Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao and Heiye Lan looked at each other. Even he was deeply awed by the ‘gaming society’ of the New Federation. “So, you can barely live your life in the federation today if you do not participate in the game ‘Civilization’ carefully, correct?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ling Xiaole said. “However, it will indeed give you many advantages if you have accumulated a lot of contribution points and gaming time. Other than what I said just now, the greatest benefit for common folk is the tax rate. Playing ‘Civilization’ can reduce your tax.

“Star Glory Federation is a country with high taxes. It can’t be helped. The New Federation has only developed for a hundred years. Many planets in the seven Sectors are still being built from scratch. The investment into infrastructure has to be increased. Also, the threat of the expedition army of the Imperium forces us to keep a regular army that is almost too huge. The military expenses every year are astronomical.

“Therefore, the life of common folk in the New Federation is far from carefree. The basic tax is sometimes more than fifty percent of the total income.

“However, generally speaking, nobody pays so much tax. Their taxes will be cut through the various quests they accomplish in ‘Civilization’. The better they play ‘Civilization’, the lower their tax rate will be. Also, virtual contests are held in almost every place every year, and the champions are sometimes even the privilege of zero tax!”

Li Yao felt stunned. “Playing the game can reduce your tax?”

“Allow me to repeat myself again—this is not a simple game but a fully-simulated, grand-unified platform founded with cloud data and light circuits in space,” Ling Xiaole said carefully. “Any decision made in ‘Civilization’ can be considered as the player’s intellectual property, which may be of great help to propel our entire civilization!

“Isn’t handing over intellectual property to the government as replacement for money a very reasonable policy?”

Li Yao thought for a moment and realized that it did make sense.

In fact, more than a hundred years ago, when he proposed the idea of developing the wisdom of the public by the game ‘Civilization’, he had considered the issue of participation.

It was because the more real ‘Civilization’ was, the further away it would be from the notion of a ‘game’. The tedious operations and information processing that involved tremendous data and hard thinking would not be to the liking of most players.

Of course, the federation could not force everyone to play a boring, brain-burning game, but if the data collected was not large enough, or if only part of the ‘seasoned players’ were attracted to the game but not people of all ages, genders, and trades, the decision outputted would not be of much real significance.

The dilemma had puzzled Li Yao and the rest of them for a long time. There had not been a satisfaction solution even by the time he left the Heaven’s Origin Sector for the dark nebula.

He did not expect the New Federation to have resolved the problem perfectly with only two moves, namely College Entrance Examinations and tax reduction. It was… rather impressive!

Ling Xiaole smiled. “What I listed just now are the relatively practical benefits. In the next, it is the most crucial ‘honor’, which is the citizenship of the Star Glory Federation.

“Like the Imperium, the federation adopts a ‘citizen contribution points’ system. Only when one’s contribution points reach a certain level will they be considered real citizens and enjoy the right of deciding the country’s future.

“However, the ‘contribution points’ in the Imperium of True Human Beings have to be earned by accomplishing difficult, dangerous, and complicated missions, say, hunting ferocious beasts on unvisited, undeveloped planets. The system seems ‘fair’, but how can ordinary people ever complete such missions?

“The federation has similar tasks, too. For example, exploring an unknown resource planet as a pioneer will earn tremendous contribution points. However, for the general public who are unable to complete such dangerous missions, they can also accumulate contribution points through quests in ‘Civilization’ and learn to be a qualified ‘citizen’!

“Yes. In the eyes of the federation, ‘citizen’ is a supreme word that stands for great glory and responsibility. It is a title that is even more valuable than ‘Cultivator’!

“You two must know that hundreds of civilizations emerged in the broken universe after the Star Ocean Imperium’s collapse ten thousand years ago. Many of them adopted election systems of various kinds to decide the future, but their outcomes were mostly very pitiful.

“Election is not necessarily bad, but leaving the low efficiency of elections aside, the real critical problem is how to make the people understand that the tiny power in their hands is of paramount importance for the entire civilization!

“The Supreme Speaker of the Federation is elected, but we do not believe that everyone is born with the power to decide the future of the civilization. Human beings are born selfish, and those who are not trained tend to be shortsighted. When countless people who are not trained gather together, they will only be a rabble who can barely see the road below their feet.

“By rabble, I am not just referring to ordinary people. Even Cultivators are still rabble before they receive the political, economic, sociological, and cultural training that is due, despite their Cultivation, which might be in the Nascent Soul Stage. They do not deserve tickets, either.

“For example, I’m not implying anything, but in the last years of the Star Ocean Republic, when the parliament was controlled by countless Cultivators, the fiend ‘Blackstar the Great’ Wuying Qi still showed up. He even usurped the power of the parliament easily and worked as the supreme leader of the Star Ocean Republic for a while. It is indicative enough that ‘Cultivator’ and ‘citizen’ are not naturally equal.

“I am always blunt in the way I talk. You don’t mind, do you, uncle?”

Li Yao coughed. Before he was able to respond, Heiye Lan had already spoken, not entire convinced. “I understand it now. This is just another kind of meritocracy. People are blind, and only the elites can decide the future of a civilization. It is very reasonable, but is it any different from the Imperium? I’m told that the Imperium of True Human Beings adopts a meritocratic system, too. The emperor does not decide everything. The nobles, lords, and Sector Masters have a big say in the decision-making process, too!”

“Meritocracy is essentially not wrong.” Ling Xiaole smiled. “If we get to the bottom of it, managing a country is also a skill. Of course, we have to look for specialists.

“However, exactly who qualifies as a real ‘specialist’?

“I don’t deny that a lot of the nobles, lords, and Sector Masters in the Imperium of True Human Beings are perhaps specialists on planet management, but most of them simply have larger fists, greater combat ability, and are better at fighting. Some people are even worse than them. They excel in political conflicts and setting other people up. Just because somebody is knighted thanks to their combat ability doesn’t mean that they will be good at governing a place. In fact, it is possible that they will be too concentrated on training in order to make their fists even heavier to think about receiving the most fundamental education on the decision of public affairs.

“Such people can barely make the most common ‘citizens’, much less the leaders of a place.

“It can’t be helped. This is how the Imperium works. The strong prey on the weak, and strength is all that matters. It seems advanced, but it is in fact made of a bunch of iron savages who are equipped with starships and Colossi.”

Heiye Lan took a deep breath, lost for words.

Li Yao smiled. “Is the federation different?”

“Of course it’s different,” Ling Xiaole proudly declared. “The people of the federation have been receiving training on public affairs since little. When they are adults, they already boast the basic qualities desired for a citizen. They understand that their decision and hard work concern the future of the entire civilization! Those who do become citizens in the end have all proved themselves in the game ‘Civilization’ to have a profound understanding of economics, politics, culture, military, and all the other fields. They are also relatively rational, calm, and farsighted, willing to contribute their intellectual property to the service of the people!

“The Cultivation of such ‘citizens’ varies. Most of them are not even Cultivators, but they are the well-deserved ‘elites’ of our society, and they can speak for everyone in the federation to a large extent. It is the best system that we can come up with to ask them to elect the Supreme Speaker and to decide the future path of the federation.

“Such a system avoids the tragedies like a lot of civilizations in the past ten thousand years where they elected their leaders from an uneducated rabble only to have a fancy-looking but incapable guy, if not an ambitious schemer, inaugurated in the end. The super high transmission speed of information based on the light circuits in the sea of stars also reduces the consumption of the election itself to the minimum!”

Ling Xiaole’s tail was wagging so fiercely that it also brushed the tip of Li Yao’s nose many times, making him almost unable to stop himself from sneezing.

“Right.” Scratching his nose, Li Yao asked, “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you since the beginning. Are the data transmission methods in the federation so developed right now? Even the telepathic thoughts between two different Sectors can be transported and exchanged instantly. That is a rather shocking speed. Even the technology on Firefly seems unable to achieve that. We can only complete instant data exchange within one Sector. A ‘grand-unified’ virtual platform that includes seven Sectors would collapse any second with our technology.”

Ling Xiaole hesitated for a second. Li Yao knew that she was asking for permission through the micro communication rune arrays that were stuck to her ears. Three seconds later, her supervisor probably gave consent. Ling Xiaole explained, “It doesn’t matter if I tell you right now. We did not have such technology in the beginning. However, a hundred years ago, before the New Federation was founded, the ‘Old Federation’ received a mysterious signal from the depths of the sea of stars.”

“Oh?” Li Yao sat up straight. The signal that Ling Xiaole was talking about was obviously the signal that had brought him to the Ancient Sages Sector and then brought Meng Chixin, Long Yangjun, and the others back.

“At this moment, the content entailed in the signal is not important, but the technique through which the signal was transmitted is of paramount importance.

“The scholars of the federation spent decades studying the signal. Eventually, they confirmed that it was a high-level information transmission protocol of the primeval civilizations. Such a method that is similar to ‘gravitational waves’ can cover such a distance instantly, thereby achieving the seamless synchronization of information in multiple Sectors.

“It was exactly with the help of the ‘primeval signal’ that the information transmission technology of the federation soared, and the grand-unified world of ‘Civilization’ was founded in the end!”