Cui Lingfeng was silent. His lips were as solid as the gate of the starship that faced the vacuum of space.
Tang Dingyuan glanced at Li Yao. His eyes were even more aggressive, and his fury was slowly accumulating. "First, the 'Red Lotus Plan'. Now, this' Rebirth Plan '. How many things on this starship are I unaware of?"
"A lot," Cui Lingfeng said gloomily.
"You are the captain of Firefly," Cui Lingfeng said gloomily. "You are the captain of Firefly. A captain must be fearless and march forward bravely! Only the ignorant can be fearless. You don't have to know everything. "
"I want to know."
Staring at Cui Lingfeng in the eyes, Tang Dingyuan said calmly but firmly, one word after another, "If you won't tell me, I'll let Ding Zhengyang do it."
The gate that sealed countless secrets on Cui Lingfeng's lips shivered for a long time. Finally, he said, "In the past thousand years, we have encountered countless difficulties and perils. We have drafted emergency plans for all the situations. The 'Rebirth Plan' is exactly the emergency plan for the most serious, dangerous, and fatal 'Super Level Crisis'."
Tang Dingyuan was slightly dazed. "I've never heard of any 'Super Level Crisis'. A 'Level Crisis' is already the highest level."
Cui Lingfeng smiled. "No, Level Crisis is not the highest level; Super Level is. The so-called 'Super Level Crisis' refers to a situation where the resources for survival and escape on board are less than one fifth of the standard. The circulation system and the artificial greenhouses are seriously sabotaged, and the follow-up resources cannot be recovered to one half of the standard in fifty years. Or rather, they will continue to decline, resulting in the collapse of our civilization in fifty years and the extinction of our civilization in a hundred years. Oh, that is still the ideal situation. In fact, because of human beings' natural instincts for survival and their crazy actions before death, once everybody learns that we will perish in fifty to a hundred years, it will not take that long at all. In five years, the social order will completely collapse. In ten years, the fire of civilization that is as feeble as a firefly on this starship will completely die out.
Once the Speaker realizes that such a situation is happening, he will have the power and must activate the 'Rebirth Plan' to reduce the population on board quickly, efficiently, and steadily until a balance is reached between the population and the sustainable recovery of resources.
Tang Dingyuan's voice began to shiver. "How — how do you 'reduce the population'?"
"Do you know the meteorite shower that Firefly suffered 728 years ago?" Cui Lingfeng asked. The meteorite shower was not serious per se. It only pierced through the shell of our starship at the outside. However, the weird virus inside the meteorite caused a great plague inside Firefly, reducing our population by twenty percent.
"Of course I do. It was almost the most difficult and darkest period for Firefly."
Tang Dingyuan was confused. "But wasn't the plague completely extinguished by us?"
"Yes, the plague has been extinguished, but the virus has not been completely destroyed."
Cui Lingfeng smiled weirdly. "It is indeed a very perfect virus. It mutates a lot, and it spreads quickly through the air. The symptoms are not obvious, and the incubation period is unpredictable. Once it breaks out, it is extremely fatal. Also, it will automatically look for the strongest host to infect first. The stronger the host's spiritual energy is, the faster the mutation and corruption will be, which will offset the host's efforts of self-treatment with spiritual energy." In other words, it is a virus that treats everyone equally. Neither ordinary people nor Cultivators can escape from its clutches. The death rate is almost the same.
"Our virologists studied the virus deeply in the laboratory. At first, they planned to produce a virus weapon to strike the Imperium. But later, they discovered that the virus has a fatal weakness, which is that it can be easily prevented and treated by a synthetic drug." The materials to synthesize such a drug can be produced in every Sector. The synthesis method is not very complicated, either.
"It means that even if a virus weapon is produced, it will barely be a serious blow to the Imperium. The best that it can do is to wreak havoc on one or two of their starships for a while. It will not be of much military significance.
"However, it is difficult to produce such a specific drug on a large scale on our starship.
"Therefore, the specialists hundreds of years ago began to produce a virus weapon for a new purpose. The final result has been very satisfactory. It spreads fast, has inconspicuous symptoms, and is highly lethal. It targets both Cultivators and ordinary people. Once it spreads inside a sealed starship through the air circulation system, it can reduce a lot of population instantly without alarming anyone." Most importantly of all, it boasts a feature that we call 'half-life'. After several generations of transmission, it will perish on its own and will not spread any further.
"The half-life is controllable. It can be long or short.
"In other words, it is a virus weapon of 'precise attack'. As long as the half-life is controlled and the total population that can be infected is known, it will be possible to calculate in advance how many people it can kill. After the death toll reaches a certain threshold, it will decay and perish, too, without leaving any sequelae.
"The virus is named 'rebirth virus'. It is the key to the Rebirth Plan. Perhaps, it can bring … rebirth to Firefly, which is on the verge of destruction."
Tang Dingyuan could not believe his ears at all. He stared at Cui Lingfeng in bewilderment for a long time. "You … You have developed a virus weapon in secret, but you are not using it to deal with the enemy but to kill your own people, your compatriots, and the people that you swore to protect! Is there any difference between you and the Immortal Cultivators by doing that? "
"There is," Cui Lingfeng said calmly.
"Assuming that you are an Immortal Cultivator responsible for implementing the 'Rebirth Plan', think about it. What would you have done specifically? Of course, you would have isolated the cabins where the ordinary people, who are the humble 'hominoids', lived, from the cabins where the Immortal Cultivators, who are the 'true human beings', lived, and only released the virus in the cabins of the hominoids. "Or perhaps, you would have fed all the Immortal Cultivators with the special drugs in advance. Or even during the production phase of the virus weapon, you would have tried to weaken its aggressiveness to those whose spiritual roots have been awakened so that it would only infect the ordinary people and not the Immortal Cultivators, right?
"After all, in the eyes of the Immortal Cultivators, the ordinary people are garbage population and a useless burden. Since the resources are insufficient, it is only natural that we reduce the number of garbage population.
"But that is not what we are going to do. I can decrypt all the implementation plans of the 'Rebirth Plan' to you. We do not intend to isolate everybody or feed anyone with the special drugs in advance. Or rather, for safety reasons, our predecessors have destroyed all the special drugs and the materials that can be refined into drugs a long time ago.
"Once I decide to release the virus, the virus will spread across the entire Firefly and kill the prey that it chooses randomly. Nobody will be spared. Both the Cultivators and the ordinary people, including myself, may be infected and eventually die.
"Do you understand now? The predecessors who made the decision did not consider themselves to be 'supermen' who could decide the life and death of the 'ordinary people'. Both the Cultivators and the ordinary people are the same. They listen to the judgment of fate. Many people will die, but even more people will carry their burdens and move on, moving on in the … dark universe.
"You may say that the predecessors who drafted the 'Rebirth Plan' were deceiving themselves, but I believe that this is probably the greatest difference between them … between us and the Immortal Cultivators."
Tang Dingyuan's heartbeat and breath were both labored. He was gritting his teeth so hard that he felt that he would have chewed a starship into pieces even if it was put in his mouth. "However you defend yourself, I still cannot accept it. Absolutely not!"
"Then, Brother Dingyuan, why don't you tell me what we should do?"
Cui Lingfeng sighed and said, "Suppose that right now, as the captain, you know very well that the resources on board are only enough for a hundred people to survive, but we have two hundred people, two hundred mouths that are waiting to be fed, and two hundred stomachs that can never be filled. What will you do?"
Deep in thought, Tang Dingyuan was lost for words. His voice was much lower than before. "Cultivators … Cultivators shouldn't be so … so …"
"If you think that Cultivators shouldn't be so dark," Cui Lingfeng said casually.
"That's only because somebody is standing in your way and helping you get the dark, dirty, and cruel things done first, my captain."
Inside the prison cell, Ding Zhengyang cackled like a crow. "Captain, you know the truth of the 'Rebirth Plan' now, don't you? Your belief is fine, isn't it? Tell me, can a guy who can come up with such a plan still be considered a real cultivator? No. I am not the first Immortal Cultivator on Firefly. There were Immortal Cultivators on this starship a long time ago. It was occupied by the Immortal Cultivators a long time ago! "
"Ding Zhengyang," Cui Lingfeng said coldly, "we did not implement the 'Rebirth Plan' until the end. Firefly still survived."
"Yes. It did survive, but only because you were lucky enough not to run into a 'special crisis'!"
Ding Zhengyang smiled. "But our luck will not be so good forever. If we did not run into the claw fleet of the Imperium or the Xing Yao Federation, Firefly would've continued drifting toward the depths of the sea of stars, toward the unexplored lands where no human beings would've visited. As the starship slowly aged, a 'special crisis' would've certainly happened in the next few hundred years!
"Don't argue with me about that. I am the chief mate. I know every thread of every screw on this starship like the back of my hand!
"It means that, in the next few hundred years, even if the Imperium did not capture Firefly, Firefly itself would've been swallowed by darkness and turned into a tiny 'civilization of Immortal Cultivators'!
"Do you understand? One day, we will all become Immortal Cultivators. I'm just … one step ahead of you!
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