Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao thought for a long time, only to fail to come up with any rebuttal. He simply said, “Perhaps it is because the member of the Pangu Clan who woke up on Kunlun left too deep an impression on me. I find it hard to imagine what weaknesses those giants possibly had. Compared to the weak human beings, they are almost invincible.”

“This is exactly what one might call ‘survivorship bias’,” Long Yangjun said casually. “It is very possible that the members of the Pangu Clan that we can see right now are all the exceptional experts among experts, and the common members in the Pangu Civilization were not as tough as them at all.

“For example, if we consider this exploration team as a sample for analysis, we will find that the ratio of the Cultivators in the Core Formation Stage and the Nascent Soul Stage is close to one hundred percent, which is appallingly high. But we cannot infer that all human beings are experts at least in the Core Formation Stage solely based on that, right?

“The same goes for the Pangu Clan. Has it ever occurred to you that the dead bodies of the Pangu Clan have all been found on battlefields, secret bases, or laboratories like the one here?

“Those who were qualified to show up in such places must’ve been the soldiers, experts, and senior researchers in the Pangu Clan who were filtered over hundreds of thousands of years. The weaker ones among them have long been obliterated without leaving any dust behind. How can we even discover them?

“After all the screening and the test of time, what can the bodies that were kept intact and could even be revived be if not the experts among experts?

“In short, only if they were strong enough could their bodies be kept intact for our studies, and the majority of them who were not strong enough have long perished in the river of time. This is a classic ‘survivorship bias’.”

Li Yao was not entirely convinced. “Is it?”

“Of course it is,” Long Yangjun said. “If you still can’t understand it, let me give you another example. Do you have any Grand Illusionary Soldiers around you?”

Looking at three Grand Illusionary Soldiers of the latest generation that were glittering but somewhat numb, Li Yao said, “Yes. What about them?”

“With your capability right now, it is nothing to blow up dozens of Grand Illusionary Soldiers, right? However, it only proves that you are strong enough personally. For most of the ordinary people, it is an arduous task to compete with the most advanced Grand Illusionary Soldier. There’s no need to mention the old, the weak, and the children, who will be butchered by the Grand Illusionary Soldier easily.

“Assuming that the civilization of mankind perishes one day, and the Grand Illusionary Soldiers and the crystal processors give birth to a brand-new ‘mechanical civilization’, if explorers of the mechanical civilization excavate the bones of ‘Vulture’ Li Yao and retrieve your cells for analysis, they will discover astonishing energy in them that has not quite vanished after hundreds of thousands of years. Based on that, they come to the conclusion that human beings are a strong species that they cannot compete with at all. Isn’t such a ridiculous conclusion?

“In your opinion, if the civilization of mankind truly perishes someday, whose dead bodies are more likely to be preserved, the top-tier experts like you and me or a common clerk, teacher, or waiter in a restaurant?”

Looking at the three Grand Illusionary Soldiers that were receiving orders to enter the ‘warehouse of embryos’ for exploration, Li Yao murmured, “You have somehow convinced me.”

Long Yangjun smiled. “In fact, we don’t have to go through so much trouble. There is obvious proof that human beings were actually quite dangerous for the Pangu Clan.”

Li Yao was surprised. “What is that?”

“What else? The ‘three fundamental laws’ themselves!” Long Yangjun said. “In your eyes, the ‘three fundamental laws’ were a barrier that the Pangu Clan imposed on human beings. They were seals and restraints. But think about it. Under what circumstances would you impose barriers and restraints on a tool and even seal it?

“If it is just a random hammer or axe, it will not require any barrier or restraint. Only the tools that are highly dangerous and can attack the master anytime but have been too widely used as a bedrock of the civilization to be destroyed will be blocked and restrained.

“Hehe. The more I think about it, the more I feel that the Pangu Clan probably treated human beings exactly like how human beings treat the crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus.

“Human beings invented crystal processors, but crystal processors run faster than the brains of most people. They can control all kinds of machinery and perform difficult work that normal people cannot.

“Human beings are scared of crystal processors. In fiction, many people have foretold that the crystal processors will one day develop self-awareness and swallow their creators.

“Human beings now understand that very well, but they cannot live without crystal processors. They can only set up barriers on the crystal processors in self-deception, trying to exterminate the birth of a mechanical civilization in such a way.

“However, some insightful people have realized that the birth of a mechanical civilization is unstoppable. They are studying and pushing it actively, trying to make it develop toward a more controllable direction.

“Was it the same for the Pangu Civilization?

“It is true that the Pangu Clan created human beings, but the prosperity in the last years of the Pangu Civilization and the glorious civilization it established in the three thousand Sectors could not have been achieved without the hard work of human beings. Human beings were to the Pangu Civilization what crystal processors, the Spiritual Nexus, and beast puppets are to mankind. They couldn’t be abandoned. If they were, the Pangu Civilization would’ve been completely destroyed.

“Therefore, the Pangu Civilization could only brand the so-called ‘three fundamental laws’ into the souls of the newborn human beings. It is a sign of absolute control in your eyes. But from another perspective, is it not indicative of fear and helplessness?”

Long Yangjun’s words cast Li Yao into deep thought. After pondering for a long time, he said, “Then, in your opinion, was mankind a ‘tool’ or a ‘descendent’ of the Pangu Civilization?”

“They are fundamentally the same,” Long Yangjun said. “The Pangu Civilization was an alliance of thirteen different kinds of carbon-based lives. When the carbon-based lives were developed enough to utilize the energy of a star at a high efficiency and to edit genes, it was only natural for them to come up with the idea of combining the essence of the thirteen carbon-based lives and creating a new, evolved entity as a successor of the Pangu Civilization, wasn’t it?

“Perhaps they had indeed created human beings as ‘tools’ in the beginning, just like human beings created crystal processors and beast puppets as tools at first.

“However, as the crystal processors and the beast puppets were more and more developed, and when the perfect individuals such as ‘Grand Illusionary Soldiers’ showed up, the inadequacy of the body’s sturdiness and the brain’s computational ability of the ordinary people couldn’t have been more highlighted. Didn’t some human beings try to get rid of the fleshly body and live inside iron shells and super crystal processors?

“Look at all the spectral Cultivators. In terms of appearance, they are entirely different from past human beings and more like combinations of crystal processors and machines. They can be built into the most bizarre shape or even get rid of the restraint of the shell and live inside the Spiritual Nexus. But who can deny that they are also human beings?

“Then, although the Pangu Clan created mankind for the purpose of making tools in the beginning, they began to develop human beings as a certain ‘carrier of civilization’ after discovering the infinite potentials in human beings. This is a rather reasonable hypothesis, isn’t it?

“In that case, the Nuwa Clan played a similar role in the Pangu Civilization to Professor Mo Xuan’s in the civilization of mankind!

“Now that the awakening of mankind is inevitable, and it is impossible for us to abandon such an important tool, we might as well control its awakening and make us their parents while hoping that they consider themselves our offspring, which will be the best outcome.

“That was perhaps what was on the mind of the Nuwa Clan and why they had conflicts with other members of the Pangu Civilization and eventually had a civil war, right?”

Li Yao found it hard to believe. “You came up with all these theories only a moment ago?”

“Indeed. This trip to the Pangu laboratory has proved to be very rewarding.” There was a vague chuckle in Long Yangjun’s voice. “Although it is just my nonsense that is not supported by much evidence, I somehow have a feeling that we are very close to the final truth.”

After repeatedly scanning the beast puppets and the Grand Illusionary Soldiers to make sure that there was no sign of life or any giant crab that was lurking in the form of spores in the ‘warehouse of embryos’, Li Yao and the rest of them finally stepped in prudently.

The southeast corner of the vast warehouse had completely collapsed, buried by rocks and walls that weighed tens of thousands of tons. Even the telepathic thoughts of the Divinity Transformation Stage could barely penetrate through.

However, Long Yangjun suddenly told Li Yao that she vaguely recalled that something was behind it.

With a dozen of Colossi there, even a real mountain would have been moved away quickly. It was certainly no trouble at all to dig a hole that was enough for the beast puppets and the Grand Illusionary Soldiers to crawl through.

The result of their scouting was that there was indeed a rather large space behind the collapsed rocks.

Surprisingly, despite the passage of hundreds of thousands of years, almost ten gigantic black cubes were still floating in midair, with dense, layered geometric patterns whose lines were as thin as a hair on their surfaces. The moment they touched the air, they immediately unleashed green glimmers.

There were hundreds more black cubes that had crashed to the ground helplessly with cracks as thick as fingers on the surface, revealing the crystal components inside that could not have been more precise.

Li Yao had seen a lot of similar magical equipment on Kunlun. They were the tools of the Pangu Civilization to help with computation and control, similar to the ‘crystal processors’ of mankind.

It appeared that this place was the control center to maintain the functionality of the entire warehouse of embryos.

Dozens of crystal cameras were rolled agilely and scanned hundreds of broken, giant bodies with their cold rays of light. Judging from the fragments of the armors and the weapons, they were of much higher levels than the dead bodies outside.

Also, in two corners that were opposite each other with a long distance in between, two dead bodies, with flickering light flowing on their surface as if they would come back to life at any moment, were sitting cross-legged!