Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Wow. You have asked such a complicated, mysterious question that contains the ultimate philosophies of the universe. How do you expect me to answer it?” Long Yangjun smiled. “In fact, everybody has their own understanding about that unsubstantial, theoretical question. There might not be a correct answer, or there might be ten thousand correct answers, all of which can explain part of the unknown universe from a certain perspective.”

“Then, what is your ‘correct answer’?”

“I do not have one,” Long Yangjun replied. “The best I have are some immature deductions and hypotheses that I would like to share and discuss with you.

“We have been talking about the opposition between the ‘Pangu Civilization’ and ‘chaos’ and even depicting it as an unprecedented war that involved all of the three thousand Sectors hundreds of thousands of years ago. But before the division of the Nuwa Clan at least, the form of the so-called ‘war’ and the criteria of victory are barely comprehensible and imaginable for us.

“The Pangu Civilization was like moving mountains, whereas chaos or the extraterrestrial devils were countless times smaller than the smallest microorganisms. Or rather, they did not have any entity and were merely ‘shadows of microorganisms’. They did not have any self-awareness or a civilization. Do not mistake chaos or extraterrestrial devils for personified existences, which would be the greatest mistake.”

Frowning, Li Yao said, “However, I have seen a lot of extraterrestrial devils that boast strong emotions and self-awareness, such as Mo Xuan, Lei Yuqin, Lu Qingchen, and also the commander of the Nuwa Clan who tried to possess me just now. Wasn’t an ancient extraterrestrial devil that had hibernated for hundreds of thousands of years lurking inside her brain?”

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Long Yangjun remarked. “It is highly inaccurate to call Mo Xuan an extraterrestrial devil. Specifically speaking, what existed inside Professor Mo Xuan’s soul was not a single extraterrestrial devil but a collection of millions of ‘chaos’ and ‘extraterrestrial devils’.

“No. Not just Professor Mo Xuan. Millions of extraterrestrial devils exist in the brains of you, me, and everybody else.”

“Millions of extraterrestrial devils?” Li Yao was completely confused. “I don’t understand…”

“You may compare our soul to an ecological system. It has a sky, a continent, an ocean, and plants and animals. It is an exuberant, unique planet, an independent Sector, or a mysterious, unpredictable universe!

“Every gentle breeze, every beam of sunlight, every blade of grass, and every drop of dew in the tiny universe is not exactly ‘you’; the ecological system that all of that makes up is your mind, your consciousness, and your soul. Do you find such a metaphor acceptable?”

After pondering for a moment, Li Yao nodded slowly.

“But a long, long time ago, at the very beginning, such an ‘ecological system’ did not exist,” Long Yangjun said. “At that time, human beings, as ‘tools’ or ‘carriers’, had only a bare, lifeless planet inside their brain, a world of absolute desolation and death and a universe without the slightest heat and waves. The best that there possibly had been were some unconscious waves, like thunderstorms and earthquakes in nature.

“However, perhaps because ‘seeds of life’ were implanted into the bottomless, scorching oceans when the planet was born, or maybe because meteorites from outer space brought amazing gifts, after a long time, ancient lives gradually appeared on the planet of death and silence.

“More and more lives appeared, and they became more and more complicated. They integrated, swallowed each other, and evolved, slowly transforming the desolate planet. They covered the lifeless earth with colorful moss. From the moss grew huge trees, and the fruits ripening on the trees fed countless creatures. Everything together made a complicated and precise ecological system that was the soul of a human being.”

Li Yao was rather stunned as he listened.

“The extraterrestrial devils are like cells,” Long Yangjun said. “Your body is made of millions of cells, while your soul is made of millions of extraterrestrial devils. A single cell or a single extraterrestrial devil is not you, but when millions of cells and extraterrestrial devils are condensed, they will construct your fleshly body and your powerful soul.

“The fleshly body may get sick. It may be infiltrated by foreign viruses and germs and can even grow ‘cancer cells’, eventually leading to self-destruction.

“By that logic, the extraterrestrial devils are themselves neither good nor bad. The grass swallows dew and sunlight, sheep feed on grass, and wolves feed on sheep. None of them are good or evil here. Everything will be fine if they can assemble a balanced food chain that can maintain the order of the entire ecological system.

“However, if a certain ferocious foreign species barges into the ecological system and shatters the vulnerable ecological balance, there will be dire consequences.”

Li Yao thought of something and said, “So, the so-called ‘invasion of extraterrestrial devils’ is not as simple as an extraterrestrial devil swallowing the soul of a human being; it is the catastrophic consequence when ‘a few’ extraterrestrial devils invade the sealed ecological system inside someone’s brain causing the malfunction and even collapse of the entire ecological system?”

“Exactly,” Long Yangjun said. “The term ‘extraterrestrial devils’ is strongly biased in the negative sense. One will inevitably imagine them as dark, evil, and bloodthirsty existences. I prefer to call them ‘chaos’. By ‘chaos’, it means that they are neither good nor bad, neither kind nor evil. It is brightness, and it is darkness. It is kind, and it is evil.

“Everybody has countless kind thoughts and malevolent ones inside their head all the time, but most of the time, they are able to control their malevolence, which is like the subtle balance in the ecological system where wolves, sheep, grass, sunlight, and dew drops coexist.

“However, after the extraterrestrial devils arrive, it is like a meteorite bringing a virus that has never appeared in the ecological system before, causing the collapse of the entire system. That is the general sense of ‘being possessed’.

“How do you measure the power of the soul? In my opinion, it all depends on the complexity of the ecological system.

“The simpler an ecological system is, the more vulnerable it is. For example, an ecological made of only four elements—for example, wolves, sheep, grass, and sunlight—will collapse if any random variable is introduced. The variable does not even have to be an aggressive tiger or lion but can be as insignificant as some germs that can cause the grass to wither and die on a large scale.

“The souls of the ordinary people are exactly such simple and vulnerable ecological systems. Therefore, in the arrival of the extraterrestrial devils, even the devils of the lowest level were enough to cause the cerebral collapse of hundreds of thousands of people, transforming them into ‘devilized people’.

“Through training, the soul can grow more and more powerful, which is equivalent to saying that the ecological system becomes more and more complicated. It has truly become a vigorous planet where billions of different creatures live. One or two foreign germs or living creatures will be far from enough to destroy the entire ecological circle. Or rather, they will soon be grabbed by thousands of food chains and digested as part of the ecological system.

“The reason why you could swallow the enormous tenebrum energy left by Mo Xuan and Lu Qingchen is because your ‘ecological system’ is extremely complicated and boasts an extraordinarily strong anti-corruption and assimilation ability. After the structure of the food chains are adjusted, the ‘foreign species’ are embedded perfectly and turned into ‘local species’, and the ecological balance is achieved again.

“Therefore, there is no need to brood on if the extraterrestrial devils have invaded the deepest part of your soul. The extraterrestrial devils are not terrible by themselves. They are like our cells and the bacteria that live inside our intestines. What is terrible is the loss of balance in the ecological system, which will make it collapse!”

Li Yao listened silently. It was not until this moment that he finally took a long breath in relief. “I have never heard such a theory before. It is truly refreshing and eye-opening!”

“Of course you have never heard it before because that is the jibber-jabber I came up with just now!” Long Yangjun’s eyes were glowing in eagerness. “As for if it is real, I can’t wait to jump to the center of the cosmos to find out the answer!

“Hehe. We have chatted for such a long time without me knowing it. If we go on, chances are that I will really be locked onto by the starships of the federation. I’m leaving now to search… no… to create my destiny. Li Yao, if you want to continue our conversation, find me at the center of the cosmos!”

Blue ripples spread out on the light beam, as if a transparent flower was blooming slowly.

“By then, I hope that…” Staring at Li Yao, Long Yangjun said thoughtfully, “I hope that you will be able to tell me what your ‘destiny’ is. No, not the destiny that other people give you, but the destiny you create for yourself. Your real destiny!”

When the last word ‘destiny’ was spoken, the light beam already turned from deep blue into snow white. Long Yangjun and the seat behind her were both enshrouded in dazzling light as if they had been entirely melted.

Amid her thoughtful mumbles that were echoing in the room, Li Yao saw the most unbelievable scene through the surveillance cameras that were deployed around the Land of Eternal Night.

In the middle of the clouds in the sky of the ice field that were surging like tides, a deep blue flower slowly blossomed like a chrysanthemum, with the petals extending all the way to the horizons around. The pistils tied each other up in a spiral, establishing a bridge that led to the depths of the sea of stars.

Hiu!

A splendid streak of brightness appeared out of nowhere. Before any of the starships of the federation realized what was going on, it had darted out of the clouds along the bridge beyond the dark nebula and disappeared among the infinite stars!

“Long Yangjun…”

The deep blue flower in the sky gradually dispersed, turning into glamorous blue light that splashed on the ground. The frozen land in the thousand square kilometers around seemed to be covered in the most glamorous auroras.

Staring at everything in a daze, Li Yao could not help but recall the last thing that she had said before she left.

“Not the destiny that other people give me but the real destiny that I create for myself?”