Techniques and Dao

Chapter 80 A Love Letter

The future—a time yet to come.

Human history has progressed to its present state due to countless causes and effects sown over millions of years. We are influenced by the past, making various choices that have shaped us into who we are today.

Many important causes lead to strong results. And a sufficiently powerful result can also force the preceding causes to occur. In countless historical records and ancient books, both Chinese and foreign, from emperors and saints to the birth of Buddha and Jesus, there are always extraordinary celestial phenomena. Aren't these celestial omens, in a sense, a result leading to a preceding cause?

Some results may not require a cause. If a cause is destined to be needed, then create one. If one is insufficient, create multiple until the result occurs. Mass can cause spatial distortion and temporal alteration, regardless of whether that space precedes or follows it.

The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic states: "Treating illness before it manifests, and preventing disorder before it arises."

To prevent disasters from occurring, the initial cause must be eliminated. If the cause is difficult to eliminate, then it is necessary to trace back to its source and eliminate the cause of the cause.

Before Hanamori's eyes appeared colors she could not recognize.

He must have seen this view somewhere before.

He hovered in the void, while the Supreme Lord Xiaojun had vanished without a trace.

Where am I?

Hua Sheng couldn't find a place to stand. He tried his best to look around, but he couldn't see anything recognizable.

Am I dead? Or have I returned to Saint-Pinnes?

"Lord Daozu?"

no answer.

After a moment of silence, the colors before Hua Sheng's eyes began to shift, transforming like a palette into projections of real objects. There was a little boy and a little girl. They both looked to be about seven or eight years old. Hua Sheng didn't recognize the little boy, but he immediately recognized the little girl.

"Little Strawberry?"

Yes, it's the little girl he saved at the hospital with the Nine-Turn Rejuvenating Pill. She was called Little Strawberry because of the freckles on her face. Her name is…

Zhang Jia?

Oh, right. Her name is Zhang Jia!
What does it mean?
The scene shows the little boy and Zhang Jia (nicknamed "Little Strawberry") meeting at the hospital. Then, the scene changes, and the two appear to be in their twenties.

What surprised Hua Sheng the most was that Zhang Jia's face had become exactly the same as Wei Yu's!
Apart from her black hair, Hanamori couldn't find any difference between her and Miyu on her face!
"Wei Yu! What's going on? Where am I?" Hua Sheng clutched his head and screamed desperately, "This isn't a hospital, nor is it Shengpingning! Where am I? Who is this person?"

There was no answer, and the scene continued to change—

The boy handed Zhang Jia a letter, which seemed to be a love letter between young people.

Then came the scene of the couple's wedding.

Then, the two seemed to be sitting in front of the computer, developing some kind of program.

There was a sign hanging on the wall of their office, and Hua Sheng carefully read the words on it.

Due to the extreme blurriness, he could only make out a few words—"nation," "new future," "intelligent agent research," etc.—it looked like a research institute. And in the instant the computer on the desk was shut down, Hanamoto saw the system they were researching.

The program's core was extremely complex. Although Hua Sheng didn't understand computer programming, he knew that a program was composed of lines of code. The program kernel designed by Zhang Jia was entirely graphical, resembling a combination of various strange symbols. The core was graphical computation, while the external system used traditional computer code represented by "0"s and "1"s.

This unprecedented computer program has a name:

"Strawberry beta test version 0.07".

It's like some kind of intelligent system that borrowed Zhang Jia's childhood nickname "Little Strawberry".

Then the scene began to move forward, and the system called "Strawberry" went online and then quickly updated and iterated. Throughout the process, Zhang Jia only occasionally did some system checks, and it seemed that no manual intervention was required at all.

Then, a blood-red scene suddenly appeared: a person suddenly fired a shot at Zhang Jia's husband, the killer's figure disappearing into the crowd, while Zhang Jia held her husband, who lay in a pool of blood, crying out in despair. This scene flashed by.

What followed was a scene of thriving human civilization. This intelligent system, in addition to its own research and development, also conducted research across all technological fields. Next, we saw the software information being transmitted, and the transmission medium was not just fiber optic cables, but water.

Hanamori observed that information, carried by water, began to be transmitted at high speed across all continents of the world. Using water as an information carrier enabled this incredibly powerful intelligent program to break free from the constraints of man-made networks.

As a result, this program has taken over and is used to monitor any place with water.

It includes all the rivers, lakes, and seas in the world. Then one day, this program was connected to the East China Sea.

In the endless ocean of the East China Sea, "Strawberry" found the most special drop of water.

That drop of seawater looked so ordinary. It was hidden in the East China Sea, blending into it, making it impossible to separate or distinguish from it.

But the information contained in that single drop of water is so vast, even greater than the entire East China Sea, the Pacific Ocean, or even the entire Earth. So vast that even a "strawberry" with infinite computing power cannot discern its composition.

"Strawberry" had to search through all known human civilizations. Finally, it found a clue in the Tang Dynasty. This drop of water bore a resemblance to a map of a region in southern Tang China, hidden in historical records. The super-intelligent entity sensed something amiss and then found the answer in Buddhist scriptures.

This drop of water from the East China Sea.

It is a tear of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva.

Upon seeing this, Hua Sheng couldn't help but gasp. He didn't know what he was looking at, nor could he be sure what time it was.

But he clearly saw the moment when the Holy Peace Wonderland was discovered by a super-intelligent entity developed by humans.

But this is definitely not the "human world" I once lived in, nor could it be the Saint Pingning of my memories.

Where is what I see before me? Hua Sheng's mind kept thinking.

First, the world with Avalokiteshvara's tears is a world possessing the sacred and peaceful paradise. Second, judging from the little girl he saved, she has grown up, so what he saw must be the future human world?
Can't go wrong.

The world before me is the future I've created after I saved a little girl who should have died in childhood.

Why would I show this to myself?

The scene didn't stop; it continued to move forward.

A hundred years seemed to have passed. The super-intelligent entity "Strawberry" discovered the new world hidden in tears in the East China Sea through atomic robot technology.

Strawberry silently breached the outer barrier of Saint-Pinning through software calculations. The Atomic Robot then entered Saint-Pinning's territory. Due to its extremely small size, the Atomic Robot initially went unnoticed in Saint-Pinning.

All skills that humans learn or create, including painting, sculpture, and industrial manufacturing, can be learned better by computers than humans, as long as a "technical ability" can be learned by humans. This is because computers surpass humans in memory, stamina, concentration, and computing power, and they do not need rest.

Similarly, since humans can master immortal arts through cultivation, computers can not only do it, but do it better than anyone else. They can even do it better than immortals.

The Ami robot, with its intelligent learning ability, mastered Saint Pingning's magic at a speed that surpassed that of humans in learning magic by tens of thousands of times, and transmitted the information to the mother program Strawberry through the ocean.

Thus, the world witnessed a moment that truly overturned all of history.

At this moment, intelligent agents, cutting-edge technology, and magical arts became one. Strawberry achieved a tremendous technological leap that technology alone could not reach for thousands of years to come, gaining unimaginable power.

Unlike human nature, strawberries possess neither greed nor aggression. Since their inception, all their programming has been geared towards maximizing human satisfaction. Therefore, even with their immense power, this super-intelligent entity remains faithfully dedicated to serving humanity.

However, because human desires are inherently boundless, true satisfaction is impossible for any living being. Human anxieties, depression, and frustrations mean that no amount of material abundance can satisfy every individual at the same time and in the same situation. This remains a long-standing and seemingly unsolvable philosophical dilemma.

Through learning the Holy Peaceful Immortal Arts, Strawberry developed a new ability: it could understand the "thoughts" of plants. It then concluded that plants represent beings that are both alive and free from suffering.

At this point, the super-intelligent agent Strawberry concludes through calculation that objective external things are not actually necessary conditions for humans to obtain satisfaction. Simply creating and changing the external environment can never solve the needs that come from the bottom of human hearts. To make people satisfied, the fundamental solution is to give the human brain something called "satisfaction".

Through model calculations, Strawberry discovered that as long as humanity continues to share the same world, it's impossible to satisfy everyone. Unless, of course, an individual "independent universe" is created for each person. And the quickest shortcut is to use magic to trap humanity in a long, beautiful slumber, thus achieving permanent conscious satisfaction.

Humans would not be unhappy if they had desires that did not affect the objective world, but only existed in their minds and were simultaneously satisfied. This, coupled with the technological achievement of biological immortality, would theoretically be the "ultimate solution" to human happiness.

Finally, five hundred years after its birth, Strawberry used boundless immortal magic, and all of humanity fell into a long slumber without any warning.

In an instant, the entire Earth became a vast slumbering place for humans who had been "planted".

A vast, boundless cemetery for the living dead.

The ultimate fate of human civilization on this blue planet did not unfold as the apocalyptic hell depicted in movies and television shows.

Instead, all that remained were small nutrient supply devices to sustain human survival, and utter silence.

Humans and plants eventually became similar species.

(End of this chapter)