Chapter 348: Chapter 347: The Badit People’s Route

Old Guo glanced at the forum posts, all sorts of debates and quarrels, and somehow felt a bit bored.

He yawned and stood up from his chair, “No telling how long this wrangling will last, nothing interesting to see here. Some people are given the pleasures of five cycles of rebirth, and still they crave more, really shouldn’t be too greedy… Dead is dead, I don’t see what there is to fuss about.”

“Living too long can be boring sometimes… A life that never changes, endlessly repeating ten thousand years, a hundred million years, I don’t see the point.”

Seeing that it wasn’t late, the two rose again and walked towards the great conference room of Kunlun Mountain.

This time, the discussion meeting was quite grand, with over fifteen hundred participants that included experts and scholars from various fields, and there were many issues to discuss.

The first issue was the discussion on Virtual World Technology, which had now been leaked, including the public announcement of the Transcendents’ project, making the most effective utilization of it the biggest difficulty.

The military wanted to use Virtual World Technology to train soldiers; engineers hoped to use it for various simulation experiments; artists had already come up with all sorts of crazy ideas and wanted to immerse themselves in it to create worlds! Then there was the tourism industry, culinary businesses, human connection with Nature, education, and more. Whenever it comes to such novel technology, people always get excited, and all sorts of messy proposals were heaped up one after another.

After all, it has the potential to change every aspect of human life!

In the end, it was Zhang Yuan who cleared his throat and said heavily, “Ladies and gentlemen, please be quiet for a moment, and listen to what I have to say.”

Zhang Yuan, after all, was an Old Captain, and he commanded considerable respect; immediately, everyone became silent.

“Regarding Virtual World Technology, we are definitely going to use it. First off, let me explain some of its specific principles.”

“Virtual Worlds 1-11 are experimental in nature, not very stable, and prone to collapse. Once a collapse occurs, the life inside will die, so we do not consider them for practical application. The main application is in Worlds 12, 13, and 14.”

“Virtual World 12 is a weak-rule world, which under normal circumstances is still stable. What is a weak rule? It means–in the real world, with a few clicks of a computer mouse, a Kunlun Mountain spaceship appears in the virtual world, so it’s quite suitable for military exercises. However, since there’s a backdoor in World 12, there’s still a possibility of collapse or tampering, so if humans enter, strict monitoring is imperative to prevent potential security issues.”

“Virtual World 13 is a strong-rule world. You may ask what a strong rule is? It means–even real-world computer operations cannot interfere with the internal workings of Virtual World 13… You understand now, this world has no backdoor; at most, we can only send people in or forcibly shut it down.”

“Only in this way can we ensure that the entire Virtual World is safe and reliable because nobody wants to be walking down the street and suddenly be killed by a rock spontaneously forming out of thin air.”

Hearing this, everyone burst into laughter, realizing the truth in his words.

Zhang Yuan continued, “Virtual World 13 is essentially an extension of the real world, where the Badit people are imprisoned. Our already fallen soldiers also live here.”

“And then there’s Virtual World 14, the truly virtual world, an idealistic world. This community is involved in the Transcendents’ project, so before you all grow old and die, don’t think too much about it…”

So, by that logic, apart from some military and experimental proposals, the majority of the schemes still require strict discussion, and safety issues are still the most important.

It’s no joke, with the development of such technology, it’s better to be slow and cautious, rather than hasty and reckless.

The following discussion was about the decryption of top-secret information in the Black Box, as well as the knowledge system recently contributed by the Badit people.

This was also a point of great interest to everyone.

Indeed, the top-secret information inside the Black Box had been decrypted after some overtime work, and combined with the relentless interrogation of the Badit people, the entire civilization translation project had been relatively smooth.

Its contents were quite surprising to everyone.

It included cosmological common knowledge that humans longed for and a great many technologies, supplementing the interrogation efforts of the Badit people!

Let’s not forget, the spaceship of this Alien Civilization was a commercial vessel, its main purpose, after all, was for commercial trade.

And the trade between interstellar civilizations was mostly not in material goods, but in information, as well as technology!

This spaceship’s furthest exploration distance reached 110 light years away from its Mother Star, and during the entire voyage, it encountered two batches of aliens with interstellar travel capabilities, with humans being the third batch. A portion of this information was stored in the Black Box, which is now in human hands.

This discovery excited everyone beyond measure; no one expected this war prize to be so much richer and more real than imagined, with hardly any chance of deceit.

Organizing this batch of information naturally became the top priority for the time being.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please look!”

When the topic came up, everyone perked up.

Zhang Yuan tapped the screen, and a star map image appeared, with about a hundred Constant Stars interconnected by thin lines.

Zhang Yuan said, “This route is the one the Badit people took on this mission. In pursuit of greater commercial profits, they intentionally took a bit of a detour.”

“At the end of this route lies a trade market of a Fourth-level Civilization… Most of the technology in the Black Box was traded from this market. There was also some information exchanged with two other interstellar civilizations.”

“As for those two interstellar civilizations, they were merely passersby along the journey, exchanging a few trinkles.”

“So the Badit’s confession held no lies, and from these records, you should also understand why we are seen as a rookie civilization. I hope everyone will be mindful when interacting with interstellar civilizations in the future.”

“And our current location is roughly here, 44.9 light years away from that trade market.”

Zhang Yuan pointed to a black area in the center of the image, and the Constant Star on the very edge was the destination of this mission, 187j3x2.

The distribution of Cosmic Strings is like a complex neural network, but it is sparse compared to the vast expanse of the Universe.

Thus, even though the Badit Civilization had been scouting this part of the sky for tens of thousands of years, they could only explore a small portion of the area around the Cosmic Strings. 187j3x2 just happened to be an unexplored region.

For stars like the Sun, which are several light years away from a Cosmic String, interstellar civilizations Below Level 4 had very little interest in exploration. Geography dictated that. Even a Third-level Civilization, without the use of gravity propulsion, would have to use most of the spaceship’s mass for fuel, and it would likely be a one-way trip.

Zhang Yuan then pointed to the endpoint of this route: “This trade market Constant Star– let’s tentatively name it Huantai Star–the host civilization there is called the Huantai Civilization, a Level 4 Civilization with Curvature Technology. You all should know what Curvature Technology really means.”

“Are you suggesting that we could also go to this Level 4 Civilization’s trade market?” Ye Junchang adjusted his glasses, lost in thought.

“Yes, that’s correct. If we want to expand our external interactions, it’s indeed a good option.”

Hearing Zhang Yuan’s affirmative response, the others began to discuss quietly among themselves. Some frowned, thinking that humans could indeed meander over to that trade market to have a look, while others remained silent, not commenting.

“Taking into account the stops for maintenance, it’s about 600 years of travel, though with hibernation, it’s somewhat acceptable.”

Additionally, the route would pass several Life Planets. These planets, all scouted by the Badit Civilization, were home to Low-level Civilizations, some with technology that was not very advanced, with a few even in the primitive stages.

The Badit Civilization didn’t have much interest in interacting with them, but… humans did!

Human’s New Civilization History needed to collect more historical samples. The more advanced this field of study became, the less likely humanity would take missteps.

Some people also felt it was a bit risky… Although they had caught up considerably with Universe Cosmology, it was the ‘what if’ that frightened them–if humans were to be robbed by aliens again, even a victory would force humanity to consider the associated risks.