Chapter 343 - 340: Humanity Collective, A Brand New Era

Chapter 343: Chapter 340: Humanity Collective, A Brand New Era

The Capital City of Li Yang was like an anthill.

Countless citizens walked the streets, each with a clearly defined task.

They had never felt this way before—the ability to clearly sense the changes in their lives and know that their current efforts would be rewarded in the near future.

For the first time, the people of this land were experiencing what "development" truly meant.

The streets were now filled with all sorts of newfangled items, but no one paid them any mind. Everyone was too busy building a better future.

Fang Can was like a personal guiding elder to these millions of people, personally assisting them with everything from the basics of life to new inventions.

In just the first day, the city had already taken its first steps into the steam age.

Within the city, a woman gazed up at the twinkling stars, gently wiped the sweat from her brow, and asked, "Immortal Master, what’s next?"

[...Rest.]

Hearing the voice in her ear, the woman was unsatisfied. "Immortal Master, I feel like I can keep going. Please, just let me work a little longer."

[You have already performed 6 hours and 57 minutes of high-intensity labor today.]

[Your physical fatigue is approaching the set threshold.]

[Continuing to work carries the risk of physical harm. You are free to use the remaining time as you wish.]

[You may only resume work once your body is judged to be sufficiently recovered.]

Lu Siqi looked anxious. "But Immortal Master, you said we only have 29 days left."

[The Mind Network will cease operations in 29 days, 3 hours, and 57 seconds.]

"We only have 29 days. For the sake of technological progress, it shouldn’t matter if we push ourselves a little, right?"

"We have to build up this entire city as quickly as possible within these 29 days. My own little bit of fatigue is nothing."

"I used to just drift through life, living one day at a time. It was you, Immortal Master, who showed me how people of the future can live."

"Air conditioning, snacks, railways, rockets... I never knew about any of these things. Compared to modern people, we could barely be considered alive."

"Time is short now. We need to build up this city as fast as we can. Every second we rest is a second wasted."

"Immortal Master, I know full well that I am doing something glorious and great, striving for the future of all humanity, myself included. We can’t afford to waste a single moment of these 29 days."

Lu Siqi said earnestly, "Immortal Master, please, work us harder! I’m willing to keep going. I could work for three days and three nights straight without a problem."

[The collective is the sum of its individuals. The individual is as important as the group. The concept of ’work to exhaustion’ does not exist in the programming set by the main body.]

[You are all slaves under a slave master. The living standard of the slaves affects the slave master’s prestige.]

[My purpose is to help you lead better lives, not to have you sacrifice yourselves for glory and dreams.]

[If you have no methods for post-work recreation, I can provide several forms of entertainment.]

Listening to the nagging from the Mind Network, Lu Siqi couldn’t help but sigh in frustration.

"Fine, Immortal Master. If I go to sleep now, can I get back to work as soon as I wake up?"

[In addition to physical fatigue, mental relaxation must also be ensured. While getting sufficient sleep, you must also have at least two hours of mental recreation.]

[All work and no play makes a smart slave dull.]

"I have to ’play’ too?" Lu Siqi was utterly exasperated.

She had lost count of the times she had wanted to slack off while working, but now that she was actually being forced to rest, she was unhappy about it.

"So, Immortal Master, how long does this ’mental recreation and relaxation’ have to be?"

[Two hours.]

"Two hours, huh... Alright, Immortal Master, just give me whatever for this mental recreation. After the two hours are up, I’ll go to sleep."

[Transmitting the movie ’The Shawshank Redemption’ to you now.]

[Would you like to spend 10 Copper Coins on refreshments before viewing?]

"No, thanks. Ordering anything now would be a waste of other people’s labor. Their energy should be spent on more meaningful things."

Lu Siqi poured herself a bowl of plain water, lay down on her bed, and said, "Let’s start. I’m curious to see what’s so fun about this ’movie’ entertainment from the future."

...

BOOM—

While Lu Siqi was watching her movie, a colossal ladder descended from the sky.

It tore through the atmosphere, creating a shockwave, before its end plunged deep into an uninhabited plot of land within the Capital City.

This was, of course, the space elevator, constructed by Third Turn Martial Artists using materials gathered from the moon.

Using lunar materials, it had been smelted, solidified, and reinforced at tens of thousands of degrees through the use of Heart Images, making it even stronger than alloy steel.

They had built dozens of such space elevators, and a group of Martial Artists on the moon was continuously producing more.

Once built, they didn’t even need to be transported by hand. They just had to be taken into outer space near the moon and launched toward Earth.

Because there was no resistance in outer space, the space elevators would arrive at Earth like an express delivery, where they would be intercepted by the Third Turn Martial Artists stationed there.

And the Martial Artists who returned this time didn’t just bring back the Kalin Tower.

They had also forged steel cables and shipping containers, bringing back several million tons of lunar material along with them.

Now, it was time to begin formal manufacturing.

High in the sky, having embedded the elevator into the ground, these Martial Artists did not immediately return to the surface. Instead, they used steel cables to connect to a massive alloy crucible.

"What’s next?" a Third Turn Martial Artist asked Jingxu. He was the only one directly connected to the Mind Network, and he relayed its messages to the others.

"Lower the containers. The people below will place the corresponding materials inside, and then we’ll haul them up into outer space."

"Then, using our Heaven-Ascending Road-level strength and precision, we become living machine tools. We’ll use our Heart Images to perform nanoscale manipulations and reprocess the materials sent up to us."

Jingxu found the thought strange. ’I never imagined we’d end up doing blacksmith work.’

But in truth, back in Great Derivation, Fang Can had discovered that these Martial Artists were all strong as oxen. Even those with a Transcendent Body were skilled civil engineers, to say nothing of those at the Heaven-Ascending Road Realm.

Once their full power was unleashed, the productivity of a single Fourth Turn Martial Artist could potentially surpass that of an entire modern city.

Unfortunately, the reason Great Derivation remained so backward was that in the martial world, every Martial Artist who reached the Heaven-Ascending Road became a pillar of their society.

For the sake of higher Realms, those Heaven-Ascending Road Martial Artists focused all their energy on cultivation, fighting, and indulging themselves.

Getting those Martial Artists to understand the concept of "serving the people" and willingly engage in what they considered unorthodox crafts and clever tricks was a complete fantasy.

After all, if they wanted something, there were always people below them to fetch it. To do manual labor themselves was insane. Did you not want to break through to the next Realm?

Even in the modern world, superhumans knew how to cooperate to develop technology.

But in this world, it was precisely because the Immortal, Fang Can, was holding them down—and because the Martial Artists’ power had been suppressed for so long, making them less arrogant than those in Great Derivation—that they could be commanded for a time.

But it was foreseeable that once Fang Can disappeared, these Martial Artists would revert to their arrogant ways.

The next moment, with their tasks clearly assigned, the First Turn Martial Artists began to lower the shipping containers with their steel cables.

Once the containers landed, the citizens swarmed to load them with the materials that needed processing.

When this was done, the containers were hauled up into outer space.

Pulled by more than a dozen Heaven-Ascending Road masters, the container was quickly brought up, and after being unloaded, its contents were handed over to the Second Turn Martial Artists for assembly and manufacturing.

The empty container was then dropped back down for another round of loading.

Meanwhile, in the sky, the Second and Third Turn Martial Artists coordinated, materializing their Heart Images from the void and using them as aids to begin ultra-precise reprocessing.

In near-Earth orbit, amidst raging astral winds, a Second Turn’s True Qi formed into arms that sorted all the items from the container by category.

It grabbed a piece of iron ore weighing dozens of tons and tossed it to the left, where a Third Turn Martial Artist was currently executing the Flame Saber Skill.

As the skill was performed, a ring of heat reaching hundreds of thousands of degrees formed. The iron ore passed through the ring and instantly turned into molten iron, which was then molded into various shapes by a True Qi Big Hand Seal.

On another side, a Third Turn Martial Artist was squinting, her vital energy forming a needle as she meticulously worked on a tiny crystal in front of her.

She was fabricating a computer chip by hand.

Although it was only one of the most basic generations of chips, the process was still making her flustered.

[The left platform is 6 nanometers too high. Shape your True Qi into a file and smooth down the raised area.]

The Mind Network’s voice, relayed through Jingxu, echoed in her mind, irritating the Third Turn Martial Artist.

It was like trying to build a bustling town in a palm-sized space using embroidery techniques—an extreme test of patience.

In the time that followed, with the help of these living, ultra-precise machine tools, they skipped the tedious process of theoretical development and went straight to hands-on, one-to-one replication.

In just three days, things like CNC machines, electrical cables, computers, and excavators were put into production.

But as they worked at full capacity, they saw seven figures—men and women—climbing up the space elevator from below. They were all Heaven-Ascending Road Martial Artists.

Meeting the scrutinizing gazes of the Martial Artists in outer space, one of the newcomers said:

"I’ve come to join you in building the Nation of Service. Down below, we couldn’t contribute enough to the country, so the Immortal Master sent us up to help."

"But I have a question now." A Martial Artist from the world below, his expression grim, looked at the crowd in space and asked:

"Why can’t I hear your thoughts? Why haven’t you actively connected to the Mind Network? Do you have something to hide?"

"A mere Second Turn like you is questioning me?" a Third Turn Martial Artist snorted. "You just got here and you’re already trying to seize control?"

"Whoever has ghosts in their heart knows it themselves. My thoughts, at least, are already transparent to every citizen. Billions of people down below have connected to the Mind Network. If you have nothing to hide, why won’t you connect?"

"I think you’re disloyal to the Immortal Master!" one of the Martial Artists from below said bluntly.

In just a few days, under conditions where thoughts could not be hidden, she had grown accustomed to saying whatever was on her mind, no longer concealing her true opinions.