Chapter 694: Dream Weaving
While the Federation had been established for nearly a century, cultural differences remained difficult to bridge due to the extraordinarily long lifespans of the upper-tier superhumans.
In particular, after a large group of people from the former Huaxia Federation took the lead in wearing retro-style Daoist robes, people from the former European Union also took to donning wizard robes in kind.
This event ignited a massive bomb in the cultural sphere, shattering the very notion of cultural unity once again.
A Huaxia-style palace with carved beams and painted rafters might stand right next to a castle-like magic academy, and some even more absurd ones were shaped like pyramids.
The Xuan Tian Sword Sect, founded by Wen Jian, was precisely one of the regions where Huaxia's retro style was most pronounced.
Its architecture resembled a wuxia world, its clothes a xianxia realm. When idle, they would compose poetry, and some internal written documents even utilized classical Chinese.
Hence, the strange "later records" from earlier.
Of course, adopting retro attire didn't contradict their enjoyment of technological advancements.
The Xuan Tian Sword Sect also possessed numerous space warships, and its lower-tier disciples, clad in power armor and wielding high-frequency blades capable of effortlessly slicing through tanks, routinely swept the solar system clean of various alien life forms.
Such as, "May your father's loquats wither barren, and your mother bear but a nameless trifle!" and so forth.
And after decades of technological development, mobile phones had vanished from the hands of Federation citizens, replaced by an external bionic virtual reality organ—the Seventh Sense.
The Seventh Sense directly generated visuals within the human brain by simulating visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory signals transmitted to the brain. Not only was the experience more realistic, but no matter how much one played, it wouldn't cause neck strain or nearsightedness.
For the Federation, the Seventh Sense, with its excellent virtual reality effects, was also an incredibly useful tool for maintaining social stability.
Not only did it come with built-in monitoring capabilities, but more crucially, it could continuously generate a myriad of virtual scenarios.
Any unmet need in real life could almost entirely be satisfied within the highly simulated virtual world.
Even the market for addictive drugs had been marginalized by this increasingly mature virtual reality terminal, the Seventh Sense.
How could the ephemeral ecstasy of drug-induced stupor compare to the thrill of indulging every dark fantasy and desire within one's own mind?
Thus, the profession of "Dream Weaver" was born.
What is a Dream Weaver?
In a sense, they were also authors. The only difference was that readers would directly become the protagonists of the "dreams" they wove in the virtual world.
To truly experience the story from a first-person perspective.
This was a profession that emerged almost simultaneously in both the Federation and the Land of White, continuously creating all sorts of interesting virtual worlds, and currently, it was one of the largest commodities in terms of bilateral trade volume.
Selling imagination.
Unfortunately, cultivators weren't particularly impressed by this.
Because as their cultivation deepened, all their senses would be actively and passively enhanced. Looking back at virtual reality content, they would immediately find it incredibly fake.
Current technology could only fool the senses of ordinary people, allowing them to blur the line between virtual and reality, but it remained powerless against superhumans.
For instance, most people couldn't discern the pores on others' faces, so when modeling in virtual reality, there was no need to truly simulate each individual pore.
But for cultivators whose vision had been enhanced, it was different. They could easily see the pores on human skin, and even residual dead skin on those pores. Compared side-by-side, they would instantly find the virtual people too fake, completely lacking any immersion.
The Seventh Sense could serve for watching holographic movies and stories, but cultivators would absolutely not confuse virtual with reality, much less immerse themselves in it.
However, many cultivators also developed a fear of this technology.
As technology advanced, virtual reality would inevitably become more and more lifelike.
If their cultivation stagnated, one day they would be drowned by the virtual ocean, just like ordinary people now, no longer able to distinguish truth from illusion.
This was also the "Catch-Up Theory" that gained considerable traction among some ascetic cultivators within the Federation—one must cultivate fast enough, or they would be overtaken by the virtual world.
...
"Ceres was entirely wiped out..."
"My heavens, that was a dwarf planet over nine hundred kilometers in diameter!"
"If you don't believe me, go see for yourself."
"..."
Federation observation stations scattered across half the solar system, with the exception of a few individuals currently in blind spots, all witnessed this violent astronomical phenomenon.
A stream of super-energetic particles, escaping from the Sun's surface at nearly one-fifth the speed of light, swept through the asteroid belt near Jupiter.
Wherever it passed, dust returned to dust, and everything solid with a diameter greater than one centimeter ceased to exist, leaving only endless cosmic dust drifting about, narrating all that had just occurred.
"Issue a general mobilization order. Begin the final dismantling of the remnants of Mars, Mercury, and Venus. Once the last batch of Martian resources is transported to the Land of White, the Federation will officially execute the migration plan."
According to the contract previously signed by both parties, the Federation and the Land of White would jointly develop Mars, and the resources obtained would be split fifty-fifty.
Of course, the actual heavy lifting was almost entirely done by the Federation; the Holy Progenitors merely sent a few people to oversee and receive goods.
Standing on the bow of the Federation's war titan, the Extreme Heaven Bastion, Ji Er Ke Fu, then the highest leader of the Federation and Speaker, began issuing orders.
This titan behemoth, entirely transformed from the Moon God fortress, stemmed from a colossal threat, and it had almost allocated all its points into defense.
Even against the sword strike that had just annihilated the galaxy, the Extreme Heaven Bastion had considerable confidence it could withstand it head-on, at the cost of slight damage from hull overload.
Ji Er Ke Fu, in his earlier days, had also been taken by Bai Mo to labor for several years, moving mountains and filling seas, before later leaving Earth with the Federation and gradually surpassing all his predecessors to become the Federation's strongest Speaker.
Alas, even having surpassed everyone else, that white shadow remained ever-present and oppressive. Only when standing upon the Extreme Heaven Bastion, like a super turtle shell, did he feel a sliver of security.
"Concurrently, notify Zeppelin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Saturn Expeditionary Force, that after the main solar system fleet of the Federation completes its assembly, its first destination will be Saturn. We hope he can bring good news before the main fleet arrives at Saturn."
"Remind the Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto expeditionary fleets that after completing their conquest, they are to dismantle the three planets on the spot, take all usable materials, and return directly to Saturn for assembly, rather than coming back to Mars."
"Yes, Speaker!"
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