Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao found it hard to imagine that a brand-new virtual life could be born in such a way, or that the virtual life would listen to the orders of mankind, their creator, obediently. “Why does it sound so undependable to me?”

“Of course it is undependable. However, creating a virtual intelligent life in a brand-new form is something that none in history have ever tried. Who can guarantee that a certain approach is definitely going to work out?”

Professor Xie Wufeng smiled bitterly. “Toward the collapse of the Virtual Spirits Sector, even Professor Mo Xuan realized that it was a dead end. Creating a brand-new virtual life was both unlikely and unnecessary. He shifted his field of research to the virtualization of humans themselves. The ideas of education through ‘history museum’ and ‘grand library’ were furthered in the ‘Tinder Plan’ in the ‘old grandpas’, except that the targets to be educated were no longer a brand-new virtual life but a primitive civilization millions of years in the future.

“But both creating a brand-new virtual life and educating a primitive civilization millions of years in the future are fundamentally the same. They are both hoping to pass on the spirit of the civilization of mankind after it declines, or even to create a ‘replica’ or ‘upgraded version’ of human beings.”

While talking, everybody slowly walked toward the downtown area.

In the central square, hundreds of tall and magnificent statues were supposed to be standing. They were the most influential politicians, artists, military commanders, and battle experts. Together, they congregated into a magnificent forest.

At this moment, all the statues were lying on their sides and riddled with holes, with traces of green moss and rust everywhere.

A lot of the statues only had the broken limbs left. Some were even ripped into pieces by lightning or earthquakes and scattered on the ground nearby, drowned by the weeds and thorns that grew out of the cracks on the earth.

“This is…”

Professor Xie Wufeng walked to a bare pedestal and touched it. His face suddenly turned extremely weird at that moment, and his pupils were constricted to the minimum.

Li Yao suddenly grew alert. “What’s up?”

“It is rather odd.” Professor Xie Wufeng looked around carefully for a moment before he frowned and said, “A statue is missing. Not crippled, not blown apart by lightning strikes, but entirely gone. Not a single finger that belongs to the statue can be found anymore. Look. The pedestal is very clean, without a single pebble or iron piece left. The statue did not crack, collapse, or break apart but was probably… devoured by something.”

Li Yao raised his eyebrows and touched the pedestal. He only felt that the place where the statue should be joined was as smooth as a mirror, which did not look like the destruction caused by the collapse of the virtual world. “Something is indeed not right. Whose statue is this?”

Professor Xie Wufeng glanced at the number on the pedestal and browsed through the experiment data of the Virtual Spirits Sector Project. Then, his expression became even weirder. “It is your statue.”

“Huh?”

“Is it so strange?” Professor Xie Wufeng asked. “The square was established to introduce the six hundred years of history of the federation. Generally speaking, the most dominating and distinguished big shots from the six hundred years all had their statues here. No matter how modest you are, you don’t think that you can’t make it onto the list of most influential persons in the federation, do you?”

Li Yao held back the urge to scratch his head. He was almost amused. “My statue is completely gone. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The so-called ‘statue’ is just a front-end display that we can see in this interface,” Professor Xie Wufeng explained. “From the perspective of the essential data, every statue means the enormous information base of the celebrity—the public information, of course.

“It includes but is not limited to the celebrity’s glorious deeds, training experience, battle videos, theses and books, essence of lessons and speeches, deep tomography of the brain, dynamic analysis of the brainwaves, and so on.

“By the combination of the enormous database, it is not a cold statue that is created in the end but a living virtual hero. You may understand it as an early version of the ‘old grandpa’. Your statue is actually ‘Grandpa Yao 1.0’.”

“Wait…” Li Yao frowned and interrupted Professor Xie Wufeng’s introduction. “There are even the deep tomography of the brain and the dynamic analysis of brainwaves? Where did Professor Mo Xuan get that?”

“Every time you were wounded or about to advance into a new level, the most brilliant doctors and Meditation Healers of the federation would perform physical examinations on you,” Professor Xie Wufeng said. “A lot of information on your brain and soul was left behind.

“Such information was supposed to be confidential and would not be unclassified until your death was confirmed, but at that time, Professor Mo Xuan was already under the influence of the extraterrestrial devils. In order to produce a more perfect ‘old grandpa’, it was not strange that he found a way to copy the graph of your brainwaves and appended it to his database.”

Li Yao could not help but rub his temples. “So, the ‘statue’ that contains my brain tomography and brainwave analysis is the only one that has gone missing right now. Why? Is there something different between my brain and other people’s?”

“Even if there is a difference, it is not something that can be figured out from the tomography of the brain or the brainwave analysis,” Professor Xie Wufeng said. “You also know that the mysteries of the human brain are probably more than the mysteries of the whole universe. Or rather, a human brain is itself a minor universe. Even if all the crystal processors of the federation run to the point of collapse, I’m afraid that it will not be enough for them to figure out one percent of the truth of the ‘minor universe’.

“Everybody’s soul is unique and utterly different from one another. You are an expert close to the Divinity Transformation Stage, which means that your soul will be even more special. How can anybody figure out everything based on a few graphs of brainwaves?

“In my opinion, it is possible that Professor Mo Xuan intentionally migrated the database that contained tremendous information about you in order to deal with you, isn’t it?

“But that doesn’t make sense. He shouldn’t have foreseen your return at that time. Besides, he must’ve had copies of the data about you. There was no need for him to restart the Spiriters’ Realm and take away the data about your brain and soul inside.

“In that case…”

Li Yao, Long Yangjun, Wei Qingqing, Professor Xie Wufeng, and other members of the inspection team, faced with the empty pedestal, were caught in a long silence.

…

After six hours in the Virtual Spirits Sector, the inspection team had still found absolutely nothing.

They found neither the tiniest pieces of the Hyper Spirits ‘No. 17’ and ‘No. 18’ nor Li Yao’s statue.

Li Yao and Professor Xie Wufeng returned to the beach near the sluggish ocean again. They looked at the continuous sand drawings and the black, lifeless ocean in a daze.

The uncanny incidents after he entered the Virtual Spirits Sector had made Li Yao ill at ease. He somehow felt that an invisible rope was connecting everything.

“According to the result of the preliminary exploration, No. 17 and No. 18 must’ve been completely deleted.”

Professor Xie Wufeng took a breath in relief and said, not without regret, “This is not a bad ending. Although we have no access to the core databases of the two Hyper Spirits right now, we don’t need to worry that they may fall into the hands of ambitious schemers and cause major trouble again.

“As for your missing statue, it is not a big deal. Ninety-nine percent of the information contained inside the statue was from the public files. Even the brain tomography was data from more than a hundred years ago. During the hundred years, your soul went through drastic changes. That outdated data is nothing but junk. It cannot be used against you at all. You can rest assured about that.”

“Professor Xie Wufeng, do you think—” Staring at the sand drawings, Li Yao suddenly asked, for reasons he did not know, “Is it really impossible for real virtual life with self-awareness to show up?”

Professor Xie Wufeng was slightly dazed. He smiled and picked up a handful of sand. Then he remarked, “It is not entirely impossible, but the odds are quite low. How low? Let me give you an example. Suppose every grain of sand on this beach is carved with a random letter, and I have picked up a handful of sand randomly and let it slip through my fingers. The odds of a real virtual life being born are exactly the odds of the sand drifting in the wind lining up to be the most touching poem in the whole universe!

“I know what you are thinking.

“You are thinking of No. 17 and No. 18, after being thrown into the Virtual Spirits Sector after the failed experiments, evolving significantly and gaining self-awareness through uncanny fortuitous incidents that turned them from ‘artificial intelligence’ into real ‘virtual life’, aren’t you?

“Hehe. I can assure you… No, all the specialists of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus in the entire federation can assure you that it is impossible, absolutely impossible.

“No. 17 and No. 18 are essentially databases with a bunch of cold operation logic, fundamentally the same as ‘Moonlight Bringer’. They are tools, just like the stones with which humans smacked nuts and animal bones in the beginning. They are nothing more than tools.

“Stones cannot evolve into humans. Those ‘virtual stones’ certainly cannot evolve into real ‘virtual life’, either.”

Frowning, Li Yao thought hard for a long time before he spoke once more. “Professor Xie, I once heard a theory before. More than ninety-seven percent of the mass of a human is fundamentally made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, helium, phosphorus, sulfur, and other common elements, which is exactly what the billions of stars in the vast universe are made of.

“In other words, the basic elements that make up our body are the same as the basic elements that make up the stars. We are the literal ‘sons of stars’.

“You said just now that only cells can evolve into humans and that stones could never evolve into humans. But where did the original cells come from? At the beginning of the big bang, was there any fundamental difference between the elements that were to make up cells billions of years later and the elements that were to become stones?”

Professor Xie Wufeng was rendered speechless for a moment. He was dazed for a long time before he finally replied, “As you said just now, those changes only happened after billions of years. That’s what it takes for the odds of one billionth to become reality.

“In the scale of ten billion years, of course, anything is possible.

“However, if we are talking about the hundred thousand years in which the civilization of mankind has been shining, or the future thousand years of the Star Glory Federation, I can still promise you very solemnly that virtual intelligent life will absolutely not be born without the interference of the outside world!”

Li Yao’s ears and eyebrows pricked at the same time. “If I may ask, what do you mean by ‘interference of the outside world’?”