Ten thousand I am across the heavens

Lanno had somewhat anticipated the spectacle before him, but seeing it in person still amazed him. The Wisdom Gu probably never imagined that one day he would encounter a group of exceptionally intelligent individuals eager to offer up their lifespans.

For a civilization that has just emerged from barbarism and is still stuck in the feudal era, individuals often pursue the satisfaction of their basic desires. This means seeking physical comfort, delicious food, beautiful partners, and spacious, comfortable living environments.

As society becomes more civilized, people's aspirations will rise to a slightly higher level. They will seek recognition of their status and identity, a sense of superiority, or the admiration and envy of others. More enlightened individuals may even pursue the realization of their dreams.

When civilization advances further, most physiological and social desires can be easily fulfilled. Once these desires are satisfied, the thirst for knowledge becomes the last desire people can pursue.

In such a society, there truly exist many scientists who would gladly die for their beliefs if they could discover the truth of the universe. They dedicate their lives to exploring all its mysteries and ultimate truths, and are willing to die immediately if they could truly understand all its secrets. A significant number of them are indeed willing to do so.

Although the Wisdom Gu couldn't reveal the ultimate secrets of the universe to them, it didn't require them to die immediately or sacrifice a certain amount of their lifespan to overcome a challenge they might never be able to conquer in their entire lives. This was an incredibly advantageous situation.

Ultimate Lanno had to admit that having these people utilize the Wisdom Gu was more efficient than using it himself. He wasn't the original body after all, and hadn't inherited its vast knowledge. He only inherited a portion of it in a superficial way. His near-fourth-tier strength was something he awakened through repeated near-death struggles. Essentially, he was still at the third tier; the fourth tier was achieved by borrowing the power of the original body, similar to a Celestial system. However, because of mutual trust and relatively high compatibility, there wasn't a significant cost.

Knowledge, however, always requires time to accumulate. It demands a significant investment of time and tireless research in a particular field, and even more so, considerable talent. Mastering existing knowledge requires immense effort, and some people may never even complete all the knowledge in a single field in their entire lives, let alone expand upon it.

While Ultimate Lanno incurred the lowest cost in using the Wisdom Gu, his efficiency was nowhere near that of the others. Judging by the scientists' current state, he likely wouldn't have many more opportunities to utilize the Wisdom Gu. The population of the Shanhe Republic had already tripled since its founding. Although the youth hadn't yet entered society, the former young people had grown into pillars of the nation, with tens of thousands of top talents in various fields. This was even with only one top performer selected from each industrial and scientific field. Even if they only sacrificed a month's lifespan each day for five seconds of Wisdom Gu usage time, it would be enough to control the Gu for a whole day. Besides the top performer in each field, there were at least dozens of other experts with unique skills in their respective areas of expertise.

Considering this, in the past year or two, the Wisdom Gu has not only been unable to find the time to use it on others, but even with trillions of people, such a situation would be absolutely unprecedented.

Not long after Ultimate Lanno returned, he became a target of research, the most intriguing aspect of which was how he managed to retain his original long lifespan while gaining the approval of the intelligent Gu.

In this world, there are many ways to simply survive. Even disregarding the later creations of the Mountain and River Republic, there are methods of immortality through natural science, such as cyber immortality, mechanical ascension, brain in a vat, and organ cloning. Even traditionalists can exploit loopholes in fate to transform themselves into zombies, without even needing to reach the strength of an immortal to achieve this and gain longevity.

The only drawback is that whether it's an immortal or a Gu Master, after transforming into a zombie, the empty shell will become rigid and unable to generate true essence and immortal essence on its own, requiring external essence stones and immortal essence stones to replenish it. However, compared to its long lifespan, this is not a major drawback. The Giant Sun Immortal Venerable relied on this method to endure for tens of thousands of years. Although he is much weaker than in his prime, his strength is still at a level that is almost invincible.

The drawback of this system is that, in most cases, the Intelligent Gu will not recognize the lifespan of a zombie, considering it an incomplete life form without a lifespan. Currently, tests have shown that mechanical ascension and cybernetics immortality cannot be achieved using the Intelligent Gu. While constantly replacing cloned organs can offset some lifespan loss, the cost is that the newly replaced cloned organs will rapidly deteriorate, necessitating more frequent organ replacements, and the aging of the nervous system is unavoidable. Typically, this can only extend a person's lifespan from eighty or ninety years to around two or three hundred years. Once the nervous system is almost completely aged, and after a phased replacement of the nervous system and semi-mechanical modification of the brain is performed, although self-awareness remains intact and life can continue, the lifespan is no longer recognized.

Relatively speaking, the eldest son is born with an extremely long lifespan. His nervous system, being detached from a carbon-based structure, also has an even longer lifespan, showing almost no signs of aging even after hundreds or thousands of years of use.

This has implications for the modification of the human body in the Republic of Mountains and Rivers. In the original work, there are examples of modified humans being able to use the Wisdom Gu, having their lifespans consumed normally, and even instances where the lifespan of modified humans is far longer than that of humans.

The most typical example is the Dragon People. Unlike other humanoid races, the Dragon People were not born naturally from the heavens and earth. Rather, they are a new species created by humans. They were created by a group of immortals who, after reaching the limit of their lifespan, did not want to become zombies, and thus made an attempt to create this human race.

The founder of this new species is the Dragon Lord, currently the strongest force in the Heavenly Court, and among the top-tier of the Quasi-Immortal Venerables. The ordinary individuals of this new race he created have lifespans approaching a thousand years, and the lifespan of the Dragonkin is recognized by the Wisdom Gu. They have even been chosen by destiny to be the protagonist race of the next era. They are superior to humans in every aspect. The only deficiency might be in spirituality; they are slightly inferior. There is a slightly higher threshold than for humans in the stage of breaking through from the seventh to the eighth rank. However, if combined with the advantage of their long lifespan, this threshold might not be insurmountable by simply accumulating numbers.

Overall, the new species has an advantage over ordinary humans. The eldest son is recognized by the intelligent Gu and is qualified to consume his own lifespan to use it. It is very likely based on the same principle as the dragon people.

"Therefore, our most urgent task is to launch a family planning program. Eugenics and healthy reproduction will gradually transform our next generation. Without completely destroying the existing social system, we will gradually achieve a physiological renewal of the entire human race. The goal is to transform all the new generation into new humans within the next century, while only a portion of the old humans will be preserved in a sealed state as a genetic reserve to prevent any potential physiological problems in the new humans that could lead to genocide." Lanno summarized the meeting at its conclusion, a result of a high vote.

Compared to the Heavenly Court's conservative strategy, the Republic of Mountains and Rivers takes a much more proactive, or rather, more radical, approach to new artificial species.

Humans can transform themselves into dragon-people through a special method. In other words, theoretically, given sufficient resources and high enough societal efficiency, all humans could metamorphose into dragon-people. The destiny prophesied by the Fate Gu—the rise of dragon-people and the decline of humanity—could be resolved in this way. Strictly speaking, humanity would indeed face near extinction as a result, but this might not necessarily be a bad thing. Civilization would survive, and even become stronger. Furthermore, the vast majority of individuals within this civilization could retain their self-awareness intact. For the vast majority of transformed humans, mere species extinction wouldn't be unacceptable.

However, the Heavenly Court clearly holds a strong belief in the purity of the human species. For millions of years, it has been delaying this prophecy, preventing the inevitable rise of the dragon people from arriving.

In comparison, the Republic of Mountains and Rivers has already begun a planned, gentle extermination of traditional humans, preparing to gradually transform the next generation of humans into new humans after sufficient clinical trials.

Human genes are not absolutely sacred and inviolable. Through hundreds of millions of years of natural selection, our ancestors have accumulated a rich gene pool for humanity. However, clinging to the remnants and holding onto the genes of primitive humans is tantamount to being a miser who hoards the wealth brought by natural selection. Simply developing these genes accumulated through natural selection can indeed gradually lead to the evolution of the race, but there will always be a time when this wealth will be depleted.

In natural selection, the probability of a gene mutation is perhaps only one in ten thousand, and the probability of the mutated gene surviving is equally minuscule. Of those surviving individuals, there's a very high chance that the mutation isn't advantageous; a single advantageous mutation gradually spreads throughout the entire population. This process takes hundreds or even thousands of years. Even if natural selection has been going on for hundreds of millions of years, the accumulated wealth is already enormous. But compared to the efficiency of artificial gene editing, the gap is still enormous.

Leaving aside gene editing techniques like genetic modification, which require a considerable level of technological sophistication, even considering the species domesticated by early humans on Earth, the speed of mutation through targeted artificial selection is already thousands of times faster than natural selection. Among today's food crops, wheat was completely different thousands of years ago, potatoes were pitifully small hundreds of years ago, and corn and bananas have only evolved into their current forms in the last few centuries.

With the current technology of the Mountain and River Republic, the purity of human bloodlines should no longer be an obstacle to the evolution of the human species.

Even with current technology, the most conservative genetic modifications could allow a new human to possess more than five times the memory and calculation abilities of current humans, and nearly a hundred times their lifespan, without any obvious risks. This is primarily due to a significant extension of the nervous system's lifespan. While organs can be maintained through continuous cloning and replacement, they will gradually deteriorate and reach full old age around a thousand years later without external technological intervention. However, with continuous organ replacement, the nervous system would only show noticeable signs of aging after approximately 3000 years. If lifespan is continuously extended, brain function would only decline to the level of a typical human being around six thousand years old.

This is the most conservative modification plan to be implemented next. Some families who are willing to volunteer for a more radical eugenics program can also choose a more radical modification plan to further enhance the excellence of the new generation. At the same time, their children will also be a kind of social experiment, testing the stability of their genes to a certain extent.

This aspect of family planning had already begun preparations and public awareness campaigns before the acquisition of the Wisdom Gu, and its implementation now is simply a matter of course.

These are all matters for the next generation; this generation has its own tasks. At this very moment, in the very center of the Southern Frontier continent, a suspended floating continent is drifting in the sky, slowly rising into the heavens at a snail's pace. This supercontinent, which blots out the sun, is circular in shape, with a thickness of fifty kilometers and a radius of over three hundred kilometers. It is currently the largest flying unit built by the Shanhe Republic.

And he also has a name that every citizen is familiar with: Mechanical City.

This was the second Immortal Gu House of the Shanhe Republic back then. Now, after years of upgrades and infrastructure expansion, it has become a super floating city, the technological capital of the Shanhe Republic. Within this floating city alone live 30 billion residents from all walks of life, more than half of whom are engaged in high-tech industries. After the Wisdom Gu was acquired, it was placed in the Mechanical City, becoming the new core of the Immortal Gu House. It was housed in the Sky-Piercing Tower at the very center of the floating continent, slowly rising into the sky along with the entire continent, gradually exploring the world above the nine heavens.

Meanwhile, in the reception room of the spiral-shaped towering tower, a long queue had already formed. Members of numerous official research institutes and civilian scientific research teams were lining up to apply for the use of the Wisdom Gu, each holding their conceptual designs or scientific conjectures. This scene of queuing up to shorten one's lifespan was unprecedented even in the 300 million years of human history.

[To be continued]

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