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Chapter 228 - 227: Sketching Civilization Here
Chapter 228 - 227: Sketching Civilization Here
Chapter 228: Chapter 227: Sketching Civilization Here
Translator: 549690339
Both of them asked everybody they met in the vast world, and the responses they received all bore striking similarities – everybody believed their entry into the virtual world to be without any complaints or regrets.
“The Euthanasia Plan…at the very beginning of the Flying Sky Company’s establishment, this plan was already in place. Its founder, Xiang Gu, had created the company for the sole purpose of implementing this plan.”
“The real mystery is Xiang Guts motive. Pity that Xiang Gu lived over a thousand years ago and is long dead,” Bai Hongtu regretted. If he could find Xiang Gu, he would truly wish to ask how this fools could, from any perspective, pull an entire civilization into the grave.
“There must be something wrong with Xiang Gu, maybe he’s not dead after all,” Bai Hongtu insisted — it was his intuition.
After returning to the real world, they used their Divine Senses to search through the five galactic systems, and all they could find was Xiang Gu’s grave.
Bai Hongtu, unwilling to accept this, used the spell “Wind and Fire Return” to restore Xiang Gu’s bones to their original form – they looked exactly like him.
He’d heard that technological civilizations often used DNA to identify individuals, so he carried out a DNA test and compared the results with the DNA database. The outcome verified his identity as Xiang Gu.
“Could my intuition be wrong?” Bai Hongtu was doubtful, becoming suspicious of his own instincts.
“No, Wind and Fire Return and DNA testing cannot solve this problem,” Jiang Li frowned, “Don’t forget the first step of the Euthanasia Plan – ‘exploit divine inspiration to develop technology’. If divine inspiration is an item, we haven’t seen anything transcending our times. Hence, divine inspiration should be a powerful being conveying something to Xiang Gu.”
“But there’s only one civilization in this world – the Sketching civilization. So where could this god come from? The Ancestral God had already passed away during that time. This powerful being can only be from another world.”
“Either an Immortal from the Immortal Realm passed by and took a liking to
Xiang Gu, imparting him with technological knowledge, or a Celestial Level Extraterritorial Devil arrived here, encouraging him to wipe out the Sketching civilization.”
“I lean towards it being the work of the Extraterritorial Devil,” Jiang Li analyzed, “Although the Sketching people willingly choose death, the Sketching civilization has indeed disappeared on the whole, which fits the goals of the Extraterritorial Devil.”
When Du Ming was around, they couldn’t speak openly about certain things.
If they were to tell Du Ming that it was all the work of the Extraterritorial Devil, he probably would have thanked the devil.
“And the nutritive liquid, the price of being unable to reproduce and a separation of body and consciousness in exchange for an extended life of two hundred years, it’s almost as if they intentionally want the Sketching people to stop reproducing.”
At first, Jiang Li and Bai Hongtu thought that since this nutritive liquid was truly defying nature, capable of extending the lifespan of mortals, they could bring some back to the Nine Provinces to use among common people and low-level cultivators.
After learning about the cost of its usage from Du Ming and conducting further research on the liquid themselves, they couldn’t wait to destroy all of it.
The cost of the nutritive liquid is too high.
As far as civilization is concerned, the nutritive liquid is just as dangerous.
Being immersed in the nutritive liquid long-term would gradually separate the body from the consciousness. If one were only to be soaked in it for a short time, it would only result in the loss of fertility.
The earlier one started soaking in it, the better the results, prolonging life up to two hundred and thirty years at most.
Offering a lifespan of two hundred years at the cost of fertility, who knows how many people would choose to soak in the nutritive liquid.
They couldn’t be sure that people would reproduce before deciding to soak in the nutritive liquid.
There might even be those who, in order to live longer, would decide to soak in the nutritive liquid early.
“What kind of twisted logic would lead one to come up with such methods!” Bai Hongtu cursed heavily – he could never have come up with the holographic simulator or the nutritive liquid – such harmful things.
“The Extraterritorial Devil is rather good at manipulating human nature, seizing the paradox between individuals and collectives,” Jiang Li analyzed for Bai Hongtu using knowledge from his previous life.
“How could a person brought up by the Extraterritorial Devil live past one hundred years?” Jiang Li sneered.
Historical data showed that Xiang Gu lived only a hundred and thirty years, and that the nutritive liquid was invented after his death, to be precise, during the tenure of the tenth president of the Flying Sky Group.
“From the establishment of the Flying Sky Group to the moment the entire civilization entered the virtual world, four hundred years passed, ten presidents came and went, and not a single one executed the extinction plan in person. Did Xiang Gu really believe that every president after him would share his perspective?”
“I suspect that Xiang Gu faked his death and fled. The presidents that came after him are all his puppets. Otherwise, for a civilization that couldn’t break through the lifespan limit, a person living for over four hundred years would stand out too much.”
“But how would you explain this face? And what about the DNA test? Isn’t it supposed to be reliable?” Bai Hongtu asked, pointing at the restored face of Xiang Gu – an ordinary old man whom no one would believe to be the culprit behind the civilization’s destruction.
“Cloning technology.”
Bai Hongtu suddenly realized, remembering the existence of this technology in the world of science.
He wondered if he should devote himself to studying with Ming Zhong for a while to familiarize himself with technology. If not, both of them would have the same knowledge, yet Jiang Li would be able to react quickly, making him feel rather embarrassed.
Though he had lost face in front of Jiang Li many times before, he still wanted to avoid it where possible.
“If Xiang Gu is still alive, doesn’t that mean he’s about one thousand four or five hundred years old now? Is he in the Body Integration Realm?”
“There’s nothing hard about that. If an Extraterritorial Devil can use an
Immortal Pill to advance the Twelve Heavenly Kings to the Divinity
Transformation Stage, couldn’t they also use an Immortal Pill to advance Xiang Gu to the Body Integration Realm? If I had the power of an immortal, I could make people immortals with a Nine Turn Immortal Pill.”
“Then where is he now?” Bai Hongtu had not found any remains of a Body Integration Stage cultivator in the five galactic systems.
“Who knows? The universe is so vast, he could be wandering somewhere, or perhaps he completed the task of the Extraterritorial Devil and was taken away by them.”
Unfortunately, the system wasn’t a human trafficker’s shop and didn’t sell people, otherwise, Jiang Li would have wanted to buy Xiang Gu and present him before them.
The server that contained the entire Sketching people was like a towering mountain, its top lost in the clouds, glittering with countless points of light, drawing its energy from a constant star and with nuclear power as backup, ensuring that the server wouldn’t lose data due to a power failure.
The Sketching civilization as it currently exists is this server.
They found the Sketching civilization through this server in front of them.
A pity they were one thousand years too late.
“What should we do with this? Just leave it here?” Bai Hongtu didn’t think this felt right, but taking it back would pose even larger issues.
Although virtual personalities aren’t considered human and this server is merely an inanimate object storing data, with ten billion virtual personalities residing inside, Bai Hongtu couldn’t emotionally dismiss these virtual personalities as inanimate.
The thought that he should do something, yet not knowing what to do was eating him.
“We don’t need to worry about the power issue. The stellar energy is enough to sustain the server’s operation for hundreds of thousands of years. You just need to set up a Formation to prevent it from being destroyed by meteors,”
“Also, there are black holes. Check whether there are any within a thousand light-years range that pose a threat to this place and eliminate them. This part, I’ll handle it. We should come back to check every thousand years.” Jiang Li assigned tasks, Bai Hongtu complied.
Jiang Li assigned tasks, Bai Hongtu complied.
Black holes are extraordinarily powerful astral phenomena. The Body Integration Stage cultivators don’t fear black holes because they have a three-in-one characteristic. If they only used their physical bodies, however, they wouldn’t be able to withstand a black hole.
Only beings that reach the level of an Immortal can resist a black hole with their physical bodies.
Bai Hongtu did have a method to eliminate black holes, but it was time-consuming and strenuous, so it was better to leave it to Jiang Li.
After dealing with all these, Jiang Li erected a stele.
The two of them didn’t admit that the Sketching civilization was dead, neither did they acknowledge that the stele was a tombstone. They claimed it was a commemorative stele.
So, they wrote on the stele, “The Sketching civilization is here.” They took a deep bow and left the Sketching civilization..