Li Yao ignored the first half of the mental devil's sentence out of habit. He mumbled, "Then, what kind of state do you think we are in right now?"
"In the general sense —"
The mental devil said calmly, "We are already dead."
"What!"
Li Yao's soul released sharp waves, which turned into bright gold data and runes that spurted out. "Are you kidding me? Is that your conclusion?"
"What else?"
The mental devil asked back. "Our souls have completely lost connection with our bodies. However hard I searched and sensed, I could not find the 'thread' that could drag us back into our bodies. Our bodies are billions of stars away. Perhaps our brains and internal organs have all stopped functioning. The best-case scenario is that we are in a vegetative state and frozen by Xiaoming and Wenwen.
"Such a state is called 'death', isn't it?"
"But …"
Li Yao argued, "We have been through a similar state before. When we were scourged by excessive stellar radiation in the Devilish Scorpion Nebula right after we jumped to the center of the cosmos, our souls broke away from our bodies and snuck into the planet of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, attaching ourselves to a spiritual puppet and making friends with Han Te and the Coloured Glaze!"
"That was different. At that time, our souls and our bodies were both in the same Sector and in the same solar system. The distance between us was no more than ten lightseconds. It is safe to say that we were still within the coverage of the magnetic field of the same star and in the 'same world'. We kept in touch with each other in a certain mysterious way."
The mental devil sighed and said, "But this time, our souls and our bodies are too far apart. As the saying goes, 'quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes'. When the distance is ten million lightyears away, it is enough to sever or even erase all the connections between the body and the soul.
"Exactly. For the experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage who have a high level, traveling at night and traveling at night seems to be a common and necessary skill. However, for most people, their soul and their body are no more than hundreds of kilometers apart. It is only several light seconds at most. Take us as an example. We have 'jumped' from dozens of Sectors to dozens of Sectors without caring about our own lives, engaged in a fierce battle in the form of souls, and almost exhausted the last bit of our soul power. Then, we were bombarded by a whole fleet from the orbit of the planet and were in the ion flames of almost ten thousand degrees for almost an hour. Just think about it. Is it possible that we did not die?
"Therefore, it is not a question of whether or not we can find our way home and our bodies, but I suspect that even if we find our bodies, our souls and our bodies may be incompatible and unable to be melted!"
"Well —"
Li Yao felt that his blood was freezing. He could not help but feel rather upset.
Although it was said that everyone who became a cultivator had long put their lives on the line, licking blood from the edge of a blade to make a living, and paying particular attention to the fact that one's head was as big as a bowl's scar and that they would be a good man again eighteen years later, it still felt strange and melancholy to be "dead" for real.
"So, have we turned into spectral Cultivators?"
Li Yao wriggled his soul and gathered the bright gold data and information streams that were flowing out of his soul into a virtual palm. He turned the palm over and over, warmed up his fingers, and observed carefully. "Although I have never died and do not know what it feels like to be a spectral Cultivator, I used to have a lot of good friends who were spectral Cultivators. For example, Senior Ding Yin and Sister Qing Qing, who saved my life on the train on the Grand Desolate Plateau. I heard them talk about how it feels to be a spectral Cultivator.
"Spectral Cultivators … don't seem to be like that.
"Spectral Cultivators are a group of very special waves of the remaining souls. They are very sensitive and fragile. Often, they can only hide in special crystal processors and move around with artificial bodies. Such special crystal processors are equivalent to their unique brains. Once they are melted into a crystal processor, it will be very difficult for them to wander around. If they want to migrate to a second crystal processor, the procedures will be very complicated, and the risk factor will be very high.
"But that is not what I feel.
"I don't think that I have simply melted with the debris of the crystal processors in the floating fortress. It's not as simple as that. I can extend my will and senses to all directions freely to invade and manipulate more magical equipment and crystal processors. I can clearly 'see' the splendid, marvelous new world outside that is made of infinite spiritual waves, information data, and cosmic radiation. I even feel that my soul can rush to any place that I want to through the Spiritual Nexus as fast as lightning!
"Even if I do turn into a wandering ghost, I will still be a wandering ghost on the Spiritual Nexus. Is that something that common spectral Cultivators can achieve?"
"You're right. Common spectral Cultivators do not have the super abilities that we do," the mental devil said.
"But there is a special kind of spectral Cultivator that may be able to. They are the 'star spirits'."
"Star spirits?"
Li Yao was slightly dazed.
It had been a long time since he last heard the term.
Years ago, when he performed the first space jump and tried to die together with Skeleton Dragon, Sparkle had carried five special spectral Cultivators, or Phantom Entities, on board. They were Professor Mo Xuan and Li Yao's four senior brothers.
As it turned out, Sparkle and Skeleton Dragon encountered an overwhelming cosmic storm together. Under the strike of the intense radiation and high-energy particles, Professor Mo Xuan and the other Phantom Entities went through amazing changes and turned into spectral Cultivators, or rather, the embryonic form of information life that had never been seen before. They were the 'star spirits'!
Later, in the battle of Heavenly Saints City in the Flying Star Sector, Professor Mo Xuan had to swallow the mainframe crystal processor that contained the extraterrestrial devil, the star child, in order to save Li Yao and the entire Flying Star Sector. Tempted and corrupted by the darkness, he eventually transformed into 'Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan', who tried to turn the 'spectral Cultivators' into the 'Spiriters' so that the Spiriters could become the mainstay of the civilization of mankind. But that was a different story.
"Are you suggesting that we have unraveled the ultimate mysteries of all Professor Mo Xuan's legacies by accident?"
Li Yao immediately realized what was going on. "Therefore, our souls turned into the form of Professor Mo Xuan, the super spectral Cultivators — star spirits?"
"At first, I thought that was the answer, too," the mental devil said solemnly.
"But after considering it carefully for three days and three nights, I realized that the logic of causality might've been reversed. The most important question is, why was Professor Mo Xuan able to get rid of the state of Phantom Entities that was almost obliterated at the beginning and become a 'star spirit' that was far above the common spectral Cultivators and could hack the crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus as a human being's soul freely?
"If his soul had undergone a high mutation the moment he became a 'star spirit', and he was no longer a pure human being, who was the culprit that caused his mutation?"
"About that …"
Li Yao hesitated. "It is very difficult to answer the question. God knows what kind of cosmic radiation and high-energy particles were hidden in the cosmic storm that we encountered years ago, what kind of impurities were mixed in the particles, and what combination of the waves and elements of the frequencies triggered the mutation from 'Phantom Entities' to 'star spirits'.
"Back when he was in the Flying Star Sector, Professor Mo Xuan ran some experiments in order to perfectly replicate the cosmic storm in the past and upgrade more spectral Cultivators into star spirits.
"After the new Federation was established and the news of the Black Wind Fleet's attack came over, the government of the Federation even considered the training of the 'star spirits' as one of the key projects for the next hundred years. A lot of resources were devoted to the simulation of the scenes in the past.
"But no matter how many areas of high incidence of cosmic storms they found, or how many artificial cosmic storms of different shapes were simulated, and almost every frequency of waves and the mixed blast of metal elements was tested, they failed to find the secret to upgrade from 'regular spectral Cultivators' to 'star spirits'. It is truly uncanny!"
"Yes. The resources of the entire Federation were devoted to the experiment, but they failed to find a result even after thousands of repetitions," the mental devil said.
The mental devil said, "But years ago, a random space jump and a cosmic storm accidentally created the marvelous Star Spirits. Do you believe in such a coincidence and luck?"
Li Yao was slightly dazed. "It's true that I don't believe in coincidences or luck, but it is a fact that Professor Mo Xuan turned into a star spirit. How do you explain it?"
"Perhaps, the problem was not the cosmic storm or the uniqueness of the cosmic storm but another factor that was of paramount importance," the mental devil said.
"It was' Vulture Li Yao '. It was exactly because' Vulture Li Yao 'was present and burned his life and will to the maximum when he died together with Skeleton Dragon that Professor Mo Xuan and the rest of them were infected and turned from' Phantom Entities' into 'star spirits'."
"Are you suggesting that we …"
Li Yao was dazed again.
"The answer to that question may be the same as the answers to the other two questions," the mental devil continued.
The mental devil went on. "Why was Professor Mo Xuan able to evolve from a 'Phantom Entity' into a 'Star Spirit' when we were present and burned our souls to the maximum under the scourge of the cosmic storm and contaminated by the waves that we spread out?
"Why was it that new-generation information lives with self-awareness such as' Xiaoming 'and' Wenwen 'could be born in the enormous ocean of information of' Civilization Game 'after swallowing our brain-scanning database?
"Why was it that even 'A Boxing Champion Lei Zonglie', a 'self-learning and upgrading battle puppet' whose core of self-awareness came from the world of magic, mistook us for its own kind when it saw us for the first time?
"You should know how special and strong A Boxing Champion is. Do you think that it has never encountered other 'self-learning and upgrading battle puppets' in the Land of Sins? Those scraps of copper and iron were all torn apart by it without any hesitation. It didn't seem to care about the friendship of its own kind at all.
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