Chapter 11: An Infinite Future
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Chapter 11: An Infinite Future
Can someone like Peng Bing achieve transcendence?
Of course he can!
If even the world’s number-one grandmaster could not easily achieve transcendence, then what meaning would the revival of spiritual energy have?
“In fact, Peng Bing, you are only one small step away from achieving transcendence!” As he spoke, Xiong Yan illustrated the distance with his thumb and forefinger.
Had someone like Peng Bing been born into a world of martial heroes, he would long ago have cultivated internal energy from external training, roaming the world and repaying grudges and kindness as he pleased. Had he been born into a world of gods and demons, he would already have awakened his vital essence, circulated it through his entire body, and embarked upon the martial path of the Human Immortal.
Unfortunately, before the appearance of the Stars in Daylight, the real world had been nothing more than a purely material realm. There was no spiritual energy and no transcendence. Even after reaching the limits of the human body, even after breaking through those limits, one was still merely a carbon-based life-form!
At this point, Xiong Yan glanced at Chu Xuan. Chu Xuan immediately produced a book. Its cover was a plain yellow, almost entirely undecorated, bearing only a few ordinary words:
An Introduction to Vitality Martial Arts.
Under everyone’s gaze, Peng Bing accepted the book without hesitation and began reading it at once. Before long, he was completely immersed in its pages, occasionally exclaiming in admiration.
“Excellent!”
“Great minds think alike! In many places, I cannot say your ideas resemble mine. They are exactly the same!”
Xiong Yan acted as though he had not heard him.
This textbook had been compiled in his previous life with Peng Bing as its principal source and the other grandmasters as supplements. It was a textbook written by Peng Bing himself. How could he not be familiar with it? How could he fail to recognize every passage?
“Everyone, there is no need to envy him. Peng Bing is not the only one who can soon achieve transcendence. All of you can do the same.”
“Now that spiritual energy has revived, everything in existence will be affected. Animals will undergo mutations. It is easy to foresee that, before long, the primeval forests and the depths of the oceans will become extraordinarily dangerous.”
“All kinds of beast tides are bound to emerge one after another. The depths of the sea in particular—places where humanity is currently unable to intervene on a regular basis—will give birth to unimaginable sea monsters and colossal beasts. Even maritime transport will be affected.”
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“But humanity’s position as the protagonist of Heaven and Earth will not be shaken. The Earth will still be ours to command. Animals are evolving, but human beings are evolving as well!”
“And you are the first beings to embark upon the path of evolution because of the revival of spiritual energy.”
“As for the copy of An Introduction to Vitality Martial Arts in Peng Bing’s hands, it is simply more suited to him. That does not mean the same path will suit all of you. In truth, no two people are exactly alike.”
“Some people are suited to the hard, straightforward methods of external martial arts. They first temper their bodies through years of arduous training until they reach the true limits of the human form. Then, by using that trace of spirituality within spiritual energy, and drawing upon the correspondence between the seven emotions, the six desires, and the five internal organs, they unlock the power of those organs. In the end, they give birth to vital essence and achieve transcendence.”
As he spoke, Xiong Yan glanced at Peng Bing, who remained immersed in the manual.
“Anger harms the liver, joy harms the heart, sorrow harms the lungs, thought harms the spleen, and fear harms the kidneys. By using the seven emotions and six desires to excavate the potential of the five internal organs, I tried this path myself when I was sixty. I even went to several neighboring countries and conducted quite a few experiments. But the path simply did not work,” the Azure Void Daoist said softly.
“That was because spiritual energy did not exist before,” Xiong Yan said seriously.
Take Peng Bing, for example. He had used traditional martial arts and modern technology to strengthen and cleanse his sinews and marrow more than once, yet he had never managed to cultivate a single supernatural ability!
“Some people are suited to combining movement and stillness. Through breathing exercises, energy circulation, and entering meditative concentration, they ultimately use that trace of spirituality within spiritual energy to combine the power of the mind with the ATP in the body. They turn the false into the real, produce true energy, and achieve transcendence.”
At this point, Xiong Yan looked toward the Azure Void Daoist, who was already more than a hundred years old this year yet appeared scarcely different from a beautiful woman in her thirties.
With the Azure Void Daoist’s beauty and figure, if she walked down a busy street, young men would probably rush over to ask for her contact information.
Who could have imagined that this stunning beauty, whose appearance seemed almost celestial, was in fact more than a century old?
“Some people are suited to contemplating images and preserving the spirit. In the state of initial meditation, the mind becomes still as water. In the state of sustained meditation, one can remain unmoved even when Mount Tai collapses before one’s eyes. In the state of perpetual meditation, with the assistance of that trace of spirituality within spiritual energy, one can unify the individual consciousness and elevate it into mental power.”
At this moment, Xiong Yan exchanged a glance with Lin Er, who came from Dragon Tiger Mountain.
That fellow had invented the split-mind method of spirit cultivation!
For ordinary people who practiced it, ten out of ten would develop split personalities!
Even with Lin Er standing before them, it was difficult to say whether he himself had truly avoided such a fate. If he had not happened to live through the revival of spiritual energy, it might not have been long before he deliberately split his own mind.
But what did a few flaws matter when he had explored transcendence and longevity without spiritual energy and achieved such remarkable results?
“Besides, there is science!”
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“When science is combined with transcendence, it can give birth to many fascinating new schools of thought: scientific martial arts, electricity-driven techniques, magnetic-field rotation, solar-energy cultivation, and many others. When practicing such methods, one must study not only martial arts, but also subjects related to magnetic fields, solar radiation, and the like.”
“There is also the most direct path of transplanting supernatural organs. Although it transforms the human body into something neither human nor beast, at least it still leads to transcendence.”
Hearing this, Bai Mo instinctively rubbed his nose. For some reason, whenever he heard about this path, he felt a chill creeping across his back.
“Combining science with spiritual energy can also give birth to many fascinating new schools of thought. One could use spiritual energy to transfer individual consciousness into the internet, transforming a carbon-based organism into a digital life-form and living within the online world in the form of artificial intelligence.”
“Although from that moment onward, one would lose the joys and sorrows of a carbon-based organism, as well as the senses of taste, smell, and hearing—and although one’s life would thereafter consist of nothing but zeroes and ones—from another perspective, could this not be considered an indirect achievement of immortality?”
“Using spiritual energy, one could evolve from digital life into informational life. Would that count as the Great Path of the Primordial Spirit? And if informational life were elevated into conceptual life, could that process be called Union with the Dao? At that point, should such a being be called Bright Heaven or Supreme Unity?”
“This is spiritual energy!”
“The revival of spiritual energy should bring us more than merely the so-called paths of vitality martial arts, energy cultivation, and spirit refinement. It should bring us more than simply preserving the spirit, visualizing the divine, and pursuing longevity. It should bring us an entirely new future, one filled with infinite possibilities!”
“I understand now!” Lu Zhou suddenly slapped his forehead.
“Following the path of vitality martial arts, someone like Brother Peng would certainly become powerful. But if he mastered science, combined spiritual energy with it, and completely unraveled the mysteries of genetics, could he not achieve transformations without limit and be reborn from a drop of blood?”
“As everyone knows, according to the hypothesis concerning the origin of life, all life on Earth came from the ocean, from that original giant organic molecule. Under this hypothesis, all living things are, in a certain sense, descended from a common ancestor.”
“Since selective gene expression and genetic mutations allowed primitive life to develop into the splendid world of today, could we not control genes and reverse the process?”
Hearing this, Ji Zhen nodded solemnly. “If we truly mastered the mysteries of genetics completely, then unlimited transformations and rebirth from a drop of blood would indeed be easy.”
“By then, we could even use the free combination of base pairs to create beings that exist only in mythology—the Candle Dragon, the Three-Legged Golden Crow, the Vermilion Bird, and others...”
End of Chapter
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