Chapter 101: Civilization Completion

What does a Celestial Palace built by a psionic cultivator look like?

There is no standard answer to this question.

Once the "Lianming Cong" (Life-Refining Cluster) is perfected and leaves no leaks, the resulting Celestial Palaces are bizarre and diverse, entirely dependent on the cultivator’s lineage and techniques. Some choose their physical bodies as the Palace, so their Palace takes the form of their own physique. Others entrust it to an object, resulting in a Palace that manifests as a fortress. Those who attain the Dao through the sword see their Palace manifest as a flying blade. Then there are those who hold no fixed concept at all, believing that the Celestial Palace is merely an abstract notion—and thus, the Palace is simply themselves.

Lan Yi belongs to the latter.

In the perception of Lan Yi, this top-tier psionic cultivator, a Celestial Palace is essentially a state of permanent existence. It is superior to a solidified Daoist spell; once one feels that the Palace is achieved, it is achieved. It is a singular, eternal realization that requires no further physical manifestation.

In the future, this perspective of Lan Yi’s will become the mainstream.

After stripping away the complex for the simple, all psionic cultivators walking the orthodox path should be pointing directly toward the source.

"Hmm, it truly is a precious, non-renewable resource. It even inadvertently aided my cultivation," Lan Yi mused. He truly was a benevolent person. It seems he should do more good deeds in the future to help raise his realm.

There were no falling blossoms or golden lotuses springing from the earth.

A breakthrough is simply a breakthrough. It is not as if he cannot control his power and needs to show off like a rutting monkey. If a psionic cultivator cannot control their own strength, they would not need an enemy to kill them—the psionic energy within their own body would suffice.

The further along a psionic cultivator progresses, the more they become a literal carbon-based nuclear power plant.

"Hmm? Have you built your Celestial Palace?"

After all, she was the one sharing his pillow.

Following Lan Yi’s breakthrough, the subtle disturbance in his life aura did not escape the notice of Li Wanzhou, who possessed exceptional martial talent.

And then, his "brother" grew disgruntled.

There is a saying: one fears their brother lives in poverty, yet fears their brother drives a Land Rover.

Why is it that while everyone is "doing it," and you are clearly the one enjoying it the most, your cultivation realm skyrockets, while I have suffered so much and consumed so many nutrients, yet I remain at the "Refining the God and My Form" stage?

"Confess! Do you have some kind of dual-cultivation technique? Hand it over immediately!"

The snarling tomboy rolled over and straddled Lan Yi’s abs, attempting to smother her good brother with her chest. But how could he be blinded by such a thing? With a "Dragon Claw Hand" maneuver, he instantly seized the weakness, beginning to refine it!

Si Lingluo, waking from her groggy stupor, shielded her eyes. After a moment of daze, her vision gradually refocused, and she witnessed the two of them acting out.

"Really... don't you two ever get tired?"

She was just an ordinary person.

Having neither cultivated Daoist arts nor martial arts, the reason Si Lingluo hadn't been worn to death by Lan Yi was largely due to the tomboy helping her shoulder the burden.

"Doing... the things we do, how could we be tired?" Li Wanzhou, having rolled onto the carpet like a spring roll, jumped around playfully.

"It’s you," the tomboy added. "If you don't cultivate, you’ll die in the next Artificial Divine Realm trial. And you still love playing the saint."

Although the tomboy was chaotic-evil, she felt quite good about Si Lingluo. She was a genuinely kind person. If not for Lan Yi, Li Wanzhou would have unreservedly teased this saint, savoring the look of pain and despair on her face to see how long her kindness could endure. But alas, she couldn't touch the saint now; she was Lan Yi’s "white moonlight," so she might as well wish her a long life.

"I don't understand cultivation, nor do I like it, because through cultivation, everyone becomes so fierce."

Resistant to the practice, Si Lingluo got out of bed to pour three cups of hot water.

It was strange, to say the least.

The three of them were completely open with one another, with no shame regarding their intimacy. Lan Yi and Li Wanzhou could be understood, but for Si Lingluo to be the same, one could only say that her mental circuitry was indeed a bit unusual.

But then again, if her circuitry were normal, she wouldn't have chosen to remain in the radiation of the Artificial Divine Realm.

Rather than calling it a "saintly heart," it was more that after being disappointed by the chaos and filth of the Prime World, she chose not to return, instead finding a place to dedicate her life. This was the mindset of many cultivators from the Prime World; some stayed in the Artificial Divine Realm, while others simply wandered through the clusters of artificial realms.

Later, when Lan Yi began his expansion, he occasionally encountered such renegade cultivators from the Prime World. Most of them were simply not strong enough.

"You have your own path," Lan Yi said, rising. It was time to leave his seclusion.

Seeing him get up, Si Lingluo gently and meticulously smoothed the wrinkles on his collar and cuffs. Feeding the demon with her own body—as long as this demon junior was normal, her efforts were not in vain.

"Senior sister, strive to become stronger. At least don't faint so frequently; it’s quite a buzzkill." Lan Yi stated his request bluntly, knowing exactly what would make Si Lingluo agree.

"Alright."

"What about me? What about me?" The tomboy tried to help dress him, but she clearly lacked the talent, leaving his crisp shirt and coat a wrinkled mess.

"Start by training your physique to reach supersonic speeds," Lan Yi said, as his "Canghua" scroll brought him the latest intelligence.

Although he had been in seclusion, he had kept an eye on external affairs.

The portal in Tianhai City was set to close in two days.

The advance team led by Ji Ning was working very smoothly. They had successfully completed the replication of some super-technologies. Ionospheric power generation was not considered "black technology" to a reincarnator, but it was the most practical tech of the last two months; by tweaking the electromagnetic parameters, one could temporarily satisfy the craving for infinite energy.

Furthermore, the vast amount of resource data brought back from Artificial Divine Realm 1909, once published, drove the vast majority of reincarnators to flock to it. They decisively increased their investments, binding their interests with Lan Yi in the Prime World, and locked in their slots for the next great development in advance.

Thus, within the River Civilization, Lan Yi had effectively achieved unification among the reincarnators and psionic cultivators. With the approval of the psionic cultivators, Lan Yi could now mobilize over eighty percent of the nation's manpower and resources within two months.

This was much faster than the Ocean Civilization.

The mainstream ideology of the Ocean Civilization was zero-sum competition. In the previous life, they were strong early on, but suffered constant internal strife—animal rights, LGBT, conservatives, white leftists—the slogans were loud, the gunshots were louder, and the infighting was truly lively, much to the delight of the bloodthirsty spectators!

By the time the civilization’s voice unified and the two major factions, "Ingray" and the "Pantheon," were decided, the psionic cultivators finally returned to normal, but the Ocean Civilization had already missed its best window for competition, losing the initiative in the race.

But objectively speaking, after the descent of the War Space, both human civilizations were actually completed.

The River Civilization, needless to say, lacked true plundering and had never seen blood in their collective thinking. You might not need it in the Dimensional Sea, but you absolutely cannot be without it. The shortcoming of the Ocean Civilization was their lack of sincere cooperation; with the opening of the Artificial Divine Realm, if they did not supplement this, they would quickly become too isolated and perish in the Dimensional Sea.

As for the other branches, they had too many flaws. Without being tested by blood and fire, they could not stand firm. Lacking cohesion in the face of the opportunity to head toward the Dimensional Sea, they quickly collapsed.

There was no attraction.

Why would those psionic cultivators fighting abroad return to the Prime World to continue serving?

Either I come back, overthrow your setup, and become the boss, or I simply run off to become a local emperor in the Artificial Divine Realm once it’s fully opened, while maintaining trade interactions with the Prime World. As long as one moves frequently enough, there will always be artificial realms with backward military and civilization that can be remodeled and ruled, serving as a sanctuary while still enjoying the benefits of trading with the Prime World.

This was a major issue that all forces in the Prime World had to face.

If they could not solve this problem, they would vanish in the merciless scouring of the Dimensional Sea.

The clusters of the Artificial Divine Realm were simply too vast.

They were so vast that even the Shenzhou Quantum Main Building of the previous life’s Prime World had not finished counting them. And since leaving the Prime World was just a matter of a single thought, this directly led to the collective failure of the old era’s governing models.

Ultimately, the most important thing in a civilization is its people.

A civilization without people is called a corpse in the Artificial Divine Realm!

Before the construction of megastructures like the Two Worlds Mountain and the Quantum Main Building, how to retain people was a difficult problem.

Lan Yi, however, did not need to worry about this.

The River Civilization possessed the "Great Unification" mindset left behind by their ancestors since ancient times, as well as thousands of years of the spirit that "Kings and nobles are not born with high status." It was destined that the River Civilization could not run away; if things got bad, they would just kill all these vermin and deal with it! At worst, they would go to the Artificial Divine Realm to fight a guerrilla war, then raise an army and come back to kill again!

Back then, Lan Yi himself had this kind of "stubborn commoner" mentality.

He had single-handedly fought his way onto the wanted list, chilling the bones of the masters!

"Ji Ning is actually complaining to me."

Lan Yi’s eyes lit up. It was rare to see this bureaucrat suffer a setback.

Although the work in Artificial Divine Realm 1909 was proceeding smoothly, a small problem had occurred in the most important part: the exploration of the unknown artificial realm.

Ji Ning had already highly overestimated the strength of this wave of invaders.

He had directly brought in several log transport vehicles from the Prime World, temporarily launched a sub-orbital rocket satellite for positioning, and used eavesdropping to lock onto the enemy's location for data collection and scheduled strikes.

Anyone coming to destroy an important logistics base was definitely an enemy. There was no such thing as "killing them too much."

Through spy satellites and intercepted intelligence, Ji Ning discovered traces of another portal within the territory of Magadha.

The bureaucrat did not hesitate to launch a second-generation nuclear weapon.

His logic was simple: first, sever the link to this portal so that it could not continue to deploy troops for a short time. As for the two supersonic individuals that had already entered, they would be cut off from their rear, trapped in Artificial Divine Realm 1909 like dogs in a closed house.

Capturing them would be best. If not, extracting information from their corpses would also be highly valuable.

However, what surprised Ji Ning was that when the second-generation nuclear weapon fell five hundred meters above the Magadha portal, a figure darted out from the portal. Realizing the danger, this person actually embraced the nuclear bomb, flew upward to create a slight distance, and then fell in a wretched state amidst the nuclear explosion, escaping back into the violently oscillating portal with heavy injuries.

Another monster that had walked out of a nuclear blast...