ccnovels #378 - The Book of Civilization
#378 - The Book of Civilization
‘How boring.’
Wang Jixuan floated out from the black mist, and the rolling black mist instantly returned to surround him.
The demeanor of a righteous cultivator quickly returned.
Nielda Tamon frowned slightly, but as a spiritual cultivator, he knew nothing about cultivation methods. He didn't forget that they had formed an alliance and strictly adhered to their agreement.
Just as Wang Jixuan was about to enter, Amina and Nielda Tamon spoke almost simultaneously.
“Don't rush!”
“There's something…”
Amina raised her hand, gesturing for him to speak first: “You go first.”
“Okay,” Nielda Tamon looked at the palace, initially intending to use spiritual energy circuits to transmit his voice, but considering that this was the origin of all core circuits, he abandoned this potentially ineffective little trick.
He said directly:
“I saw some magazines in the isolation room. In the middle page of each magazine, there's a portrait of you and your quotes.
“They call you the Great Pioneer.
“That should be you.”
Afterward, Nielda Tamon stared at Wang Jixuan's face, wanting to see Wang Jixuan's surprise and astonishment.
But the strong man was quickly disappointed.
Wang Jixuan simply nodded calmly and cupped his fist at Nielda Tamon.
“Thank you for letting me know.”
Nielda Tamon was a little confused.
Wasn't he shocked at all by this news?
Is their shock threshold as spiritual cultivators too low?
Amina took the opportunity to move beside Wang Jixuan, carefully reminding him: “Try not to start conflicts after entering. Our purpose is to find out the truth and resolve the Earth's crisis.”
“Okay,” Headmaster Wang nodded in agreement.
He smiled and said: “Did you think I was a reckless young man who can't tell what's important? I was just assessing the armaments here.”
“Uh, you looked like you were about to fight to the death just now.”
“What can't be taken back on the battlefield can't be taken back at the negotiating table.”
Wang Jixuan explained simply:
“Without the determination and attitude of burning your boats, even the strongest strength is just a show.”
Amina nodded slightly, not saying anything more.
She believed that Wang Jixuan knew what he was doing.
“Come with me, I've been here twice, I know where she is.”
Amina called out and led the two towards the central hall.
Wang Jixuan turned his head and shouted: “You guys can wander around here! Don't get into conflicts with the drones!”
Wu Man and the others responded from a distance.
Their spiritual sense was suppressed, and they couldn't transmit their voices, so they could only shout at the top of their lungs.
Communication basically relied on shouting.
In the palace, the 'bamboo pole' remnant spirit with long arms and a long neck quietly knelt, with three cushions already placed in front of it.
The four walls of this hall had reliefs similar to the spiritual cultivators' subspace stone slabs, and the scattered light constantly danced, making it look like a paradise on earth.
Wang Jixuan and the others landed in front of the hall.
The ancient remnant spirit stood up, crossed its hands in front of its chest, and bowed slowly.
“Great Pioneer, welcome back.”
Wang Jixuan ignored the spiritual cultivators on either side, snorted coldly, and strode into the hall with his hands behind his back.
He said indifferently: “Is there even a single truth left in your mouth?”
“From now on, everything I say will only be the truth.”
“You're just like Old Sophie, your mouth is full of lies.”
“It's not the same,” the ancient remnant spirit sighed, “If I hadn't used lies to deceive you and lure you here, I would have completely lost the opportunity to let you enter Cloud City. You have already left this civilization, although this is what we didn't want to see.”
She paused and said gently:
“Moreover, I have no motive to lie now. In Cloud City, neither the current you, nor Amina, nor this brute can leave without my permission.
“Please let us have a frank and open conversation.
“No matter the outcome of our conversation, as compensation for tricking you into coming here, I will activate the planetary barrier, protect the human world on the surface, and protect this place from being invaded by the despicable Blade Beasts.”
Wang Jixuan nodded.
Since he was here, he might as well stay.
Wasn't this what he came for?
Wang Jixuan stepped into the hall with a smile.
The brute behind him, who wasn't even worthy of being mentioned by name, had a face as black as the bottom of a pot.
Nielda Tamon felt the contempt, even the disregard.
“Sit down.”
… …
The sound of zither playing came from the corner of the hall, and a gentle male voice seemed to be humming from far and near.
Wang Jixuan sat cross-legged opposite the ancient remnant spirit;
Amina sat elegantly with her legs crossed, while Nielda Tamon imitated Wang Jixuan and sat cross-legged.
“Great Pioneer, you can call me Heryu Li, this is the transliteration of my name.
“Now, you can ask me any questions you have.”
Wang Jixuan shook his head: “I don't want to be a question-answering machine. Tell us what you know and what you can tell us.”
The ancient remnant spirit Heryu Li frowned slightly, as if she couldn't sort out her thoughts.
A few minutes later, she said slowly:
“You have already found two clues in the city, so there is no point in me hiding anything.
“As you can see, this civilization, which disappeared six hundred thousand planetary revolution cycles ago, once received your guidance and, nurtured by the technology you shared, gave birth to a spiritual energy civilization.
“Half of everything here comes from your selfless sharing.”
“Selfless?” Wang Jixuan chuckled, “I don't quite believe it.”
“You mean?”
“The Dharma is not lightly transmitted,” Wang Jixuan said, “Even if I don't have the memory of contacting you now, my principles of conduct have always remained the same. I don't believe I would easily teach the sect's methods to you.”
Heryu Li was silent.
She said softly: “But in fact, you did share it.”
“What did I share?”
“You gave us countless guidance.”
Heryu Li sighed softly:
“As for the specifics, you will know as soon as you enter our core library later.
“But I must admit that you changed our civilization and had a profound impact on our civilization.”
Wang Jixuan said indifferently: “And then, my sculpture is lying there?”
Heryu Li was silent again.
Amina reminded: “You said that there is no need to deceive us now, you have already gained an absolute advantage in power.”
Nielda Tamon said:
“I clearly know that the level of individual quality does not represent the achievement of a civilization.
“But, I'm sorry.
“You have made me have much less respect for the mother of our spiritual cultivation civilization.”
Heryu Li's eyes became a little sharper and more majestic.
Nielda Tamon smiled indifferently.
“Because of a rebellion.”
Heryu Li explained simply:
“This is our civilization's scar and dark side, and I don't want to elaborate on it in detail.
“Specifically, there are opposing factions who believe that we are obsessed with pursuing individual advancement, which violates the original intention of our civilization's construction.
“This problem is very complicated. If you allow me, can I start telling the story from the beginning?”
“Then make it short.”
Wang Jixuan said indifferently:
“Please don't start talking about the creation of the world, I'm afraid the Blade Beasts will have already attacked by the time you finish talking.”
“There's no need to start from the Big Bang, that's too far away.”
Heryu Li raised her hand and gently beckoned, and a golden book slowly unfolded in front of her.
Her expression became a little more devout, and she murmured in a language that Wang Jixuan could understand:
“This is our Book of Civilization, please allow me to introduce you to the necessary historical background.
“Our civilization calls itself Yina.
“In our mother star's language, it means beauty and harvest.
“We have survived in the universe for a long time, accepting the kindness of advanced civilizations and feeling the malice from advanced planes.
“Our civilization has experienced rise and fall. Finally, after developing for one hundred and twenty thousand mother star revolution cycles, we became a level-two civilization.
“We can carry out stellar-level immigration and exploration.
“At this time, we received a major opportunity, which was to obtain a seed of hope left by an advanced civilization that had completed its self-ascension.
“Our civilization began to develop rapidly. We mastered technologies far beyond what our current civilization level could master, which is interstellar space jump technology. The interstellar gate you see now is evolved from our technology back then.”
Heryu Li sighed softly.
Her words were a little more helpless;
The Book of Civilization in front of her also began to turn pages continuously.
After that, there were hundreds of thousands of years of development.
This time period, measured in units of ten thousand years, is only like dust relative to the size of the universe.
With the technology left by the advanced civilization that successfully ascended, the Yina civilization developed rapidly and soon occupied a star field. This star field has tens of thousands of star systems and hundreds of terrestrial planets suitable for carbon-based intelligent life to survive.
The development of the Yina civilization quickly encountered a barrier.
The barrier came from time, space, and the 'disallowance' of advanced civilizations.
The range of the star field they controlled could no longer be increased. The probes sent out could discover habitable planets or even lower-level civilizations after a long time, but they could not establish space jump channels.
This is a shackle that needs to be broken through by self-development and innovation of the civilization.
The Yina civilization entered a stagnation period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After the entire civilization tried several ideas of collective ascension, but suffered painful failures, some of their individuals began to degenerate.
At this time, the Yina civilization made a major decision.
“We did not choose to give up.”
Heryu Li opened the Book of Civilization in front of her and said calmly:
"In several previous attempts, we vaguely glimpsed the spacetime where advanced civilizations reside."
"We need to obtain guidance from advanced civilizations."
"Therefore, we pooled resources, spent thousands of years preparing, gathered the energy of dozens of stars, and used spatial superposition technology to try to open a gap in the spacetime barrier, asking advanced civilizations to show us the way."
"The pioneers of civilization at that time had reached the point of madness. As long as they could get a real look at the form of an advanced civilization, a glimpse of that spacetime, they were willing to sacrifice everything."
"The experiment proceeded smoothly. We used pure energy to blast open the barrier of spacetime."
"But on the other side of the gap, there was only a deep void, endless darkness, and energy fluctuations that we could not understand or explore."
He Ruli pursed her lips:
"These energies began to invade our space. We soon discovered that these energies were not violent, and did not seem to have any aggressiveness."
"The universe cannot have one gram more or one gram less."
"Otherwise, it will inevitably lead to local collapse, which will lead to overall collapse."
"The pioneers at the time were very panicked, feeling that they had committed a monstrous disaster, but before they could shut down the experiment, a person fell out of the crack."
Wang Jixuan frowned tightly.
He Ruli looked over, her eyes full of endless tenderness and respect.
"That is you."
"Me?"
"Yes, your body was collapsing at the time, and you were shouting these three syllables—Damn heavens!"
He Ruli smiled:
"Later you told us that this was cursing the gods of the higher plane."
"You suffered fatal injuries. We tried our best, but we still couldn't stop your body from collapsing. At that time, you and our pioneers could not communicate in the same language and could not understand what each other was saying."
"What you did at the time, we only learned later."
"You took the initiative to dissolve your own cultivation, allowing your body and cultivation to melt, and your soul entered the body of a recently deceased human, and transformed this body into your own appearance."
"The Book of Civilization uses 'Second Contact with Advanced Civilization' to describe this encounter with you."
Wang Jixuan: … …
He failed to survive the tribulation and should have died, but this civilization opened the spacetime barrier by accident and fished him out?
Eh?
"Is that gap you opened still there?" Wang Jixuan asked, "Where did you open it? Is there still a location now?"
"This is a secret of our civilization."
He Ruli shook her head gently:
"I cannot tell you this. I can only say that we have already solved this threat."
"If you can recover your memory, you will naturally understand these things."
"Your self-proclaimed title at the time was, the carefree vagabond of the Three Realms. We still use this title to this day."
With that, He Ruli turned another page of the Book of Civilization in front of her.
She continued:
"Your arrival made the pioneers ecstatic."
"In just a few hundred years, our civilization has undergone tremendous changes. Spiritual energy began to be born. All the technologies you shared with us were so magical, using another path to achieve individual ascension."
"Almost all pioneers cannot refuse individual ascension."
"But as you taught us, not everyone has the aptitude and talent to become a cultivator."
"And very few individuals in our civilization can become cultivators."
"The opposition was born from this."
"The opposition believes that our civilization is sick and has gone down the wrong path."
"The pioneers believe that collective ascension has been judged a failure. If civilization wants to advance, it needs more than just energy and population. If all individuals in a civilization ascend, wouldn't that be a kind of collective ascension?"
"The promotion of spiritual energy was carried out against the backdrop of this dispute."
"After hundreds of years of arguing, under your guidance, we have begun to try to develop universally beneficial spiritual energy technologies."
"This is the City Above the Clouds in front of you, as well as the later Core Circuit and Spiritual Energy Circuit."
Universal benefit, spiritual energy development…
Wang Jixuan leaned back slightly.
This path was almost taken by these guys?
Wang Jixuan asked: "Then what I saw in Xiao Huating's memory, comets falling from the sky, and a large number of flame giants appearing?"
"That was the rebellion."
He Ruli sighed:
"A rebellion launched by the opposition in conjunction with powerful enemies from outside the star field. At that time, the opposition was almost opposing for the sake of opposition."
"Our civilization suffered heavy casualties in this rebellion."
"I forgot to tell you that the population of our civilization at each period is not very large, only about a few million. This City Above the Clouds is our paradise."
"In times of crisis, we released our research results and created the current Spirit Cultivation Civilization."
"After that, our civilization quickly collapsed. This was once the battlefield where the opposition and we fought. After the war, the city self-repaired itself here."
Wang Jixuan looked enlightened and smiled: "So, you are one of the opposition?"
He Ruli frowned slightly.
Wang Jixuan's eyes were like swords:
"You are not Xiao Huating's previous life."
"Xiao Huating is indeed a member of your civilization, but she should be a member of the rulers back then, and was also responsible for receiving the souls of the dead. Her status in the civilization is definitely not low."
"And you…"
"There is a subtle misalignment between you and Xiao Huating. No matter how you disguise it, this sense of disharmony has always existed. When you left Xiao Huating's body, the feeling I got was exceptionally clear."
"Adding you is a burden to Xiao Huating. You don't show any signs of merging."
He Ruli nodded slowly: "The great pioneer's insight is truly admirable."
Amina had already frowned and pursed her lips, her face somewhat annoyed.
He Ruli said calmly: "The final result of the war was that there were no winners. Powerful enemies took the opportunity to completely defeat us, and I, an opponent who had been exiled by them, became the last survivor of this civilization."
She sighed:
"The opposition is not a mob. We are just marginalized people who were driven away and squeezed out by them."
"Amina, you should have the same feeling, right?"
Amina did not answer.
Wang Jixuan said: "Don't change the subject. What happened next? I want to hear about that part about what's-her-name, Posuo."
He Ruli turned the Book of Civilization to the last page, and her expression became somewhat uncertain.