Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“What do you mean?”

Li Yao suddenly remembered that, in the ‘ultimate test’, the voice of the Primeval Lord of Heaven had told him that ‘Thousand Treasures Sea’, the leader of the civilization who fled from Earth, had gone crazy in a trance and claimed that he had seen countless ‘ghosts from Earth’ following their fleet.

At that time, Li Yao had disapproved of the sentence. He had thought that it was just an illusion caused by Wan Zanghai’s old age and guilt.

However, what if it was not an illusion?

Li Yao shuddered hard. “It’s impossible. The meteoroid shower did not hit Earth directly. Instead, it lunged at the sun and triggered a solar storm that affected the entire solar system. The water planet, Venus, Earth, and even Mars were all swallowed. All the water on Earth was vaporized, and the ground was wreathed in flames. For days, weeks, or even months, no life could survive in such an environment.

“For a carbon-based life, yes.

“But who says that there is only one form of life? Who says that the ‘sun’ cannot be a different form, a different level, or a life in a different sense?”

Li Yao was greatly alarmed. “What? What do you mean?”

“If you want to know the truth of the Earth’s destruction, you will have to wait until the bridge of information between the Lord Civilization and me is built. We will take over the civilization together, read the tremendous information, and even experience the desperation, struggle, and sublimation when the Earth is destroyed!”

Gu Wuxin opened his arms and said, “I just want to tell you that the feeling of being connected to a super entity is... unique and incomparable. Besides, there will be no consequences at all. You don’t need to worry that your self-awareness and emotions will be erased at all. All you need to do is open your soul completely and write a special super information interactive protocol in it so that your soul will be one of the endless computational nodes in the ‘unified super information of the universe’. You will share all the information, thoughts, emotions, and wisdom with other people.

“After you join the super body, your life will be upgraded. Just like a single-celled life evolving into a multi-celled life, you will experience an earth-shaking, rebirth-like upgrade. From then on, you won’t just be yourself. You won’t just be living in such a lonely and ridiculous shell. You will become all the computational nodes in the super body. You will become all the compatriots around you. You will live on the network. In the ‘cloud’, you will tear open the void and cross the galaxy with the help of the Great Unification Super Information Interaction Agreement. You will live in the bodies of 10,000,000 or 100,000,000 or 100,000,000,000 compatriots almost without any delay. Within a second, you will be able to feel 100 million different emotions and ways of thinking. You will be able to absorb the life experiences and beautiful memories of 100 million people. Moreover, you will be able to share your emotions, your will, your way of thinking, and your memory fragments with these 100 million people... Your soul will even be able to exist simultaneously on countless planets with completely different environments. You will be able to live in the bodies of countless bizarre-shaped creatures. You will be able to enjoy a life of a thousand forms in the manner of these ‘monsters’. You will be able to obtain brand-new philosophies and comprehensions. You will be able to condense your own meaning of life.

“In the end, you will no longer be a tiny, weak, stupid, selfish, impulsive, dust-like human being. Instead, you will live as the amalgamation of billions of lives. You will be fully integrated into the civilization of mankind and the universe. You will be the civilization of mankind and the universe!

“...I don’t understand.”

Li Yao was silent for a long time. He breathed heavily and said, “I only know that anyone who wants anything in the universe will have to pay a corresponding price. Also, every time a guy like you shows up and says that everything is perfect, he is most likely lying.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand. That’s why I said ‘summer insects shouldn’t talk about ice’.”

Gu Wuxin was silent for a moment, too. Then he said, “Before I was connected to the super body, I didn’t understand it, either, and I was very proud of my insignificant, lonely, enclosed self. What a blind and idiotic pride it was!

“But in the end, I was connected to a small super entity made of thousands of people from the Heavenly Palace as well as the captives of the Flood Tide. Our small-scale super information exchange agreement is far from the vastness, depth, and unpredictability of the real main civilization super entity in the sea of the universe, but it has already made me feel extremely happy and touched. I feel that I’ve lived in vain in the past. I’m just a muddle-headed, single-celled life. The things that I’m proud of and protect are meaningless. Right now, this is the real beginning of my life.

“I am Gu Wuxin, living in such a weak body.

“I can be a monster, too. My life cycle is only a few hours. I have to burn the fire of life deep inside my cells in a moment.

“I was also the first generation of researchers of the Heavenly Palace thousands of years ago. When the Heavenly Palace was being built, I was invited by the so-called captives of the Flood Tide and established a local super information exchange agreement in the isolated Pangu Universe. In the days to come, I absorbed all the life information of thousands of elite researchers so that everyone could live in the mind of Gu Wuxin in the form of information.

“Look. Flesh, cells, genes. Everything is superficial. Only information is the foundation of life. Information, information, information, information constitutes everything in the Universe Ocean. As long as you have information, you can control everything at your will.

Gu Wuxin’s voice sometimes came from his real body, sometimes from the body of the Indigo Devil God, sometimes from the nine-headed griffin, sometimes from the Mystic Color Jellyfish, sometimes from the skinned jackals, sometimes from the depths of the sea of foam where the voices of thousands of people overlapped.

Tremendous tides were raging inside the sea of foam. In the tides almost a hundred meters high, pink tentacles were wriggling nonstop, as if thousands of different figures were staring at Li Yao and the human experts while they screamed, “Join us! Join us! Share all the information with us!”

Li Yao felt goosebumps all over his body.

“What kind of pervert do you think I am?”

He rubbed his hands hard. “You want me to release all the information in my brain so that any Tom, Dick, and Harry can see my most private memories and read my mind? This—this is even more terrifying than wiping out my free will and emotions. You are forcing me to publicize the browsing and downloading records of my crystal processor! How can you think of such unpardonable, inhuman things? Lunatics! You are a bunch of out-and-out lunatics!”

“Judging from the magical equipment and crystal processors you’ve been using, you’ve entered an information society and even have a unified super light speed network in every space zone of the Pangu Universe, haven’t you?

Gu Wuxin’s voice came from his own body, the monsters, and the squirming tentacles deep inside the sea of foam. “If so, you should be very clear that the so-called evolution of civilization is the process of informationization and sharing.

“In the primitive society, each individual received and outputted very little information. The primitive people did not have their own names. Such important identification information was rarely exchanged with other cave tribes. They lacked the urge to transmit their own information, nor did they have the desire to pry into other people’s information. Each individual was a node that was cut off from each other and sealed itself. Survival had drained all their energy. There was no need to talk about uniting everyone’s information, because the entire civilization was a pile of loose sand.

“By the medieval era, the intelligent creatures had conquered the entire continent and even the entire planet, becoming the well-deserved ‘spirit of all things’. However, their information exchange was still extremely poor. There was no need for information transmission, nor did they have the means to read information. Other than their own family or their own village, they were completely uninterested in the information of the outside world. This was the so-called ‘darkness and ignorance’.

“However, as the technological boom brought about tremendous changes to the society, it only took a moment for the industrial society to evolve into an information society. You will find that, as the civilization surged forward, every individual’s demand for information exchange soared exponentially, hundreds of times higher than their ancestors hundreds of years ago.

“I don’t know what the civilization of mankind is all about, but in the history of the Pangu civilization, almost all the carbon-based intelligent creatures experienced such information explosions when they jumped from the industrial era to the information era.

“During the information explosion, everyone would be immersed in the ‘carpet-type information bombardment’ of the official news, public forums, and the self-media of the experts when they woke up in the morning. Every terminal would bombard people’s brains like a never-ending rapid-fire cannon. The information that they read during breakfast was almost the amount of information that their ancestors could only receive a year and a half ago. Even so, they were still in an insatiable ‘information hunger’. Even if they were on their way to work and study, they would have to bury their heads in various terminals and read and share the information through various channels. As long as they were away from the terminal for one second, they would feel abandoned by the entire society.

“This is part of the information reception. There is still the output of information.

“Also relying on the terminal and various network channels, they were able to display and export the details of their daily life in great detail. What they ate, what they wore, who they met, and even their shallow and barren thoughts... There was no need for anyone to force them. They were born with the urge to expose themselves and strip themselves of everything. All the information that constituted their entire life was completely uploaded to the terminal and the cloud, using their own hands!

“My question is, have you ever wondered how the information society will naturally evolve when it continues to develop for thousands of years?