Chapter 541: Departure
"The Sun... I was negligent." Bai Mo looked up at the sky.
Due to the inertia of his thinking, he had never before considered that the colossal, scorching sphere, visible every day and familiar to the point of being utterly mundane, could actually give birth to life, or even give rise to a primitive civilization. After all, even the wildest scientific fantasies usually only envisioned using the Sun as an energy source, rarely contemplating direct human colonization of it, and thus few would imagine native life existing there. The advent of Spirit Qi had, time and again, overturned humanity's very definition of life.
"Even if these high-energy life forms can only survive in our environment for a few minutes, the destruction they cause is immense. Should they appear in a city center, the consequences would be unimaginable. Moreover, given the Sun's sheer mass, we cannot rule out the existence of even more terrifying monsters deeper within. It's not impossible that, as time progresses, some of them might adapt to the 'ultra-low temperature' world outside the Sun, taking a step towards colonizing other stars. However, we've already decided to leave the solar system, so this matter won't have much impact..." Yun Jie said, syllable by syllable, suppressing the energy fluctuations of his impending breakthrough.
According to the Human Federation's thousand-year plan for future development, they would leverage the generational gap in civilizations to swiftly harvest their allotted portion of the solar system's resources, then immediately begin their journey to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Therefore, as long as the entities on the Sun caused no trouble for the next one or two centuries, they would no longer concern the Human Federation.
...
There were, in fact, many reasons for the Federation's ultimate decision to become an interstellar nomadic people. Beyond merely escaping the threat of the Land of White in the beginning, the discovery of the Solar Star Spirits was also a crucial driving factor.
No one knew what degree of high-energy life the Sun, which accounted for 99.86% of the solar system's mass, could ultimately birth. But they understood that if even one life form could harness a mere thousandth of the Sun's mass-energy, it could effortlessly vaporize the Moon with just its pure light and heat upon approach, even without any active attack. Perhaps millions of years in the future, their highly developed compatriots in all respects might possess the resolve for such a battle, but humanity, currently controlling only 0.01% of the solar system's mass, clearly had no intention of attacking the Sun or preemptively eradicating the Solar Star Spirit race.
...
"How many years do you think it will take to escape the shackles of light speed?" Bai Mo mused. "This universe, it's truly vast enough to inspire despair." No one could say for sure how many years it would take to research and develop mature high-speed interstellar travel technology; perhaps it could materialize in a few decades, or it might be centuries or even millennia away.
"Are you planning to undergo the Reincarnation Tribulation on the Moon?"
"No, I'll go to the Mang—huang—Realm." His voice was exceptionally light as he spoke the three words.
"As expected, the people on the Ark are colluding with you." Hearing Yun Jie's words, Bai Mo felt little surprise. Given his understanding of the Ark's transmigrators' personalities, it was perfectly normal for those individuals to have secret dealings with the Human Federation. If it were a primitive world whose coordinates only they knew, those people certainly wouldn't trade them away. But with Bai Mo's intervention in the Manghuang Realm, there was too little for the transmigrators to gain. It was better to sell it to the Federation, letting them get involved and further muddy the waters.
...
"Undergoing Reincarnation Tribulation on the Moon carries too many risks. In a mature modern society, big data is ubiquitous, making it very easy to uncover anything one truly wishes to investigate." He had held high positions in the Federation for decades, and friends and enemies on his level were certainly not few. Should he reveal a moment of weakness, not only would his overt enemies seize the opportunity, but even some superficial friends might try kicking him while he's down. If someone were to target his most vulnerable period, mobilizing vast human and material resources to conduct a needle-in-a-haystack type of census, regardless of cost, it's quite possible they could indeed discover the identity of his reincarnated body. To successfully construct a True Spirit Barrier on the path of Reincarnation Awakening, one must complete the awakening steps through one's own will. If one is ultimately awakened by others, the minor consequence is a significant loss of cultivation, while the severe consequence is mental derangement and qi deviation. The half of the Concentric Lock that Yun Jie gave to Yue Yu was precisely the contingency plan he left specifically to address this characteristic. If, after fifty years, he had not successfully broken through and returned, Yue Yu would use the properties of the Concentric Lock to search for Yun Jie's reincarnated body in the Manghuang Realm and forcefully awaken him.
...
"We will meet again." Yun Jie, now completely enveloped in light, unleashed his strongest explosive power and began his long journey of breakthrough. Beside him, Yue Yu held their two children, silently watching Yun Jie depart.
Yun Jie's departure did not fill her with the feeling of being a lone widow with children. After all, she was a top-tier Five Tiers powerhouse, among the strongest thousand individuals in the Federation. Moreover, her primary ability was space-elemental, so even those significantly stronger than Yue Yu had little confidence in being able to hold her back, for there was only one such monster capable of mastering all Spirit Arts.
...
"Assassin!" the outer guards cried out nervously.
They had never imagined that security personnel like themselves, primarily serving to project an image of authority, would actually have a day when they were truly needed.
"Which blind idiot would try to assassinate Lord Shadow, one of the Federation's strongest!"
"The Grand Princess just went to the back hall!"
"The explosion came from the back hall too!"
"Where's Butler Shi Mi Si?"
"He's in the back hall too!"
"Go check immediately!"
...
Yun Jie's final burst of power easily broke through the layers of defenses laid out in the back hall. A pillar of light shot straight into the sky, nearly piercing through the Moon's artificial atmosphere. Such intense Spirit Energy fluctuations naturally attracted the attention of countless individuals.
...
In the Cloud Shadow Qionglou, a palace-like structure, a giant character meaning "Slow" stood out prominently. "I truly didn't expect him to hide so deeply, just leaving like that," lamented two middle-aged men playing chess. These were Cheng Mu and Liu Zhen, who had been marginalized from the core power circle after the Federation's establishment. Since their deification twenty years ago, their power growth had been remarkably slow. One after another, Five Tiers Spirit Energy cultivators around them surpassed them in strength. Correspondingly, however, batch after batch of old acquaintances had fallen at the Xuanhua Stage, their bodies gone, leaving only cenotaphs. Through years of exploration, they had gradually understood that the Divine Path was a relatively low-risk route, one that required patience and accumulation over time. It didn't demand high cultivation aptitude but certainly had significant requirements for one's mental fortitude. Watching those who were once at similar levels gradually drift further and further away, while they themselves progressed at a snail's pace day after day, it was easy for their mindset to become imbalanced. And once one began to take shortcuts on the Divine Path, the cultivator's consciousness would be enslaved and devoured by Faith Power, until they ultimately became mere puppets.
"After all, he's a genius whom even the mundane world couldn't confine."
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