Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Original sin?” Li Yao frowned. He had never believed that any sin came with one’s birth and felt subconsciously repulsive about the phrase.

Thinking quickly, Li Yao opened his mouth and asked, “Is that a ruse that the Sand Primitive natives came up with, claiming that the Martial Meritocrats natives occupying a prosperous and steady world was highly unfair? It was their natural-born original sin, so they had to make up for the Sand Primitive natives? Is it a hilarious theory like this one?”

Su Changfa smiled and shook his head. “If you think that way, you are terribly underestimating both the Martial Meritocrats natives and the Sand Primitive natives. Also, the history would lose its general significance. You can totally argue that the destruction of the Martial Meritocrats Sector has nothing to do with the ideology of the Cultivators but is solely because the Cultivators there were too idiotic!

“You can argue that, if it were Cultivators who were more sober and wise, and they had taken it slowly to assimilate the Sand Primitive natives step by step, the outcome might’ve been entirely different.”

Li Yao almost choked for a moment.

It was exactly what he was thinking. When the Star Glory Federation was accepting the demons, they were certainly not as naïve and foolish as the Martial Meritocrats natives.

“No, the history that I’m telling you is much more complicated than that. The destruction of the Martial Meritocrats was not caused by their stupid immigration policies, either. At best, the Sand Primitive natives were just a ‘trigger’!

“The so-called original sin was not used to explain the contradiction between the Martial Meritocrats natives and the Sand Primitive natives but that between Cultivators and ordinary people. It was not the Martial Meritocrats natives who had ‘original sin’ but the Cultivators!”

“What?”

Dumbfounded, Li Yao scratched his cheeks beyond his control. He found it hard to believe. “What original sin does a Cultivator have?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Su Changfa said thoughtfully. “Including the Martial Meritocrats civilization, most of the Cultivation civilizations hold, to different degrees, that natural human rights are inviolable and that everybody is equal whether you are a Cultivator or an ordinary person. However, you can draw a preposterous conclusion from the ideas, which is that Cultivators and ordinary people are naturally highly unequal!

“Yes. The law can protect the rights and political position of the ordinary people. Through the one-person-one-vote system, the ordinary people can even pretend that they are as good as the Cultivators!

“However, it is just a lie that they tell themselves!

“Once the spiritual roots are awakened, Cultivators boast speed, strength, body build, and intelligence that far exceed the ordinary people’s. Their sight, hearing, and other senses will be much keener, too!

“Such advantages on the Cultivators’ body are something that ordinary people can never achieve however hard they do physical exercises!

“With such advantages, Cultivators can easily eclipse all ordinary people in any competitive field. They can occupy all the jobs that have a high demand on intelligence, physical strength, speed, or the soul. They can be eye-catching heroes who will be cheered and applauded by the general public!

“As long as one Cultivator appears in a certain field, it means that all ordinary people, even if they work so hard that their every cell is exploding, will not stand any chance of competition. They can only give up nicely and watch the Cultivators show their techniques!

“In short, the world is the Cultivators’ stage, and the ordinary people are the audience below the stage at best, whose only responsibility is cheering and applauding!

“They don’t deserve, nor are they capable of, going to the stage and demonstrating their own splendor!

“Fellow Cultivator Li, is such an inequality not an original sin of the Cultivators?”

Su Changfa’s smile grew creepier and creepier as he spoke, but his tone was ever calmer. Li Yao could not help but feel goosebumps all over his body!

“More critically, the inequality not only means that ordinary people cannot compete with Cultivators in any field, but also means that ordinary people are totally incapable of protecting their lives and their property. Everything is in the hands of the Cultivators!

“The ordinary people have to accept the fact that their happy and peaceful lives are founded on the Cultivators’ kindness, pity, and charity!

“Everything that they have is a sand tower in wind and a pavilion without a foundation. It is maintained by the Cultivators’ ungrounded ‘morals’!

“Today, the Cultivators decide to help the weak, beat the bullies, and protect the ordinary people chivalrously. That’s why the ordinary people are living a good life.

“But what if the Cultivators change tomorrow?

“What if the Cultivators, for any reason, or for no reason but their bad mood, decide not to protect the ordinary people any longer and want a different way of living?

“By then, the Cultivators will be able to kill ordinary people, take away their property, enslave their family, and regard all their offspring as free slaves!”

“Cultivators won’t do that!” Li Yao blurted out.

Hardly had he spoken out when he felt cold sweat in his heart.

Su Changfa gazed at him and smiled. “The key point is not if they will, but whether or not they can! And obviously, they can!

“Cultivators can harm ordinary people easily, but ordinary people cannot hurt Cultivators at all. Therefore, the latter can only pray that the former abide by the social rules that have been long abided by, which are ‘morals’. This is where the most fatal problem lies!

“As I said just now, Fellow Cultivator Li. ‘Morals’ are the most unreliable things in the world. As the productivity and the social relations change, morals will also change at an astonishing speed!

“Besides, there are also a lot of accidents!

“The easiest example will be you, Fellow Cultivator Li. I believe that you must’ve been a model Cultivator in the past. Chances are that you did a lot of good things and protected many ordinary people, didn’t you?”

His eyelids twitching violently, Li Yao pretended that his mind was in chaos and nodded softly.

A fiendish smile popped up on Su Changfa’s old, wrinkled face. “However, after the accident in space, in which you went so far past the line that the line is a dot to you, you have changed, in each and every way!

“Even if the ordinary people could trust you wholeheartedly in the past, can they still trust you right now?

“If you hadn’t run into us but returned to the Flying Star Sector by luck, are you certain that you could have regarded the ordinary people the way you did instead of considering them to be delicious meat?

“If you harmed an ordinary person, driven by a certain weird instinct of yours, and maybe even their entire family, would they be capable of defending themself?”

Li Yao’s face was pale as he made a gagging posture, but he failed to come up with a reply.

“Nobody can stand the fact that their fate is entirely based on other people’s kindness and mercy!” Su Changfa said coldly. “Cultivators’ abilities to harm the ordinary people however they want and never to be harmed by the ordinary people are their original sins. Biggest original sins!

“Targeting the two original sins, the solutions proposed were quite easy!

“First of all, the tax rate for Cultivators was further increased, and their rights were limited. Ordinary people were much more in favor in jobs, education, politics and all the other fields!

“Secondly, since Cultivators were so dangerous, bordering on brutal animals, they had to be monitored closely. Their identity, capability, level, and whereabouts would be tracked and known by the public. When necessary, the Cultivators could be kept in detention even without proof!

“Thirdly, the ‘Committee of Equal Human Beings’ was founded to investigate all cases in the past century where Cultivators abused their abilities and harmed the interests of the ordinary people in unfair competitions. Also, magical equipment that could restrain the abilities of the Cultivators was developed to ensure that the ordinary people boasted the ability to harm the Cultivators!

“Absolute power means absolute corruption. Right now, the Cultivators boast ‘absolute power’. So, their corruption will only be a matter of time! Only if everybody has the ability to harm each other will the balance of power be achieved and the stability and development of the Alliance ensured!

“Those were the main points of the original sin theory.

“Soon after the theory popped up from the dark abyss, it swept across the entire Alliance of Martial Meritocrats like a wild tide under the support of most of the ordinary people!”

“How is it possible?” Li Yao’s eyebrow was almost standing like sabers. “It’s not strange that the original sin theory was supported by the citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector because the Sand Primitive natives were probably behind the theory. But weren’t half of the citizens from the Martial Meritocrats Sector? Why did they support such a farce?

“You find the original sin theory absurd because you are a Cultivator. It’s only reasonable that you take the Cultivators’ side!” Su Changfa declared coldly. “If you were an ordinary person who barely had the strength to capture a hen, you wouldn’t find it absurd at all. Instead, you would probably feel greatly enlightened!

“Try to walk in their shoes, Fellow Cultivator Li. Summon your computational ability and imagine that you are an ordinary person. What exactly will be at the bottom of your heart when you are faced with the high, mighty, omnipotent Cultivators?”

Su Changfa placed his freezing arm on Li Yao’s shoulder and craned his head to Li Yao’s ear. His vague voice sounded like a breeze from the deepest level of hell. “Seeing that they are higher, faster, stronger, smarter, and more handsome than you, that they have a much higher social position and a better ability of self-actualization, while knowing for a fact that you will never be able to catch up with them for the rest of your life…

“As an ordinary person, wouldn’t you feel a bit… jealous?

“When you see that the Cultivators can blow up a giant rock with a single punch and kick away a demon beast weighing more than ten tons after a casual kick, would you find it irresistible to imagine how it would feel if you were the one being punched and kicked?

“As an ordinary person, wouldn’t you feel a bit… scared?

“When you watch the splendid Cultivators living an extraordinarily marvelous life on the stage, and when you turn back to review your boring, lackluster life in the auditorium, wouldn’t you feel a bit… desperate about your weakness, idiocy, uselessness, and ugliness?

“Jealousy! Fear! Desperation! When all the negative emotions overlapped and haunted you day after day, year after year, wouldn’t a tiny bit of… hatred brew at the deepest part of your bones?”