"A farm?"
Li Yao and Daniel Zhang understood what Red Pole Star meant at the same time. With sweat popping out of their foreheads and their faces pale, they pointed at their noses and said, "So, we are all 'rice' and 'fruit trees' on a farm, and our feelings and imagination are the 'fruits' that the will of Earth needs?"
"That's my guess. Otherwise, why would the will of Earth lock us in this wretched prison of reincarnation after countless reincarnations?"
Red Pole Star pointed at its temples and said, "Its purpose is to stimulate our souls to a certain extent so that we can produce feelings and imagination that it can never secrete.
"The seemingly bizarre, bizarre, and even absurd legends, the works that will be dismissed as nonsense, the imaginative worlds, and the most audacious and ignorant yearning for the end of the universe — they constitute the solid core of a great civilization, but the will of Earth itself does not have such a core. If it once had hot blood, it must've cooled and condensed billions of years ago. Even if it once had dreams, they must've been obliterated into mottled pieces!
"Even on the level of the grand universe, it is truly an invincible super monster that boasts remarkable computational ability and an enormous army. A dominating being in the level of gods can perfectly control everything in the grand universe and calculate perfect answers for all the questions. However, on the level of 'life' and 'civilization', the so-called 'perfection' does not exist at all. When the moon is full, it will be waning. After the peak, it will be an abyss. The end of 'perfection' is destruction.
"In short, the will of Earth does not have feelings or dreams. It does not even have the 'ability to make mistakes', and the ability to make mistakes is a critical factor in the evolution of life. Only by making the most whimsical and absurd mistakes can we have a chance to survive and develop in the ever-changing grand universe and even unleash infinite possibilities.
"A civilization that does not have imagination and would not make mistakes would not be able to discover the slightest possibility, not even finding the meaning of its existence. It is fated to hit its limits not long after climbing to the pinnacle, and it would never be able to break through its own limits. Therefore, it had to rely on external forces — a race that possesses emotions, dreams, and imagination, and would keep making mistakes in search of infinite possibilities. That is us.
"We humans are not as good as we make ourselves out to be. We don't even deserve the title of 'the wisest of all things'. We are a very bad kind of carbon-based intelligent life. We have a lot of emotions, but we are often impulsive because of our emotions. We fall into the dark swamp of human nature and hurt ourselves. We have the ambition to keep forging ahead, but this ambition often turns into ambition, and we lose everything because of an ambition that we cannot support. We are ambitious and full of dreams, but this makes us often suffer from our own dissatisfaction. We are insatiable. No matter how much we get, we will be bored in three to five seconds at most. We are eager to find something ten times, a hundred times more, to fill the emptiness in our hearts.
"But it is precisely these flaws that have shaped us and allowed us to possess the greatest strength in the sea of stars. When our ancestors looked up at the starry sky for the first time a long time ago and sighed, our race was destined to embark on a path of supremacy that would overcome all obstacles and surpass all obstacles. Only in such a way can we be qualified to be the 'heart', 'brain', or 'engine' of the will of Earth!"
Li Yao and Daniel Zhang were shocked again. They looked at Red Pole Star in a different way.
"So, the entire Reincarnation Prison is the 'engine' of the will of Earth?"
Daniel Zhang mumbled.
"Yes. I like the term 'engine' more than 'brain' or 'farm'," Red Pole Star said.
"Because the 'engine hypothesis' can explain why the will of Earth does not dare to restart it immediately without considering anything. It is because doing so will not only cause serious damage to the 'engine' itself but also disrupt the continuity of the power output, which will affect its combat ability on the battlefield of the grand universe."
Li Yao and Daniel Zhang thought for a moment and both felt that it did make sense.
If the will of Earth was a tank that was engaged in a fierce battle with the enemy, its engine could not be restarted easily. If the engine was damaged for three to five minutes, the will of Earth would be shot into a beehive by the enemy.
"Your assumption does make sense, but I still don't understand it."
Daniel Zhang frowned and said, "Even if the Reincarnation Prison is really a farm with infinite cycles and an engine that is always running at a super high speed, why is it happening now? Why is it happening now? Why is it happening between the 1970s and the 2010s?"
"Because it is the golden age of the civilization of Earth. Human beings have reached the peak of the carbon-based intelligent life on a single planet in the past decades," Red Pole Star said.
"My guess is that the will of Earth can certainly set the setting time of the Reincarnation Prison in the Middle Ages or even the Stone Age, but it will not be able to harvest enough emotions and imagination. From the Stone Age to the Middle Ages, and even to the modern times when the Industrial Revolution just sprouted, it was a dark age without wisdom. The people living in such an ignorant and isolated environment did not have enough food to eat, and they had to devote most of their energy to the competition for survival. Only a few people had such 'luxuries' as emotions and imagination. The underdeveloped means of information transmission made it impossible for their emotions and imagination to resonate with other people on a large scale.
"For a poet who lived in the Middle Ages, even if he wrote an immortal poem about stars and the universe, it might take thirty to fifty years, or even a hundred to two hundred years before it could be transmitted to the ears of another poet thousands of kilometers away. Most people except for the noble poets could not understand one ten-thousandth of their subtlety at all. Such information transmission efficiency is too low. How can the emotions and imagination that are stimulated satisfy the needs of the will of Earth?
"But our era, or rather, the era that the will of Earth carefully created for us, is completely different.
"The steam revolution, the electric revolution, and the information revolution!
"World War I, World War II, the Cold War!
"Turing machines, computers, the internet, mobile phones, wireless networks, and all kinds of information terminals!
"Universal education, national entertainment nurtured by a solid enough material foundation, online games with millions of people at the same time, online novels with millions of words, high-speed interaction between authors and readers at any time!
"Space technology, cloning technology, nanotechnology, information explosion, technological explosion … everyone can share their dreams and emotions with others anytime and anywhere through mobile terminals, forming a large-scale resonance similar to mass hysteria!
"Don't you think that this is the best era if the will of Earth really wants to harvest our emotions and dreams?"
Li Yao and Daniel Zhang were stunned for a long time.
Scratching his head, Daniel Zhang said, "So, you're saying that all the information terminals we use, including the social environment we live in, everything was deliberately created by the will of Earth to harvest us?"
"It might not have been deliberately created — it's all too real, so real that it doesn't seem fake. I suspect that there really was a 'Planet of Origins' a long time ago, and every cycle we experience is based on the history of Planet of Origins," Red Pole Star said.
"But that time frame must have been carefully chosen by the will of Earth. Only such a golden era would be most convenient for it to 'cultivate' the strongest emotions and the richest imagination, and carry out the most efficient 'harvest'.
"If that's the case, there's another explanation for the Apocalypse's erasure of the Observers. Perhaps it's not just because they were afraid that the Observers would awaken more Heroic Spirits, but also part of the harvest. After all, the Observers are usually those with the strongest emotions and the richest imagination, and harvesting one Observer is probably more useful than harvesting a hundred ordinary people."
"That means …"
Daniel Zhang thought of a chilling possibility. "The creation of the Observers, the awakening of the Awakened, and even the resistance of the Prison Breakers … everything was part of the will of Earth's plan?"
"It's possible. After all, when the Awakened discover the truth and evolve into the Prison Breakers, they will certainly release infinite feelings, willpower, and determination when they resist. Maybe the will of Earth needs those things?"
Red Pole Star smiled. "However, I've always believed that something that can perfectly control everything does not exist. Perhaps the will of Earth at its peak could control six billion heroic spirits at will, but today is different from the past. This time, we are different!"
"Got it."
Thinking for a moment, Daniel Zhang asked, "Then, why did the will of Earth set the end of the Prison of Samsara in the thirties or forties of the twenty-first century? The later it is, the greater the information explosion will be, and the more dreams people will have. Won't it harvest more feelings and imagination?"
"No. In that case, it will be too much," Red Pole Star said.
Red Pole Star said, "Harvesting feelings and imagination is a double-edged sword. When the hero spirits output the most intense waves in their soul incessantly, they will certainly awaken and resist nonstop. The will of Earth must control the resistance of the Awakened to a reasonable limit and must not exceed the tipping point, or the situation will be completely out of control.
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