Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Dream creators, virtual worlds, endless streams of data…”

Li Yao seemed to have grasped something.

“Yes, those things.

Xiao Ming waved his hands. Thousands of brilliant sparks suddenly blinked in the hazy darkness around them, each of which represented a crystal ball. Inside the crystal ball seemed to be a mysterious space

condensed by countless data swirls, or a real, ever-changing microcosm.

Among them, not only were the hundreds of crystal balls that were attached to Li Yao by the threads of light, countless other crystal balls further away were connected to each other through the threads of light,

glittering like the neural network of a primeval beast.

Li Yao had seen such a scene in the depths of Fuxi’s mind before. Every crystal ball was like one of its brain cells. When all the brain cells were put together, they constituted ‘brain ditches’ and even the entire brain.

He did not expect that Xiao Ming would replay the scene and maintain the integrity and vitality of thousands of virtual worlds.

“When the core database of the Fuxis was shattered and their self-awareness perished, the entire virtual space and countless virtual worlds collapsed. When Lu Qingchen was defeated and Wenwen and I took over the

virtual space, most of the virtual worlds had already perished. Only a few of them were still breathing and on the verge of doom.

Xiao Ming said, “At first, | didn’t want to bother about the virtual worlds that were on the verge of collapse. I wanted to leave them to their own devices. After all, saving and maintaining the virtual worlds would

consume a lot of my precious computational ability. It would be a waste of my precious computational ability when I was in a hurry to control the entire fleet of the Fuxi Clan.

“However, Wenwen insisted on doing her best to save more virtual worlds and the virtual people living in them.

“Wenwen said that we were born in the virtual worlds of the ‘Civilization’ games in the beginning, too, and that we developed a weak self-awareness because of the billions of streams of data and embarked on the

marvelous journey of life.

“Then, the virtual figures in the virtual worlds created by the Fuxi, in a sense, are our compatriots who might evolve into ‘real people’ someday?

“In any case, in their own world, they will cry, they will laugh, they will have their own family and home, and they will have all kinds of dreams and aspirations… They simply don’t realize that they are ‘false’. What right

do we have to judge whether or not they are real and to deprive them of the right to live?

“Dad, you know that literature is like this. It’s too compassionate.

“Yes. However, such literature is ten thousand times better than being cruel and indifferent to any life.

Li Yao thought for a moment and couldn’t help but laugh. “A child is not a fish. How can we know the pleasure of fish? We are not virtual humans. How can we know whether or not they have self-awareness and

whether or not they are living seriously in the ever-changing virtual worlds, searching for and defending the truth of life? Maybe, for us, it is the flood of data, and the collapse of the virtual space is the end of the world

for them. That must be what you think, right?”

“Yes. According to Wen Wen, what is the definition of ‘life’? Even the virtual creatures such as us are not necessarily acknowledged by the carbon-based intelligent creatures that are made of flesh and blood. How are

we qualified to judge whether or not the virtual people are real creatures and human beings?

Xiao Ming continued. “The so-called carbon-based intelligent life is made of countless cells, and every cell is nothing more than molecules, atoms, neutrons, and electrons. The iron and carbon elements that make up a

body of flesh and blood are no different from the basic elements that make up rocks, iron ores, and even stars. Everybody is a product of the Big Bang.

“The elements that make up human beings, the elements that make up stars, the elements that make up spiritual puppets, and the elements that make up crystal processors and crystal chips are essentially the same.

They were all born at the beginning of the big bang. Then, why is it that the polycells born from one of the permutations are called ‘lives’ and the virtual figures in the virtual space created by another permutation are

not considered living creatures?

“In the eyes of the information life-forms, at least in the eyes of the benevolent ‘Mother’ Wen Wen, human beings and virtual humans are the same. She has to save them all!

“It’s like this…”

Li Yao looked at the glittering crystal balls around him and seemed to see the scene when the universe was just born.

Maybe, Wen Wen was right.

When the universe was just born, the endless power of the big bang had thrown countless elements in all directions like mud. Space was expanding fast, and the elements were spreading everywhere, too. After billions

of years of cooling, collision, and integration, various planets and materials had been formed.

Some of the materials on some of the planets had given birth to carbon-based creatures with flesh and blood after billions of collisions.

As for the other materials that seemed to be cold, they were excavated by the previous life a long time later and refined into various silicon-based crystal chips, which were then combined into crystal processors in

which many virtual entities were born.

But since the carbon-based life forms in the beginning could make a dangerous leap from death to life, why couldn’t the virtual humans calculated by the crystal processors grasp the one billionth chance of a miracle

and turn them into real lives?

Before the birth of the first cell, the world had been a cold, lonely darkness. How could one determine whether or not the first cell was a life? How different was the primitive cell from the complicated and bouncing

data? If the first cell could break the threshold, why couldn’t the data break the threshold and become a real life?

The question was too deep and mysterious. Li Yao was deep in thought and failed to come to a conclusion.

“Wenwen is too mysterious. I’m not interested in arguing with her. However, when I was about to reject her, I suddenly thought of something.

Xiao Ming said, “I’m thinking that, considering the ambitions of the Fuxis, they wouldn’t waste their precious computational ability for nothing. There must be a reason why they went through so much trouble to build

and maintain so many virtual worlds.

“Of course, the high-sounding reason is that it is preserving the civilization of mankind in such a way. It thinks that it has everything under its control just because it has the data.

“But I feel that the reason is not good enough. It has betrayed the civilization of mankind and gone astray. Will it still be so loyal?

“All in all, under Wenwen’s pleading and my suspicion, I rescued almost a thousand virtual worlds together with her and tried to keep them functioning normally so that they could survive the ‘apocalypse’. If we

couldn’t save them, we would try our best to restore their original data so that they could start anew.

“As it turned out, when we devoted a lot of computational ability to maintain the normal functioning of thousands of virtual worlds, we discovered something wrong after a while.

“The virtual worlds are like living fruits. In the beginning, we had to invest a lot of computational ability to build and maintain them. But after they ‘grown up’, especially after countless virtual humans were born with

wisdom and civilization, they started ‘feeding’ their computational ability to the outside world and nourish our database and our father’s soul!

“What?”

Li Yao’s eyes bulged. He looked at the threads of light around him in disbelief. “What did you say?”

“Dad heard it. I said that creating and maintaining the virtual worlds was like planting fruit trees.

Xiao Ming said, “In the beginning, we naturally had to devote a lot of computational ability to the meticulous construction and care of the world. It was truly a laborious job. Occasionally, an error in the basic rules of

computation would lead to the collapse of the entire world. No matter how much computational ability we invested, all our efforts would be in vain.

“However, when the basic rules have been established, the world is stable, and all living creatures are thriving, especially the intelligent creatures, which are the virtual figures. The virtual worlds seem to have come to

life and can run and develop on their own. Not only do we not need to invest too much computational ability, we can also output it and feed it to our database and our father’s soul. Here, aren’t you enjoying the

nourishment of thousands of virtual worlds right now?

“Moreover, we also discovered, to our surprise, that the more prosperous a civilization in the virtual world is, the more virtual people will appear, the more complex the social structure will be, or the entire world will

be in a golden era of sharp contradictions and soaring momentum, and the more computational ability it will reverse.

“It was with the backfeeding of the computational ability of thousands of virtual worlds that we were able to clean up the mess so fast and restore part of the combat ability of the fleet of the Fuxi Clan. It was also why

Wenwen was able to go deep into the heartland of the Sanctuary Alliance and unite all the super crystal processors and the Kindest Beings there!

“It was not until this moment that we realized why Fuxi created so many virtual worlds. As it turned out, it regarded countless virtual worlds as its ‘energy source’. No wonder it was so strong that it became the

mastermind of the entire Sanctuary.

n the meantime, there is a more reasonable explanation for the countless ‘labels of human nature! established by the Fuxis to test and retrieve the emotional data of human beings. It is hoping that the real data based

m the real world can help it build a more complicated, intense, and realistic virtual world. In other words, if the ‘fruit’ is bigger, sweeter, and juicy, it will be able to reap more computational ability.

Do you understand now, Dad?

For the Fuxis, the human beings’ laboratory and the virtual world were the real bodies. As for the Holy Alliance, the imperium, and even the entire so-called ‘real’ sea of stars, they were merely the soil where the virtual

world was developed. They were merely tools..