Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao swallowed hard.

When he realized that even his saliva was virtual, it was even harder for him to swallow.

Ling Xiaole crossed her arms subconsciously and asked in a shivering voice, “What do you want, professor?”

Professor Mo Xuan continued licking the nonexistent lollipop and enjoyed the sweetness that was purely virtual. Then he smiled and said, “I don’t want to do anything except have a nice chitchat with the honorable guest from the center of the cosmos. If you feel uncomfortable, we can always go to the town and join the leadership of the federal army and the Secret Sword Bureau in the Hundred Flowers Space Zone.

“Of course, it will hardly be any different, because they have the highest clearances of this world. Although they are not here on the surface, they can hear what I said just now loud and clear. A true Cultivator never bothers to conceal his opinion. Everything I do is open to any scrutiny. I have repeated my standpoint more than a hundred times.”

Li Yao was deep in thought. He would rather figure out what was on his professor’s mind exactly instead of joining them. Therefore, he simply shook his head and said, “That will be unnecessary. I’m quite interested in your theories, professor. They do sound a bit radical, but a lot of cutting-edge studies can only be radical in order to be innovative. It’s totally understandable. Please proceed. Anything else you would like to add?”

“Of course.” Professor Mo Xuan pointed at his temples. “Do you understand? Human beings who are confined to their physical bodies are actually an imperfect life form. Our ancestors originated from the continent of an unknown planet in the depths of the universe. They were regular monkeys even a million years ago and only triggered the first spark of wisdom by making fire and using tools. Later, they were picked by the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan as a certain ‘experiment subject’ and carefully modified to accommodate a lot of their genes and hereditary techniques.

“However, despite all the modifications of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan, we cannot get rid of the shadow of monkeys. Our bodies are only suitable for basic hunting and gathering on the planet. They are a product of serious flaws!

“We, as monkeys, can only live in the worlds with an atmosphere and a stable temperature and environment. Most people cannot withstand heats above eighty degrees or coldness below minus fifty degrees. Our bodies are so fragile that a tree branch or a sharp tooth is enough to kill us. We need air that has a precise ratio of elements, and the increase or reduction of the microelements can easily turn the air into fatal gas. Our physical strength is too weak, and our running speed is too slow. Compared to the vastness and ancientness of the universe, our life is also too short when we can only live less than five hundred years. Are we any different from the germs that are born in the morning and die at dusk?

“Of all the shortcomings, the most insufferable one is our brain.

“Our original brains—sticky, podgy things—are too poorly devised. They were prepared for the monkeys hundreds of thousands of years ago whose sole destiny was to collect, hunt, and reproduce in primitive forests. It never occurred to the monkeys that they would shoulder the mission of conquering the entire universe one day!

“For starters, our brain cannot inherit the wisdom and memories of the previous generation. We cannot allow our offspring to get everything their parents know when they are born. However smart and knowledgeable their parents are, they cannot embed their wisdom, information, and memories into their genes and pass them on to the offspring. Everything must start from zero! Even the child of the greatest mathematician of our age must learn ‘one plus one equals two’ clumsily at the beginning!

“What a great waste that our wisdom and memories cannot be inherited! What a pathetic brain!

“Secondly, the brains of most humans are not suitable for complicated computations. Without the help of crystal processors, arithmetic is already the limit for the brains of most people. Even a distinguished high-school graduate can only run arithmetic within five digits without pen and paper at best.

“But what about calculous? What about quantum physics? What about the deflection and turnover of magnetic fields? What about the mathematical expression of the gene strands? What about the calculation of hypersurfaces in hyperspace? Can human brains do that? No. Not just the ordinary people, even Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators might not have a brain capable of doing such things!

“However, such things are necessary for us to explore the universe and develop our civilization in a broader space on a higher dimension!

“To conquer such a mysterious universe with a fleshly brain is like an ant living on the plane of a piece of paper trying to figure out how to climb onto a high mountain. It is too difficult!

“Getting to the bottom of it, we are just monkeys. The planet from which we originated should’ve been where we ended. The sea of stars shouldn’t have been our destiny, responsibility, and ambition. We are not capable of that!

“But the Pangu Civilization and the Nuwa Civilization picked us and enlightened us. They inserted too many things into our poor fleshly bodies and gene strands. Such things triggered our wisdom and also raised our ambitions to conquer the universe—ambitions that are in fact too enormous for us!

“It is exactly because of such ambitions that the brilliant and glorious civilization of mankind today has been created. However, it is already our limit to walk this far while dragging our heavy, feeble fleshly bodies.

“We need a leap. A new leap of evolution. Just like how our ancestors waved a burning branch or whetted a sharp stone for the first time hundreds of thousands of years ago!

“The Spiriters are my answer.

“Do you not feel that, compared to regular humans, the Spiriters have a lot of advantages? We can use ‘artificial bodies’, which are far stronger than our original bodies. Our energy consumption and the space we occupy is far less. We are less sensitive to temperature and air. Even desolate planets without an atmosphere and air can be paradises for the Spiriters. Most importantly of all, we can build a lot of crystal processors for ourselves and install computation and cooling addons to the crystal processors. In such a way, our learning abilities, computational abilities, and communication efficiency will be far higher than regular humans whose bodies are made of flesh and blood!

“Therefore, my opinion is that the fleshly body is merely a product of the ‘planetary civilization’. Now that human beings have developed an ‘interstellar civilization’ that includes three thousand Sectors and can travel thousands of lightyears instantly through four-dimensional space, it is only natural that we should get rid of the burden and boundary of our bodies, at least partly, in order to upgrade into a whole new form!”

Li Yao took a deep breath and calmed himself down. “Professor, your theory may be quite unacceptable for those new to it.”

“For other people, yes, but how can the two of you find it unacceptable?” Professor Mo Xuan asked. “Haven’t you been long tired of your fleshly body and made your attempt to change and get rid of it?”

Ling Xiaole was dumbfounded. “Professor, what are you talking about?”

Professor Mo Xuan smiled and unhurriedly said, “Miss Ling, if my eyes are as functional as I think, you have a certain bloodline of the demons. You are a half-demon, correct?”

Instead of waiting for Ling Xiaole to reply, he simply went on. “Demons. What are demons? Wasn’t it because the human beings a long time ago felt that regular fleshly bodies no longer suited their needs to march into the universe and that modifications on the genetic level were mandatory?

“We should say that your ancestors succeeded. At least in terms of strength and adaptability to the environment, most demons are indeed more advanced than ordinary people.

“But no matter how the genes are modified, and no matter how strong the fleshly body is trained to be, there are always limits. Both humans and demons are carbon-based life after all, bound by the laws of the material world. Even the strongest demon emperor or the demon god cannot live inside a burning star, can they?”

Ling Xiaole was unconvinced. “Can the Spiriters?”

“Not yet, but they have the potential to,” Professor Mo Xuan said. “The direction of their development is obvious in theory, but even if you walk down to the end of the demons’ path, you will still essentially be a carbon-based life of a larger size, like the Pangu Civilization and the Nuwa Civilization used to be.

“Even Pangu and Nuwa, kings of carbon-based life, have been destroyed. As their successors, if we keep walking on their old path, is there any other possibility for us except repeating their doom?”

Ling Xiaole bulged her eyes and said, “But humans are carbon-based life!”

“Little girl,” Professor Mo Xuan observed, “you must let go of your restrictions and count on your imagination. We will make a theoretical assumption. Assume that the civilization of mankind still exists in a hundred million years after much development, do you believe that humans can only have fleshly bodies instead of any other forms?”

Ling Xiaole pouted and thought for a long time. Then she lowered her head and mumbled, “Who knows what might or might not happen a hundred million years later?”

Professor Mo Xuan smiled. “In fact, there’s no need to wait a hundred million years. A long, long time ago that is far earlier than today, somebody embarked on a path of evolution that is different from the path of demons. Theirs is the path of the Spiriters, or the ‘pure-energy life’. I’m referring to the… path of Cultivation that Representative Lin here has been walking on.”

Not foreseeing that his professor would be pointing at him, Li Yao blinked and pointed at his own nose. “Me? A Cultivator?”

“Yes. Haven’t the Cultivators from ancient times to today all been aiming to ‘ascend to the heavens and become deities’, to get rid themselves of the boundary and restrictions of the fleshly body and evolve into a life form of pure energy?” Professor Mo Xuan smiled casually. “There are many levels for the Cultivators. After every level you advance into, you will move further to the life form of pure energy.

“In the Refinement Stage, you can perceive the natural spiritual with your soul. It is the first experience of the mysteries of the energy world for all the Cultivators.

“In the Building Foundation Stage, the spiritual energy is preliminary stabilized inside the fleshly body. Connecting all the internal organs, nerves, and veins inside the human body, the spiritual energy partly cleanses and builds up the flesh and the veins and partly constructs a network of spiritual veins that are similar to the real veins and nerves in the body. It means that a new ‘body of spiritual energy’ is constructed inside your fleshly body, except that the two bodies overlap for now.

“In the Core Formation Stage, a new organ, the second brain, gradually takes shape. It is the brain of spiritual energy for the body of spiritual energy.

“In the Nascent Soul Stage, a Cultivator’s soul will have been nurtured and trained to a very powerful state. It means that a baby in the form of spiritual energy is finally born and really sets foot on a whole new path of evolution! Representative Lin, you are now at the beginning level of the Nascent Soul Stage. You must have a deep understanding about what I described, right?

“If you are lucky enough to reach the Divinity Transformation Stage one day, in the Divinity Transformation Stage—”