Chapter 529: Sentience and Ruthlessness
Malinjia, the capital of the Humanity's Federation, Special Persons Monitoring Office.
"It's confirmed to be target number forty-eight, codenamed the Shopkeeper, but monitoring of other targets must not be relaxed. He might have more than one backup avatar, and no suspicious individual can be overlooked!"
"Yes, sir!"
Since the Humanity's Federation relocated to the Moon, to strengthen the management of the entire planet and its various subsidiary sub-spaces, and to maintain peace and stability on the Moon, the Special Persons Monitoring Office was specially established.
This organization is solely responsible for remotely monitoring cultivators who possess formidable power, exhibit unusual personalities, and show no willingness to join official organizations.
They are elements of instability in society, but until they commit an actual crime, the Federation cannot take overly drastic measures, lest it provoke a strong backlash.
After all, the upper echelons are all superhumans; who doesn't possess a streak of individuality? Governing too strictly would make things difficult for everyone.
"What is he up to this time?" After his subordinate left the office, the director of the Monitoring Office lightly tapped the wall with his left hand, deep in thought.
He was privy to many secrets, including the true reason behind the establishment of this Special Persons Monitoring Office.
They needed an organization to closely monitor the movements of each avatar.
...
"They... move quite fast." Several seconds after Red Fox spoke, a figure in white robes, with hair reaching to his waist, slowly materialized from thin air.
There were no energy fluctuations around the man in white, only emptiness and boundless indifference in his eyes, devoid of any emotion.
"What a loss, he actually cultivates the Dao of Ruthlessness, and of the most absolute kind." The moment their eyes met, she understood some things, and now she felt utterly pained.
After so much effort to extract information from her superiors and secure this mission, she had fully intended to reel in a big fish. Now, all her efforts had gone down the drain.
Those who cultivate the Dao of Ruthlessness are impossible to curry favor with or build relationships with; even emotional (or seductive) appeals are utterly useless. Their only attitudes towards everyone are utilization and disregard.
The debate between sentience and ruthlessness had long been an open secret within the Federation's upper echelons.
Some believed that base desires like food, sex, and instinct were utterly meaningless to superhumans, advocating for the abandonment of these trivial things to focus energy on more important matters.
Ordinary people were too distant from them, a distance exceeding the gap between species. Gods and humans should not intertwine too much.
However, the mainstream societal view remained that, having been born human, one should live as a human. The seven emotions and six desires, love, hate, and enmity, should not change due to increased power. To have one's human desires obscured by power was tragic.
Yet, such debates were confined only to the high-end fifth and sixth tiers; only they needed to consider such profound questions.
Those below naturally sided overwhelmingly with the sentient path. After all, being regarded as a friend or a junior was infinitely better than being treated as a tool or air.
As long as the superhuman community still cherished kinship, blood ties, friends, and lovers, and still enjoyed the embrace of warm fragrance and soft jade and the adoration of the masses, then ordinary people would not be abandoned.
A society that glorified "killing one's wife to prove the Dao" would undoubtedly be a hell for ordinary people.
...
"Are you regretting?" A few breaths later, the man in white asked with a slightly stiff tone.
"No... no!" Red Fox, her thoughts exposed, replied somewhat flustered. She vigorously pinched her face, trying to regain her composure.
"Sir, please." Only then did she remember that she had never known his true name; the mission log had always only shown the codename "Shopkeeper" and never mentioned any information about a name.
But at this point, asking the guest's name would be too awkward.
After several full seconds of blank staring, the man in white finally nodded, acknowledging her invitation.
His repeated slow reactions finally caught Red Fox's attention. She noticed that the man before her seemed incredibly slow to react to changes in his surroundings; no matter what happened, it always took him a few seconds to respond.
For a fifth-tier or higher cultivator, this was exceedingly strange, as a few seconds were more than enough time for them to accomplish a great deal.
For example, demolishing a skyscraper.
...
"Finally, the mission is complete, a perfect success! Tonight, my treat!" The monitoring squad leader, watching the convoy quietly depart, finally relaxed his taut nerves.
From being assigned to this small town until now, he had been responsible for this mission for over three years. His main job every day was to keep an eye on "the Shopkeeper," report relevant information to his superiors, and, if he had time, address local public security issues.
This nearly unchanging routine had made him quite reliant on it.
Thinking that his life trajectory might undergo a significant change after the mission was completed, he couldn't help but feel a little lost.
"Captain, look! The books in the bookstore!" Just as he was planning how to spend the 300,000 mission bonus he was about to receive, a familiar voice called out.
"What now? The person's gone. What could a small bookstore possibly do to cause an uproar?" The squad leader, dreaming of clubs and models, looked at the flat-haired youth who had disturbed his pleasant thoughts, clearly displeased.
"The books! The books are disappearing!" From the video surveillance, it could be seen that after the man in white left, the books in the bookstore slowly began to weather away and vanish.
A strange impulse suddenly rose in the flat-haired youth's heart: those books would definitely be useful to him!
He didn't explain further, wordlessly stepping past the captain standing at the doorway and rushing into the bookstore alone.
He wasn't the only one who realized this. The group of teenagers who had been in the bookstore earlier were the first to notice.
By the time the flat-haired youth reached the bookstore, the scramble for the phantom books had already reached a fever pitch, on the verge of turning into a full-blown brawl.
As long as you grabbed a book and ate it like bread, a segment of understanding would naturally appear in your mind, some related to cultivation, others to various auxiliary skills.
Not just the books, but everything in the bookstore began to disappear at the same moment. Even with everyone's best efforts, less than one percent of the information could be "saved."
The place where the bookstore once stood, like the ending of a classic horror film, instantly transformed into an empty lot.
Even with the dazzling sunlight beating directly on their faces, these people felt not a shred of warmth.
The books were gone, the bookstore was gone; only a few fragmented insights remained, proving that it had all once existed.
...
The captain, having witnessed the entire disappearance of the bookstore, suddenly lost all desire to find models. At this moment, he was filled with mixed emotions.
PS: Continued gratitude for the support of the big bosses, now I have over a thousand more in royalties to splurge.
Comments