Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Their eyes glittering like the morning stars in the dark night, the two kids released their brainwaves and showed the idiosyncratic structure of their souls.

With her remarkable senses on the soul and the brainwaves, Long Yangjun immediately detected their difference. “What… What is the meaning of this exactly? Also, which idiot came up with a horrible name such as ‘Lady Long’?”

Long Yangjun glared at Li Yao angrily.

Wenwen smiled and quickly changed the way of addressing. “Aunt Long, we are indeed Dad’s children and the children of human beings. However, we are slightly different from other children in that other children’s bodies are born first before their souls are gradually developed in the bodies. Our souls and self-consciousness were born first, and we developed our bodies carefully after our self-consciousness grew strong enough.

“Xiaoming and I were both born in the vast, boundless virtual game called ‘Civilization’. The abundant data in ‘Civilization was the first nutrition that we tasted. We grew up in the world of ‘Civilization’, observing the world and defining ourselves…”

According to the theories that they discussed with Li Yao earlier, the kids introduced themselves together.

Of course, the incident that their self-consciousness was suddenly awakened after they absorbed Li Yao’s brainwave data was too uncanny for the two kids to bring up. They only said that after the “Hyper Spirits”, their antecedents, were created by Professor Mo Xuan, they accidentally ran to the world of “Civilization”, where they absorbed astronomical information and finally gained self-awareness as the changes in quantity led to a change in quality.

Because Li Yao was known as the father of “Civilization”, and his marks were everywhere in the game, and since a lot of players had the habit of praying to his statue before the game, the two kids decided that Li Yao was their creator and their “father”!

After that, the things including how they created “main shells” for them to enter the material scope, how they tracked their father down from the federation all the way to the Imperium, how they found Long Yangjun’s secret base first, and how they set up a camp next to her nest… were all explained to Long Yangjun dutifully and honestly.

Long Yangjun, on the other hand, was soaked in a cold sweat with a pale face.

Before this, she had thought that nobody knew her relationship with “Nepenthe” and that she was the one hiding best behind the curtain.

Little did she expect that two weird kids had been around her while observing her.

After hearing the kids’ narration, Long Yangjun had goosebumps all over her body. While rubbing her arms, she exclaimed in shock, “Li Yao, I’ve told myself countless times that whatever unbelievable things happen to such a monster like you would not be worth my surprise for one second, but I have to admit that it’s unachievable! You always have a way to shock other people, and none of the previous shocks is as shocking as this one!”

While speaking, she looked at the kids in curiosity and hesitated, as if she intended to extend her hands to pinch their pinky cheeks to determine if they were real. But naturally, they were not puppets or statues.

“I didn’t see this coming.”

Long Yangjun mumbled to himself, “During the battle against Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan, we both believed that the time for the real virtual lives to be born in our world had not come yet, and considering the development of technologies today, the first light of dawn of virtual lives would probably not shine until thousands of years later, which was already a short moment in the prolonged history of civilization! I did know that even such a ‘short moment’ would be unnecessary, and that I would be fortunate enough to witness the ‘child civilization’ of mankind, or at least the prototype of it, so soon!”

“We are not virtual lives!”

Pouting their lips, the two kids corrected her at the same time, “We are real. Our bodies of flesh and blood, our brainwaves, and our feelings all exist in reality!”

“I’m sorry.”

Long Yangjun was quick to change her mistake. “Then should I call you ‘strong artificial intelligence’?”

“‘Artificial intelligence’ does not have a clear definition.”

Wenwen continued pointing it out, “To some extent, human beings themselves were also the ‘artificial intelligence’ created by the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan. Or rather, are you certain that the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan weren’t edified by the more ancient civilizations millions of years ago or even created artificially? If everybody is ‘artificial intelligence’, the word will not be of any reference.

“Please call us ‘information lives’. We are lives that are based on information and wander in the ocean of information!”

Long Yangjun grinned. “Is ‘information lives’ any more accurate than ‘artificial intelligence’? Any life carries a lot of information since the moment of their conception. The genes of human beings are exactly a pair of helical strands that are fully written with information! So, human beings, the Pangu Clan, and the Nuwa Clan are all ‘information lives’, except that the carriers of our information are genes and cells, whereas the main ways of information interaction are audio and image. Of course, thanks to the development of training techniques and crystal processors, the direct communication with brainwaves is turning into the mainstream. But that’s still no fundamental difference.”

“Right!”

Somewhat stunned by what Long Yangjun said, the two kids looked at each other in bewilderment. “Exactly. Carbon-based lives and information lives are not contradictory concepts at all. Carbon-based lives are information lives with different carriers. Then, how exactly are we going to distinguish us from them?”

“The carriers are not necessarily different, either.”

Long Yangjun seemed particularly fond of watching the two kids troubled by the puzzle. She intentionally said, “Look, you can develop a body of flesh and blood and download your main thread into it, changing yourself into a ‘carbon-based life’. By the same logic, human beings can voluntarily or involuntarily abandon their bodies and hide the remaining souls inside the artificial containers, living on as ‘ghosts’. Then, can they still be counted as ‘carbon-based life’?

“Furthermore, in the designs of Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan, most people did not even need the artificial bodies, and they could simply live inside the crystal processors after the souls were highly compressed. If such a future did become reality, would they have been any different from you?”

“Well—”

The two kids blinked their eyes fast, with smoke popping up from their heads. “We have never considered it that way. It’s really an interesting question. It seems that we have to redefine our relationship with human beings? What are we exactly? And what are human beings?”

“Huh…”

Li Yao was rather stunned after hearing their conversation.

It seemed that Long Yangjun was much more acceptive than he imagined. She got used to the two kids so quickly, and what she said sounded very reasonable and philosophical!

“What’s your plan?”

Long Yangjun glanced at him. “You’ve brought the two kids to me without any disguise and introduced their identities without any hesitation. What’s the meaning of this? Have you accepted my opinion that the evil schemes must not be done stealthily and clandestinely, and the more evil they are, the more necessary it is to carry them out openly?”

“What evil scheme can I possibly have?”

Li Yao held his chest high and said, “I have always been frank and forthright. But you’re not wrong. It’s true that I do not know how the two kids should face the entire civilization of mankind, and how to make most people accept them.

“Since they are my children, I certainly do not want them to live in darkness for their entire lives. Also, in order to resolve the chaos at the center of the cosmos and to take down Blackstar the Great, the four Kurfürst families and the main-force fleets of the Covenant Alliance that have never shown up yet, their assistance will be vital.

“However… you’ve seen the strength contained inside their bodies, haven’t you? If they truly grow up to the point that they can give us a hand, many people will be deeply feared.

“I really don’t know if other people will accept them. That’s why I’m here to ask for your advice!”

Through the glass window that had long exploded, Long Yangjun watched the well-organized teams of spiritual puppets outside dismantling and collecting all the useful things in the Great Iron Plants, ready to ship them to deeper parts of the underground world.

What was most eye-catching was an assembly line of components, which was still operating despite the harsh environment, producing the torsos and limbs of spiritual puppets!

With the limbs and joints, the spiritual puppets that had been blown apart in the fierce battle could be recovered.

Everything above was under the control of Xiaoming and Wenwen.

In other words, the information lives were already capable of self-duplication and self-upgrade without the interference of human beings. They were only one step away from “reproduction”.

“It is indeed creepy if you view the current scene from a certain perspective. It entails a weird sense of beauty, like the end of the world is about to come.”

Watching for a while, Long Yangjun moved her eyes back to Li Yao’s face. “Congratulations on proving your nickname of ‘Monster Li’! You are now one of the most capable competitors for the ‘destroyer of mankind’. That is a title that countless supervillains have been pursuing since ancient times. The small fries such as Xiao Xuance, Lu Zui, or Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan would certainly feel ashamed if they were faced with Monster Li!”

Li Yao said with a bitter smile, “Stop joking. I’m here to ask for your help. Help me think if there is a way—”

“I don’t know. Also, you shouldn’t be asking me at all.”

Long Yangjun said casually, “Don’t forget that I am not a pure human being. In the eyes of most people, I am also an ‘alien species’, no different from the member of the Pangu Clan that you executed in the Kunlun relics.

“I can only live in the human society under careful camouflage while keeping a certain distance from other people. I don’t even have the courage to tell anybody my identity except for you.

“Why do you think that I’m qualified to offer you any enlightenment when I’m like this? Even though I can accept the cute kids, it’s only because I’m compassionate with them since we are all ‘alien species’. It doesn’t mean that most human beings can accept them!”