40,000 Years of Cultivation

"Understand."

Xie An'an nodded. The little girl who used to have a red apple face, a little plump, shy but persistent, has now become a peaceful and calm middle-aged lady full of mature and elegant temperament, the only thing that does not change , Is the trust and admiration of Li Yao deep in the eyes, "This is a problem that many people who have been hibernating for a long time have to face, it seems that Master, just like Shiniang, is slowly becoming a'Feiyue Clan'."

"Feiyue Clan?"

Li Yao was startled slightly, looking at Ding Lingdang, "What's that?"

"This is a brand new concept proposed by the senior hibernator Gui Shoushou. After transferring the "Tombstone Project" to preserve civilization to Professor Mo Xuan, he has been engaged in research in this area. It's just a means for us to achieve a certain goal, but in Guishoushou's place,'super long-term human hibernation' is regarded as the goal itself."

Ding Lingdang explained, "Like you, I have spent most of the past 100 years in hibernation, and the total time I spent awake will not exceed 20 years. Every time I return to the Federation, I feel like everything is right and wrong. .

"The first time, I missed the wedding of Wu Ma Yan, this stinky boy, and Xie An'an; the second time, I missed the birth and growth of their children... There are many, many people, many, many things, all like sparkling The shiny sands quickly flowed through my fingers, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch them.

"That feeling is really like what you said. It has disappeared out of thin air for decades. We hibernators and normal people live in two different time dimensions. We have a strange... alienation, just like us. It has not made much contribution to the construction of the new federation, but a beautiful and bright home will come on its own, and we only need to sit back and enjoy its achievements."

"how could be?"

Xie Anan hurriedly said, "Master and Madam Master discovered three great worlds plus the former Xinghai Republic's government in exile, and they also made great contributions to defeating the Imperial Expeditionary Army. What do you mean by no contribution!"

"I know."

Ding Lingdang smiled and said, "It's not that I am humble, it's just a very strange feeling. Those of you who haven't hibernated for a long time are hard to understand.

"In fact, the reason why I want to run for the Speaker of the Federation this time is to reconcile the relationship between the New Four Realms and the Old Three Realms, and try to maintain the balance between our side and Jin Xinyue’s side, but the more important reason is that My selfishness-I really want to integrate myself with the new federation more closely in this way, and be able to reintegrate into the current federation. I never know what to say about the "flying clan" and return to the ordinary "crawl" Family'."

Li Yao heard that there was a very rare melancholy in Ding Lingdang's words, and he became more and more strange: "Feiyue tribe and Crawler tribe, what are they!"

Ding Lingdang drank a full glass of red wine and said: "After a long hibernation, I spent a whole hundred years alone in the sea of ​​stars. After returning to the Federation, I felt that I was incompatible with the world around me, so I went to find the same thing. The long-term hibernator's Guishoushou senior chatted with him. He happened to be doing research in this area. He told me a lot of things and gave me several notebooks.

"Gui Shoushou senior said that the upper and lower squares are the universe, and the universe is the continuum of time and space since ancient times. In this three-dimensional universe we live in, time and space are originally continuous, linear, and Stable, time goes by every second, every second has the same meaning, and the civilization that lives in such continuous time and space, for example, the current human civilization is a tortoise crawling slowly on the avenue of time. , So it is called the "creeper".

"But in fact, whether it is the Pangu and Nuwa tribes hundreds of thousands of years ago, or today's human civilization, they have discovered a way to transcend the continuity of space, that is, the star sea jump.

"Using wormholes and four-dimensional space, one can surpass the continuity of three-dimensional space. From this point, it instantly reaches another point a million light-years away.

"Since the continuity of space can be surpassed, can the continuity of time also be surpassed?

"In a sense, of course, it is the human hibernation technique.

"Before the hibernation technology was invented and matured, the intelligent beings living in our universe were all'crawlers.' Whether beggars or emperors, ordinary people or cultivators, one second is one second, and one minute is one minute. At most, by stimulating the brain nerves, the illusion of slowing down the passage of time can be simulated in the virtual world, but that is false, and the flow of time in the real world is still the same.

"But for us hibernators, that's not the case.

"Even when this technology was just invented, the Star Federation, which is still very crude and inefficient, hibernators like you and me, can sleep in one breath for hundreds of years. Before we fall asleep and after we open our eyes again, what we face is completely Two different worlds.

"And those civilizations with more advanced hibernation techniques, such as the Pangu tribe?

"Li Yao, don't remember the Pangu clan you met at the Kunlun Ruins, but he slept for hundreds of thousands of years!

"Of course, he was beheaded by you just after he woke up, before he had time to face a completely strange world.

"But let go of your imagination and substitute the perspective of this Pangu tribe. If you are not beheaded, how will you face a completely different world after hundreds of thousands of years, and face those under your feet? The'descendants' who are alive and yelling, facing the stars of the sky, are there no loneliness of the same kind?"

Li Yao was startled and fell into deep thought.

Ding Lingdang said: "Gui Shoushou senior believes that with the development of hibernation technology, the harm and loss of hibernators will be less and less, and more and more hibernators will appear. Anyone who masters this Sooner or later, the technological civilization will be divided into two parts, the "crawler tribe" composed of non-hibernators, and the "flying tribe" composed of hibernators.

"The world of reptiles is continuous, stable, and linear. They use every minute and every second to burn their lives, build their homes and civilization, and enjoy stable relatives, friends, happiness and various emotions.

"But for hibernators who have been hibernating for decades and hundreds of years of light and shadow, time is discontinuous, non-linear, and fragmented. It is like a mighty river. The flow of the river is extremely slow, but the river surface is discontinuous. Some rocks were exposed. The hibernator was originally a fish in the river, but once it jumped out of the water and grew wings, he could use his wings and the power of bounce to fly forward, and see a brand new world in the river far ahead. Originally, they left behind, everything in the seemingly frozen'river water' was gradually stripping away its original meaning.

"You also said, it's just a matter of opening and closing your eyes, the Star Federation has undergone earth-shaking changes. Your relatives and friends have different experiences and growth. Some people die, more people are born, and enjoy With their slow, even and steady joy, anger, sadness and joy.

"This is only a hundred years. What if you hibernate again for three or five hundred years?

"Does the past ideals, goals, moral system, world outlook, outlook on life and values ​​have any meaning for you who have regained consciousness five hundred years later?"

Li Yao was speechless, and a picture that could not be described with pen and ink appeared in his mind. It was extremely gorgeous and extremely bleak. While giving birth to a chilling feeling, he unexpectedly faintly looked forward to it?

Ding Lingdang said earnestly: "Senior Guishoushou believes that when some people have mastered the ability to jump forward in the long river of time, their understanding of value, morality and even'life' itself will be completely different from others, then Like a tortoise crawling slowly on the ground, and a bird flying in the sky, it is impossible to understand each other. There are two different life choices, one is'continuous life, crawler race', and the other is'discontinuous life, leap race'. The difference between them is probably even greater than the difference between a cultivator and a cultivator. Much."

Li Yao was thinking about it, and had to admit that Gui Shoushou, an old guy who had been happy for a thousand years, said something reasonable.

It's really funny to think about it. This old guy's body is obviously a green-haired old tortoise, but he just calls others a "crawler", but he calls himself a "flying clan", which is a kind of stinky. Face?

"By the way, why didn't you see Guilao?"

Li Yao said, "Didn't he say that he wants to be the witness of all the major events of the Federation, he won't run out to record such big news as the'Empire Strikes Back'?"

"Guilao's realm has improved again."

Ding Lingdang said, "He has completely stepped into the realm of the'Feiyue Race', maybe in the red world where time is slowly passing, there is nothing worthy of him to pursue and pay attention to. I haven't seen him for a long time, maybe he will He dormant in an unknown horn, and slowly "leaped" to the next millennium.

"When we met for the last time, he was still saying that the individual'Feiyue Race' is already so mysterious. If an entire civilization chooses to actively hibernate itself, it will thaw once every 1,000 or 10,000 years. Leaping forward continuously in the long river, evolving into a "time-strider civilization", what will it look like? He really wants to find such a non-linear civilization-in his own way.

"As for us, we have just gone through hibernation for at most a hundred years. It is not really a'Feiyue clan.' At most, it is an incomplete form between the crawler and the Feiyue clan. The concept of "has not yet formed, and naturally will encounter various maladjustments. Senior Gui Sushou named such troubles as "time-out syndrome", "sickness caused by going beyond the timeline."