Ten thousand I am across the heavens

The trust issue between the two sides was impossible to resolve in the short term, and neither of them was the type to easily entrust their backs to another. Therefore, under the mutual checks and balances, the Ghostly Demon Lord finally managed to find a method that both sides could temporarily accept to change the past.

Because of his innate talent, Fang Yuan cannot send himself to a point in time that is too far back in time. If he were to be forcibly sent there, his thoughts would arise out of thin air because he would not have a self as an anchor point and would eventually dissipate completely without being replenished.

The cicada can send back to the past with just a single thought. A thought itself is extremely fragile without a vessel. Theoretically, it can exist independently for a period of time. This time depends on the strength of the thought and the availability of a protective natural environment. It could be as short as a blink of an eye, or as long as several years or even longer. In some special secret realms, it might even last for hundreds of years. However, because thoughts have limited ability to interfere with the material world, the vessels that can carry them are not easy to create. Especially in the past, with its lack of natural resources and industrial equipment, it was almost impossible to create the necessary equipment before death to send a thought back without a physical body to carry it.

This means that sending a single thought might influence some history, but the thought itself is almost certainly doomed. The only advantage is probably that doing so can evade the pursuit of mortal enemies. Because it's already in the timeline before his birth, even if there were enemies before his birth, they hadn't yet become his enemies.

Comparatively speaking, the Ghostly Demon Lord's situation is much better. Although he didn't have a physical body in the conventional sense in his past, remaining in a state of dazed awareness, it was perfectly adequate to contain his thoughts. This dazed state actually proved helpful in their cooperation, because a more rational being, upon receiving thoughts from the future, would engage in excessive rational deduction, perhaps even gleaning some insights from the subtle clues of the future.

The additional information they discover could potentially be detrimental to each other.

The agreement between the two parties was essentially to project limited information into the past. It also used the cicada as a medium, but instead of directly returning to the past, it used the cicada to travel through the river of time, carrying only a very fragmented thought, allowing a portion of the information within that thought to return to the past.

For example, some knowledge from the future can be carried to the past in this way. Simply carrying back a portion of knowledge and certain technologies would indeed make the Ghostly Demon Lord stronger in history, but it wouldn't affect Fang Yuan. This is because Fang Yuan wasn't even born then. Without additional information, the Ghostly Demon Lord would have no idea how a nobody born in Qingmao Mountain would grow. After all, at that time, he was only a third-grade aptitude. He was barely even on the path of cultivation; how could he possibly attract the attention of a Venerable?

"I can agree to use the Spring and Autumn Cicada to create a deadly technique. Under certain conditions, I'll let you send some technology back to the past. But the technology sent back must also be limited. You're already too strong. If I let you grow infinitely in the past, when I travel back to that point in time, when I'm still extremely weak, you'll have absolutely no power to resist. And you have absolutely no reason to allow a superfluous time traveler to exist. If you really complete this one-way time travel, you'll only think about eliminating me as soon as possible."

Therefore, I need more safeguards. If you are the only one who benefits from passing on knowledge to the past, I cannot accept this agreement.

The Ghostly Demon Lord nodded. He had always maintained his composure and rationality in front of this man, lest he reveal any weakness that the other could exploit. He explained calmly, "According to our current agreement, even if we traveled back to the past, to before the agreement was signed, we cannot harm each other. The agreement itself even binds us to a certain extent, requiring resource sharing. Therefore, my past self becoming stronger would also be a help to you."

"Don't think I don't know you're investigating the loopholes in the agreement. Do you think I wouldn't notice the flaws in our agreement? This agreement is based on the Mountain Alliance Gu. This means that once the Mountain Alliance's mountain is destroyed, the agreement will have major problems. Indeed, before this mountain was created, it was impossible to destroy it. But now this mountain is as large as a floating continent. Without the strength to directly defeat the Mountain and River Republic, it is impossible to destroy it."

But there was actually a period in history when the Mechanical City was relatively weak, and the Mountain and River Republic was also relatively weak. At that time, if a full-scale attack had been launched, the Mechanical City could have been destroyed. If a full-scale attack had been launched then, it was very likely that the agreement could have been completely destroyed. How could I obtain guarantees then?

After a moment of contemplation, Fang Yuan revealed his plan: "I can indeed help you send back some information, providing your past self with some knowledge guidance, but the things you created in the past must have some backdoors that I can easily access."

Future technologies are far too complex for our past selves. Even with incredibly detailed information, we might not be able to fully comprehend many technologies. Even current technologies contain many elements that are technical black boxes to us, forcing us to rely on clandestine trade routes and imports from the Republic of Mountains and Rivers.

This means that the technologies we pass on to the past may contain technical "black boxes" that were completely incomprehensible to us in the past, and could only be realized by replicating the original data 1:1. And this was perfectly normal for us in the past.

At this point, the two couldn't help but sigh. No one had ever considered the "black box" of technology to be a hidden danger. The killing techniques created by others were already incredibly complex. Immortal killing techniques were even more intricate. Learning someone else's legacy simply required following the steps outlined in the tradition; the underlying principles and methods of constructing the killing technique were rarely considered. If it worked, that was enough; if modifying it would render it unusable, why bother? Thus, killing techniques throughout history, especially the oldest ones, were passed down without anyone understanding their true technical principles, merely being used by generation after generation within the tradition.

[To be continued]

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