The ghosts of the Primeval Civilization were all frozen.
"What did you say?"
The female captain found it hard to believe. "Didn't you come to this place after all the difficulties and passed all the tests for the legacy of the primeval era? It's the only hope to save your civilization, but you're going to … refuse it?"
"Yes, I refuse."
Li Yao was calmer and more relaxed. He smiled and said, "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not betting everything on the survival of the entire civilization on a whim, nor am I playing hard to get so that I can approach the 'correct answer'. I truly believe that the so-called legacy of the primeval era is not good for my civilization. Or rather, my civilization is not ready to accept such a generous gift yet. The time is not ripe yet!"
"Why?"
The female captain stared at Li Yao without blinking. "Can you explain it?"
"Since the very beginning, I've been wondering what the real purpose of the 'ultimate test' is. What are you trying to test and measure exactly? Are they really such black and white concepts as' justice 'and' evil '?"
Li Yao shook his head and said, "No, I don't think so. On the march of a civilization, the concepts of righteousness and evil are changing every moment. There are more than one ways to save a civilization. Who can say that they are always right and will always be right?
"It's just like in the civilization of mankind, there are personalities like me and Ding Ling Dong, but there are also Long Yangjun, Boss Bai, Li Jialing, Li Linghai, Lei Chenghu, Guo Chunfeng … There are thousands of different personalities, different ideologies, and different beliefs. They are all fighting for the rise of the entire civilization in their own way. Am I necessarily more correct and more capable of saving the civilization than they are? Or rather, if everybody's personalities and ideologies are changed into mine, with only one voice, one ideology, and one path, even if it seems to be a bright and righteous path, will such a world be better than right now?
"Even I dare not say so myself.
"I'm afraid that's why you said that there was no correct answer at the beginning.
"I think that even after thirty thousand years of torment and reflection, the surviving members of the Primeval Tribe wouldn't agree that their ancestors were wrong, would they? Just like there are 'Cultivators' and 'Immortal Cultivators' among human beings, there must be two or even more factions among you. Some people will always believe that their ancestors were not wrong and that the 'Mass Extinction Order' and the 'Solar Defense Plan' should have been more ruthless.
"Therefore, 'righteousness' and 'good and evil' are not what you value most at all. When you reach the level of a 'Quasi God Civilization', your beliefs have long surpassed the concepts of 'righteousness' and 'evil'. Perhaps you also know that you will never find a way out if you are too caught up in the issues of righteousness and evil.
"What you care about is not righteousness but the attitude of a civilization when it is faced with the forces that suddenly expand or fall from the sky.
"From the past on Earth at the beginning to the struggle and rise of the Primeval Tribe in the Universe Ocean, you have in fact hinted to me countless times that the control and utilization of any power is not without a price. There is a 'Heavenly Dao' that has secretly marked the price for every power. The more powerful one is to control and utilize the power, the heavier and even more gory the price will be. If you are too obsessed with the power, instead of becoming the master of the power, you will end up as the slave of the power.
"The mammoths and the saber-toothed tigers seemed to have been blessed by evolution and grasped the unparalleled power in the environment at that time. They became the dominators of a certain area, but the price they paid was that they were too complacent and lost the motivation to continue evolving. In the end, when the 'mutants' of human beings appeared, they were annihilated in only one moment.
"The same tragedy happened to the alien species such as the 'Void Hunters' and the 'Giant Crab'. Originating from the natural paradises with abundant spiritual energy, they were thousands of times stronger than the saber-toothed tigers and the mammoths, and the price they paid was thousands of times more gory. If it weren't for the Flood, they would never have known what real wisdom and civilization looked like.
"What about the earthlings who entered the industrialization and informationization society? They seemed to have mastered the advanced technology and superior civilization that all the other creatures on Earth could not master, but the price was that they had lost self-control and stimulated the self-destructive tendencies deep in their genes to the extreme. The First World War, the Second World War, and even the thermonuclear war that turned the atmosphere into a black curtain and turned the land into a wasteland — the Third World War. These were the prices that the people on Earth had to pay for power.
"What about the descendants of the earthlings, the Primeval Clan? Of course, you paid a price too, and it was a price that was much higher than that of the earthlings, the saber-toothed tigers, the mammoths, the Void Hunters, and the Giant Crab.
"It was too fast. The evolution of your civilization was too fast. You were not the natives at the center of the Universe Ocean but the 'mutants' who invaded from the outside. Before you came to the center of the Universe Ocean, you had never been in contact with spiritual energy on such a large scale and in such a deep way. Wasn't the abundant and intense spiritual energy in the natural paradises a power that 'fell from the sky and was completely free' for you?
"With the assistance of such 'completely free power', you completed the transformation from an ordinary civilization to a quasi god-level civilization in only tens of thousands of years, but you were also lost in the overly powerful power without exception.
"Just now, I scanned your social form and technological development and discovered that you were a rather abnormal civilization with a lot of faults. In certain fields, especially in the field of bloody and murderous military technology, you had developed to the peak and even the most insane level. However, in the fields of humanities, law, and morality, you were not much more advanced than the Earth era. Because of the coldness and darkness in the universe, you even regressed to the feudal and tribal level of the Middle Ages on Earth. Such a tear between technology and humanities was too weird.
"I assume that the force that corrupted the Void Hunters, the Giant Crab, and other alien species in the past and kept the inferior civilizations in a slave society forever began to corrupt the Primeval Civilization, didn't it?
"So, why did you perform so poorly on the path of the rise of your civilization? Why did you issue the 'Mass Extinction Order'? Why did you forget the lessons of the Earth era after slaughtering most of the civilizations and launched a cruel civil war again? Why did you propose the 'Solar Defense Line Plan'? It is meaningless to blame some people for their low moral standards. The root of the problem is that you are lost in the power that you cannot control. You are expanding so fast that your moral standards cannot keep up with the progress of technology. You are too greedy. You want to control things that you cannot control. In just a few tens of thousands of years, you have achieved hundreds of millions of years of glory.
"Whether or not you could keep a clear head and make rational decisions in the face of unparalleled power and fatal temptation — that is what you really care about, isn't it?"
The female captain listened quietly. After hearing that, she and all the ghosts of the Primeval Civilization finally showed the most ashamed, remorseful, and pained expressions.
The lips of the female captain shivered. There was no telling whether it was because there was no corresponding answer in the preset program or because a certain truth was revealed above the program, but she kept silent.
"The new-generation civilization of mankind in the Pangu universe is lucky."
Li Yao's smile was more and more brilliant. "Although we are also an artificial civilization by chance, and although our 'parent civilizations' such as the Pangu Civilization and the Nuwa Clan have left abundant heritages for us, those heritages were all buried under the sand and drifted in the sea of stars for a long time. We mainly worked our way through all the obstacles with our own hands and walked to where we are today. Not only have we developed advanced technology and practiced powerful techniques, but our people also boasted sound bodies and solid morals. The experts and the wise could reach a general consensus, too. The entire civilization was aggressive, vigorous, and full of fearless hope.
"Under such circumstances, we discovered the relics left by the Pangu civilization one after another. Because the gap between the Pangu civilization and us was not very large, and the technology of the relics was only discovered sporadically, it did not cause too much of a shock to our social form and morals. Even if some of the subversive things were found, we could still digest and absorb them slowly.
"It is safe to say that such heritages are the things that are beneficial to the civilization of mankind at this moment.
"However, what about the 'primordial heritages' from the Primitive Civilization? According to you, those are things that are at least hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us. They are so unbelievably advanced that they can make our civilization leap to the level of a quasi god-level civilization all of a sudden. Hehe. That is too unbelievable. Just like it is impossible for an ordinary person to become a Yuanying expert all of a sudden by taking divine pills, I cannot imagine what it is like for an ordinary civilization to become a quasi god-level civilization all of a sudden.
"Let me make another inappropriate analogy. It is like a poor man who suddenly wins tens of millions of dollars in the lottery. Do you really think that he has enough knowledge, ability, and will to control the windfall instead of losing himself in the materialistic world of money?
"Ordinary people who were mediocre but happy and lived simple lives suddenly became rich overnight. Their personalities changed drastically, and they were corrupted by their own desires. They squandered their money recklessly and committed crimes. After that, they returned to poverty. They couldn't accept such an ending, and they fell into an even more painful abyss. I've heard a lot of such things.
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