Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Why are you not talking after you see me? You haven’t figured out yet how to trick me?”

Looking at Long Yangjun’s cold and mysterious back, Li Yao sniffed. “You’ve done a better job in acting than ‘Mother White Lotus Wan Mingzhu’. Why have I never noticed that you have such a facet?”

“Aren’t you well aware that I have dual personalities?”

Long Yangjun was not infuriated but simply walked to the depths of the gigantic excavator. She said casually, “Most of the time in the past, what you saw was my side that was more inclined to the ‘Nuwa Clan’, but what you are seeing right now is the Pangu Clan’s side of me.

“Now that I have brought you to the underground world, I will not keep anything from you. Just widen your eyes and watch this side of me carefully!”

Li Yao stopped and said solemnly in full wariness, “Stop walking anymore. What’s your purpose exactly?”

Long Yangjun said with a smile, “Don’t be scared. I am your life-saver after all. Since I have rescued you from Blackstar the Great’s hands at great risks, and I have brought you back to my nest for careful treatment, is there any reason why I should do you harm? There is no need to be so anxious at all. To be honest, even if I want to harm you, I’ll prefer to crumble your beliefs inch by inch and enjoy your furious but helpless look, rather than simply savaging you physically. The destruction of a physical body is always most crude and boring, isn’t it?”

Li Yao gnashed his teeth. “I will certainly bear your favor in mind. Next time you are savaged by Blackstar the Great to the point that you are almost destroyed, I will naturally come back for you too! However, just because you did me a favor does not mean your ideas are justified! You should know it more clearly than anybody else that I am a man of principles. I am a selfless, devoted, and loyal Cultivator who will not waver in front of what is right and what is wrong!”

“Is that so?”

Long Yangjun finally stopped and turned around, looking at Li Yao. A familiar smile gradually popped up on her cold and indifferent face. “But I don’t feel that I am crossing your lines. Then why do you have to act so aggressively as if you are holding me responsible for something I’ve done?”

“In that case, let me ask you, what were you doing just now? Were you not brainwashing the underground wildlings and eliminating their feelings and desires?”

Li Yao said confidently, “Also, can you turn off the light ring above your head for now? Let’s just talk nicely and throw away all the occultic sound and visual effects. If you insist on doing that, I can surround myself in dazzling electric arcs and get a headful of golden and explosive hair so that we will be communicating on equal terms!”

“Excuse me, I forgot about it.”

Long Yangjun waved her hands, and the light ring hovering above her head gradually dimmed, eventually turning into a silver metal ring that was stored into her Cosmos Ring.

She said, undisturbed, “If you are accusing me of being pretentious, I will not deny it. After all, neither the residents of the 10,084th district nor the ignorant wildlings here will trust an outsider easily. If I had not pretended to be an envoy of the gods, it would’ve been impossible for me to join them and make them absolutely trust me so that I can settle their wars and conflicts.

“Besides, by claiming that I am an envoy of the gods, I was not entirely lying, because I am a successor of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan after all!

“As for your accusation that I’ve washed off their feelings and desires, I’m afraid that you’ve wronged and overestimated me.

“Haven’t Li Jialing told you that the so-called feelings and desires all depend on a material foundation? In the places where materials are abundant, communication is frequent and smooth, life security of the people is ensured, and the future of the people is promising, it will be natural that the feelings and desires of the people will blossom. Everybody will be passionate and self-expressive. They will not be implicit at all.

“However, in the remote mountains that are poor, secluded, and hopeless, people who are going to spend their entire lives there were born to be taciturn, nonchalant, and numb. They do not have any hope for the future, and they have few desires except for survival and reproduction. Even if they do have some feelings deep inside their hearts, they will usually hide the feelings very well. Isn’t it only natural?

“The ecological system ten thousand meters below the ground is a relatively simple and extremely barren system. Look at the monotonous environment around you. Do you think the wildlings living here boast profuse feelings and desires require my ‘brainwashing’? How hilarious!”

Li Yao was not moved. He simply sniffed and said, “Then, what were you doing just now? Why did the wildlings of three different tribes, who should’ve been fighting each other relentlessly, sit below your feet obediently in harmony?”

“It’s true that I taught them certain tricks to repress their feelings, but my lessons were mainly about how to hold back the fury and abandon unnecessary hatred.”

Long Yangjun replied confidently, as if she did not feel guilty at all, “After ten thousand years of bloody battles, in the areas of darkness and death, few beautiful feelings are left in the brains of the Black Armors, the Night Wings, and the Red Rings. The only thing they remember is the ineffaceable hatred. Nobody knows how the hatred originated, but they know they will not stop until one or two of the tribes are completely wiped out.

“When I just came to the underground world, the three tribes were about to summon all their people for an unprecedented bloody war. Although they did look hideous, they were a part of mankind after all and the creatures of Pangu and Nuwa. Whatever my stance was, I did not want them to die together with each other.

“Therefore, through what I was capable of, I helped them settle the war and saved the precious lives of a thousand wildlings. Why, Cultivator Li Yao, is that in violation of your principles? Do you want me to just sit by and watch the wildlings slaughter each other until none is alive?”

Li Yao was stunned for a moment. Then he sneered, “So to speak, you did it for a noble purpose?”

“Does it really matter what my purpose was?”

Long Yangjun smiled casually. “As the saying goes, you just judge people by what they do, not what they think. Whatever clandestine purposes I might’ve had, it was an undeniable fact that I saved the precious lives of so many wildlings, soothed the pain of the residents of the 10,084th district as well as many other zones, and even… condensed them in a certain way so that they could be highly-organized. Wow, I have done so many great things. I think you should be applauding me. Why are you acting as if I were a criminal?”

“Highly-organized? Right, I remember it now.”

Li Yao said, “The way you controlled the wildlings was exactly the same as how the commander of the Covenant Alliance led the common soldiers in the Godly Might Prison. I’m afraid that you are not just saving the precious lives of those wildlings but also trying to transform them into your tools, aren’t you?”

“It is not exactly ‘control’. To be more exact, I was merely ‘communicating’ with the wildlings.”

Long Yangjun explained, “It is a very special way of communication, similar to the direct communication with brainwaves. You may call it ‘telepathy’.

“Theoretically speaking, every ordinary person is capable of ‘telepathy’ without special training. Our brains are born with such an ability. The connections between a mother and her child, or those between twins, are all phenomena of telepathy due to the overflow of brainwaves.

“A man would have a very weirdly familiar feeling when he visited a place for the first time, as if he had visited the place a long time ago. In fact, it is only because he accidentally received the brainwaves of the passers-by and connected with them.

“However, in daily life, the heads of the ordinary people are filled with exuberant emotions and self-awareness, and they are used to transmit information via soundwaves. As a result, such an ability is gradually covered.

“But as long as one suppresses the emotions to the minimum, trying to empty their brain, they will naturally recover the ability of ‘telepathy’ under some guidance. How should I put it? It’s like how the blind always has keen ears, and the intellectually disabled can sometimes come up with brilliant ideas. They are all part of the biophysical ‘compensation effect’.

“Therefore, I was not brainwashing the wildlings just now but only talking to them by way of ‘telepathy’. It was no different from standing on a podium and giving a blood-boiling speech to refresh the audience.”

Long Yangjun had been peaceful and patient the whole time, and Li Yao could not vent his fury at all even though he had a lot of it. He could only ask in suspicion, “Telepathy? Is it a real thing?”

“Yes.”

Long Yangjun said casually, “However, it is destined that you cannot master such an ability because your soul, feelings, and self-awareness are simply too intense. It is absolutely impossible for you to repress your emotions and completely clear your brain.”

Li Yao was still not entirely convinced. “If there is such a convenient way of communication where everybody can talk to each other just by thinking, then why have the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, and human beings developed speaking abilities? Isn’t it completely redundant?”

“You are wrong about that. The language based on the vibration of sound waves is in fact a more advanced way of communication than ‘telepathy’, which directly relies on the interaction of brainwaves.”

Long Yangjun said solemnly, “The biggest problems of ‘telepathy’ are that it can only be used to deliver the fuzzy, general concepts and that it will make the whole group of people likeminded. When the brain waves are mixed, the speed and efficiency of communication will certainly be improved, but it is obviously very disadvantageous in the cruel competitions of nature if ten thousand people only have one idea. It will take only one foolish decision to ruin the entire community.

“Communicating with a language seems inefficient and underdeveloped, but it protects the brains of all the members of the group so that everybody will be an independent individual who can think entirely on their own. As a result, the community as a whole will have a myriad of different ideas, and the diversity and abundance of decisions will be ensured to the largest content. That is the most important and safest approach on the way of evolution!”