Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 818
"Many parties had been kept in balance for hundreds of years, with a similar number of hardcore supporters, but with the votes of the Sand Primitive people, it was very possible that the situation in the past would be changed!
"The more Sand Primitive people are in favor of us, the more likely we will win the election!
"How can we get more Sand Primitive people to support us? First of all, naturally, we will promise them more privileges and assure them that the policies will be in effect as soon as we are in power, thereby winning over the Sand Primitive people!
"Then, we can try our best to move their family, friends, and even the entire tribe to the Martial Meritocrats Sector and make the newcomers citizens of the nation. So, we will have more new votes!
"As a result, the votes on our side will definitely increase exponentially!
"Even if we don't do it, our hostile parties will. If the hostile parties are supported by more Sand Primitive immigrants, we will never be able to carry out our beliefs in office!
"Such a train of thought was simple enough even for a Building Foundation Stage Cultivator or a Core Formation Stage, not to mention those in the Nascent Soul Stage. In fact, it was exactly what the smart and civilized Cultivators did!
"To win the support of the voters from the Sand Primitive Sectors, today, Party A proposed that the social position of the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector must be improved and that a certain ratio of employees in the government agencies must be from the Sand Primitive Sector.
"The next day, Party B proposed that the conditions required for the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector to join the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats should be loosened and that every Sand Primitive native would automatically be granted citizenship and the voting right the moment they entered the Martial Meritocrats Sector.
"The day after that, Party C proposed that, in order to maintain the basic rights of the citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector, they must be provided with additional allowances other than free food and housing!
"The Sand Primitive people, on the other hand, knew the importance of gratitude quite well. They indeed supported Party As, Party Bs and Party Cs, making those parties win the elections smoothly and crush many opponents that had troubled them for hundreds of years!
"The parties-in-elect, after savoring the fruit of success, wouldn't abandon such effective approaches. To ensure the victories in the future elections, they spared no effort moving large batches of Sand Primitive natives to the Martial Meritocrats Sector and transforming them into citizens of the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats and even the disciples of the local sects!
"Day after day, year after year, the privileges and the position of the Sand Primitive natives became better and better; their number and voice grew larger and larger. Eventually, they became a force that nobody dared to mess around with.
"The Alliance of Martial Meritocrats only meant to hire a few workers in the beginning, but now, the workers had become the bosses. Despite the benefits that were even higher than regular natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, they were greedy enough to demand higher wages, benefits, and better living environment, and a medication, education, and social security system that favored them biasedly!
"In many cases, the Sand Primitive natives were in fact too stupid to come up with all that.
"It was the parties and local sects of the Martial Meritocrats Sector that offered the conditions to them promptly time and time again, stimulating their greed and ambitions to expand!
"This was the first fatal mistake that the Martial Meritocrats civilization made.
"The second fatal mistake, in the meantime, was the population issue."
Li Yao felt that his eyelids were jumping. "What's the population issue?"
"The Martial Meritocrats civilization and the Sand Primitive civilizations were actually two civilizations of different eras and levels. Yet, the childish Cultivators melded them together by brute force," Su Changfa sneered. "The Martial Meritocrats civilization had already entered a highly-developed phase. As the educational and economical level improved, the fertility rate naturally decreased.
"Traditionally speaking, natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector focused more on the self-perfection and self-actualization. Faced with the boundless sea of stars, too much work needed to be done, and too many mysteries were waiting to be explored! Everything would consume a lot of time and effort.
"Therefore, the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector did not like having too many children, if they were married at all. Many of them believed in celibacy, claiming that they would devote their life to the sea of stars!
"For those who chose to have offspring, they often stopped when they had two children. They carefully educated every child and raised them with their all.
"Therefore, it was even less likely that they would be interested in more children.
"That was the practice of the society. The natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector who had a handful of kids were often mocked by their friends for their lack of ambition. They would be considered to be the antiques from ancient times.
"But the Sand Primitive natives were different.
"The harsh environment of the Sand Primitive Sector meant an appallingly high death rate. So, fertility meant everything! Only by giving birth to enough children and transforming them into the most frantic warriors in the most efficient way could the Sand Primitive civilization survive while being surrounded by the infinite enemies!
"Therefore, the females of the Sand Primitive Sector were all highly fertile. They usually started having children immediately after their menarche and wouldn't stop until their menopause. It was not strange at all if they had twenty children!
"In the Sand Primitive Sector in the past, most of the twenty children would die of diseases or in the battles before they grew up. Such cruel eliminations ensured that the population wouldn't excessively expand and that only the strongest could survive.
"However, the 'kindhearted' Cultivators, who were determined to protect every ordinary person, had arrived. How could they bear to watch the Sand Primitive natives being killed by the alien species while doing nothing?
"Therefore, they taught the Sand Primitive Sector tremendous techniques, aided them with countless flying swords and crystal cannons, and eventually helped annihilate all the enemies of the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector!
"The enemies were gone, new medication procedures were introduced, but the tradition of fertility was unchanged. Naturally, the population of the Sand Primitive Sector boomed!
"Cultivators of the Martial Meritocrats Sector simply waited and watched everything happen. Instead of stopping it, they even encouraged the practice and offered all kinds of birth benefits and education funds.
"It was because such a tradition was their 'sacrosanct culture'. It was also because every newborn baby in the Sand Primitive Sector meant a new vote in the near future!
"Just like that, after only a hundred years, after a series of population booms and crazy immigration, the citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector almost took up half of the population of the Alliance of Marital Meritocrats now.
"Fellow Cultivator Li, take a guess. What would happen next?"
Taking a long breath, Li Yao narrowed his eyes and said, "The Sand Primitive natives were about to reveal their true face, weren't they?"
"Wrong!" Su Changfa laughed maliciously. "After a hundred years of learning, the new-generation natives of the Sand Primitive Sector were much more cunning than their predecessors. They fully continued the nature of the nomadic people and lurked around the prey, setting up traps quietly!
"On the surface, nothing too dramatic happened. Although the demands from the Sand Primitive natives were more and more arrogant, and the Chiyou Cult was spreading inside the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats more and more actively, it was nothing different from what they had been doing in the past century. Like frogs in warm water, the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector were rather used to it. The situation did not seem to be out of control.
"However, in the darkness, a theory known as 'original sin' suddenly rose up and swept across the entire world!"
Chapter 1252: Natural-Born Original Sin! |
"Original sin?" Li Yao frowned. He had never believed that any sin came with one's birth and felt subconsciously repulsive about the phrase.
Thinking quickly, Li Yao opened his mouth and asked, "Is that a ruse that the Sand Primitive natives came up with, claiming that the Martial Meritocrats natives occupying a prosperous and steady world was highly unfair? It was their natural-born original sin, so they had to make up for the Sand Primitive natives? Is it a hilarious theory like this one?"
Su Changfa smiled and shook his head. "If you think that way, you are terribly underestimating both the Martial Meritocrats natives and the Sand Primitive natives. Also, the history would lose its general significance. You can totally argue that the destruction of the Martial Meritocrats Sector has nothing to do with the ideology of the Cultivators but is solely because the Cultivators there were too idiotic!
"You can argue that, if it were Cultivators who were more sober and wise, and they had taken it slowly to assimilate the Sand Primitive natives step by step, the outcome might've been entirely different."
Li Yao almost choked for a moment.
It was exactly what he was thinking. When the Star Glory Federation was accepting the demons, they were certainly not as naïve and foolish as the Martial Meritocrats natives.
"No, the history that I'm telling you is much more complicated than that. The destruction of the Martial Meritocrats was not caused by their stupid immigration policies, either. At best, the Sand Primitive natives were just a 'trigger'!
"The so-called original sin was not used to explain the contradiction between the Martial Meritocrats natives and the Sand Primitive natives but that between Cultivators and ordinary people. It was not the Martial Meritocrats natives who had 'original sin' but the Cultivators!"
"What?"
Dumbfounded, Li Yao scratched his cheeks beyond his control. He found it hard to believe. "What original sin does a Cultivator have?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Su Changfa said thoughtfully. "Including the Martial Meritocrats civilization, most of the Cultivation civilizations hold, to different degrees, that natural human rights are inviolable and that everybody is equal whether you are a Cultivator or an ordinary person. However, you can draw a preposterous conclusion from the ideas, which is that Cultivators and ordinary people are naturally highly unequal!
"Yes. The law can protect the rights and political position of the ordinary people. Through the one-person-one-vote system, the ordinary people can even pretend that they are as good as the Cultivators!
"However, it is just a lie that they tell themselves!
"Once the spiritual roots are awakened, Cultivators boast speed, strength, body build, and intelligence that far exceed the ordinary people's. Their sight, hearing, and other senses will be much keener, too!
"Such advantages on the Cultivators' body are something that ordinary people can never achieve however hard they do physical exercises!
"With such advantages, Cultivators can easily eclipse all ordinary people in any competitive field. They can occupy all the jobs that have a high demand on intelligence, physical strength, speed, or the soul. They can be eye-catching heroes who will be cheered and applauded by the general public!
"As long as one Cultivator appears in a certain field, it means that all ordinary people, even if they work so hard that their every cell is exploding, will not stand any chance of competition. They can only give up nicely and watch the Cultivators show their techniques!
"In short, the world is the Cultivators' stage, and the ordinary people are the audience below the stage at best, whose only responsibility is cheering and applauding!
"They don't deserve, nor are they capable of, going to the stage and demonstrating their own splendor!
"Fellow Cultivator Li, is such an inequality not an original sin of the Cultivators?"
Su Changfa's smile grew creepier and creepier as he spoke, but his tone was ever calmer. Li Yao could not help but feel goosebumps all over his body!
"More critically, the inequality not only means that ordinary people cannot compete with Cultivators in any field, but also means that ordinary people are totally incapable of protecting their lives and their property. Everything is in the hands of the Cultivators!
"The ordinary people have to accept the fact that their happy and peaceful lives are founded on the Cultivators' kindness, pity, and charity!
"Everything that they have is a sand tower in wind and a pavilion without a foundation. It is maintained by the Cultivators' ungrounded 'morals'!
"Today, the Cultivators decide to help the weak, beat the bullies, and protect the ordinary people chivalrously. That's why the ordinary people are living a good life.
"But what if the Cultivators change tomorrow?
"What if the Cultivators, for any reason, or for no reason but their bad mood, decide not to protect the ordinary people any longer and want a different way of living?
"By then, the Cultivators will be able to kill ordinary people, take away their property, enslave their family, and regard all their offspring as free slaves!"
"Cultivators won't do that!" Li Yao blurted out.
Hardly had he spoken out when he felt cold sweat in his heart.
Su Changfa gazed at him and smiled. "The key point is not if they will, but whether or not they can! And obviously, they can!
"Cultivators can harm ordinary people easily, but ordinary people cannot hurt Cultivators at all. Therefore, the latter can only pray that the former abide by the social rules that have been long abided by, which are 'morals'. This is where the most fatal problem lies!
"As I said just now, Fellow Cultivator Li. 'Morals' are the most unreliable things in the world. As the productivity and the social relations change, morals will also change at an astonishing speed!
"Besides, there are also a lot of accidents!
"The easiest example will be you, Fellow Cultivator Li. I believe that you must've been a model Cultivator in the past. Chances are that you did a lot of good things and protected many ordinary people, didn't you?"
His eyelids twitching violently, Li Yao pretended that his mind was in chaos and nodded softly.
A fiendish smile popped up on Su Changfa's old, wrinkled face. "However, after the accident in space, in which you went so far past the line that the line is a dot to you, you have changed, in each and every way!
"Even if the ordinary people could trust you wholeheartedly in the past, can they still trust you right now?
"If you hadn't run into us but returned to the Flying Star Sector by luck, are you certain that you could have regarded the ordinary people the way you did instead of considering them to be delicious meat?
"If you harmed an ordinary person, driven by a certain weird instinct of yours, and maybe even their entire family, would they be capable of defending themself?"
Li Yao's face was pale as he made a gagging posture, but he failed to come up with a reply.
"Nobody can stand the fact that their fate is entirely based on other people's kindness and mercy!" Su Changfa said coldly. "Cultivators' abilities to harm the ordinary people however they want and never to be harmed by the ordinary people are their original sins. Biggest original sins!
"Targeting the two original sins, the solutions proposed were quite easy!
"First of all, the tax rate for Cultivators was further increased, and their rights were limited. Ordinary people were much more in favor in jobs, education, politics and all the other fields!
"Secondly, since Cultivators were so dangerous, bordering on brutal animals, they had to be monitored closely. Their identity, capability, level, and whereabouts would be tracked and known by the public. When necessary, the Cultivators could be kept in detention even without proof!
"Thirdly, the 'Committee of Equal Human Beings' was founded to investigate all cases in the past century where Cultivators abused their abilities and harmed the interests of the ordinary people in unfair competitions. Also, magical equipment that could restrain the abilities of the Cultivators was developed to ensure that the ordinary people boasted the ability to harm the Cultivators!
"Absolute power means absolute corruption. Right now, the Cultivators boast 'absolute power'. So, their corruption will only be a matter of time! Only if everybody has the ability to harm each other will the balance of power be achieved and the stability and development of the Alliance ensured!
"Those were the main points of the original sin theory.
"Soon after the theory popped up from the dark abyss, it swept across the entire Alliance of Martial Meritocrats like a wild tide under the support of most of the ordinary people!"
"How is it possible?" Li Yao's eyebrow was almost standing like sabers. "It's not strange that the original sin theory was supported by the citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector because the Sand Primitive natives were probably behind the theory. But weren't half of the citizens from the Martial Meritocrats Sector? Why did they support such a farce?
"You find the original sin theory absurd because you are a Cultivator. It's only reasonable that you take the Cultivators' side!" Su Changfa declared coldly. "If you were an ordinary person who barely had the strength to capture a hen, you wouldn't find it absurd at all. Instead, you would probably feel greatly enlightened!
"Try to walk in their shoes, Fellow Cultivator Li. Summon your computational ability and imagine that you are an ordinary person. What exactly will be at the bottom of your heart when you are faced with the high, mighty, omnipotent Cultivators?"
Su Changfa placed his freezing arm on Li Yao's shoulder and craned his head to Li Yao's ear. His vague voice sounded like a breeze from the deepest level of hell. "Seeing that they are higher, faster, stronger, smarter, and more handsome than you, that they have a much higher social position and a better ability of self-actualization, while knowing for a fact that you will never be able to catch up with them for the rest of your life…
