Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Looking at the disabled veterans bowing and offering wreaths, Li Jialing clenched his fists and said, “Things must’ve been different in the age of Blackstar the Great.”

“They’re all the same.”

Li Yao said, “If the Immortal Cultivators did not have so many corruptions and internal conflicts, and they were not as selfish and despicable as they are today, it was not because the Immortal Cultivators had higher integrity but because the Imperium was still in the phase of expansion. The interests of the newly-conquered areas could be swallowed in order to soothe the conflicts within.

“The vigor and vitality of countries such as the Imperium of True Human Beings are built on accelerated expeditions. Whenever they stop expanding, the internal contradictions will burst out together, resulting in their inevitable decline.

“The Imperium has deteriorated to such an extent that it is now too sick to be rescued by any medication. Any ‘reform’ will not solve the root of the problems. They may be able to cut out the cancers on the body, but they cannot change the genetic deficiencies. Not just Li Linghai and Lei Chenghu, even Blackstar the Great could not heal the country even if he were back to life.

“In order to transform and revive the Imperium, the true path of immortality must be criticized and denied in the most complete way. But here comes the question. Is the Imperium of True Human Beings without the guidance of the true path of immortality still the Imperium of True Human Beings? Which Immortal Cultivator could afford such a destructive reconstruction of their beliefs?”

Li Jialing thought hard for a long time. “Do we have to do that? Is there not a third option?”

“It is inevitable.”

Li Yao said solemnly, “Survival is the natural instinct of any life. As long as the true path of immortality highlights the law of survival of the fittest, everybody will spend all the resources on themselves for survival driven by their instincts. The resources will be wasted in meaningless internal conflicts. Even if they are not needed for now, they will be secretly hidden in case they are needed in the future, and they will never be devoted to the public, the country, the civilization, and the external fights. So, how can the most optimal configuration of resources be reached at all?”

Li Jialing frowned hard and shook his head. “That being said, is the ideology of the Cultivators any better? Can the Cultivators always maintain high morals and fight for the general public under the guidance of their beliefs, and social ossification and enormous interest groups will never appear? If that is the case, the Star Ocean Republic and Firefly wouldn’t have been destroyed!”

“You are right. I don’t want to lie. Both Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators are humans, and every human has desires and deficiencies. What is happening to the Imperium of True Human Beings today will… has happened to the Star Ocean Republic and Firefly yesterday and even resulted in two destructions.”

Deep in thought, Li Yao mumbled, “But I still prefer to believe that at the very least, in a society where the prevailing ideas are that the strong should help the weak, the weak should support the strong, and the strong and the weak should fight together, people will not be so motivated to jeopardize the interests of the whole just to strengthen themselves. If the community is the most solid shield and the warmest reliance for the individuals, then considering the interests of the whole before considering themselves will not be in violation of human nature, right?

“If you still find it hard to understand, we can construct a simplest social model, where the whole society is highly compressed and simplified into two persons and one unit of resources.

“One of the persons is you. You are not sure whether you are a Cultivator or an Immortal Cultivator, and you can switch between the policies of the Cultivators and those of the Immortal Cultivators easily.

“The other person is an expert who is far stronger than you. But he is heavily wounded and in dire need of the resources for recovery.

“Naturally, the resources are now in the hands of you, who are strong and healthy. If you choose to consume the resources yourself, your strength will be increased by 10%, but the heavily wounded expert will die soon.

“But if you give the resources to the heavily wounded expert, his strength will be increased by 100% after recovery.

“Right now. Other than the two of you, there lie all kinds of threats in this world. The stronger your overall strengths are, the more likely it will be to survive in the perilous world.

“Here comes the question. In the first scenario, if you know that the heavily wounded expert is a cold, ruthless Immortal Cultivator who believes in survival of the fittest, would you like to offer the valuable resources to him so that he can be fully recovered, while you are only one fifth if not one-tenth as strong as he is?

“In the second scenario, if you know clearly that the heavily wounded expert is a Cultivator who has fought for the weak countless times, what will you choose? Will you give the resources to yourself to maximize your personal combat ability, or will you give them to him to maximize the combat ability of the team?”

Li Jialing rolled his eyes again and again. It was not until a long time later that he finally struggled to say, “I can’t lie. In the first scenario, I will reserve all the resources for myself without a care for the life or death of the expert, but in the second scenario, I will very likely give the resources to the expert. After all, he will probably protect me after he is recovered.

“However, in the first scenario, there is still one option. If the resources can be divided, I will separate the resources, giving the larger proportion to myself and the smaller proportion to the expert to make him more or less recovered. Then, he will be slightly weaker than me but can still be of help.”

“That will be the same.”

Li Yao said casually, “No matter what the ratio is, the combat ability of your team will not be maximized. In other words, you haven’t achieved the optimal configuration of resources.

“Besides, if you give a few resources to the heavily wounded Immortal Cultivator, he might not be grateful for you at all but would likely resent you for your pettiness. In the team fights later, the two of you will be wary of each other and probably burst into conflicts before external threats show up, right?”

Li Jialing was stunned. “That’s right. But who can guarantee that the Cultivator will certainly protect the weak after he gets all the resources and recovers? What if he changes his mind, drops his mask of hypocrisies, and abandons me at a critical moment?”

“It’s all about probability. Everything has odds. I’m not saying that it is necessarily the right choice to give all the resources to the Cultivator expert in the second scenario; I’m just saying that such a policy will maximize the odds of survival. That’s all.”

Holding the windowsill with both hands, Li Yao stared at the statue of Blackstar the Great and said, “It’s true that Cultivators may be fake gentlemen sometimes, but Immortal Cultivators are certainly always real villains. Fake gentlemen will not hurt other people until they drop their disguise at the last moment, but real villains spurt out venom, implement schemes, and harm other people for their own interests twenty hours a day. If you have to choose one of them as partners, even a fool will know which option is better?”

Li Jialing frowned and said, “What are you trying to say, Brother Yao?”

Li Yao said, “What I’m trying to say is that, in a world of any scale, if your companions are Immortal Cultivators, it won’t matter however kindhearted, honorable, selfless, and devoted you used to be. Driven by the instincts for survival, your only policy will be to transform yourself into an Immortal Cultivator as soon as possible, preferably an even more cruel, brutal, and cunning one than your companions. At the very least, you will have to strike a ‘balance of deterrence’ between one another. That is the only way for you to ensure your own safety and your partnership with other people.

“But as a result, the world made of the Immortal Cultivators cannot achieve the optimal configuration of resources that you brag about at all. On the contrary, if you have 100 points of combat ability in the ideal situation, it will only be 10 points because of your conspiratorial games of survival.

“I would like to name such a phenomenon as ‘dilemma of the Immortal Cultivators’. The entire Imperium of True Human Beings is now trapped in a gigantic dilemma of the Immortal Cultivators, to the point that it cannot destroy a minor Covenant Alliance at a corner of the cosmos, which does not have any creativity at all, when it has the most abundant resources at the center of the cosmos.

“In the second social form, if your companions are Cultivators, the odds that you are transformed into a Cultivator will be very high, and you tend to act selflessly, say, give the valuable resources to other people first, because you know that it is a reliable investment and that they will return even more resources to you after their wounds are recovered.

“Such a positive encouragement and feedback will make the two of you more and more selfless and united. In the end, you will achieve the optimal configuration of resources and output the highest overall combat ability, right?”

Li Jialing tilted his head and thought for a long time. “It does seem to make sense.”

“Of course it is. Isn’t a living example standing right here?”

Li Yao declared, “You were a little devil who could not tell kindness from evilness and who did not hesitate before bloody slaughters at all. You were the best talent to grow into an Immortal Cultivator. But after you got in touch with such a Cultivator of morals and integrity like Brother Yao, you have been touched by my lofty character without you knowing it, and you are learning to view the world from the Cultivators’ point of view. You are slowly transforming into a Cultivator. Isn’t this the best evidence?

“Therefore, as long as everybody offers a tiny bit of love, the universe will be a much more beautiful place tomorrow. Although the path of the Cultivators seems down and out right now, it will become the mainstream at the center of the cosmos in the days to come! Only the path of the Cultivators can save the Imperium. If the Imperium is to be reformed to give birth to a ‘new Imperium’, it shouldn’t be a new Imperium in the plan of Li Linghai and Lei Chenghu, but a new Imperium where everybody is a Cultivator!”