"The residents of the 10084 district do not have the concept of 'work when the sun rises and rest when the sun sets'. They haven't seen the sun for ten thousand years. So, they have adopted a never-ending schedule of 'three shifts'."
Li Jialing said with deep feelings, "Every day, they have to get up early in the morning to fertilize the underground plants, moss, and mushrooms. Those crops do not grow below the ground in the first place. Even though they have been genetically modified, they are still rather delicate. They need to mix minerals that have been ground into powder in the feces of the rock worms as fertilizers and growth drugs before they are sprayed in different ways to make them thrive. One moment of carelessness, and they will wither on a large scale, which will be a disaster for the entire town.
"After the vines, moss, and mushrooms have finally grown, they have to climb up the walls and enter the crevices to collect them at the risk of their lives before they are delivered to the caves to be minced for the rock worms. While the rock worms are eating, they have to massage the rock worms diligently. The skin of the rock worms is extremely tough. It is not enough if the strength of the massage is too light. They have to exert all their strength in order to activate the flesh and blood of the rock worms. After working for more than ten hours nonstop, there is not a second when they are not exhausted.
"After working in fear and sweat for years, only then can the meat of a rock worm ripen. Hundreds of rock worms are carried to a four-digit town thousands of meters above, only to be exchanged for a handful of magical equipment, energy, and cans of super-compressed air that are worthless on the ground at all.
"Let's not talk about whether or not they can fill their stomachs. Because of the serious shortage of fresh air, the residents here do not even dare to get too excited, because crying, laughing, or making a fuss will increase the consumption of oxygen, which will bring unnecessary losses to the total quota of fresh air in the town. As time goes by, they have become as pale and unsmiling as they are right now.
"Only carefree children are ignorant and don't know the preciousness of fresh air. That's why they laugh without restraint and consume oxygen, which is even more precious than crystals, to their heart's content.
"And that is without any accidents. It is already more miserable than death for them to live in peace. It is needless to say that the wildlings and demon beasts deeper below the ground invade, or the entire town collapses due to an earthquake, or everybody is burnt into ashes instantly when magma spurts out. Those natural disasters are all sharp blades hanging above their heads that may fall down in the next second, bringing them incessant and ubiquitous mental pressure.
"Those are natural disasters and man-made disasters. They are the accidental discovery of mother lodes or ancient relics!
"The discovery of mother lodes and relics should've been a good thing, but the residents here are too weak, and their oxygen supply is blocked by the upper towns. They do not have the ability to protect themselves at all. Should they really discover mother lodes and relics, it is very likely that the greedy bandits in the upper towns or the Immortal Cultivators in the shallow underground and on the surface of the ground will be attracted.
"By then, they will be captured as slave laborers and cannon fodder for the exploration of relics if they are lucky, and they will not even be qualified to be slave laborers and cannon fodder if they are lucky. They will either be banished to deeper underground as wildlings, or they will be directly killed. The Immortal Cultivators naturally have stronger and more well-trained slave laborers who can take their place.
"While the 10084 district has never seen such a tragedy before, the other five-digit towns have seen it many times. When a town discovers invaluable mother lodes and relics, it often means the arrival of destruction. As time goes by, most of the five-digit towns have learned their lesson and simply stay in their own land to grow mushrooms and raise rock worms dutifully, strictly forbidding the residents from exploring and adventuring. Whoever finds new mother lodes and relics, or even the things that are only suspected to be mother lodes and relics, will often be killed mercilessly, leaving the secret in darkness forever.
"Brother Yao, from the Star Ocean Republic to the Imperium of True Human Beings, no matter how the political situation and the social form on the surface of the planet changed, the underground locals had been living such a life for thousands of years. If they did keep their intense feelings, their feelings would've been condensed into 'pain' a long time ago. If they did have desires, their only desire would've been to live on in desperation. That's all.
"Brother Yao, you said that I was fooled by Sister Long just now. I've thought about it carefully, too, and I don't think that Sister Long's approach, which is close to brainwashing, is correct. I can only say that if many underground residents are willing to accept Sister Long's brainwashing willingly and wash away most of their feelings, I can understand their approach very well, because what they wash away is only the pain that can never be resolved and the desperation that can never be reversed."
Li Yao was silent and deep in thought.
Li Jialing seemed to be venting the depression that had accumulated for ten days if not more than ten years. He went on, "Brother Yao, I'm told that in the world of Cultivators in the Star Ocean Republic more than a thousand years ago, there was a concept of 'humanitarianism', which believed that when a person suffered from a terminal disease and was mired in inescapable pain, they had the right to end their own life. It was called 'euthanasia'.
"In the Imperium of True Human Beings, it is also advocated that when an Immortal Cultivator can no longer make contributions to the civilization of mankind, for the dignity and decency of the Immortal Cultivators, they should die generously and leave the resources to other people.
"When I was being modified by Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan, I didn't know when I thought of death. For me at that time, death was not painful but a relief.
"The most precious thing for a human being is their life. If we all agree that one can choose to abandon their life voluntarily when faced with irresistible and unbearable pain, is there anything wrong with abandoning part of their feelings, desires, and free will voluntarily? Does it have to be in violation of ethics, unacceptable, and even incomprehensible? "
"They are two different things."
Pondering for a long time, Li Yao finally said slowly, "I admit that you and I, as individuals, have the right to end our own lives when we are under unresolvable pain. It is indeed in line with the spirit of humanitarianism.
"However, it is one thing for individuals to choose to end their own lives, but it is a completely different thing for the highest authority that is above the masses to end everybody's lives on a large scale.
"Individuals can retreat, give up, and surrender in the face of pain, but any responsible authority should never solve the problem by means of 'large-scale euthanasia'. It is not solving the problem at all but dealing with the 'people who cause the problem'!
"To put it more simply, when faced with the shortage of resources, Long Yangjun or the highest authority of the Holy League will ask individuals to suppress their feelings and desires as much as possible and reduce the consumption of resources to the minimum. Is it any different from asking people to tighten their belts when there is a shortage of food? If there was a shortage of food, then think of a way to produce more food. No matter how tight one's belt was, people still had to eat. No matter how firm the seal of the Three Great Fundamental Laws was, people were still called the wisest of all things because of the existence of emotions and desires!
"Therefore, I cannot agree with Long Yangjun or the authorities of the Holy League's' solution to the shortage of resources'. Such a solution is too untechnical, irresponsible, and cannot solve the fundamental problem at all. Even if the underground people have indeed erased all their feelings and desires, they still have to eat and breathe fresh air. The best they can do is to consume less resources. So, what's the point of such a solution other than postponing the inevitable destruction?
"Of course, what you said just now does have a point. The tip of the iceberg that Long Yangjun has shown has made me understand more or less why so many people are willing to be branded with the Three Fundamental Laws. Then, let's just keep watching.
"We've seen enough of the 10084 district. Where are Long Yangjun's specific coordinates? Let's go and ask her right now!"
Li Jialing inserted a special chip into Li Yao's wrist crystal processor, claiming that it would connect Li Yao and Long Yangjun's wrist crystal processors to each other.
Long Yangjun had gone deeper below the ground to mediate the war among the wildlings and preach her path of "emotionlessness". Naturally, her whereabouts were unpredictable. Only the chip could lock onto her precise coordinates.
Li Yao thought of something and asked Li Jialing curiously, "Are there still large-scale wars in the underground world?"
Li Jialing nodded in agreement. Generally speaking, large-scale wars rarely broke out in the organized towns that boasted a civilization, mainly because the fresh air in the underground worlds was too precious. Even though they were sweating hard during the heavy labor, they still dared not take a deep breath even if their lips were blue.
And war was the most oxygen-consuming thing. A single incendiary bomb, which did not have much destructive power on the ground, was enough to deplete the oxygen in several tunnels and large underground caverns, not to mention the upgraded version of thermobaric bombs.
Therefore, when two towns with a five-digit population went to war, it was often a tragedy where both sides suffered heavy losses. Neither side would gain any advantages.
However, it did not mean that human beings could completely abandon their nature and stop attacking each other.
If there were extreme natural or man-made disasters, such as an earthquake that crushed half of the town, magma that destroyed all the moss, vines, and mushroom plantations, or a sudden plague that killed all the rock worms, the survivors would have no choice but to form groups and wage war on the neighboring towns like crazy.
Such hasty attacks would most likely end in a brutal failure. The losers would have nowhere to retreat and could only venture deeper into the dark, unnumbered areas of death below the ground.
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