Looking at the wounded veterans who were bowing and offering flowers outside of the window, Li Jialing clenched his fists and said, "It couldn't have been like this in Blackstar the Great's age."
"It's all the same."
Li Yao said, "In Blackstar the Great's age, if the Immortal Cultivators were not as greedy, corrupt, and morally corrupt as they are today, it was not because the Immortal Cultivators had a high moral standard but only because the Imperium was still in the development phase at that time, and they could swallow the interests of the newly conquered areas to ease the internal conflicts.
"The exuberant vitality of a country like the Imperium of True Human Beings must be based on accelerated expansion. Whenever the expansion is stopped, all kinds of internal conflicts will burst out, pushing the Imperium to an irreversible decline.
"With the corruption of the Imperium today, it is already too sick to be cured. Any 'reform' can only treat the symptoms but not the root of the problem. The best they can do is to remove the cancer on the body, but it is impossible to change the defects deep inside the genes. Not just Li Linghai and Lei Chenghu, even if Blackstar the Great were reborn, how could he have cured the country?"
"If the Imperium is truly reborn, the true path of immortality that the strong prey on the weak must be refuted and denied in the most thorough way. Here comes the question. Is the Imperium of True Human Beings still an Imperium of True Human Beings without the guidance of the true path of immortality? Which Immortal Cultivator can bear such a destructive reconstruction of their fundamental belief? "
Li Jialing pondered for a long time. "Does it have to be so? Is there no other way?"
"It has to be so."
Li Yao said solemnly, "Survival is the first instinct of a life. As long as the true path of immortality adheres to the law of 'the strong prey on the weak', everybody will spend all the resources on themselves under the drive of their instincts and waste them in the meaningless internal conflicts. Even if they are not used for the time being, they will hide the resources in case of emergencies. They will never devote them to the public, the country, the civilization, or the external conflicts. How can you talk about the optimal allocation of resources in such a case?"
Frowning hard, Li Jialing shook his head. "That being said, is the path of the Cultivators any better? Are the Cultivators bound to maintain a high moral standard under the guidance of the path of the Cultivators, and they will fight for the public wholeheartedly without class rigidity and enormous interest groups? If that were the case, the Star Ocean Republic wouldn't have perished, and Firefly wouldn't have been destroyed! "
"You're right. I don't want to lie to you. Both the Cultivators and the Immortal Cultivators are human beings. As long as they are human beings, they have the instincts, desires, and shortcomings of human beings. Everything that happened in the Imperium of True Human Beings today … happened in the Star Ocean Republic and Firefly yesterday......
Deep in thought, Li Yao mumbled, "But I'm still willing to believe that, at the very least, in a society where 'the strong help the weak, the weak feed back the strong, and the strong and the weak work together to support each other' are the mainstream ideas, people do not have such strong motives to strengthen themselves at the expense of the interests of the whole. Since the whole is the strongest shield and the warmest reliance for the individuals, it is not against humanity to invest interests on the whole first and consider oneself later, right?
"If you still can't understand it, you will understand it by constructing the simplest social model. In the model, the whole society is highly compressed and simplified. There are only two people and one resource.
"One of them is you. You are not sure whether you are a Cultivator or an Immortal Cultivator yet. You can switch between the two strategies flexibly.
"The other person, on the other hand, is an expert whose capability is far higher than yours. However, he is heavily wounded right now and is in dire need of the resource for his recovery.
"Naturally, the resource is in the hands of you, who is strong and healthy. If you choose to consume the resource on your own, your capability will be improved by ten points, and the other heavily wounded expert will probably die very soon.
"However, if you give the resource to the heavily wounded expert, his capability will be improved by a hundred points after he recovers.
"Right. Other than the two of you, there are other kinds of threats in this world. The stronger your overall capability is, the more likely it will be for you to survive in this perilous world.
"Here comes the question. In the first case, if you know that the heavily wounded expert is a cold and heartless Immortal Cultivator who believes in the philosophy of 'survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest, and the winner takes all', are you willing to give the precious resource to him so that he can fully recover his capability when your strength is only one-fifth or even one-tenth of his?
"In the second case, if you know clearly that the heavily wounded expert is a Cultivator who has fought for the weak countless times, what will you choose? Will you give the resource to yourself to maximize your personal combat ability, or will you give it to him to maximize the combat ability of your team?"
Li Jialing rolled his eyes again and again. He clenched his fists, loosened them, and clenched them again. It was not until a long time later that he finally took a long breath in relief and struggled to say, "I can't lie. In the first case, I will keep all the resource to myself without caring if the expert is dead or not. In the second case, it is very likely that I will give the resource to the expert. After all, he will probably protect me after he recovers his capability.
"However, in the first case, there is another option. If this resource can be divided, then I will divide the resource. A large portion will be given to me, and a small portion will be given to this expert. This will allow him to recover slightly and maintain his strength to be slightly weaker than mine, but at the same time, he can still be of some use."
"It's all the same."
Li Yao said casually, "No matter how many resources you give to the Immortal Cultivator, the combat ability of your team will not be maximized. In other words, the 'optimal allocation of resources' will not be realized.
"It is needless to say that if you give the heavily wounded Immortal Cultivator some resources, he will not necessarily be grateful to you. Chances are that he will be angry at your stinginess, and the two of you will be wary of each other in the battle that follows. Before the external threat shows up, you will fight each other first, won't you?"
After a brief daze, Li Jialing said, "That's true, but in the second case, who can guarantee that the Cultivator will protect the weak after he recovers his strength after he gets all the resources? What if his mentality changes and he tears off his mask at the critical moment and abandons me?"
"Probabilities. Everything has probabilities. I am not saying that the strategy of giving all the resources to the expert Cultivator in the second case is definitely correct. I can only say that such a strategy will maximize the odds of survival. Nothing more."
Holding the window frame with his hands, Li Yao looked at the statue of Blackstar the Great on the opposite side and said, "It's true that the Cultivators can be hypocrites, but the Immortal Cultivators can be real scoundrels all the time. Hypocrites will only harm others at the last moment when they turn on each other, but real scoundrels spurt venom, scheme, and harm others for their own benefit twenty-four hours a day from the very beginning. Even an idiot will know who to choose if you have to choose one as your partner!"
Frowning, Li Jialing asked, "What are you trying to say, Brother Yao?"
Li Yao said, "What I'm trying to say is that, in any small-scale world, if your partner is an Immortal Cultivator, no matter how kindhearted, honorable, and selfless you are in the beginning, it will be useless. Based on the instincts of survival, your only strategy is to turn yourself into an Immortal Cultivator as soon as possible. It will be best if you become an Immortal Cultivator who is colder, crueler, and more cunning than your partner. At the very least, you have to reach a 'balance of terror' between you and your partner. Only in such a way can you be safe, and the cooperation between you can be stabilized for now.
"However, in such a way, the world of Immortal Cultivators such as yourself cannot achieve the 'optimal allocation of resources' that you bragged about at all. On the contrary, the combat ability that can be maximized under the most ideal conditions will only be maximized by ten points in the game of survival of your scheming and deceit.
"I would like to call such a phenomenon the 'dilemma of the Immortal Cultivators'. The entire Imperium of True Human Beings is currently caught in an enormous' dilemma of the Immortal Cultivators'. It is to the extent that even the most prosperous and abundant resources at the center of the cosmos cannot be destroyed by the tiny, uncreative Holy League at a corner of the cosmos.
"In the second social form, if your partner is a Cultivator, it is very likely that you will be transformed into a Cultivator and make selfless moves. For example, you may give the precious resources to your partner first because you know that it is a reliable investment. After your partner recovers, he will certainly collect more resources for you.
"Such positive incentives and rewards will make the two of you more and more selfless and united. Eventually, the 'optimal allocation of resources' will be reached and the overall combat ability will be maximized, right?"
Tilting his head, Li Jialing thought for a long time. "Seems like it."
"Of course it does. Isn't there a living example right in front of your eyes?"
Li Yao shouted, "In the past, you were an ignorant little devil who could not distinguish between good and evil, who pretended to be yourself, and who did not even blink in bloodshed. You were the best candidate for the Immortal Cultivator. However, after you met such a kindhearted, virtuous, and principled Cultivator as Brother Yao, you have been influenced by my magnificent personality without you knowing it. You have even learned to view the world in the way of the Cultivators and gradually transformed into a Cultivator. Isn't that the best proof?
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