Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“I get it.” Xie Anan nodded. The girl who had round red cheeks that looked like red apples and was shy but persistent in the past had grown into a calm, mature lady full of grace. The only thing that had not changed was the trust and admiration for Li Yao in her eyes. “It is a problem that a lot of long-term hibernators have to face. It seems that Master and Masteress are slowly turning into ‘leapers’, too.”

“Leapers?” Li Yao was slightly dazed. He looked at Ding Lingdang and asked, “What is that?”

“It is a new concept proposed by Senior Gui Suishou as a seasoned hibernator,” Ding Lingdang explained. “Since passing the Monument Plan to preserve the civilization on to Professor Mo Xuan, he has been conducting studies in that field. Long-term hibernation should only be an approach for us to achieve a certain purpose, but for Gui Suishou, super long-term hibernation is a self-fulfilling process.

“Like you, I’ve spent most of the past hundred years in hibernation. The time I’ve been awake can’t have been more than twenty years. Every time I returned to the federation, I felt that I had barged into an unknown world.

“The first time, I missed Wu Mayan and Xie Anan’s wedding. The second time, I missed the birth and growth of their child… A lot of people and a lot of things slipped through my fingers like sand. However hard I tried, I couldn’t grasp them.

“The feeling is exactly like you said. After the loss of dozens of years, hibernators like us and normal people live in two different time dimensions. There is a weird… sense of alienation. It’s almost like we did not contribute much to the New Federation, and a beautiful and bright home has presented itself to us. All we need to do is sit down and enjoy the fruit.”

“How is that possible?” Xie Anan said in a hurry. “Master, Masteress, you have discovered three Sectors in total plus the government-in-exile of the Star Ocean Republic. You also made great contributions to the defeat of the expedition army of the Imperium. You were certainly not idling by!”

“I know.” Ding Lingdang smiled. “I am not being modest here. This is just a very weird feeling, which is hard for ‘crawlers’ who have never experienced long-term hibernation such as you to comprehend.

“In fact, I’m running for the Speaker of the Federation only partly to mediate between the four new Sectors and the three old Sectors and to maintain the balance between our side and Jin Xinyue’s. But more importantly, it is for a selfish reason. I want to combine myself with the New Federation more tightly in such a way so that I can melt into the federation today again and change from a leaper into a common crawler.”

Li Yao could tell that there was rare sadness in Ding Lingdang’s tone. He found it more and more strange. “Leapers and crawlers, what are they exactly?”

Ding Lingdang drank up a whole glass of red wine and said, “After traveling in space for a hundred years on my own through long-term hibernation, I felt that I was utterly unfit to the world around me after I returned to the federation. So, I went to chat with Senior Gui Suishou, who is also a long-term hibernator. He happened to be conducting research on the issue and told me a lot of things. He even offered me a few of his notebooks.

“According to Senior Gui Suishou, the universe is the continuity of space and time. In the three-dimensional universe that we live in, space and time are supposed to be constant, linear, and stable. Time goes by second by second, and every second has the same significance as any other second. The civilization that lives in such a constant space-time—for example, the civilization of mankind today—is like a turtle crawling slowly on the road of time. Therefore, they can be called ‘crawlers’.

“But in fact, both the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan hundreds of thousands of years ago and mankind today have figured out the way to transcend the continuity of space, which is space jumps.

“Through the wormholes, by means of four-dimensional space, it is possible to transcend the continuity of the three-dimensional space and arrive from one point to another point millions of lightyears away instantly.

“Since the continuity of space can be transcended, can the continuity of time, too?

“To some extent, yes, thanks to the human hibernation technology.

“Before the hibernation technology was invented and grew mature, the intelligent lives in our universe are all ‘crawlers’. Whether you are a beggar or an emperor, whether you are an ordinary person or a Cultivator, one second is just one second, and one minute is always one minute. You may slow down the flow of time in a virtual world by stimulating the brain nerves. But that is fake. Time flows at its original speed in reality.

“However, for us hibernators, the case is entirely different.

“Even in the Star Glory Federation, where the technology has just been invented and is still very shabby and low-efficient, hibernators like us can already sleep for a hundred years in a row. We are faced with two different worlds every time we close our eyes and open them again.

“What about the civilizations whose hibernation technology is more advanced? The Pangu Clan, for example?

“Li Yao, do you remember the member of the Pangu Clan you encountered on Kunlun? The guy had slept for hundreds of thousands of years!

“Of course, he was slain by you the moment he woke up, and he never had the chance to face the strange world.

“But release your imagination and walk in the shoes of the member of the Pangu Clan. Assuming that ‘you’ were not executed, how exactly would you face the world that was completely different after hundreds of thousands of years, the ‘descendants’ below your feet who are screaming and shouting, and the loneliness without a single companion in the entire universe?”

Li Yao was dazed and deep in thought.

“Senior Gui Suishou believes that as hibernation technology grows more and more advanced, and the damage to the hibernators is reduced, more and more hibernators are bound to appear,” Ding Lingdang said. “Any civilization that grasps such technology will be separated into two parts sooner or later, namely the ‘crawlers’ made of non-hibernators and the ‘leapers’ made of hibernators.

“The world of the crawlers is constant, stable, and linear. They burn their lives to build their home and civilization in every second and every minute, while they appreciate steady family, friends, happiness, and other feelings.

“However, for hibernators, who cross dozens if not hundreds of years easily, time is inconstant, nonlinear, and broken. It is like a big river that is running at an extremely low speed, with some stones exposed on the surface. The hibernators used to be fish in the river, but they leapt out of the river and grew wings one day, which allowed them to jump ahead with their wings and see the brand-new world in the river far, far ahead of them. Then, everything that is left behind by them in the seemingly ‘stagnant water’ would gradually lose its original significance.

“Like you said just now, after you closed your eyes and opened them again, the Star Glory Federation went through drastic changes. Your family and friends had different experiences and growth. Some people died, and even more were born. They enjoy their slow, even, and steady happiness and sorrow.

“This is just a hundred years. What if you hibernate again for three or five hundred years?

“Would the dreams, goals, morals, and worldviews of the old days mean anything to you after you wake up again five hundred years later?”

Li Yao was rendered speechless. An indescribably brilliant and yet miserable picture popped up in his head. While he felt chilly, he somehow even developed a feeling of expectation.

“Senior Gui Suishou believes that when some people grasp the ability to leap forward in the river of time, their understanding about values, morals, and even ‘life’ itself will be different from other people,” Ding Lingdang said carefully. “The two parties will never be able to understand each other, like turtles that crawl slowly on the ground and birds that fly fast in the sky. An insect that only lives in summer will never understand the concept of ice. This is not a matter of which side is superior, only a matter of different life choices. The crawlers have chosen a continuous life, whereas the leapers have chosen a noncontinuous one. I’m afraid that the disparity between them is even greater than the disparity between the Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators.”

Li Yao thought quickly and had to admit that Gui Suishou, who had lived for almost a thousand years, did have a point.

Come to think about it, it was rather funny. The old guy’s original body was obviously a green-haired turtle. Yet, he called other people ‘crawlers’ and claimed to be a ‘leaper’. Was it some sort of shamelessness in a different sense?

“Right. Why is Senior Gui not around?” Li Yao asked. “Didn’t he say that he would be an eyewitness to all the major events of the federation? Defeating the Imperium is such a great piece of news, but he is not here to note it down.”

“Senior Gui’s level has improved again,” Ding Lingdang said. “He has completely stepped into the domain of the leapers. Perhaps, in this mortal world where time flows slowly, there is already nothing that is worth his attention. I haven’t seen him for a long time. Perhaps he has hidden himself in an unknown corner and is waiting to ‘leap’ to the next millennium.

“When we last met each other, he told me something else. According to him, the ‘leapers’ as individuals are already amazing enough. What if a whole civilization chooses to hibernate itself and unfreeze itself every thousand years or every ten thousand years? It will leap forward in the river of time and gradually evolve into a civilization of time-crossers. What will it be like? He was very interested in searching for such a nonlinear civilization—in his own way.

“As for us, we have just been through a hibernation of a hundred years, so we can barely be counted as real ‘leapers’. We are an incomplete form between the crawlers and the leapers at most. The old concepts are being destroyed, and the new concepts have yet to form. It is only natural that we feel unfit. Senior Gui Suishou has named such troubles ‘TTC’—Timeline Transcendence Complex.”