Chapter 513: Limitations of the Era
Xing Ju's words sounded highly formalistic, or perhaps rigid, but once Bai Mo understood them, he realized that from Xing Ju's perspective, they were entirely logical and natural.
Having inherited all the memories of the Four Emperors, its way of thinking naturally converged with that of its creators.
People like Nanxuan Qingye were born into a savage antiquity, where races would readily unleash massacres with no need for justification.
For them, the human race forever reigning supreme over all other races, free from the worry of extinction, already constituted a glorious golden age.
As for concepts like freedom and equality, such notions were simply beyond their wildest imagination, for that was a world where mere survival demanded a desperate struggle.
"Meaningless attempts would shatter the golden age belonging to the children." Facing the unknown, Xing Ju behaved like the most stubbornly conservative old fogey, rejecting any form of change.
To maintain the status quo indefinitely, it utilized its power to ceaselessly alter the Qi Luck of countless individuals. Anyone who harbored thoughts of reform and change would find their Qi Luck subtly but steadily declining.
Opportunities that should have been theirs would inexplicably slip away; noble patrons would show appreciation, only for them to coincidentally make a fool of themselves... Under the "direction" of these high-level entities, all these occurrences unfolded with such seamless naturalness.
Even the slightest desire for change would immediately summon the malice of the entire world, until, disheartened by cruel reality, they would abandon their thoughts and return to their original place.
Xing Ju's logic was to keep society perpetually in its current state, but constrained by the rules Yuan Wu Chu had established, it couldn't use violence to restrain humanity. Thus, it resorted to such a circuitous method.
Yuan Wu Chu, a heaven-sent genius who designed the Manghuang Realm's most powerful artificial intelligence, while unaware of the so-called Three Laws of Robotics, still, based on his own foresight, imposed this supreme restrictive command upon Xing Ju, to prevent its programming logic from going awry one day and annihilating humanity completely.
He simply hadn't anticipated that Xing Ju would ultimately manage to circumvent its own rules to such an extent.
After thousands of years of subconscious selection, an unwillingness to change eventually became an instinct etched into everyone's genes. Topics related to it were avoided in daily conversation, and the various difficulties encountered by the people on the Ark precisely stemmed from this.
Xing Ju held no desire to explore the stars and the sea; it didn't even bother to glance up at the sky, for it had been created with a singular mission: to eternally preserve the golden age of the human race remembered in its data.
It had not the slightest interest in understanding anything else, nor was it willing to.
......
"Will people ten thousand years from now look at us the same way?" Bai Mo gazed at the Manghuang Realm, a world akin to a time capsule. "The so-called ideal societal form we pursue now, might be utterly worthless in ten thousand years, even considered dregs and garbage."
From the perspective of a modern person, the Manghuang Realm's "golden age" naturally seemed like a joke. Yet, the Five Emperors' ideas were merely limited by their era; powerful as they were, even they could not foresee the future.
In the eyes of people from a primitive society, a feudal imperial system was already the most advanced concept imaginable, worthy of dedicating their entire lives to pursuing.
"A grand dream spanning millennia, what year is it now? This dream, repeating endlessly for thousands of years, ends here."
Bai Mo had not wavered from his initial resolve and began preparing the final segment of his plan.
Just like the Five Emperors of the Manghuang Realm, as long as he believed it was right, he would endeavor to do it.
The only difference was his firm belief that he would live into the infinitely distant future, allowing him to continuously correct any errors.
The grand gate that had sent Xu Xuan Ling away reappeared, but it was no longer faintly discernible as before; its entire form had solidified, as if it intended to take root in this world.
Innumerable profound runes appeared on the doorframe, covering it layer by layer—techniques he had acquired from the cultivated world where the Disciple of the Crimson World originated.
"Stranger, do you intend to open a passage to other worlds?" The four faces on the Simian Daoist's head gradually blurred, melting into an abstract painting—this was the mark of its transition into its second combat state.
In Xing Ju's memory, establishing a passage signified preparation for an invasion war. In the ancient racial blood wars, the path-makers were always the aggressors; there was never any other possibility.
......
"Heavenly Path, open!"
Ever since his reincarnation experiment in the Manghuang Realm succeeded, and he found a way to safely break through to the Myriad Forms Realm via the Path of Reincarnation, Bai Mo had been coordinating with another avatar hidden on the Moon to advance his plan, with both sides simultaneously establishing spatial tunnels aimed at the Nine Netherworlds.
The concept of the Grand Heavenly Path was precisely to allow future cultivators breaking through to the Myriad Forms level to easily utilize the illusory layer of the Nine Netherworlds as a transit hub, completing this step of inter-world reincarnation.
As for whether they could recover their memories and reclaim their selves after transmigrating and reincarnating, truly becoming Myriad Forms Realm existences—that was not something Bai Mo concerned himself with.
That he expended such immense effort to pave an easier road for everyone was naturally not merely because he was bored.
Ultimately, Bai Mo did not wish for another monster to emerge among humanity that had fallen into Daoization and could at any moment conceive of world destruction; he himself had only with great difficulty temporarily restrained this impulse.
The human civilization that had fled to the Moon served as a crucial control group for his social experiments; if they truly all perished, it would not align with his interests. He desired to see more possibilities.
Moreover, a lifeform that had fallen into Daoization could, like him, exchange its lifespan for greater power. If a second Daoized lifeform truly emerged, there would be a possibility of it frantically sacrificing its life to perish together with him.
Even if the probability of such an event was minuscule, he refused to gamble. Thus, both emotionally and logically, Bai Mo would do his utmost to patch this loophole.
Not only that, but the spatial passage had been designed with two-way traffic in mind from its inception. Divine-level powerhouses from the Manghuang Realm could likewise traverse back, and Xu Xuan Ling was precisely the first to attempt it.
......
"Rumble, rumble!" Yue Gui City, situated on the Moon, suddenly experienced an inexplicable, faint tremor.
At the Human Federation Council, the "Star Wars" plan proposed by Rotating Speaker Joseph Lee, which aimed to transform the Moon into a mobile planetary fortress, was successfully passed with eighty-two votes in favor and forty-five against. Following this, countless construction sites sprouted up like mushrooms after rain, and massive construction instantly became the dominant theme of human society.
As a crucial industrial city, Yue Gui City had undertaken a vast number of engineering tasks, and thus, it was naturally bustling all day long with super-heavy machinery constantly moving about. Consequently, this level of faint tremor barely registered with most people; they simply assumed it was the sound of some colossal machine operating.
P.S.: Today I checked my royalties and found I still had over a thousand! Many thanks for all your support for this salted fish, ORZ.
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