Chapter 542: Psychology
After decades of turmoil, the entire world gradually came to understand one truth—while the strong might not be suited to govern nations, they would invariably become the leaders, the masters of supreme power.
Because no one would willingly hand over the power of life and death to another, especially when that other person was someone who could be snuffed out with a mere breath.
The few who had switched to cultivating the Divine Path clearly understood their limitations in aptitude, recognizing how difficult it would be to contend with the various geniuses who had risen concurrently within the next one or two centuries.
Therefore, they successively lay dormant, guarding their own small territories, awaiting the day when persistent effort would wear away stone.
The strongest are most easily broken; pioneers who rushed to the forefront could easily become martyrs. Life was singular, and only those who endured to the very end were the victors who could freely write history—a principle they had consistently upheld.
"Still unwilling to lose to that person?" Chen Bo, currently in the Federation Capital of Marinjoia, also sensed the spirit energy fluctuations of Yun Jie's departure from hundreds of kilometers away.
He wasn't bothered in the slightest by Yun Jie's hidden strength. Excluding the few who cultivated in seclusion among the populace, none of the eighteen six-stage council members, at least overtly, displayed their full power within the testing system.
"Too hasty. Wouldn't it be better to wait another twenty or thirty years, until everything is perfected, before leaving?" Beside Chen Bo, a silver-haired, blue-eyed man with a bewitching appearance and an air of neutral beauty, spoke.
"He simply wants to catch up, Mr. Fiss."
A massive power vacuum was left behind, awaiting those who would come after to fill it. Of course, the instigator seemed not to care about anything he had abandoned.
The intricate network of relationships suddenly lacked its crucial core, but humanity's adaptability was incredibly strong; the world would always continue to operate, no matter who was gone.
"Are you leaving?" Outside Bran City, Yue Yu called out to Bai Mo, who was floating ahead like a ghost.
He nodded.
Earth's transformation was already nearing its end, with an estimated half a year still required for the final organizational work.
The "cells" who had already lived for several years mentally on the virtual Earth, after nearly a decade of adaptation within the virtual reality environment, would very easily grow accustomed to their new lives on the real Earth, which was almost exactly the same.
Of course, before that, Bai Mo still needed to go and resolve the Star Beacon with whom he had made a wager in the Manghuang Realm.
As the envisioned "place of Dao attainment," that world, according to his plan, would no longer contain any seventh-stage power.
Individuals from Earth's spatial layer, upon breaking through to the seventh stage, would reincarnate in the Manghuang Realm, while the natives of the Manghuang Realm, upon breaking through, would "transmigrate" to this side.
The Manghuang Realm would, in a sense, become the "lower realm"; cultivators from the Earth-Moon "upper realm" could "descend" for trials and experience, and conversely, natives of the lower realm who broke through to the seventh stage could "ascend" to the upper realm.
"Can you tell me, what exactly are you thinking?" she asked another question.
Bai Mo's true intentions had always been a mystery, and he often did things whose reasons outsiders could not fathom in the slightest.
However, the avatar he had left behind, due to excessive consumption earlier and the current need to maintain the Spirit Art sealing the Solar Star Spirit, had begun to show signs of instability.
His white form flickered occasionally, appearing bright one moment and dim the next, like a fluorescent tube with a loose connection.
"Live on..."
Yue Yu vaguely felt that within the words Bai Mo left behind, there seemed to be three voices simultaneously. She wanted to ask further, but found that he had already vanished.
Compared to her mother, who wore a blank, bewildered expression, Yun Ru, tightly protected behind her, seemed to have understood something. She cast a deep glance in the direction Bai Mo had departed, her eyes holding a trace of inexplicably complex emotion.
"Let's go. We're going back to our new home." After several rounds of fruitless thought, Yue Yu ultimately gave up pondering.
"...In summary, our conclusion is that the target may suffer from a certain degree of split personality, which would explain the contradictions in his behavioral style."
"Professor Min, are you joking? How could a powerhouse of that caliber suffer from a mental illness common among ordinary people?"
"Mental illness has nothing to do with power. Of course, you could also call a cultivator's split personality an inner demon.
Within the Federation's upper echelons, there circulate some bizarre cultivation methods capable of artificially and forcibly creating inner demons, constantly achieving the goal of rapid strengthening by overcoming one's own inner demons.
Naturally, such heretical paths come with enormous side effects; one might inadvertently find themselves usurped by the guest."
"Couldn't be another urban legend, could it?"
"No, I've seen it with my own eyes..." The man referred to as the professor wiped his glasses and slowly fell into a trance-like state of recollection.
Seeing this, the people around him knew his old habit had returned.
Every time he recalled something from the past, this usually meticulous professor would become like this; they had long grown accustomed to it.
"Old Min's acting up again. I really don't know who, back then, left such a deep psychological trauma on our esteemed psychology professor."
"I heard he was dumped once when he was young?"
"Such a trivial matter? At least five out of ten men have experienced that. How could it leave Professor Min's heart so riddled with holes?"
"Ah, matters of the heart, they're hard to say, aren't they? After all, who hasn't been young and frivolous?" The middle-aged man with black-framed glasses spoke in the tone of one who had seen it all.
"Don't open his old wounds. In another half a year, after the Great Expedition begins, most of our department's funding will be cut, won't it?" From the dark room, within the institution bearing the sign of the Psychological Research Institute, several tea-drinking researchers spoke with great reluctance.
"Since it's coming to an end, there's no point in continuing the research. For the remaining six months, everyone, write up a summary of these years' achievements, submit it to the Federation's Central Archives, and then go your separate ways." The middle-aged supervisor in a white lab coat sighed.
Everyone was still very reluctant to part with this department, which had a special nature: aside from requiring high confidentiality externally, its work was quite relaxed—a true "slacking off" department.
Their main task was to analyze Bai Mo's psychological state and attempt to predict his subsequent actions using all available data and intelligence.
On the Moon, there were quite a few think tanks like theirs, operating under the guise of psychological research institutes but effectively serving as strategic research departments.
The existence of the Land of White could be seen as the manifestation of Bai Mo's singular will; therefore, studying his psychology was not much different in status from diplomatic strategic research in the Earth era.
The only difference was that when conducting their research, they had to enter specially designed dark rooms to block any information probing from the Land of White.
Informally among the populace, these think tanks also had a unique nickname—Bai-ologists.
PS: This week has been incredibly busy ORZ, so I can only apologize for the update.
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