Chapter 233: The True Self Tribulation
"Bai Mo, what do you think is the best way to manage a country like this?" Wen Jian suddenly asked this question after their transaction was complete.
"Why ask me such a question?" He was somewhat puzzled. "I've never had much interest in such bothersome matters."
"I just wanted to see what others truly think. Everyone below me is too good at guessing my intentions; they won't speak a single truth, just platitudes tailored to my liking." Clearly, this complex political issue left the young military man feeling quite helpless. "There are too few people at my level who can speak without any reservations."
"Then what do you consider 'well-managed'?" Bai Mo continued to ask.
"Everyone living in peace and contentment?"
"That's quite easy. Either you chop up everyone who can't live in peace and contentment, or you distribute all of society's wealth equally. Both methods should work, and both can achieve your wish within a week. With your abilities, you could probably slaughter them all in a week."
"Can you offer some constructive advice..."
"It's more like your question is too broad. When it comes to statecraft and strategy, you could ask anyone on the street and they'd ramble on for tens of thousands of words."
"Then let me rephrase. What are your thoughts on managing this country?"
...
"It's impossible to satisfy everyone. What a qualified ruler must do is merely strive to meet the interests of the group that forms the bedrock of their rule, and then ensure that the remaining populace receives enough resources to cross the survival line, allowing them to live normally, just enough to not harbor thoughts of rebellion."
"And then leave just a little room for upward mobility, like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey."
"That seems a bit too cruel for ordinary people." Wen Jian, who had always been steeped in traditional military thought, found Bai Mo's inherently cold words a little difficult to accept.
"This is the era of superhumans; why care so much? Success, after all, comes from mutation."
"Truly merciless."
"The more one cultivates the Thousand Soul Scripture, the more thoughts proliferate, and the more pronounced the indirect acceleration of thought becomes. In other words, it's as if the perceived passage of time speeds up."
Wen Jian, who pursued pure power more intensely, dedicated most of his time to the Martial Path and developing his own abilities. He hadn't actually engaged much with purely supplementary cultivation methods like the Thousand Soul Scripture.
After completing the spiritualization of his brain and the transformation of the Xuanhua Stage, he felt that his thought speed was entirely sufficient to control his own power, so he didn't spend much more effort on this aspect.
"Thank you." Wen Jian sincerely thanked Bai Mo for his reminder.
"Have you ever felt the existence of the 'True Self Tribulation'?" In return, he also shared some secrets with Bai Mo.
"True Self Tribulation?"
"Actually, I haven't felt it either. It's just a concept Chen Bo briefly mentioned when we were discussing things privately before."
"He has a theory about the path ahead: as the body continuously undergoes Spirit Hub transformation, at a certain stage, something akin to a true self core might condense. According to ancient texts, this could perhaps be called a Primordial Spirit?"
"But Chen Bo said that just as he thought of this and was preparing to try it, his crisis perception ability suddenly reacted, warning him that if he attempted to condense a 'Primordial Spirit' now, there was a very high chance he wouldn't pass this trial. That's why he called it the 'True Self Tribulation,' to correspond with the 'Daoization Tribulation' of entering the Xuanhua Stage."
"I didn't expect him to have explored so deeply." Hearing this, Bai Mo roughly guessed Chen Bo's line of thought.
"It seems the generation of Primal Matter truly causes genetic collapse, while also requiring a large number of Life Field fragments to merge and collapse with parts of the body. Only such a grueling process could easily kill an Ability User at the Xuanhua Stage."
"Otherwise, it's genuinely difficult for other external attacks to kill a cultivator protected by layers of Xuanhua. Of course, direct inundation by boundless light, as it did, is another matter entirely."
"According to Chen Bo's idea, the Chemosynthesis stage and the Xuanhua Stage don't actually have an absolute sequential relationship. As long as one can survive the genetic disaster and the temptation of power during breakthrough, both realms can even be broken through simultaneously, just as I previously conjectured."
"The road ahead is arduous, but one must still press forward with difficulty." Bai Mo said a strange remark to Wen Jian, leaving him feeling somewhat perplexed.
Primarily, this reality, which didn't follow the usual tropes, was quite different from the straight-line, upgrade-to-the-end progression Bai Mo had seen in previous novels, prompting this sigh of emotion from him.
"To imagine that reality, like variational calculus finding the brachistochrone curve, could offer a single optimal cultivation path—I was truly too naive."
"How many acupoints have you opened?" He shifted the topic, bringing up the Martial Path.
"Seven acupoints." Wen Jian answered readily; there was nothing to hide about such things. "Want to spar? To be honest, I've never fought you in the Martial Path before."
Progress in the Martial Path demanded continuous tempering through combat; this had become a consensus among everyone who chose this path.
Wealth and willpower were the two indispensable elements for cultivating the Martial Path. Whether it was the spiritual materials and medicinal liquids used to aid in breaking through acupoints, or the tonics used to regulate the body and heal hidden injuries, every single item required massive financial support.
It was once statistically calculated that an average person, in terms of aptitude and willpower, would on average need to spend about ten million Hua coins in resources to break through to the fifth acupoint level without leaving any lingering side effects.
And from a large sample, it was found that even after genuinely spending ten million, only about half of the people could truly reach the goal of five acupoints.
This was merely the cost of cultivating the Martial Path alone. If one chose to cultivate both Spirit Hubs and the Martial Path (Dao Wu Shuangxiu), the resources required would be incalculable, hindered by the insidious characteristic that acupoint breakthroughs became exponentially harder the stronger one became.
Taking Bai Mo as an example, the resources he spent to break through from the fifth tier a few months ago to the current sixth tier already amounted to nearly three hundred million.
Of course, part of this was also because he was busy with his own affairs and didn't temper himself through combat like a normal martial artist, instead relying entirely on consuming heavenly treasures and earthly wonders to make up the difference.
To stimulate society's desire to explore ways of lowering the cost of Martial Path cultivation, the Huaxia Federation government publicized the specific methods for breaking through the first two acupoints.
At the same time, they offered generous rewards for optimized methods, encouraging countless individuals who couldn't cultivate due to lack of funds to use their imagination and strive to lower the costs..
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