Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Both the Star Glory Federation and the Imperium of True Human Beings had analyzed the differences between the ‘medieval Cultivators’ and the ‘modern Cultivators’ and the causes after getting a general picture of the age of the ancient Cultivators from the boundless ancient classics.

Li Yao’s own experience was even more unusual. With Ou Yezi’s memories, he had a deeper understanding of the congenital flaws of the ancient Cultivators’ civilizations.

The difference between the ancient Cultivators and the modern Cultivators was essentially the difference between a self-sustaining feudal society and a modern, or even postmodern, information society with a sweeping industrial system.

The former was just the simple accumulation of personal experience. They knew what and how, but they did not know why. They knew that a certain spell could trigger a certain technique with a certain effect, but nothing more.

As for exactly how the spell could trigger the specific technique, how the technique was structured, and why it could deal the unique damage or other effects, they did not have the first clue and simply credited everything to the deities.

The latter, on the other hand, highlighted the importance of fundamental mechanisms, big data, and manufacture on the same conditions.

Even the simplest flying sword and ‘fire raising art’ needed to be studied to the core!

For example, a Lotus Flower Hand Seal, in the medieval civilization of Cultivators, might have been passed on by one’s grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa. How exactly the hand seal should be made and what effects it would bring, but nothing more.

As for the grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa, he was probably enlightened by an eccentric expert or a deity to grasp the hand seal.

The mechanism of the hand seal, the flowchart of spiritual energy… Such information was utterly unknown to them. The technique was a black box. They knew the input and the output, but they did not know what happened in between at all.

When such a ‘black-box hand seal’ was passed on through vehicles such as jade chips and classics, there would be two outcomes.

If the heritage was kept intact, the offspring would worship it as the standard. Everybody would train themselves exactly the same as their ancestors did without the slightest adjustment.

It never occurred to them that everybody’s finger size and palm size were different. Also, the different fingerprints and palm prints would influence the effects of the hand seal, too.

Moreover, the hand seal ‘taught by the deities’ was possibly an art of a species in the Pangu civilization that was naturally endowed with six fingers. If their ancestors copied everything exactly as it was, their ancestors would be fundamentally wrong. How much damage could the hand seal cause after they performed it?

This was the better case-scenario.

If the vehicles in which the technique was stored got broken—change of dynasties and destruction of civilizations were nothing unusual for a civilization, and most of the heritages could possibly be damaged—then, the Cultivators of the future generations could only figure out a way to fill in the missing parts on their own.

But they did not know the mechanism of the ‘hand seal’. The fill-in became an art of mysteries. However the process was embroidered, it was essentially a game of luck!

The Cultivation arts revised in such a way would be even less powerful.

The modern Cultivation civilization, on the other hand, was different.

If a modern Cultivation civilization had access to a brand-new hand seal, they would recognize first that hand seals were a way to construct unique magnetic fields with their fingers by guiding the bioelectricity inside their body to their hands, which were the deftest organ on their body. Then, the magnetic fields would be used to trigger the spiritual energy hidden inside the body, the Cosmos Rings, or nature, leading to a chain reaction that would generate greater magnetic fields.

Therefore, the hand seals were essentially the ‘commands’ to invoke different ‘functions’. Different hand seals represent different commands.

But the commands were not unchangeable. Everybody could ‘compile’ their own simple, elegant, and errorless commands based on their actual situation.

After figuring out the mechanism, the modern Cultivators would slightly adjust the new hand seal according to the size of their palms, the length of their fingers, their bone density, their average hand speed, their extreme hand speed, and so on, with the help of the immense computational ability of the crystal processors.

After all the data was inputted into the crystal processors to construct models, digital tests would be run millions of times before the most perfect hand seal was outputted.

When a modern Cultivator trained themselves with the standard, most perfect hand seal, they could also receive the assistance of the facilities such as ‘hand fixer’. Naturally, their improvement would be fast.

That was just the beginning.

After a new hand seal was discovered, the government would upload it to the relevant ‘hand seal database’, check its similarity with the existing hand seals, and see if it belonged to a series.

Then, the new hand seal would be calculated repetitively in a virtual world in pairs with the spells in the ‘spell database’ for the researchers to see if any spell could build up its power when used together.

There were too many follow-up research programs to count.

But all the studies, including the immense databases of arts and techniques, needed to be backed by a powerful central government or a super business agency.

In a small-scale peasant economy, the court, which lacked control over the subjects, and the classic sects, which considered their neighbors their enemies, would never have such power.

It was exactly so for the moves that Li Yao had performed.

The punches, kicks, and knocks seemed simple, but in terms of routes of attack, breath frequency, and entanglement model, they were the products of countless specialists after hundreds of years of hard work, and they had been optimized by the super crystal processors. All the fabulous and yet redundant actions had been abandoned, and they had returned the true, fundamental meaning of the notion ‘attack’, which was to hit the target’s most vulnerable part with the greatest force through the shortest distance.

Simple as that.

Ugly as that.

Violent as that.

Boom!

Li Yao’s unattractive fist broke through the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator’s dazzling defenses and smashed into his hawk nose.

The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator cried. His entire body was bashed into the hard rock, like a nail that had not been hammered in the right place.

It was the only result.

The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator’s arts had been learned during decades of seclusion by himself.

The arts of Li Yao, an alien Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, were the essence of the wisdom of the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Blood Demon Sector, and the Flying Star Sector. They were invented during the communication, perfection, testing, and adjustments of countless Cultivators of different levels with consideration of the mechanisms in the studies of spiritual energy, biochemistry, kinetics, aerodynamics, anthroponomy, and hundreds of more disciplines.

The hundreds of disciples could only be developed in a highly developed industrial and information society!

It was not a battle between two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators but a collision between a medieval civilization that had remained stagnant in a small-scale peasant economy for more than a hundred thousand years and a modern Cultivation civilization that had dominated the sea of stars!

There was not any suspense in the outcome.

The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators here are too weak, Li Yao thought to himself.

In terms of the reserve of spiritual energy, the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator would pass.

However, his moves when he was making hand seals, casting spells, or performing close-distance attacks were brimming with redundant, inexplicable actions.

The actions were indeed mysterious, and the posture was indeed elegant. The sound and visual effects triggered were quite impressive, too.

It was a shame that it was not a pageant going on right now but a fight.

Li Yao estimated that the redundant actions were either a must for the Pangu Clan who created the art because of their physiological conditions, false information caused because of the misinterpretation of the arts during the ages of lineage, or simply a gesture to show their belief and summon the deities.

Whatever the reason was, it did not matter at all!

BAM!

Li Yao kicked another time through a few flowers of ghostly fire, dislodging three teeth from the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator’s mouth.

The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, who had appeared dominating a moment ago, now looked like a giant monkey that was depilated. He could not have looked more wretched.

His eyes full of fury and his face written with devastation, he was still waving his hands crazily as if cramping while he recited his spells and summoned the nonexistent deities in desperation.

Although every meaningless, redundant movement cost less than 0.1 seconds, three to five of them added up to almost half a second.

In a fierce battle between the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators, a lot of things could be done in half a second.

Superstitions are truly a bad thing!

Li Yao could not help but sigh to himself.

To stride into the modern civilization, the very first step was to eliminate all superstitions and establish an atheistic worldview. It was the only way one could appreciate the techniques, magical equipment, and classics inherited from the ancient times from a more objective perspective so that they could study, improve, or even overrule the traditional knowledge.

But it was certainly not an easy task.

The Earth of Li Yao’s previous life in his memory was a place devoid of the traces of any prehistoric civilizations. The pyramids, the Stonehenge, and the Great Wall were all works of human beings.

Even so, billions of people were still avid believers of supernatural beings.

In the Sectors of Li Yao’s current life, there happened to be prehistoric civilizations incomprehensible for human beings.

When the enormous bodies of the Pangu civilization were excavated, they could easily be mistaken for the ecdysis of deities by the mortals. Also, what were starships and space stations if not heavens and paradises?

It was very difficult for an ancient Cultivator to deny the existence of deities and become an atheist after they witnessed the corpses of the Pangu Clan in person and could perform the wonderful techniques themselves!

Then, how did the modern Cultivators break their beliefs in deities?

It eventually boiled down to the silver lining of a disaster.

In the thirty thousand years of the Great Dark Era, human beings had been under the tyranny of demons, who propagated superstitious theories and governed the universe through the Four Pillars System.

According to the Four Pillars System, demons were the ‘blood descendants of deities’ and the ‘chosen ones’, whereas human beings were the traitors and clowns who betrayed the deities. It was the destiny of human beings to be exploited and enslaved, and they would bear such a fate forever without any chance of overturning it.

To stand up to the demons, naturally, human beings had to shatter the chosen ones’ propaganda together.

“No savior from on high delivers,

“No faith have we in prince or peer,

“Our own right hand the chains must shiver,

“Chains of hatred, greed, and fear!”

After sinking, praying, and struggling for thirty thousand years without seeing a single deity come to their rescue, human beings finally understood.

That was the foundation of the booming development of the modern Cultivation civilization after the demons were defeated.

Perhaps, without the thirty thousand years of desperation, human beings never would have been reborn and granted a new life, and all the Sectors in the universe would have been lost in the bigoted, obstinate medieval age like the Sector here!