Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao secretly felt more or less ashamed as he listened.

It was true that he was the one who came up with the idea of activating the strength of the ordinary people in the Imperium of True Human Beings so that the Immortal Cultivators would be mired in their wrath that was essentially a black hole.

However, after he snuck into the Imperium, after witnessing the miserable and desperate lives of the people known as “sinners” in the Martial Meritocrats Sector at the beginning, he was soon involved in the power struggle between the reformists and the four Kurfürst families following the lead of Queen Li Linghai, and he barely had any time to pay attention to the lives of the ordinary people of the Imperium.

In that regard, Long Yangjun, as a malicious “foreigner”, had deeper observations and insights than him.

However, Li Yao had always kept an open mind. From so many opponents in the past, including Xiao Xuance, Bai Xinghe, Jin Tuyi, Lu Zui, and Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan… Li Yao had learned a lot of new ideas and melted the ideas with his own thoughts into the strength that pushed him forward.

Now that Long Yangjun did have a point, he would simply listen quietly!

Long Yangjun went on. “… From the space fortresses beyond the atmosphere to the metropolises of the Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet, to the dark towns below the ground on so many levels, the whole world of Immortal Cultivators is a gigantic cage and arena. What is ironic is that in most of the cases, it is the people inside who built the cage and the arena willingly.

“Inside the cage and the arena, everybody is the oppressed and the victim, but everybody is also an oppressor and an inflictor. It is exactly like what they say. In an avalanche, not a single snowflake is innocent.

“The ‘senior hominoids’ living in the one-digit districts are in the highest class of ordinary people. They seem to be gorgeous, wealthy, and eye-catching superstars, but they have to kneel and force smiles before the Immortal Cultivators, abandoning all their pride and dignity. And when they grow old and less attractive, they will immediately be thrown away like garbage. Is their outcome not pitiful?

“However, how condescending are the superstars who are both humble and wretched in front of the Immortal Cultivators when they are faced with smaller stars or the people working for them? If they do not regard themselves as humans but only pets, they will certainly not regard other people as humans either. They will only impose the humiliations that the Immortal Cultivators have imposed on them to the smaller stars and the people working for them. In such cases, are they any less horrible than the Immortal Cultivators who play with them blatantly?

“On the other hand, when faced with the loyal supporters from the lower districts, they would immediately put on an immaculate mask, saying fancy words that they do not believe at all, to deceive the supporters through whatever means possible so that the supporters would willingly donate their life savings to make their idols look even more spectacular.

“Their idols never stop thanking the supporters from lower districts, as if they were born for the supporters from lower districts, and their supporters were as important to them as their parents.

“But I’ve seen their real attitudes in the backstage. They make fun of the bottom-level supporters, considering them to be idiots and swine. They laugh at the stupidity and humbleness of the supporters, who consider their yawns and farts to be the latest fashion and follow it. The Immortal Cultivators are their real patrons, and the dirty people from the lower districts do not even have the privilege to touch them.

“The situation in the two-digit districts where the brainworkers live is exactly the same as the first class.

“Those ‘brainfarmers’ had to run excessive calculations every day under the pursuit of the haunting ‘deadlines’. Naturally, their lives are more than miserable. But few of them have ever considered if such a life is correct and if they should rise to resist. Instead, they simply shift their sufferings to the hominoids who are even lower than them, namely the servants who cater to their daily needs.

“You know that the ‘brainfarmers’ are dedicated to computations and almost melted into the crystal processors. Their limbs have significantly shrunk, and they are not very fond of outdoor activities. Therefore, a lot of servants live in the two-digit districts to look after those ‘brainfarmers’.

“The ‘brainfarmers’ are in the seemingly trendy business. They have access to the latest crystal processors and the most up-to-date information. Their wages are dozens of times higher than the wages of the people below them. Dwelling in the illusion that they are the cornerstones of the Imperium, they can be quite nasty toward the servants. I’m sure you can imagine it.

“The simplest example is that every ‘brainfarmer’ often hires three to five servants, who will put clothes on them, deliver food into their mouth, and even wipe their a*s for them after they go to the toilet. Naturally, they are also never short of the bed slaves who satisfy their biological desires. They may argue that most of the servants are legally hired from the districts further down, but if you think about it more carefully, you will realize that it is still oppression for the teenagers, who barely have any education, to serve other people or even sell their bodies for their entire lives, isn’t it?

“However, most of the ‘brainfarmers’ have already been used to it. They even believe that the mind laborers are destined to rule over the body laborers, thinking that they are ‘mind laborers’ themselves. Hehe. Do they really deserve it?

“Those people can be even meaner than the Immortal Cultivators. The Immortal Cultivators have easier ways to get resources and money. In many cases, when they are in a good mind, their pets and slaves can live a good life for a year and a half because of their generosity. But while the ‘brainfarmers’ consider themselves to be advanced, they have to count on the few wages for their livelihoods. After they pay the bills on every payday, how much money will they have left to give their servants?

“Therefore, they always come up with all kinds of bizarre reasons to nitpick the servants and cut their allowances. The best that the servants can expect is to keep themselves warm and full. As time goes by, it is only natural that the servants hold a deep grudge, and the contradictions between the two parties are more and more intense. Somebody even comes up with the theory that the servants are natural-born larcenists and must be monitored every second with a crystal camera hovering above each of their heads. It is safe to say that this is the most direct and general exploitation.”

Listening attentively, Li Yao couldn’t help but have a lot of mixed feelings. It was true that he who traveled far knew much. When they made examples where the Immortal Cultivators exploited ordinary people during the education against Immortal Cultivators in the Star Glory Federation, they could often only think of the slaves in the mines, farms, and army.

Who could’ve thought that there was such devastating exploitation and slavery in the seemingly unattractive service industry, and who could’ve thought that the exploitation and slavery were not from the Immortal Cultivators but “senior hominoids”?

Long Yangjun sneered, “Of course, don’t presume that the servants, the assembly line workers living in the third class, and the miners living in the fourth class are any decent folks. Their minds are, in fact, the darkest of all, but they are too weak to vent their anger in reality and often unleash all of it on the Spiritual Nexus.

“In the beginning, they blatantly threw profanities at other people on the Spiritual Nexus to let out their pain caused by the failures. Gradually, such a way was not enough to fill their empty hearts, and they began to snoop on other people’s pain. It appears that the more painful other people are, the happier they will be.

“With such a state of mind, a lot of bizarre videos where people mutilate themselves or even swallow cockroaches and rats alive popped up on the Spiritual Nexus. You may find it surprising, but the more painful, cruel, and mind-boggling the videos are, the more popular they will be among the bottom-level hominoids. Even the performances of the big stars are not as good as a clip where an ordinary person eats a basin of cockroaches.

“By the time when such dark, sensational stimulations were not enough to fill their empty minds, the catharsis reached the highest point—the slaughter stream.

“Who do you think most of the people among the audience of the slaughter stream are? The Immortal Cultivators? Wrong! If the Immortal Cultivators want to kill anyone, they can totally do it on their own. They’re already tired of killing each other every day. Who’s interested in watching a bunch of ordinary people fighting one another?

“Most of the viewers of the slaughter stream are exactly the miners, servants, and assembly line workers living in the third and the fourth classes. Those people aren’t satisfied with only watching the slaughters. They often gather their money and ask the gamers in places like ‘Land of Sins’ to kill someone in designated ways!

“Whatever few wages they earn through hard work at great risks will be transferred to a certain ‘killer’ once the money arrives into their pockets, just so that the killer will kill someone they absolutely do not know in the cruelest ways somewhere far, far away. That is exactly what is happening in thousands of underground factories and mines right now when the workers want to pursue a moment of joy. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Human beings truly deserve to be the best carriers of extraterrestrial devils!”

Dense cold sweat leaked out of Li Yao’s forehead. Recalling what he had seen in the Martial Meritocrats Sector, he couldn’t help but sigh.

“Since they are passionate enough to be involved in the slaughter stream, it should come as no surprise that they slightly maintain and pack the garbage from the upper districts and sell it back to the upper districts pretending that the goods are original.”

Long Yangjun said casually, “It seems that everybody is hopelessly evil, and only the farmers of the fifth class, such as the residents of the 10,084th district, are the innocent, good guys, doesn’t it?

“That is not necessarily the case.

“How do you think they have bred the rock worms to make them so huge and fat when the environment is so harsh and the resources are so few? Have they added certain additives of unknown backgrounds, and are those additives harmful to human bodies?

“Hehe. Most of the rock worms are not served on their own dinner tables after all. Besides, the people of upper levels peg the compressed oxygen at such a high price. If they do not make the rock worms fatter and get more compressed oxygen back, how can they possibly live on? Don’t you think so?”