Chapter 223: The Funeral
From the scattered information the opponent inadvertently leaked, Bai Mo learned that it was the true culprit behind all the disasters over three years ago. However, at a depth of over a thousand meters beneath the sea, the icy, high-pressure seawater rendered most of his offensive Spirit Arts useless.
Moreover, his opponent was also an entity skilled in mental power, making psychic power that ignored mediums difficult to take effect. He could only opt for the most primitive physical attacks.
Under Bai Mo's control, three javelins, condensed from Xuanhua, attacked the same point on the protective barrier almost ceaselessly, leaving a small opening on Seres's body.
"I'll remember you..." Issuing a chilling threat after ordering its six guardian bugs to desperately hold back Bai Mo, it vanished into the nearly lightless depths of the sea.
In Bai Mo's eyes, these six bugs were nothing more than test subjects delivered into his hands. While their exoskeletons were formidable enough, in the face of his all-pervading psychic power, it was a matter of a mere thought to kill them.
It was a pity that he was currently in the deep sea, and he had no confidence in killing the brain bug, which was why he allowed it to leave.
He split off another clone, instructing it to take the dark green energy sample he had frozen solid with Spirit Arts, along with the corpses of several bugs, while his main body slowly floated to the surface to rendezvous with the main forces.
"You did all that below?" Chen Bo, still leading the team, asked.
"Mostly not."
...
The moment their gazes met, the communication via mental fluctuations was completed.
With the exchange concluded, Chen Bo immediately ordered the allied forces to disband, no longer pursuing the hastily scattered Sea Race.
This was because he had already received reports from the command center that the Sea Race troops, originally en route to the Arctic Ocean from various parts of the globe, were gradually dispersing and returning to their respective waters.
Moreover, hunting down a group of fish that outnumbered them in the ocean hardly seemed like a sensible endeavor.
At this point, this battle, which had resulted in heavy losses yet came to an anticlimactic end, finally concluded. What followed was the brutal redistribution of post-war interests.
Yet, none of this commotion truly disturbed Bai Mo's life.
Seven days after the war, Hua Taishan's funeral was held.
The number and prominence of attendees were unprecedented. Many foreign Ability Users who were indebted to him from the battlefield had also arrived in Tianqing in advance.
The five powerhouses who had achieved breakthroughs on the battlefield all personally attended. Even the most rebellious and untamed Edward Teach dispelled the black smoke that perpetually wreathed him, adjusted his unfamiliar black suit, and grew solemn, offering three deep bows to the pioneer who had sacrificed his life on the path of exploration.
Bai Mo stood quietly to the side, recalling scenes from his very first meeting with the old man. He let out a soft sigh, then also offered three deep bows to his photograph.
The funeral lasted an entire day. Finally, his empty ceremonial coffin was interred in the tomb prepared beforehand. The three pure gold scrolls engraved with yin characters — the Martial Edict, Xingyi Dao, and Acupoint Codex — were also buried as funerary objects.
Before his departure, Bai Mo noticed Hua Qing, her eyes red and swollen, sitting in a corner.
"Uncle Bai..."
"What are your plans for the future?" Bai Mo had known for a long time that Hua Taishan, who had dedicated his life to martial pursuits, had no wife or children of his own. This granddaughter was, in fact, a child he had adopted from an orphanage eight years ago. Now, with his abrupt passing, Hua Qing, an unrelated individual, felt a heightened sense of awkwardness within the Hua family.
"I don't know..." When the topic of the future arose, she felt equally lost.
"You'll follow her from now on." Bai Mo pointed to Chen Xi, who was behind him.
"Thank you, Uncle Bai." Hua Qing rubbed her red-rimmed eyes.
"I never thought you'd play the benevolent type." On the way back, Chen Xi didn't shy away from Hua Qing, who was sitting beside them, and joked with Bai Mo directly.
"He ultimately stripped my eyes of all their special abilities, making me perceive the world again through the vision of an ordinary person." Bai Mo didn't reply, instead speaking to himself, lost in thought.
"So what you see now is no different from what anyone else sees?"
Bai Mo nodded.
"Quite beautiful." He simply answered her next unspoken question.
"How did you know I was going to ask that?!"
"Guessed."
"How are you always so carefree and unburdened?" Rarely had she had the chance to converse with this elusive boss, so Chen Xi pressed with a few more questions.
"Barring any accidents, I currently have a lifespan of around four to five hundred years. When life is measured in centuries, many things are nothing more than fleeting clouds and smoke."
"Sounds like an old man," Chen Xi mumbled. "How do you know how long you'll live?"
"A feeling. No matter how immortal the body, as long as there's still an exchange of information with the outside world, new memories will constantly form. And the brain, for self-preservation, will selectively forget a portion of them."
"The mind is like a magnetic disk; erasing some memories, writing new ones, will inevitably lead to wear and tear. The time until it wears out is roughly one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy years, but in reality, the body's 'shelf life' is much shorter than that duration."
"Are you saying that previously, the bottleneck for human lifespan was the physical body, but now, with Spirit Qi's transformation, the bottleneck has shifted to the mind?"
"More or less. Before the advent of Spirit Qi, human body modification or mind uploading techniques primarily targeted the physical form. However, without mental power scans back then, no one could confirm the existence of something akin to a soul, so extending the body's shelf life was considered the correct path."
"However, the minds of ordinary people ultimately have their limits to what they can bear. Even if they keep going, constantly forgetting, they won't be able to last much longer, because if too much is forgotten, there won't be much difference from an Alzheimer's patient."
"As for memory chips or even auxiliary brain chips... a CPU, RAM, and a hard drive are ultimately not the same thing."
"Still with those mystical pronouncements. It seems even with your eyes back to normal, you're still the same." Chen Xi said with a laugh, half-understanding, half-baffled.
"The true path is for the body that carries the mind and the mind that represents the self to advance in sync. For those whose minds aren't strong enough, living too long can lead to their self slowly eroding away. Even if their physical body becomes immortal, they'll be nothing more than a living corpse."
"So what exactly *is* the mind?" Hua Qing, who had been silent till now, asked.
"I haven't fully figured it out either. I only have a vague feeling."
"So you were just spouting hot air earlier?"
"In research, they're called hypotheses."
Whether it was the small pieces of wreckage salvaged from the spaceship, the bodies of several alien bugs, or that strange dark green energy, all of them were worth his considerable time to explore.
Additionally, a summary of the new level of power and its manifestations, and the transformation of the seals around him into Spirit Arts – each of these required meticulous analysis.
After a brief discussion, both the strange substance itself and this power level beyond the Unmelting Realm were ultimately named Xuanhua. The new level attained by Chen Bo and others was also given an official designation—the Xuanhua Stage.
After all, almost everyone who participated in the war owed Hua Taishan a favor, so when Bai Mo proposed this naming convention and its rationale at the meeting, no one raised any objections.
As for the Chemosynthesis path he was quietly forging, Bai Mo didn't intend to disclose it before his Spirit Energy Network plan was complete, as it could greatly affect the entire plan's implementation. He didn't want any more variables.
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