Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Thinking for a moment, Li Yao frowned and asked, “What’s the problem of a world without diseases?”

“What’s the problem?” Su Changfa scoffed. “The biggest problem is that the Cultivators broke the rules of nature and shattered the balance between human beings and nature!

“Human beings are the spirits of all creatures, the perfect existences that were born after billions of years of evolution of all carbon-based life forms! Even counting from the time when human beings were first born, we have also developed an effective immune system in the competition with nature, germs, viruses, and diseases!

“Without any medicine or medicative approaches, the immune system of the human body alone is enough to defeat most of the bacteria and viruses and also build up the body during the process. The growth is sometimes even deeply etched into our genes and passed on to future generations!

“This is what we know as evolution!”

“That’s not necessarily right,” Li Yao observed. “If one doesn’t go to a doctor in time when they are sick, it is still very possible that they may die.”

Su Changfa snorted and said, “Diseases are the filtering system that nature has bestowed upon human beings. By eliminating the carriers of foul genes, it can be ensured that the species as a whole will develop to the correct path!

“For the civilization of mankind as a whole, a certain degree of ‘elimination rate’ must be guaranteed. Only be filtering those who are unsuitable for survival can the optimal configuration of resources be achieved.

“For an individual, death is a tragedy, but for a civilization, the real tragedy is that those who should’ve died continue living and wasting resources!”

Li Yao could not help it any longer. Pretending to be enlightened, he replied, “That explains a lot. I understand now. So, there is no such place as a ‘hospital’ in the Imperium of True Human Beings, right?”

“Of course, there are hospitals,” Su Changfa said with a smile, “but they are mostly focused on external injuries! For the infection of viruses, cancer, and other diseases, we will simply inject some ‘immune system activation drugs’ into the patients to stimulate their own potential to cope with the diseases.

“So, in our hospitals, it eventually comes down to the patient’s own immune system and resistance to deal with bacteria, viruses, and cancers. The doctors only help ‘awaken’ and ‘enhance’ them.”

Li Yao was dazed. “Does it work?”

“Of course,” Su Changfa said. “Although not as good as the hundred percent healing rate that the Medicine Fork civilization claimed, we have found that general tumors and infections can be killed by the patient’s’ own vitality!

“If they cannot be killed, we hardly intervene or perform other procedures because the patient’s fire of life is too feeble to prove that they are qualified to live on!”

Rendered speechless, Li Yao could only prick his ears and keep listening.

“However, the Cultivators of the Medicine Fork civilization chose a different methodology from ours,” Su Changfa said. “They believed that the civilization of mankind was a whole. All human beings were brothers and sisters. Regardless of their sex, age, and wealth, whether they were ordinary people or Cultivators, and no matter how many deficiencies there were in their genes and how low their immunity was, they were worth saving through whatever means possible!

“Therefore, they modified the entire planet at a huge cost, establishing an ecological system that was devoid of fatal bacteria and viruses and was therefore extremely vulnerable. They also injected tremendous hormones, antibiotics, and chemical drugs into every citizen’s body, constructing an ‘impenetrable’ man-made immune system!

“At that time, the people of the Medicine Fork Sector would have injections from the moment that they were fetuses in their mother’s womb. The moment they were born, they would be soaked in the tanks of medicine. That was the cost to trade for a seemingly long and healthy life!

“It was a pity that the health and longevity on the surface were actually founded on an extremely feeble foundation. It’s like the Cultivators worked hard to build a greenhouse for all the ordinary people and kept them safe inside from the storms of the outside world.

“It was indeed an effective approach in the short term.

“However, the side effect was that everybody, including the Cultivators, became flowers in the greenhouse!

“As the saying goes, ‘a country without an enemy will soon die of arrogance’. The same logic applies to human beings, too!

“Without the attacks of diseases, bacteria, and viruses, there would be no chance of ‘drills’. Maintaining your health purely with medicine is like protecting your nation with foreign mercenaries. How could it possibly last long?

“Just like that, the people of the Medicine Fork Sector grew up in an enormous ‘sterile room’ generation after generation. Their immune system grew weaker and weaker until they lost the ability to survive on their own!

“The historians of the Imperium of True Human Beings, when studying the civilization of the Medicine Fork Sector, named their disease ‘Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome’. Because their environment was too ‘clean’ and overloaded with interventional medicative defense measures, their immune system collapsed completely, and even their genes were changed!

“Their immune system, just like our ‘appendix’ and ‘tail’, became useless organs and slowly degenerated, eventually vanishing!

“Hehe. Because the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome caused by the Cultivators’ ‘unconditional love’ for ‘all the brotherly human beings’, we also call it the ‘spoil disease’!

“Everybody having AIDS was just part their problem. What was more horrible was that, under the Cultivator’s principle that nobody should be left behind and everybody must be saved, many people who were unsuitable to survive because of their foul genes or, at the very least, unsuitable to have offspring were rescued by them and allowed to get married and have children like normal people, only to leave descendants that were even fouler.

“The Cultivators could suppress the ostensible symptoms of the carriers of foul genes with their incredible medicines and medication skills. However, it was impossible for them to address the problem from the source, which boiled down to the gene strands.

“As a result, the foul genes spread, lurking among the people of the Medicine Fork Sector. They were like an inactive volcano that was expanding incessantly and could wake up at any point!

“To suppress the symptoms of the foul genes, the Cultivators had to increase the dosages of drugs, but the increased dosages led to the escalation of AIDS. Such a vicious circle was utterly unstoppable!

“Although the Medicine Fork civilization was on the brink of destruction, it still looked prosperous and brilliant on the surface!

“They were not as foolish as the people of the Curly Dragon Sector. They had developed rather advance space cruising technologies after several hundred years, which were excellent enough to support space jumps across different Sectors!

“That was the peak of the golden era of the Medicine Fork civilization. When they gazed at the boundless sea of stars, every citizen was confident that they could conquer every enemy including nature!

“However, they never thought of one thing.

“While their immune system was deteriorating, the bacteria and viruses, their most dangerous opponents, were mutating or… evolving!

“The medicine and antibiotics that the Medicine Fork people produced could kill 99.99% of viruses. However, the surviving one, under the stimulation, would have shocking mutations and become even more sordid, mysterious, and fatal!

“Hehe. Survival of the fittest is the law of the universe. The Medicine Fork civilization led by the Cultivators stomped on the rule arrogantly, but the bacteria and viruses in the Medicine Fork civilization had always abided by the rule. Bolstered by the medicine and antibiotics, they were struggling, mutating, and evolving at a speed hundreds of times higher than before!

“Cultivators of the Medicine Fork Sector noticed that the bacteria showed more and more resistance and the viruses were mutating faster and faster, too. A newly-discovered disease could mutate into dozens of variants in only a couple of months.

“However, they still did not realize their mistake. They simply produced even more drugs, vaccines, antibiotics, and interferons crazily. It’s like when you are faced with a blocked flood, you simply want to increase the height of the dam for temporary safety, but you never foresee the damage that the collapse will cause in the future!

“For a while, their strategy seemed to be working.

“All the bacteria and viruses on the land were thoroughly examined by them. They had also developed pertinent vaccines and antibiotics for everybody.

“But they overlooked the ocean.

“Just when the first space fleet of the Medicine Fork civilization was about to set off to explore the sea of stars, an undersea volcano located at the west of the planet suddenly erupted and threw tremendous materials at the bottom of the ocean into the sky.

“The materials included an ancient virus that had hibernated for hundreds of thousands of years in the sulfur and mud near the undersea volcano.

“For the past hundreds of thousands of years, such a virus had never appeared on the planet before. The Medicine Fork civilization did not know the first thing about it or have a targeting vaccine.

“The virus swept across the entire planet like a hurricane. Mixed with the bacteria and virus that hundreds of generations of drugs and antibiotics had failed to kill, it led to a calamitous pestilence!

“The ‘greenhouse’ that Cultivators built for the Medicine Fork civilization after almost a thousand years was finally shattered ruthlessly. The ‘flowers’, with tremendous foul genes lurking inside their bodies and without an immune system, were exposed to the terrible storm!

“In only three months, the Medicine Fork civilization lost one fifth of its population. The social order was on the verge of collapse. It fell to the deepest level of hell from the clouds!

“In fact, at that time, the civilization could still have been saved.”

With a cruel face, Su Changfa made a chopping gesture as he said, “Kill! Kill! Kill! Establish quarantines and gather the Cultivators, whose resistance is higher. They will maintain the basic order and kill all disease carriers and suspected carriers, thereby purging the entire planet of the civilization of the Medicine Fork Sector!

“Half of the population, or maybe even three quarters, may be lost. But so what? The civilization exists as long as Cultivators are there! Later, the crashed immune system can be recovered slowly, and the civilization will be rebuilt from scratch!”