Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Li Yao was used to ignoring the first half of the mental devil’s sentence. He mumbled, “What do you think we are in right now?”
“Generally speaking—”
The mental devil replied calmly, “We are already dead.”
“What?”
Li Yao’s soul released sharp waves that turned into countless spurting bright gold data and runes. “Are you serious? Is this your conclusion?”
“What else could it be?”
“Our souls have completely lost connection with our bodies,” the mental devil replied. “No matter how I searched and perceived, I couldn’t find the ‘string’ that could drag us back into our bodies. Our bodies are billions of stars away. Maybe our brains and internal organs have all stopped functioning. The best
case scenario is that we become vegetative and are frozen by Xiao Ming and Wen Wen.
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“Isn’t such a state ‘death’?”
“But.”
Li Yao retorted, “We’ve been in a similar state before. When we just jumped to the center of the sea of stars and suffered the scourge of excessive stellar radiation in the Venomous Scorpion Star Cluster, when our bodies were almost rotten, our souls left our bodies and snuck into Wu Ying. We attached
ourselves to a spiritual puppet and got to know Han Te and Liuli!”
“It was different. At that time, our souls and bodies were in the same Sector and the same solar system. The distance between us could not have been more than ten light seconds. It is safe to say that we were still within the coverage of the magnetic field of the same star and kept in touch in a certain
mysterious way.
The mental devil sighed and said, “But this time, our souls are too far away from our bodies. As the saying goes, ‘quantity leads to qualitative change’. When the distance is thousands of lightyears, it is enough to cut off or even erase the connection between the body and the soul.
‘It’s true that for the experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage at a high level, soul out of the body and traveling day and night seem to be a common skill. But most people’s souls and bodies are not separated by more than hundreds of kilometers. They are only separated by a few light seconds at most. For
example, we ‘jumped’ dozens of Sectors without caring about our lives and engaged in super-intensity fierce battles in the form of souls. We were almost drained of our last bit of soul power, and we were bombarded by an entire fleet from low-Earth orbit for almost an hour. Do you think it’s possible that we
are still alive?
“Therefore, right now, it is not a question of whether or not we can find our way home and our bodies, but rather, I suspect that, even if we can find our bodies, our souls might not be compatible with our bodies and cannot be melded!
“Well—”
Li Yao felt that his head was dizzy, but he couldn’t help but feel sad.
Although everyone who came out to cultivate had long buried their heads in their belts, licking blood on the edge of a knife to make a living, paying particular attention to the fact that their heads were as big as a bowl and that they would be a good man again after 18 years, when they really ‘died, it still felt
strange. So melancholy, so melancholy.
“So, have we become spectral Cultivators?”
Li Yao wriggled his soul so that the bright gold data and information streams that were constantly overflowing from the depths of his soul would form a virtual palm. He tured the palm over and over as he warmed up his fingers and carefully observed, “Although I have never died and don’t know what it
feels like to be a spectral cultivator, I have many ghost repair friends in the past. For example, Senior Ding Yin and Sister Qingging, who saved my life on the Grand Desolate Train. I have heard them talk about the feeling of being a spectral cultivator.
“Ghost Cultivators… don’t seem to be like that.
“The spectral Cultivators are a very special group of residual soul waves. They are very sensitive and fragile. Often, they can only hide themselves in special crystal processors and move around with their artificial bodies. Such special crystal processors are like their unique brains. Once they are integrated into
a crystal processor, it will be very difficult for them to move around. The procedure to move to a second crystal processor is very complicated and dangerous.
“But that was not what I felt.
“I dont feel that I’ve simply melded with the wreckage of the floating fortress’ crystal processor. It’s not that simple. I can extend my will and senses in all directions at my will to invade and manipulate more magical equipment and crystal processors. I can clearly ‘see’ the incomparably brilliant and
wonderful new world outside that is made up of endless electromagnetic waves, information data, and cosmic radiation. I even feel that my soul can rush like lightning through the Spiritual Nexus to any place I want!
“Even if I become a lonely ghost, I will still be a lonely ghost wandering in the Spiritual Nexus. Is this something that ordinary spectral Cultivators can do?
“You were right. Common spectral Cultivators do not have super abilities like us.
“But there is a special spectral Cultivator who might be able to,” the mental devil said. “The star spirit.
“Star spirits?”
Li Yao was dazed for a moment.
He had not heard the term for a long time.
Years ago, when he performed a space jump and tried to perish together with Skeleton Dragon, Sparkle had carried five special spectral Cultivators, or Phantom Entities, who were Professor Mo Xuan and Li Yao’s four senior brothers.
As it turned out, Sparkle and Skeleton Dragon were engaged in a cosmic storm together. Under the intense radiation and the bombardment of the high-energy particles, the Phantom Entities such as Professor Mo Xuan underwent marvelous changes and turned into the prototypes of the spectral Cultivators
or the information lifeforms that they had never seen before, which were the ‘star spirits”
Later, in the battle of Heavenly Saints City of the Flying Star Sector, in order to save Li Yao and the entire Flying Star Sector, Professor Mo Xuan had to swallow the mainframe crystal processor that contained the star child, the extraterrestrial devils, by force. Enticed and corrupted by the darkness, he
eventually evolved into “Mo Xuan the extraterrestrial devils’. He tried to turn the ‘spectral Cultivators’ into the ‘Spirit Clan’ and turn the Spirit Clan into the main body of the human civilization. It was a whole new story.
“Are you suggesting that we have solved the ultimate mysteries of Professor Mo Xuan’s heritage by accident?”
Li Yao immediately realized what was going on. “Therefore, our souls turned into the form of Professor Mo Xuan. Super spectral Cultivators—star spirits?”
“At first, I thought so, too.
The mental devil said solemnly, “But after thinking about it carefully for three days and three nights, I think the causal logic is probably wrong. The key question is, how did Professor Mo Xuan get rid of the Phantom Entities that were almost annihilated in the beginning and become a ‘star spirit’ that is far
more powerful than ordinary spectral Cultivators and can hack into crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus freely with the souls of human beings?
“If his soul underwent a high degree of mutation the moment he became a star spirit and he was no longer a pure human being, who was the culprit of his mutation?
“About that.”
Li Yao hesitated. “It’s hard to explain. God knows what kind of cosmic radiation and high-energy particle streams were stored in the cosmic storm we encountered years ago. What kind of impurities were mixed in the particle streams? What kind of combination of waves and elements triggered the mutation
from Phantom Entities to star spirits?
“Back when we were in the Flying Star Sector, Professor Mo Xuan had done some experiments, hoping to replicate the cosmic storms perfectly and upgrade more spectral Cultivators into star spirits.
“When the new federation was established and the Black Wind Fleet arrived, the federal government took the training of ‘Star Spirit Warriors’ as one of the most important projects of the hundred-year-long project and spent a lot of resources to simulate the past.
“However, no matter how many areas of cosmic storms they found, or how many simulations of cosmic storms of different forms they made, they could not find the secret of upgrading from ‘ordinary spectral Cultivators’ to star spirits’ even after they tried the combination of every frequency of the waves
and the metal elements. How uncanny!
“That’s right. The resources of the federation have been poured into it thousands of times, only to no avail.
“But years ago, during a random space jump, a star spirit was accidentally created by a cosmic storm. Do you believe in coincidences and luck?”
Li Yao was dazed for a moment. “It’s true that I don’t believe in coincidences, nor do I believe in luck. But it is also a fact that Professor Mo Xuan turned into a star spirit. How do you explain it?”
“Maybe, the problem is not the cosmic storm, not how special the cosmic storm was, but another critical factor.
“That is ‘Vulture Li Yao’. It was because ‘Vulture Li Yao’ was present and burnt his life and will to the maximum when he perished together with Skeleton Dragon that Professor Mo Xuan and the rest of them were infected and tured from Phantom Entities into ‘star spirits.
“Are you saying that we—”
Li Yao was dazed again.
“The answer to this question might be the same as the answer to the other two questions.
The mental devil continued. ‘Why was Professor Mo Xuan able to evolve from a Phantom Entity into a Star Spirit when we were present and burnt our soul to the maximum under the influence of the cosmic storm?
“Why is it that, after swallowing the database of our brains, a new generation of life-forms with self-awareness such as ‘Xiaoming’ and ‘Wenwen’ are born in the vast ocean of information in the ‘Game of Civilization?
“Why did ‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie, a self-learning and upgrade war puppet from the world of magic, mistake us for his own kind when he first met us?
“You should know how special and powerful the ‘Punching King’ is. Do you think that it has never met other ‘self-learning’ and ‘upgraded battle puppets’ in the ‘Wicked Lands’? Didn’t it tear apart all the garbage without any hesitation? It doesn’t seem to care about the friendship of its own kind at all.
“No. When it said ‘kindred beings’, it was not just referring to the upgraded battle puppets. There was a deeper meaning to it.. Maybe it sensed the scent that was hidden in the deepest part of our souls with its natural instincts from the world of magic and knew that we were indeed its… real kind!
