Chapter 522: Joy
All development, all progress, ultimately serves to make people feel "happy".
But if, from the very beginning, humanity were to exchange the ability to feel "happiness" and joy for development and progress, she felt it would clearly be putting the cart before the horse.
If you can't even feel joy, what's the point of developing?
"Perhaps." Bai Mo gave an equivocal answer.
"What do you mean, perhaps? Didn't you say you could create the future? How can there still be uncertainties?"
"The universe is so vast—it truly can be despair-inducing." Bai Mo murmured this to himself, though it was unclear if he was answering Lu Yuesheng's question.
Everyone under the Land of White becoming beings who only knew how to cultivate, research, work, and grow stronger—that was indeed an idea he once had, and one of his earliest ones at that.
If his civilization contained hundreds of millions of such beings, given time, they would surely push his main body to unimaginable heights.
Tens of thousands, even millions, of cultivation and research fanatics—their combined power would be enough to destroy heaven and earth, flattening entire multiverses.
The surging power relentlessly devoured Bai Mo's emotions, sensations, and even his self-awareness.
He couldn't even halt his ascent to greater strength, for behind him was the pressure of assimilation from the entire universe, pushing him headlong towards a dead end.
The stronger he became, the closer he was to death; pursuing his original path would simply be too late to save himself.
"Muttering nonsense... I don't even know what he's talking about."
Lu Yuesheng, not understanding, didn't reply, simply committing the things she had just seen to memory in silence.
The tech tree paths she saw in the illusion were essentially the optimal iterations derived from calculations, representing one of the fastest ways to industrialize and modernize in an unimpeded environment.
For her, or for the Ark passengers who might later transmigrate to other spatial layers to "farm" new worlds, this was an extremely valuable reference.
As an "old" transmigrator who had been "farming" in other realms for nearly twenty years, she deeply understood the critical importance of questions like which tech tree branch to pursue first, which technologies to unlock, and how to navigate the tech tree.
...
"How lively it is; it's been years since I've experienced this." Walking alone on the bustling street, she glanced left and right, taking in the throngs of people. The sense of loneliness accumulated over two decades was swept away.
Alone in a foreign land, surrounded by ancient people whose values clashed with her own, people who had grown up in vastly different environments—Lu Yuesheng had felt a heavy pressure all these years.
There were no common topics, and not even a joke or reference could be understood; after speaking, she could only laugh foolishly to herself, and as she laughed, tears often welled up in the corners of her eyes.
"Isn't this Miss Lu? What a surprise to see you leisurely strolling around?" A few young men, whom she had only recently met, noticed Lu Yuesheng, a satisfied smile gracing her lips.
"Ah, ha... Yes, just out for a walk." She immediately switched into awkward conversation mode.
Then she noticed that while the people in front of her kept talking, their gazes never left the area three inches below her neck.
This made Lu Yuesheng quite uncomfortable, and her brow furrowed slightly.
"Where are you looking? Don't you have any manners!"
"If it weren't for him, I'd have knocked you all flat already."
Thoughts like these appeared one after another.
...
"We've got a mission, see you around!" Perhaps sensing her displeasure, the leading young man reluctantly pulled back his gaze, quickly excusing himself with the system as a pretext, not forgetting to whistle before he left.
"If you don't leave, I'll beat your asses! A bunch of perverts trying to awkwardly hit on me, do they really think I'm stupid with those eyes?" Lu Yuesheng shot a fierce glare back, her opinion of them dropping even further.
...
"Your people are really lacking in manners." Once the group had gone far, Lu Yuesheng lightly patted her chest, continuing to complain to Bai Mo.
After all, she wasn't like the people of the Flame Alliance, who had deeply experienced Bai Mo's awe-inspiring power, the kind that silenced everyone into submission; she still spoke rather casually.
If it were Lin Yanyang, he wouldn't dare speak to Bai Mo with such a complaining tone, not even if he were given a hundred times the courage.
"Desire is inherently a part of human nature." Bai Mo replied with his usual mystic's air.
He was, in fact, helpless regarding such matters.
Even the strictest moral and legal codes wouldn't prohibit furtive glances like those just now. Such minute details weren't even recorded in the system's behavioral guidelines database.
Many who initially chose to stay in the Land of White were idle good-for-nothings, lured by the rumored benefits. While restricted by the system from doing anything truly out of line, an extra glance at something "good" wasn't an issue for them.
"But then again, according to them, almost all who considered themselves human elites, those above average, have left Earth. The remaining bunch are either without any special skills and lack ambition, or simply good for nothing..."
"Why did you keep these crooked gourds and cracked dates instead of the elites?" Lu Yuesheng asked directly, without any softening words.
She was truly disgusted by the men from earlier, and so her words held no mercy.
In fact, it wasn't just her; countless people on Earth and the Moon had once pondered this question: Why did he choose them?
At that time, Bai Mo, who already held absolute military superiority, could have, if he truly wished to build an ideal nation, forcibly packaged these bottom-tier societal members and sent them to the Moon, leaving only the social backbone and elites.
Instead, he allowed everyone to decide for themselves, letting the middle-to-upper classes, who surpassed the societal average and harbored ambitions for ascension, collectively choose to leave this new nation that enforced absolute egalitarianism.
He left behind a multitude of unfortunate souls who were below the human average, constantly "averaged out" in statistics, and generally unsuccessful.
"Judging whether someone is an elite based on wealth or poverty is meaningless from my perspective. I can make anyone as rich as a nation in an instant, and reclaim it all in the next."
"Judging by beauty or ugliness is the same; it's merely a matter of a single thought, of creation and destruction."
"What about ability and talent, then? Can you really create geniuses artificially?!"
"I believe time can forge everything.
Most people live unremarkable lives simply due to a lack of external material conditions and personal perseverance."
Compared to the idea of people being divided into different grades, Bai Mo actually leaned more towards the belief that everyone had their own strengths.
The system's zero-tolerance for procrastination and lack of perseverance, combined with directions chosen by the supervised themselves rather than imposed by outsiders, meant that after a "five-year plan," most could undergo a complete transformation and become stalwarts in their respective fields.
PS: Truly the last PY. "Mythical Tech Factory," a black technology novel. Those interested can check it out...
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