Chapter 103: Becoming a Wisp of Starlight

Chapter 103: Becoming a Wisp of Starlight

Picking up where the last chapter left off — I had met with Xuanze and Hanming at the bottom of the deep ocean, and spoken as well with the seas of consciousness of the eight scientists merged into the core supercomputer. I told them that, if they wished it, I had the ability to peel their seas of consciousness free of the core and let them return to the human world.

In the end, my father and two other scientists chose to leave, while the remaining five chose to stay merged with the core.

I didn’t press the matter. Everyone has their own path.

My father’s body had been preserved in perfect condition back at the old residence — a debt owed entirely to Xuanze and Hanming’s cosmic methods. The other two scientists hadn’t been so fortunate; their bodies had long since decayed and burned. I had no choice but to lodge their seas of consciousness inside parasitic hosts for the time being, then hand them over to Engineer Lin, so he could use DNA-based biological cultivation technology to grow them compatible biological bodies of their own.

Once my father was brought back to life, I led him slowly toward my mother. After twenty-two years of waiting, of separation, the two of them finally stood face to face again. My mother had long since let go of her resentment; her eyes swam with tears.

As for the choices the older generation had made, I no longer saw them in terms of right or wrong at all.

Especially after speaking with Xuanze and Hanming’s parents, I understood that my father’s decision had been the right one.

Xuanze and Hanming, wearing the old woman’s face, had disguised themselves as my father’s soul and made their meaning plain enough already. They hadn’t wanted me carrying resentment toward my father. That much kindness was theirs alone.

My father, back then, truly had no way of walking free from the core supercomputer. He didn’t have the ability. He was only a scientist — not someone versed in martial technique or the deeper reaches of force of consciousness.

All of this, I only came to understand after gaining Cassiopeia’s cosmic abilities myself.

The past had become smoke on the wind.

I no longer carried resentment toward anyone — not the Soul Hunters, not the Sweepers. The Shadow Pavilion’s Eight Elders had already accepted my punishment. I couldn’t go on hating them either.

With my father and the other two gone, the core supercomputer did show faint signs of slipping toward a lower state. But I didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing.

The projection of the virtual Future World onto Bixian Star clearly worked against humanity’s interests. HD Star’s people could study the Blue Planet’s humans with perfect clarity, while Blue Planet humans understood nothing of HD Star in return. More pressingly, HD Star stood on the brink of interstellar war with Tengshe Star. If the Blue Planet were exposed before Tengshe Star’s eyes, the consequences could go anywhere. At the very least, I couldn’t let Tengshe Star learn of Earth’s humans at all.

Tengshe Star’s technology was clearly no weaker than HD Star’s. Otherwise the coming war wouldn’t be a war between equals — it would be slaughter, one-sided. Once I’d escorted Xuanze and Hanming home to HD Star, I might well find myself drawn into that war too. If it came to that, Earth’s safety would rest entirely on my parents and the others left behind.

That was part of why I wanted my father brought back. He had always been one of the pillars behind the Blue Planet’s technological progress.

So I spent three months training him deliberately. I poured the cosmic wisdom of the Akashic Records into him, and personally used the fourth green jade token to help him draw out some of the force of consciousness held there. Alongside that, I handed him the cosmic energy mass the Yaomei Star garrison commander had given me, letting him absorb it at his own pace.

Between the two, I judged his cosmic ability would reach at least half of mine. No one on Earth would ever surpass him again.

I did this not only because he was my father, but because he had always carried Earth’s people in his heart. For humanity’s safety, he’d once been willing to sacrifice his own life, and the people closest to him. That was exactly the reason I trusted him — the reason I chose him to become Earth’s stabilizing pillar.

I used the same stretch of time to sharpen Uncle and the core members of the base — their force of consciousness, their martial skill. I gathered the martial technique data recovered from the Shadow Pavilion Building, combined it with the refined wisdom data, and pressed it all into Wisdom Capsules to expand what they already carried. Within a short span, many people at the base climbed past rank thirty. They would need that strength, going forward, to manage what came next.

Zhang Zirui had already been revived from the server. I went to see him once. He’d been the true linchpin of this whole affair, and yet, unluckily, he’d also ended up one of its casualties. Watching his family reunited, happy together again, gave me some real comfort.

Du Xiaoran wouldn’t stop pestering me to raise his cultivation. I hardly had time to spare for him, so I handed him a key to the information archives inside the Shadow Pavilion Building instead. If he had it in him, he could go dig for what he wanted himself.

I had done away with the Elite World’s Hidden Gate, but the Mundane World at large still had no idea the Elite World existed. Nor had there been any flood of Mundane World people pouring across.

One step carried me a thousand li, and I was in the Mundane World.

My first stop was to find Gu Qiutang, my father’s disciple there.

He was in the middle of a board meeting when I appeared behind him without warning, startling every director in the room half out of their seats, convinced they were seeing things.

Gu Qiutang was shocked, then delighted. He already knew something of what had happened to me in the Elite World, through the local resistance and Uncle’s parasitic hosts in the Mundane World. He wanted, in turn, to tell me everything that had changed here while I was gone.

But I didn’t have the time for it. I simply poured a great deal of cosmic force of consciousness into his sea of consciousness, along with cosmic energy and cosmic wisdom. How much of it he managed to absorb would be up to his own fortune.

Gu Kunling, watching me finish, stepped up and smacked me on the arm.

“You go off and enjoy yourself in the Elite World this whole time, and you don’t even think to come back and see us? What, you’ve attained the Dao now? Quit showing off!”

I could only laugh sheepishly. “Sister Kunling, can’t you spare me a little dignity here?”

The moment I said it, I shifted into her own face and bolted, which only made her chase after me, swinging.

That little display of mine gave the board members plenty to talk about. Every eye in the room turned to Gu Qiutang afterward, waiting for him to explain.

Second stop: the Du Group. Du Xinlang, after all, was still waiting for me to come back.

There, I ran into old coworkers, Lin Liangming among them — Xuanhong’s close confidante — and poured a measure of Elite-World-only ability into her. I handed each of them a Wisdom Capsule too, fresh product from Uncle’s team, packed with energy and information at a high grade. It would sharpen their sense of the world considerably.

I stayed at the Du residence a few days, telling them about my time in the Elite World, and about Bixian Star and Silver Pearl in particular. I told Du Changfeng that the Cosmic Deep-Space Probe project he’d once wanted to head could finally rest. The people inside that flying saucer — I hadn’t only met them. My ties to them ran deeper than words could easily untangle. That left father and daughter both stunned.

Third stop: Tansong Temple. That had once been the most peaceful stretch of my life. The quiet there, the absence of striving, had let me enjoy some of the finest days I’d ever known. When the abbot and monks heard I’d arrived, they gathered around at once. I told them stories of how vast the cosmos truly was, and with a lift of my hand, brought back to life dozens of Tansong pines in the temple that had withered from blight and old age. The monks were nearly ready to kneel and worship me on the spot.

Fourth stop: the base for the incapacitated. No one forced anyone to live there anymore, but many had chosen to stay regardless — shared suffering breeds its own company.

I found Yellow-Hair, and Lu Linfeng with his son, among the others there.

I had the Lu father and son gather everyone together. With cosmic force of consciousness, I lifted every trace of pain and illness from their bodies, and granted them genes for long life besides.

Word spread fast. People who weren’t even registered at the base — patients from hospitals, others from farther afield — came streaming in once they heard. I stayed two days. There was no more reason to hide anything by then. I split myself into countless avatars and used cosmic force of consciousness to restore every one of them to full health.

I told them all that humanity’s future held neither sickness nor death. The scientists of the Elite World were already working toward exactly that, and it wouldn’t be long before all of humanity shared in it.

What happened there quickly turned into folk legend, spreading outward from Pingdu City like wildfire.

Fifth stop: Liutan Town, to see Mei Qili and the other teachers, and old neighbors besides. With the Sweeper base gone, the fake Gao Minjun had long since vanished. Ye Ziping had already moved to the provincial capital, but he made the trip back specially once he heard I’d returned. I brought him a handful of Wisdom Capsules and told him to use them without hesitation — his abilities would multiply dozens of times over, and nothing like what happened to Meng Ran would ever happen to him.

Then I teleported to Yunding Mountain in Pengshui, and found Shiqing still meditating on Wentian Platform.

He showed no surprise at all when I arrived. He only asked, quietly, “Does heaven have an end? Does the universe hold a next life? Are we humans born of this world, or did we come from somewhere else?”

I laughed despite myself. “You’re only a parasitic host. Not even a whole person yet. Why waste your time on questions like that?”

“It isn’t me thinking them,” Shiqing said. “I suspect it’s you.”

I shook my head. “If I were thinking them, wouldn’t I already know?”

With an idle wave of my hand, I turned the cliffs around Wentian Platform into a sea of flowers, fragrance spilling everywhere — just as Silver Pearl had done for me, that day she welcomed me home from Yaomei Star.

Shiqing didn’t so much as glance at the flowers. He simply closed his eyes and drew a long, deliberate breath through his nose.

“I’m giving you your freedom now,” I told him. “From today, you’re simply yourself. No one’s parasitic host any longer. If you want it, I can send you to see the Elite World too.”

With that, I used cosmic force of consciousness to pour a complete store of life’s knowledge into his sea of consciousness, and granted him rank-ten ability in both martial technique and force of consciousness.

Shiqing didn’t seem inclined toward gratitude. He only lifted his head and said, “Don’t dwell on what others think of you. Don’t be too certain of your own opinions either. Living as yourself — that’s the only thing that matters.”

I nodded, and let the subject drop there.

What was he playing at, putting on such profundity? As if I couldn’t manage that myself.

When it came to wisdom about life, I knew every bit as much as he did. But actually carrying that wisdom into the heart, living it out in practice — that was never the easy part.

My last stop in the Mundane World was the Zhu family home. Zhu Zhaojie had long since recovered, and was still working at Gu Kun Investment Company. I told Zhu Shiqing I wanted to bring the two of them to the Elite World.

Zhu Shiqing had little warmth for the Elite World. The Soul Hunters had been elite people themselves, after all, and they’d made him and his daughter suffer badly. I explained the state of things there, told him the vast majority of its people were decent, and that the ones who weren’t had already been dealt with by my own hand.

Zhu Zhaojie, though, was eager to see it for herself. She’d always longed for that kind of superhuman existence.

I prepared a Shadow Pavilion-grade Wisdom Capsule for her and helped her install it.

The moment it took hold, her eyes filled with a light of pure disbelief.

Too much. Too strong.

I’d only chosen a rank-twenty Wisdom Capsule for her, but for someone as delicate as Zhu Zhaojie, she’d never once felt anything close to this surge of power. I told her it was safe — nothing like what had happened to Meng Ran would happen here.

Zhu Zhaojie had once been possessed by the Soul Hunter Lu Qingyue, and had even fought me while under her control. Back then, her own awareness had been buried beneath Lu Qingyue’s — or perhaps it was closer to say she’d drifted through it in a daze, with no real memory of what she’d done.

Now, carrying a Shadow Pavilion-grade Wisdom Capsule, every motion she made, every step she took, carried a kind of transcendent, martial poise. And this time, that feeling rose from somewhere entirely her own.

I turned to Zhu Shiqing. “The Elite World has no death, no illness, no fear for survival. A place that good, and you still don’t want to see it?”

Zhu Shiqing hadn’t caught much else, but he’d caught “no death, no illness”. On those two words alone, he looked ready to fly there himself, this instant.

With matters in the Mundane World settled, I brought Zhu Shiqing and his daughter back to the Elite World, and made my final farewells to Mother, Father, Uncle, and the rest.

I returned to the ocean floor, at the heart of the sea, and brought the final two pieces of the lotus-shaped green jade disk together.

Even the Pacific shuddered under the flash of bright light that followed.

I lodged Xuanze within the chakra green jade disk, and Hanming within the lotus-shaped green jade disk. Then I turned myself into a wisp of starlight, and carrying both green jade disks with me, sped away toward HD Star, twenty-one light-years distant.

(End of the novel)