Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

by <unknown>

  "If so, wasn't it only reasonable that the Cultivators paid more for them?

  "Not only was theory acknowledged by most ordinary people, even some of the idiotic Cultivators also agreed with the idea and betrayed their companions!

  "Just like that, the cancer in the body of the civilization grew ever larger, draining the nutrition of the mother planet. Instead of fixing the shortage of crystals, it escalated the problem!

  "The half-automatic mining system that adopted countless spiritual puppets had a lot of problems itself. As the spiritual puppets were slowly worn, invisible dangers accumulated and reached a tipping point!

  "Finally, on a resource planet named Bloody Dragon, a cosmic storm disrupted the communication between the spiritual puppets and the mining bases, and the chips of the spiritual puppets happened to have a fault that escaped the attention of the miners responsible for security. In the end, an unprecedented disaster was caused, in which more than 1,700 miners were killed!

  "The gory accident made the Curly Dragon Sector question the safety and legitimacy of mining on the resource planets.

  "Is it really reasonable and justifiable to trade lives for cold crystals?

  "If a civilization must be sustained by the deaths of ordinary people, what is the worth of such a civilization being sustained?

  "Blood crystals! What the Cultivators are consuming are the Blood Crystals traded with the ordinary people's blood!

  "Such voices spread virally under the freedom of speech.

  "Meanwhile, the high compensations rendered five insurance companies and the mining group bankrupt, raising a huge economic crisis in the world.

  "The labor union of the mining industry took the opportunity to attack. All the miners returned from the resource planets to the mother planet for demonstrations against the Cultivators. They demanded better working conditions and safety measures. In their delirium, they proposed unrealistic terms!

  "With the technology of the Curly Dragon Sector at that time, their demands were simply fantasies that could not be satisfied!

  "This time, the Cultivators truly had no choice.

  "However, even at the moment of life and death, the Cultivators were still unwilling, unable, to deal with the labor union. Instead, they built a mining team exclusively made of Cultivators, hoping to address the resource problem by themselves.

  "How was it possible?

  "Cultivators were much fewer in number after all. Also, mining on the resource planets was a simple, repetitive, low-intelligence job most of the time. They were wasting their lives by going down the wells in person!

  "Just like that, the resource collection system of the Curly Dragon Sector managed to keep functioning at an extremely low efficiency. In the following hundreds of years, the number of Cultivators grew smaller and smaller.

  "It was mainly caused by two factors.

  "Firstly, with the mother lodes on the mother planet being exhausted, the spiritual energy on the surface was thinner and thinner. It was essentially a small 'Age of Doom'. Of course, the number of newly-awakened Cultivators plummeted.

  "Secondly, the resource planets were highly perilous. When Cultivators mined crazily, burning their life and soul, their average longevity was much lower than when on the mother planet, and the casualty rate was significantly higher!

  "Also, after dedicating most of their time and effort to the meaningless mining work, they had barely any time to train themselves and could not advance. In the end, one death meant one fewer Cultivator!

  "The ordinary people didn't notice anything wrong about that.

  "It was because the labor union of the mining industry had already berated the Cultivators during the competition with the Cultivators.

  "Crystals are excavated mainly for the enjoyment of Cultivators. For ordinary people, we can live an excellent life even without crystals!

  "Most of the people of the Curly Dragon Sector were fooled by such a claim. They were not interested in anything happening on the resource planets. After all, the remaining assets left by their ancestors were enough for them to live comfortable lives for hundreds more years.

  "For an ordinary person, hundreds of years was long enough. They couldn't see the end of it even when they were about to die.

  "But for a civilization, hundreds of years is just a blink of an eye!

  "Just like that, after hundreds of years of fuss, the brilliant and glorious civilization of the Curly Dragon Sector finally embraced its unavoidable doom.

  "The number of the Cultivators hit rock bottom and was not enough to sustain the functioning of the resource collection system. All the mining bases fell into states of disrepair.

  "As the crystals ran dry, the last transportation route between the mother planet and the resource planet was cut off. The Curly Dragon Sector finally lost the ability of space cruising, collection, and transportation for all eternity!"

  Chapter 1247: Planet of Plague! |

  Su Changfa's voice was cold, and his face was gloomy.

  Together with the empty, desolate cities displayed in the Grand Illusionary Land, dark, depressing clouds were looming in the room.

  Although he knew that he was simply being brainwashed, Li Yao still felt cold sweat all over his body. He could not help but ask, "So, what happened the civilization of the Curly Dragon Sector?"

  "Thousands of years later, the civilization of the Curly Dragon Sector is no more," Su Changfa said casually. "Not many files are left for our reference. We can only make basic speculations.

  "First of all, as the crystals ran dry and the spiritual energy got rarefied, the Curly Dragon Sector officially entered the Age of Doom. After the last Cultivator perished, nobody was able to awaken their spiritual root ever again!

  "Without crystals, without spiritual energy, and without the lead of Cultivators, the civilization of the Curly Dragon Sector was mired in the rotting swamp that was their mother planet.

  "As the population and the average longevity continued soaring, everybody's desires and demands were infinitely magnified. The shortage of resources could never be completely resolved!

  "Yes. There were still high reserves of coal and petroleum on the mother planet. Other kinds of chemical energy and the nuclear energy were available, too.

  "However, spiritual energy is the purest, strongest energy form in the universe! Neither chemical energy nor nuclear energy are remotely close to the spiritual energy!

  "The starships powered by chemical energy or nuclear energy can never surpass one hundredth the speed of light!

  "Not surpassing one hundredth the speed of light disapproves the possibility of a mature and stable space cruising, collection, and transportation system, just like you can never hope to conduct trades across the ocean with a few canoes that are riddled with holes!

  "Besides, the coal and petroleum resources are exhaustible, too!

  "Just like that, in the several thousand years after the crystals were extinct, coal, petroleum and other resources were exhausted, too.

  "At that time, people of the Curly Dragon Sector finally realized the importance of marching into the sea of stars. But how was it possible for them to achieve that with their 'canoes' powered by nuclear energy and chemical energy?

  "Without energy, the civilization declined as a matter of course. The civilization of the Curly Dragon Sector did not collapse abruptly but walked to its doom step by step. One may say that it died of old age!"

  Shua!

  The picture in the Grand Illusionary Land flashed. The forsaken cities vanished, replaced by naked, short people whose skin was extremely pale.

  They were no taller than dwarves, but their limbs were rather proportional and slender, like mini versions of normal human beings.

  They were wearing naïve, if not moronic, smiles. Their big eyes, which almost occupied half of their faces, were blocked by a translucent membrane, but there was not the slightest spark of wisdom or humanity in them.

  Their movements could not have been
slower. Even the simplest movement of stretching out their arms took them quite a few minutes.

  Looking at the weird mini people, Li Yao could not help but recall a creature—sloth!

  "They are the natives of the Curly Dragon Sector after their civilization has degenerated for thousands of years," Su Changfa explained. "After landing on the mother planet of the Curly Dragon Sector, the exploration team of the Imperium discovered the remnants of the civilization in the complicated sewer system of the abandoned cities.

  "To adapt to the world without energy, their bodies and habits have mutated to the mode where heat is the least consumed. In their entire life, they spend most of the time lurking in the darkness below the ground, not moving at all. The heat they consume is a fraction of what a normal human being would. By sucking part of the residues of the civilization of the past, they will be able to live on."

  Li Yao shuddered hard and mumbled, "Where are the descendants of the Curly Dragon Sector right now?"

  "Still in the Curly Dragon Sector," Su Changfa said unhurriedly. "We have established quite a few 'Natural Reserves of Rare Hominoids' on their mother planet to protect them. Such reserves are open to all citizens of the Imperium. The history of the civilization of the Curly Dragon Sector is the best lesson of patriotism. It is also a reminder to all Immortal Cultivators that we must not repeat the mistake of the Cultivators.

  "If you are interested, Fellow Cultivator Li, you can visit the descendants of the Curly Dragon Sector in the Curly Dragon Natural Reserve someday in person. You will understand by then what a sensible choice you are making today by abandoning darkness for brightness!"

  Li Yao took a deep breath, and he could not help but ask, his voice shivering, "You have caged human beings and exhibited them?"

  "Are you not listening, Fellow Cultivator Li?" Su Changfa raised his voice. "They are not true human beings; they are hominoids. Hominoids! Hominoids!

  "Hominoids are not humans but a bunch of shortsighted and sluggish creatures, animals, beasts that are hopelessly driven by natural instincts!

  "You must not spare any mercy on the cattle. As long as you show them the slightest kindness, they will be insatiable. Eventually, they will ruin the entire civilization as well as themselves!

  "Only by treating them as cows, goats, pigs, and dogs and discipling them with strict rules can they expect to contribute whatever value they have to push the civilization of mankind forward!

  "Hehe. The Cultivators of the Curly Dragon Sector were too lenient and concessive. That was the essential reason of their doom!

  "If it was the Immortal Cultivators, we would've disbanded the labor union, stopped the strikes, suppress the demonstrations, and executed all the leaders of the labor union at the earliest chance. We would've skinned them and shattered their soul so that they would have nowhere to run!

  "Whoever dares cause any trouble will be sent for mining on the resource planets together with their family and friends! A ton of crystals means the death of three to five miners? Does it really matter even if it means thirty to fifty, or even three hundred to five hundred, miners must be killed? Compared with the continuity of the civilization, such sacrifices are just a drop of water in the bucket!

  "What does it matter even if millions of slaves are killed after working hard for hundreds of years? At the very least, the civilization will develop at a high speed, and there will be more and more Immortal Cultivators. We will be able to build starships of large scales, which will grant us the ability to march to the broader universe!

  "By then, the energy issue will be resolved, and all the sacrifices will be worthwhile. The entire civilization will continue its glory, instead of embracing its doom like the foolish people of the Curly Dragon Sector!

  "There's a saying in the Imperium. 'The flower of civilization must be fertilized with infinite blood'. It describes the logic quite well. Fellow Cultivator Li, what do you think?"

  Li Yao swallowed and struggled to nod.

  He suddenly felt that Su Changfa's hand on his shoulder was as slippery and greasy as five cold vipers.

  His heart seemed to have been bitten hard by a viper, too, and he felt extremely uncomfortable.

  Su Changfa could tell that he did not mean it, but he was not in the least bothered and simply smiled. "Fellow Cultivator Li, I know that it is hardly possible for you to accept all theories of the true path of immortality after only such a short time. It doesn't matter. Let's take it slow and explore it bit by bit. As long as you don't have any prior hypothesis bias, you will certainly be enlightened in the end!

  "This is everything about the Curly Dragon Sector. Then, let's talk about the tales of the Medicine Fork Sector, the second self-destructing civilization!"

  Behind Su Changfa, the light and shadow broke apart into dancing butterflies, only to condense into a space zone that looked vastly different from the previous one. At the center of the space zone was a glowing planet that seemed to be made of green jade.

  "The Medicine Fork Sector was a world that slowly grew prosperous two thousand years after the glory of the Curly Dragon civilization.

  "Different from the Curly Dragon Sector, the Medicine Fork Sector was not a world with multiple space zones; it only had one prosperous space zone. All the spiritual energy and crystals were concentrated on Medicine Fork, the mother planet. Therefore, the shortage of resources was never a problem!

  "However, the Medicine Fork Sector had its threats, too.

  "In the Medicine Fork Sector, other than human beings, a lot of demons were occupying the planet, too. The two parties fought each other for more than a thousand years as sworn enemies.

  "The demons were very adept at biochemistry and virology. The biochemical weapons and virus weapons that they developed dealt tremendous damage to the people of the Medicine Fork Sector. They nearly declared the doom of the newly-born civilization of the Medicine Fork Sector.

  "At that time, Medicine Fork was an out-and-out 'planet of plague', where everybody suffered from viruses and pestilence. They struggled to catch their breath, never knowing if they would live to see the end of the day!

  "However, the rise of humanity was the unstoppable trend. After a thousand years of bloody battles, the Cultivators of the Medicine Fork civilization developed marvelous drugs and disease control systems. Eventually, they annihilated all the demons in the Medicine Fork Sector!

  "The golden era of the Medicine Fork civilization thus began!

  "Without the enemies, nothing could stop the rapid development of the Medicine Fork Sector!

  "Because of the miserable memories of being tortured by plagues and viruses in the past thousand years, the main focus of the Medicine Fork civilization was the field of medication!

  "In only several hundred years, the people of the Medicine Fork Sector had developed the most remarkable medication skills and an almost perfect fully-comprehensive health care system. Many of their advanced medication skills are tantalizing even for the Imperium of True Human Beings today!

  "Under the creed of 'protecting all the ordinary people', most of the Cultivators of the Medicine Fork Sector were devoted to the fight with diseases. A doctor was seen as the most honorable profession in the Medicine Fork Sector!

  "They basically destroyed all the harmful bacteria and viruses in nature before they cured the diseases that troubled human beings one after another. Also, through the injection of all kinds of medications, they established a solid barrier within the body of every ordinary person, preventing them from being invaded by any intruder!

  "For the hundreds of years, Medicine Fork was almost 'a planet without illness'. Many ordinary people lived their entire life without ever being affected by the slightest ailment. Not just cancer or seriously infectious diseases, they wouldn't even catch a cold!

  "As a result, the average longevity was greatly improved, and the ordinary people 'looked' healthier and healthier, too. They could easily live to two hundred years. The quality of their life had a drastic improv
ement compared with the 'era of plague'!

  "At first glance, just like the Curly Dragon civilization's glory before their crystals ran out, everything about the Medicine Fork civilization appeared perfect when it climbed to the peak of development!"

  Chapter 1248: Calamitous Pestilence! |

  Thinking for a moment, Li Yao frowned and asked, "What's the problem of a world without diseases?"

  "What's the problem?" Su Changfa scoffed. "The biggest problem is that the Cultivators broke the rules of nature and shattered the balance between human beings and nature!

  "Human beings are the spirits of all creatures, the perfect existences that were born after billions of years of evolution of all carbon-based life forms! Even counting from the time when human beings were first born, we have also developed an effective immune system in the competition with nature, germs, viruses, and diseases!

  "Without any medicine or medicative approaches, the immune system of the human body alone is enough to defeat most of the bacteria and viruses and also build up the body during the process. The growth is sometimes even deeply etched into our genes and passed on to future generations!

  "This is what we know as evolution!"

  "That's not necessarily right," Li Yao observed. "If one doesn't go to a doctor in time when they are sick, it is still very possible that they may die."

  Su Changfa snorted and said, "Diseases are the filtering system that nature has bestowed upon human beings. By eliminating the carriers of foul genes, it can be ensured that the species as a whole will develop to the correct path!

  "For the civilization of mankind as a whole, a certain degree of 'elimination rate' must be guaranteed. Only be filtering those who are unsuitable for survival can the optimal configuration of resources be achieved.

  "For an individual, death is a tragedy, but for a civilization, the real tragedy is that those who should've died continue living and wasting resources!"