Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Although Su Changfa did not release any spiritual energy, Li Yao still found it barely possible to breathe.

“However,” he said drily, “most of the Cultivators had helped the ordinary people and won their gratitude before, right?”

“So what?

“As the old saying goes, if you give a beggar a bowl of rice, you will be his life-saver, but if you give him a tank of rice, you will be his sworn enemy! The favors that Cultivators did to the ordinary people could never be returned in this life and the next. So, should the ordinary people always keep the kindness in their heart and focus on returning the favors for the rest of this life and probably the next while doing nothing else?

“When there are too many favors, the favors will be a heavy burden, and the last straw on the hatred that was condensed by jealousy, fear, and desperation!

“Perhaps, the rise of the original sin theory was indeed bolstered by part of the Sand Primitive shamans in secret, but they were merely speaking the truth that was on everybody’s mind and nobody dared to voice!

“Have you ever heard a story named ‘the Emperor’s New Clothes’, Fellow Cultivator Li?

“The Cultivators and the ordinary people of the Martial Meritocrats civilization had knitted the ’emperor’s new clothes’ with their hypocritical morals to cover the natural, irreconcilable contradiction between the two parties!

“The natives of the Martial Meritocrats civilization born and raised in such an environment, be they Cultivators or ordinary people, had been brainwashed since childhood. Their eyes were covered in a membrane, and they lost part of their sight. After a long time, they were all convinced that the ’emperor’s new clothes’ were a real thing.

“The Sand Primitive natives, on the other hand, were the innocent child. They saw through the truth with their most barbaric, animalistic instincts and ripped apart the nonexistent new clothes, revealing the cruel truth to everybody without concealing anything!

“Right now, Cultivators and ordinary people could no longer pretend that they were ‘equal’.

“As the saying goes, inequality rather than scarcity is the cause of trouble. If there weren’t such things as a ‘spiritual root’ and ‘techniques’, and everybody in the world was an ordinary person, it wouldn’t be a big deal! However, the fact was that some of the people, with their spiritual roots and techniques, were entitled to wealth, power, and a marvelous life that other people could never hope to enjoy for the rest of their life. Why?

“One’s sense of happiness is not necessarily improved with better materialistic conditions; it is often achieved in comparisons! In a society with Cultivators, even if the materialistic conditions are significantly increased because of the good things that Cultivators have done, the increase of the sense of happiness will still be far from enough to offset the emptiness, frustration, and desperation when ordinary people compare themselves with Cultivators!”

Li Yao was so anxious that he was breathing heavily.

He suddenly felt that, compared to everything that had happened in the Martial Meritocrats Sector, the conundrums that he had been faced with in the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Flying Star Sector, and the Blood Demon Sector were as easy to fix as arithmetic of the elementary school level!

“Just like that, the original sin theory further spread out in the Martial Meritocrats civilization, winning the support of the media and the general public. From the newspapers of the national level to the taxi drivers on the street, everybody was talking about the motions to improve the position of the ordinary people and to limit the abilities of the Cultivators!

“The trend was already unstoppable!

“Don’t forget what I said earlier. The Alliance of Martial Meritocrats adopted a one-person-one-ticket voting system and worshipped the absolute equality between Cultivators and ordinary people. There were a lot of representatives and government officials that were ordinary people in parliament and government agencies of every level!

“With such a government and such a public opinion, do I need to tell you what kind of policies and bills would eventually be passed?

“In the end, the highest authorities of the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats accepted the original sin theory without distinction, and they truly established an organization named ‘Committee of Equal Human Beings’ to investigate the cases of the Cultivators in the past hundred years and to review their ‘unjust enrichment’! Also, the Cultivators would be monitored every hour of every day. What they were doing at a particular second, and how much they had grasped a certain technique, must be known by the public!”

“What’s ‘unjust enrichment’?” Li Yao asked.

“Generally speaking,” Su Changfa explained, “if the Cultivators had achieved benefits with techniques that could absolutely never be grasped by ordinary people, the benefits would be deemed as ‘unjust enrichment’!”

Li Yao could not help it any longer. “Did the Cultivators not resist when other people were already sh*tting on their necks like that?”

“Resist what? Don’t forget that the Cultivators of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, after being brainwashed by the hypocrisies of their predecessors for a thousand years, had always considered themselves to be the servants of the civilization of mankind!”

Su Changfa cackled. “Many Cultivators were believers of the original sin theory themselves and members of the Committee of Equal Human Beings! They insisted that they were indeed guilty of stripping the sense of happiness and competitiveness of the ordinary people! Also, compared to the ordinary people’s, their strength was too high, and it was only reasonable that the ordinary people felt scared. It had to be restrained!

“Such Cultivators were the saints of saints. They were known as the ‘expiators’!

“Some of the Cultivators, however, just like you said, were not willing to let other people sh*t on their necks. But what could they do when faced with the overwhelming discontent of the public? They did not know how to attack the ordinary people at all after a thousand years of brainwashing education. Moreover, if they did attack, the accusations that the original sin theory raised would be proved valid, and the situation would be even worse!

“Such Cultivators who were seething in fury and yet had nowhere to vent it were known as the liberals!

“The majority of the Cultivators, although dissatisfied about the original sin theory, never thought to resist it, because if they stood up, society would be divided!

“They felt that, if they made minor concessions to the ordinary people in appeasement, the ordinary people would be content, and their worries would be alleviated. Eventually, the Martial Meritocrats civilization would stay unified, stable, and developing!

“Such Cultivators were naturally the cowardly appeasers!

“In short, until the Cultivators were psychologically prepared to suppress all the ordinary people and revolutionize the social form, they wouldn’t be able to perform their magnificent capabilities at all when they were faced with the surging tides made of ordinary people!

“Just like that, a great trial began!”

Su Changfa scratched his beard with a gloating smile. “Fellow Cultivator Li, you must’ve felt that such a trial was mixed with the euphoria of the mobs’ self-proclaimed victory. It was destined to go out of control! The investigation soon became criticization. The trial soon escalated into confiscation. After all, according to the definition of the Committee of Equal Human Beings, ninety-nine percent of all Cultivators’ achievements were ‘unjust enrichment’!

“Faced with such blatancies, for even the Cultivators who had been brainwashed for a thousand years and were willing to be the servants of the civilization of mankind dutifully, part of them couldn’t stand it any longer and rose up to resist!

“Then, the Spiritual Valley Tragedy took place!

“It was unexpected conflict when an inspector from the ‘Committee of Equal Human Beings’ was investigating a sect named ‘Spiritual Valley Sect’ with a troop made of ordinary people!

“In retrospect, the conflict was quite uncanny. The Sand Primitive shamans and the believers of the Chiyou Cult were perhaps behind it. They were probably lurking within both the disciples of the Spiritual Valley Sect and the troop of the ordinary people and attacked each other when the atmosphere was most intense!

“The cause of the Spiritual Valley Tragedy is unknown today, but the result is that more than a thousand soldiers who were ordinary people were killed by the Cultivators of the Spiritual Valley Sect!

“The most dreadful scene for the ordinary people was finally played!

“Under the demagoguism of the Sand Primitive shamans and the believers of the Chiyou Cult, the rumor that the Cultivators had finally revealed their true faces and were about the purge all the ordinary people quickly spread out to every corner of the world!

“To defend the life and glory of the ordinary people, they had take action first and deal with the extreme Cultivators once and for all!

“It was the only thought for the panicked and anxious ordinary people!

“The civil war of the Martial Arts civilization officially broke out!

“One party of the war was the liberals of the Cultivators who refused investigation and trials and were determined to defend their rights.

“The other party was the expiators of the Cultivators who were too deeply brainwashed to wake up and the ordinary people.

“The appeasers of the Cultivators were divided. Most of them joined the liberals, making the number of the liberals quickly expand. They became the majority of the Cultivators.

“However, faced with the troops of the ordinary people that were as boundless as oceans, they were still the minority, not worth mentioning at all!

“Don’t forget that there were countless citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector who were both aggressive and fearless in the Alliance of the Martial Meritocrats right now!

“The Sand Primitive natives were similar to the ‘Iron Plateau natives’ that Fellow Cultivator Li described. Because of the extremely harsh environment that they lived in, their combat ability was multiple times higher than that of the ordinary people even if their spiritual roots had not awoken. When hypnotized by the chief shamans of the Chiyou Cult, they could even trigger their potential and become ‘berserker warriors’!

“Besides, in the past hundred years, to annihilate the demons and monsters of the Sand Primitive Sector, the Martial Meritocrats Sector had aided them with a large batch of magical equipment and helped them train an unbelievably huge troop of ordinary people!

“Right now, the magical equipment and the troop were both turned around to attack the liberals of the Cultivators in the Martial Meritocrats civilization!

“There were few expiators, but partly to win the trust of the ordinary people again in redemption, and partly to win the civil war, they could only refine popular magical equipment on a large scale and arm the ordinary people!

“Because the body build of the Sand Primitive natives was better than that of the Martial Meritocrats natives, and they were more used to cruel wars, most of the soldiers who were armed with magical equipment were from the Sand Primitive Sector!

“The civil war lasted thirty years. The Cultivators and the ordinary people, who were ‘family’ before, attacked each other on the battlefield, their blood shed in the smoke!

“However capable the Cultivators were, they were made of flesh and blood, and they could be consumed by the ordinary people with their absolute advantage in number!

“After thirty years of civil war, the liberals of the Cultivators completely failed. They either perished or surrendered.

“The expiators of the Cultivators who had been fighting on the frontlines were not any better. They suffered tremendous losses, too, and were much less influential.

“In short, in the entire Martial Meritocrats civilization, the strength of the Cultivators had hit rock bottom, with no way of making a comeback.

“The strength of the ordinary people, especially those from the Sand Primitive Sector, however, expanded to the maximum!”