Li Yao shuddered after hearing what Long Yangjun said.
The virtual black tide before his eyes seemed to have turned into a universe without stars.
The seemingly dark void was, in fact, the best camouflage, because what was patrolling outside of the darkness was an unstoppable force that was a hundred times darker than the darkness …
"Even if — even if your guess is correct —"
Li Yao's voice was like the cold wind blowing out of an ice cave, mixed with freezing coldness. "Sealing oneself does not necessarily mean that one has to completely deprive oneself of feelings. Is it so cruel?"
"It is."
Long Yangjun sighed and said, "In the past, we thought that the Pangu civilization erased feelings because of the extreme shortage of resources. After all, the intense activities and even the most extreme wars caused by feelings would significantly accelerate the consumption of resources, which would lead to the exhaustion and collapse of the closed world in advance.
"But that was just one of the reasons, one that was not very important.
"Secondly, and more importantly, feelings lead to desires. For a highly-developed intelligent life form, the most intense desire is certainly not the primitive survival and reproduction, but the thirst for knowledge and exploration. It is the ambition to march, sprint, and break all the boundaries to the outside world, all the way to the edge of the universe, and then march out of the universe!
"Even if the leaders of the Pangu civilization could have disbanded the expedition fleet and even destroyed the crystal processors, the Spiritual Nexus, and the technologies on how to make use of the tenebrum energy, it was hard to guarantee that those technologies would not have been developed in secret in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed. Some ambitious, reckless young men would have marched out of the three thousand Sectors with the new-generation starships that were powered by the tenebrum energy with the assistance of artificial intelligence!
"After all, the universe is too big. Even the 'tiny' three thousand Sectors are in fact a boundless sea of stars. It is impossible to set up defenses everywhere. As long as they are determined, somebody will be able to escape.
"Just like I said, always remember this. Not a single starship, a single person, or even a single cell of this world can escape. If they escape and are scanned by the Flood, they will be screwed!
"Then, in order to resolve the problem from the source as a precaution, it is not enough to simply destroy the technology and dismantle the starships. The desires for knowledge, exploration, curiosity, and even imagination must be completely eliminated. Such individuals are the safest existences for the Pangu civilization as a whole.
"In order to eliminate desires, feelings must be suppressed first. 'Feelings' and 'desires' are two sides of the same coin. It will be safe to eliminate both at the same time!"
Li Yao opened his mouth and thought for a long time. He had to admit that Long Yangjun's theory did make sense.
Human beings were the wisest of all creatures. Was it not curiosity and imagination was it not the greatest distinguishing feature from the other ignorant beasts?
As long as humans still had curiosity, as long as they still had imagination, they would always want to know what was behind the curtain of stars when they looked up at the starry sky. Eventually, there would be countless people who would give up their wisdom, courage, blood, sweat, and even life to charge out!
It must have been the same for the Pangu civilization in the beginning, right? When they looked at the starry sky, they must've had surging tides and volcanic eruptions in their hearts too, right?
"Thirdly, and also the most important reason why we have to deprive feelings," Long Yangjun said solemnly.
"Stay away from fear and maintain order so that the Pangu civilization can operate in the minimum order and preserve the seeds of our civilization."
Li Yao was slightly dazed. "What do you mean? As long as the expedition fleet is retreated to the black wall, won't we stay away from fear? Why do we need to maintain order? "
"You think too simply. The Pangu civilization may've never seen the Flood at all. They may've only collected bits and pieces about the Flood from the remains of other civilizations. Their fear comes from the deepest part of their heart. How can they stay away from it?"
Long Yangjun's face was both sorrowful and indifferent. Or rather, in order not to reveal the sorrow in her heart, she tried to pretend that she had nothing to do with it. "I don't know if you've ever heard that when the apocalypse comes, the world will not be destroyed by the apocalypse but by the chaos before the apocalypse.
"Human nature. Never overestimate human nature. From the scale of the grand universe, both human beings and the Pangu civilization are nothing more than dust. Faced with the great terror, the Great Cataclysm, and the Great Termination, most individuals of human beings and Pangu civilizations cannot bear it.
"Li Yao, if everything I said just now is true, how do you feel? Shocked, scared, and even desperate?"
"Well …"
Li Yao scratched his head and said, "A little shocked and scared, yes, but not exactly desperate. Hahahaha. I've been through hundreds of battles anyway, and I've seen all kinds of great sights. What's so scary about the Flood? 'If Hong Chao is so powerful, why don't you jump in front of me and hit me now? Come on, come on, Hong Chao, why don't you f * cking jump out and hit me? Hit me! Look, nothing happened at all. It suggests two things. Either, the Flood is not omniscient and omnipotent, and it has weaknesses. At the very least, it cannot detect our conversation or teleport to us instantly.
"Or, even the Flood is scared of 'Vulture Li Yao', so much so that it does not have the courage to show up after being cursed by me!"
With his hands on his waist, Li Yao cursed at the sky for a long time before he finally spoke to Long Yangjun solemnly.
Long Yangjun: "…"
Li Yao: "Hey, hey, hey. What's the meaning of this? Why did you turn around and leave? We were talking happily and about to get to the point. Where are you going without saying anything?"
Long Yangjun: "I'm going to talk to Xiaoming and Wenwen. I think it's more reliable to discuss with the two kids than with you."
"Don't, don't, don't. You should at least finish what you said just now!"
Li Yao tried his best to persuade Long Yangjun to stay. He even swore, "I won't talk anymore, alright? I'll listen to you. I'll listen to you!"
Half closing her eyes, Long Yangjun took a few deep breaths before she managed to say, "Forget it. It's redundant to ask you. I'll just continue my explanation.
"Leaving aside the freaks such as you and the unparalleled experts such as Boss Bai who have the firmest beliefs, for most ordinary people, and even for those who have grasped tremendous strength but are not firm enough, the Flood is no different from an apocalypse.
"Outside of the world that we live in, there is an irresistible force that we cannot even imagine. The force did not destroy us only because we are lucky. However, such luck cannot last forever! One day, the Flood will find us, find us, and lazily devour us!
"Thousands of civilizations have already been destroyed by the Flood. However we develop our civilization, we cannot stop the arrival of destruction. This is what we call 'inevitable doom'!
"Do you understand, Li Yao? Such an understanding will lead to the deepest fear in everybody's heart. It will completely destroy the hope of a civilization's development. The fire of desperation will sweep across every planet in the three thousand Sectors. The entire Pangu civilization will collapse before the Flood arrives!
"Since destruction is inevitable, what's the point of working hard to build a civilization right now?
"Now that breaking out of the three thousand Sectors has become an absolute taboo, where will the Pangu civilization lead to in the future?
"There is a terrible beast out there that is ready to eat us at any moment. How will the individuals of the Pangu civilization live their daily life in panic?
"Nobody can answer those questions, but everybody will gradually wake up to the unacceptable answer. In the end, all the individuals will lose the meaning of their lives, indulging in the primitive sensory stimuli and sensual pleasures, ending their lives in self-abandonment. In the worst case, there will be all kinds of psychopathic lunatics who simply decide to end their civilization in the most extreme way. You can imagine it as the suicide of a certain civilization!
"What about the government? Hehe. The government at this point should've lost all its authority, glory, and ruling ability, right? If even the government cannot cope with the scourge of the Flood, what's the point of having such a government?
"The Pangu civilization will degenerate at an astonishing speed into anarchy. Everybody will crash back and forth between the two extremes of desperation and madness, as if they are all suffering from the most severe bipolar disorder. Perhaps, in only a hundred years, the Pangu alliance created by the thirteen carbon-based intelligent species will be destroyed!
"Let me ask you, as the leader of the Pangu civilization, after you foresee such a bleak future, what can you do other than depriving all the people of their feelings and desires so that they can continue their 'normal' lives and jobs to keep the civilization running at the minimum level?"
Li Yao thought hard for a long time and said, "That does seem to be the case. In fact, as long as we are alive, material things are not the most important thing. The most important thing is whether or not we can see hope. As long as there is hope, it doesn't matter how difficult our life is right now, but if the future is completely blocked by the Flood without any hope of development, the entire civilization will be lost. It is very likely that the collapse of the government, the chaos of order, and the collapse of the civilization will happen.
"Speaking of which, erasing feelings and desires and blocking the development of all technologies is not a solution in the long run. In the end, won't it still be a dead end?"
"It may be a temporary solution."
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
