Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“It does make sense.”

Li Yao scratched his head hard. It had occurred to him that he had asked the wrong person, too. For most human beings, Long Yangjun was a “foreigner” who must have evil intentions herself. Even if she could accept the two kids, what could it prove?

Or rather, for the people who were dreaded in the first place, the picture where a primeval warrior with dual bloodlines of Pangu and Nuwa joining hands with the mysterious information lives would be a hundred times more horrifying!

Even so, Li Yao still hoped to win some sort of approval from Long Yangjun. After all, they were “best friends”, and she was one of the few persons that Li Yao could trust in the entire universe.

“Alright, let’s just forget everybody else and focus on you.”

Staring at Long Yangjun, Li Yao said, “For you personally, can you accept such two kids? Do you want Xiaoming and Wenwen to call you ‘Aunt Long’?”

“Me?”

With a smile, Long Yangjun gave Li Yao an unexpected answer. “Of course I can. I’m more willing to do that than anything else! Although I was more or less shocked when I heard you talking about it just now, I almost felt like bursting into laughter after I realized what was going on. There can’t be a more ironic thing in the entire universe!

“Do you know what I thought of when I watched the spiritual puppets duplicating, maintaining, assembling, and upgrading themselves, walking down from the assembly lines incessantly and constituting an iron army?”

Winking, she gradually put on a malicious smile.

Li Yao frowned. “What did you think of?”

“I thought of the picture where the first batch of human beings was ‘manufactured’ by the Pangu civilization hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

Long Yangjun said with a smile, “Hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, and the dozen other godly primeval clans ‘manufactured’ the first batch of human beings, they couldn’t have expected that the vulnerable, insignificant, and seemingly obedient ‘tools’ would eventually end their civilizations and replace them as the master of the three thousand Sectors someday, could they?

“Right, no, perhaps a lot of ‘knowledgeable people’ in the Pangu civilization realized the possibility, but they thought that they had plenty of ways to control human beings, say, the ‘Three Fundamental Laws’. Relying on the ‘seals’ and ‘barriers’, they were confident that they could enjoy all the benefits brought forth by human beings without being damaged or backfired at all.

“It’s a pity that the trend of the universe is unstoppable. The potentials of the new-generation lives are always beyond the estimation and imagination of the old-generation lives. The brilliant, splendid, godly civilizations perished, and the civilization of mankind rose unstoppably and has dominated the sea of stars for a hundred thousand years!

“Today… history has repeated itself. The life of a newer generation has been born. Although they look so tiny, feeble, and insignificant for now, they represent the future! Who says that they are not the future of mankind or that they will not completely replace ‘old human beings’ someday? If that day does come, would it be some sort of ‘karma’ for mankind?”

While talking, Long Yangjun suddenly squatted and grinned at the two kids. “Hey, Xiaoming, Wenwen, have you ever thought of destroying mankind? Why don’t you give it a try? It’s going to be fun!”

“Dad!”

Xiaoming and Wenwen hid behind Li Yao in fear.

“What are you doing exactly? Don’t teach the kids those bad things!”

Li Yao felt a huge headache and realized that it was a mistake to discuss the issue with Long Yangjun. “You should know your boundaries when you are joking. Don’t be too outrageous!”

“Who’s joking?”

Long Yangjun sniffed. “You haven’t forgotten that the blood of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan flows in my body, have you? Do you think I should feel delighted or even offer ovations as a survivor of the primeval civilizations for the splendor of the civilization of mankind today?

“Of course, under your influence—no, under your ‘corruption’, I may have sensed something wonderful in the civilization of mankind and dropped the boring idea of ‘destroying mankind and bringing back Pangu and Nuwa’.

“However, if a new-generation civilization is going to repeat the history and replace mankind, I wouldn’t care at all, either. I have always been an observer outside of the picture! Do you know what ‘observer’ means? It’s the person who is seated comfortably watching the dramas on the stage with popcorn in hand.”

Rendered speechless, Li Yao threw himself into the chair, not knowing whom he should be mad at.

“Do you feel that I was being too blunt?”

Long Yangjun stuck out of his tongue with an even more brilliant smile. “Should I give you some consolation?”

Li Yao said, “I thought you were only capable of sarcasm.”

Tilting her head and looking at the two kids, Long Yangjun said, “Have you ever felt strange about one thing? A myriad of magical equipment from the Pangu civilization has been excavated from the primeval relics. They are very advanced in the material science, the utilization of spiritual energy, the architecture, the biochemical technologies, and all the other aspects, but their technologies in crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus are rather underdeveloped. Greatly underdeveloped.”

Li Yao was slightly stunned. It was indeed an enigma that almost carried no answers.

Of the ultimate treasures of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan that they excavated during the exploration of the primeval relics, most of the materials, structures, and mechanisms were undiagnosable for mankind. Such treasures equaled to “black boxes”. It was already remarkable for human beings to basically duplicate the devices.

The most typical example was the Colossi. To this day, neither the federation nor the Imperium was capable of completely analyzing the operating mechanism and the elements of the crucial components on the Colossi, and therefore, they could not manufacture new Colossi in bulk. They could only maintain and assemble Colossi based on the remnants.

However, compared with the cutting-edge technologies and theories in other fields, the technologies of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus seemed unbelievably “underdeveloped”.

If the Pangu civilization was at least five thousand years more advanced than the civilization of mankind in terms of material science, structure science, spiritual energy studies, and biochemical technologies, it was only three hundred years more advanced than human beings when it came to crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus. For the elites of human beings, it was possible to completely grasp the crystal processors of the Pangu civilization after systematical and tremendous learning!

That was why human beings could copy and utilize the magical equipment left by the Pangu civilization without much trouble. From the weapons such as blades and guns to the gigantic starships, all of them could be used handily.

It did not make any sense logically!

The development of technologies was always comprehensive and synchronic. It was hard to imagine that an ancient civilization that was capable of absorbing the energy of the stars at a high-efficiency rate could not create a crystal processor a hundred times more complicated than what human beings used. There almost seemed to be a mysterious, forbidden area, and once the specialists and scholars of the Pangu civilization entered the forbidden area, their wisdom and creativity were all sealed or even erased.

“Was it some kind of… technological blockage?”

Li Yao was immediately soaked in a cold sweat.

He suddenly recalled the apocalypse raised by the Blood Stripe Virus. Before many powerful civilizations conquered the weaker civilizations, they had often struck and blocked the technological evolution of the weaker civilizations to stall their development.

Did the technologies of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus in the Pangu civilization suffer an “apocalyptic strike” and get blocked?

Long Yangjun looked at Li Yao, somewhat in surprise. She raised her eyebrows and said, “Very smart! That’s right. According to my mottled memory pieces, it’s true that the technologies of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus in the Pangu civilization were not developed naturally but intentionally blocked or even eradicated. However, it was not done by a certain unknown, hostile force beyond the three thousand Sectors, but by themselves.”

“By themselves? Why did the Pangu civilization block or even erase the technologies of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, which were of paramount importance for the conquest of the universe?”

Hardly had Li Yao raised the question when he realized everything. “Information life! The Pangu civilization was scared of the information life that would be born from the crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus!”

“I suspect so, too.”

Long Yangjun said gloomily, “Think about it. Even human beings have developed an enormous foundation of crystal processors and Spiritual Nexus after living in such a barren universe for a hundred thousand years, and you have touched the forbidden realm, making it possible for the new-generation, unimaginable information life to be born.

“The Pangu civilization had existed in the three thousand Sectors for hundreds of thousands of years when the resources were much more abundant than right now. There was no reason why their technologies in the Spiritual Nexus and crystal processors failed to significantly exceed mankind’s. So, chances were very high that an information life could’ve been born.

“The specialists of the Pangu civilization were not as optimistic as a simpleminded high-school student like you. They were probably horrified by the vision where the ubiquitous, omnipotent information lives replaced the Pangu civilization and took over the universe, weren’t they?

“However, just like Professor Mo Xuan once said, as long as the technologies of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus continued developing, the birth of artificial intelligence or information life would be unavoidable.

“So, to forestall the disaster, the Pangu civilization decided to castrate themselves. They sealed or even destroyed their technologies in crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, which were ‘overly advanced’, ruthlessly enough to go backward for hundreds of years in the field and forever restrain themselves in a certain low, safe level.

“Of course, due to the lack of advanced crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, the mission to modify and control the three thousand Sectors became terribly difficult. So, to make up for the shortage of labor force in the Pangu civilization, they retrieved the genetic essence of the thirteen species and injected it into a certain carefully-selected ancient ape, creating the first batch of ‘human beings’.

“Do you understand it now? If my guess is correct, human beings were very probably just a ‘backup plan’. They were created in order to make up for the inadequacy of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus. In other words, according to the normal route of evolution, the child civilization of Pangu and Nuwa should’ve been the information life born in crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, and the civilization of mankind was just a redundant procedure on the chain!”