Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Besides the most advanced crystal processors and cyberwarfare units, the two “Super Swirl”-level warships naturally still needed crews.

While Xiaoming, Wenwen, and the Fist King could reduce half of the posts on board through the fully-automatic operation system, the agility, independence, and creativity of human beings in the key posts could not be replaced by piles of data.

Li Yao chose the reliable soldiers in the Big Bai Pirate Gang who knew the truth of the federation and who still had family in the federation, as well as those in the Cultivators’ fleet who held bloody grudges against the Immortal Cultivators, as the crews of “Xiaoming” and “Wenwen”.

Those people either considered the federation as their homeland or had the deepest hatred against the Imperium. Their loyalty was certainly not a problem.

The question was how to explain what Xiaoming and Wenwen were to them.

Li Yao had made up his mind that he would not keep the truth a secret for too long.

Xiaoming, Wenwen, and the Fist King had also run careful deductions. If they did not intend to have full conflicts with the civilization of mankind, resulting in heavy losses on both sides, the sooner they revealed the truth, the better.

If they had mastered a dozen fleets and millions of aggressive battle puppets, only to be exposed by somebody else, it was impossible for the paranoid and sensitive human beings not to overreact.

While they were still fledging, they could offer to publicize the truth and grow up under the watch and guidance of mankind. That was perhaps the fastest way of growth for a “child civilization”.

Of course, the situation at the center of the cosmos was still too chaotic. The reformists, Blackstar the Great who was hiding among the reformists, the four Kurfürst families, the Covenant Alliance that was coveting from the darkness, the mysterious mausoleum of the Supreme Emperor, as well as the Supreme Emperor and the Blood God whose life statuses were unknown… There were too many variables.

The troops in the Blue Sky Market were far from united too. Since the battle of the Seven Seas Grand Market was about to begin, all the crew members would only be baffled if the truth was completely revealed. Therefore, after discussing with the Fist King and Boss Bai, Li Yao decided to go one step at a time and reveal part of the truth in order to see the crew’s reaction.

Regarding the two unbelievably automatic cyberwarfare cruisers, Li Yao’s explanation was that they had applied the most up-to-date super artificial intelligence technology from the federation, or to wit, the “Hyper Spirits” technology left by Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan.

Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan created countless artificial intelligence and strengthened eighteen of them into “Hyper Spirits”, planning to use them to control the entire federation. That was true.

The Hyper Spirits boasted computational abilities and logic abilities far more advanced than regular artificial intelligence, which allowed them to hack and control a super crystal processor easily. Of course, when they were applied to massive magical equipment complexes, they could significantly improve the automation of the starships or space fortresses. That was also true.

Xiaoming and Wenwen’s antecedents were Hyper Spirit No. 17 and Hyper Spirit No. 18. That was also absolutely true.

Of course, however impressive the Hyper Spirits actually were, they were still within the category of artificial intelligence, which was a popular technology in both the federation and the Imperium. It was a necessary ancillary technology to use any large magical equipment. Both the space pirates and the Cultivators of the Imperium had seen too many of such things.

It was an accepted theory that the two starships were controlled by very sophisticated artificial intelligence.

As for Xiaoming and Wenwen, the two lovely kids, Li Yao also admitted to the crew dutifully that they were his children who had naturally endowed abilities that made them very awesome “specialists of artificial intelligence”. Only the two of them were capable of controlling the Hyper Spirits on the two starships.

While it was slightly unbelievable, but considering that they were the children of “Vulture Li Yao”, the whole thing seemed, well, more understandable now.

As it turned out, the crew got along rather well with the two starships and the kids. The problems that Li Yao was worried about did not happen at all.

Both the space pirates of the federation and the Cultivators of the Imperium were marines. For a marine, what mattered most was always bigger, faster, and stronger starships.

Could there have been a more exciting thing than to be allocated to a starship that boasted the highest cyberwarfare abilities in the entire Imperium?

Although the “Hyper Spirits” almost caused a destructive catastrophe to the federation in the past, weapons themselves were not guilty, and it all depended on whose hands the weapons were. Now that the “Hyper Spirits” belonged to the “Coalition Fleet of Pyromaniacs”, of course they should be as strong as possible.

The two kids were particularly amiable too, and they raised a natural sense of protection. After seeing how lovely the kids were, many crew members were secretly complaining about how ruthless Li Yao was to put such little children on starships and involve them in the perilous war. It was simply too risky whatever unique techniques they had!

All in all, boosted by the crew’s pride and sense of unity, and thanks to the automatic performance of the starships, it took only half a month before the two highly-modified cyberwarfare cruisers miraculously gained preliminary combat ability.

The remaining amazing abilities had to be activated and improved in the real battle.

After more than half a month, when the starships of the two branch fleets were mostly done with maintenance and upgrading, Boss Bai supervised a minor drill.

On one side of the drill, it was the fleet commanded by Boss Bai in person in the traditional way.

On the other side, it was the new-generation fleet commanded by the Fist King under the assistance of Xiaoming and Wenwen, which was more intelligent and automatic.

As it turned out, while Boss Bai boasted more experience and elite warships that were faster and fiercer, the victory did not come easily. He had essentially tried everything he could before he tore apart the battle formation of the Fist King’s fleet like peeling an onion.

Despite the failure, the Fist King’s fleet still led one third of the starships to retreat in order, keeping the seeds of the troop alive, under the delicate projection of firepower, the marvelous coordination, and the absolutely calm and emotionless command.

Of course, such a marvelous “failure” was not entirely to the credit of the Fist King, Xiaoming, and Wenwen, but more like the first perfect cooperation of the newborn information lives and human beings.

Boss Bai was quite right. The pure information lives had obvious vulnerabilities. Their existence and strength were highly dependent on their communication with each other, and in the vast, boundless space, communication could be a burdensome task that was prone to interference.

Human beings, on the other hand, had the greatest advantage that they could process fuzzy orders independently. In the most extreme cases, a human soldier would be an army—an army of himself!

Human beings plus information lives, that was perhaps the right way to fight future wars, and the only path for their civilization to surpass the black wall and reach beyond the Pangu universe.

Seeing that Xiaoming and Wenwen were stronger and better integrated into human society after every day, Li Yao, however, felt a little self-contradictory.

Even though they had revealed part of the truth, some information was still retained. Once the crew learned the whole truth, knowing that the so-called “artificial intelligence” actually had their own minds and will and did not necessarily have to follow the instructions of human beings, what would they think?

Would they be happy, or would they be dreaded, when they found out that the “artificial intelligence” was so similar to human beings?

Human beings could be corrupted and completely lost because of power, wealth, or strength. Was it also the case for artificial intelligence, or information lives?

Right now, Xiaoming, Wenwen, and the Fist King were still relatively weak, and Li Yao believed that they were cooperating with mankind sincerely, but if they mastered the strength far exceeding that of human beings someday, making them ten times, a hundred times, or a thousand times stronger than mankind, what could he do?

Information lives were the creatures and children of mankind. Li Yao had already been taught too many good lessons on the evilness and brutality of mankind. As the saying went, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. If that was what mankind was like, what would their descendants be?

Although he had been making blood-boiling claims in front of everyone, claiming that all the problems could be solved through “love” and “communication”, he wondered if that was really the case when he considered in secret at night.

In the end, it was Boss Bai who calmed him down.

“I believe in the evil nature of mankind, and space pirates are the evils of the evils, but do you know that even the most ferocious and selfish space pirates on Spider Den in the Flying Star Sector also worked together a lot? Why? Was it because their nature changed? No, it was only because a more formidable enemy had appeared, say, the troop of the Cultivators, and the wicked space pirates were forced to hug each other and warm each other up.

Boss Bai said, “Everybody was born selfish and extremely evil, but in a hazardous, primitive world, an individual was so weak that even the evilest person had to cooperate with other people in order to survive. In the forced cooperation, the initial understanding and trust came into being. That was the case for brothers, family, society, or country. They were not born because of ‘love’, but only because of some kind of…’have to’.

“Is it possible that civilizations are exactly like human beings?

“Perhaps all civilizations are selfish, heartless, and malevolent in nature. They would not be able to survive otherwise.

“However, faced with the unexpected threats in the vast universe, selfishness, heartlessness, and malevolence alone are far from enough. After they are developed to a certain extent, civilizations will have to team up in order to fight the great threats together.

“So, the focus is not whether or not the Pangu civilization, the civilization of mankind, the information civilization, or the wizardly civilization is evil, because they are all genetically evil. What we should focus on is whether or not there is a threat that they absolutely cannot resist on their own. It will force them to temporarily abandon their evilness and wariness of each other and be united, or to generate a weird thing called ‘love’.

“Luckily, it seems that we happen to have such a threat—the Flood.”

The Flood that was destroying all the civilizations was a fluke?

It might sound absurd, but it was exactly what the Fist King expressed before.

In the history of mankind, most glorious civilizations originated from the river basins that were frequented by floods. Floods were destruction but also life. Floods brought infinite desperation but were also the harbinger of hope.

Faced with the overwhelming flood, the creatures in the dark forest were left with no choice except to summon all their wisdom and courage, walk out of the forest, and stride forward together bravely, to be the new master of the new world after the flood ebbed!