Chapter 2168: Road Choice, Collective Wedding

The Laboratory itself is a Resurrection Magic Array, and Soul Solidification itself is not permanent; once its efficacy fades, the resurrection Mage immediately begins work to reconstruct the link between his body and soul.

However, although the number of Resurrection Nodes he has mastered is sufficient—even enough to ensure Spellcasting is unaffected after resurrection—they are still not all the connection nodes between his body and soul; he has no way to deal with the remainder for now and must rely on time to slowly heal them.

Resurrection Spells involving fewer nodes affect physical functions and Spellcasting ability; those resurrected using such inferior Resurrection Spells can still rely on time to recover the remaining connection nodes, though it will take much longer.

Ordinary humans usually cannot wait until that day.

But Xia Duo's lifespan has long since broken through the limits of ordinary people, and since his Spellcasting is unaffected, he has plenty of patience to wait slowly; if he were truly impatient, he could also find a Projection Plane to conduct some human experiments.

Under Time Acceleration, relative to the Main Plane, it is roughly equivalent to an instantaneous repair.

However, Xia Duo had already planned to establish a Time Acceleration Zone in the Floating City to deal with future crises; as long as he does not care about the loss of lifespan, he can go there to research and recover.

So, does Xia Duo care about his lifespan?

If asked this question in the past, he would have answered that he cared very much, but when he discovered one day that his lifespan had no end in sight, he no longer cared about it so much.

Of course, besides various factors on the level of Reality, there is also a threshold on the level of consciousness for those desiring longevity or even immortality.

Living for a hundred years and ten thousand years are absolutely two different things, and ten thousand years and one hundred million years are two completely different concepts.

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Xia Duo cannot even imagine the state of a sentient being who has lived for one hundred million years, but it is foreseeable that how to maintain a continuous, stable self throughout the long years will be a major difficulty of immortality.

Just as a computer will "lag" after being used for a long time, the consciousness will also "lag" if it is stuffed with too much information, and the most critical point is that the vast majority of the information in the consciousness is related to the composition of the Personality.

This also means it is difficult to make trade-offs; for instance, Xia Duo cannot accept any interruption or non-active change in the continuation of his self.

From this perspective, those who choose to obtain immortality through Soul Solidification might have made the most correct choice, but Xia Duo similarly cannot accept this type of fixed immortality that resembles consciousness uploading.

However, for some who do not care whether their self changes, abandoning the past might be the best choice for rushing toward the future; updating one's Personality every period of time even allows for inheriting some of the previous Personality's traits and goals.

Compared to fixed immortality, this method of updated immortality is more sustainable and more likely to achieve true immortality.

But regardless of which type, neither can reach the most ideal state that Xia Duo currently considers; he believes the bottom line for immortality should be to ensure the continuity of self-continuation and the initiative when changing.

The reason he insists on Meditation Training every day is, to a large extent, for this expected ideal way of immortality.

In the legends of Xia Duo's hometown, there is also an accurate description of this state, which is—"Non-Retrogression"; it is said that only a Bodhisattva can reach this realm, and Xia Duo cannot see the edge of it for the time being, even if he were to one day achieve the Integrated Subconscious and Conscious.

However, he does not pursue reaching that realm at all costs; the process of pursuing it is itself very meaningful, at least it aligns with his current thoughts, and if one day he cannot persist, that will also be his own choice.

No one needs to be responsible for a far-off, uncertain future, and Xia Duo is no exception.

……

The experience of "resurrection" is unforgettable; setting aside the fading of the extraordinary Perception brought by Soul Solidification, the process of gradually becoming vivid from soul to body is also very wonderful.

Once all the procedures were completed, Xia Duo truly felt as if a lifetime had passed; at this moment, the hidden dangers in his consciousness were gone, and because he had taken the opportunity to discard various sensory information received in the Projection Plane during the process of stripping away the Soul Fragment, his whole person felt much lighter.

As for the damage to the soul itself from stripping the Soul Fragment, Xia Duo checked it carefully and found no discomfort or other new hidden dangers for the time being.

He guessed that stripping the Soul Fragment might be similar to donating blood; regular blood donation can stimulate the hematopoietic system and improve the blood environment, so perhaps regularly stripping Soul Fragments can also improve the function of the soul to a certain extent.

Of course, this is merely his guess and requires long-term experiments to verify; if the guess is true, perhaps he can perform regular soul maintenance in the future to keep the "hardware" of consciousness operation fresh and new.

……

In the next two days, Xia Duo did not go anywhere and continued to stay in the Laboratory to check the actual impact of having "died" once on his Spellcasting ability.

Although the Resurrection Spell he mastered does not affect Spellcasting, that refers more to the fact that the upper limit of his Spellcasting circle has not been lowered, meaning he will not fall below the rank of Great Arcanist.

Specifically, whether every Spellcasting element is affected is something the test range of the Projection Plane cannot compare to the reality of the Main Plane.

Not to mention the need to consider personal factors, so Xia Duo needs to re-test every Spellcasting element he might use to ensure that he does not make mistakes during actual Spellcasting due to a poor resurrection state.

In the Laboratory, while testing his Spellcasting state, Xia Duo discussed topics related to the Communication Mythallar with Niya; at the end, Xia Duo told Niya:

"I will go to Evereska in two days, and if nothing goes wrong, I should stay there for a few days."

Xia Duo had already told Niya about this two days ago, and Niya could understand, but today Niya put forward a request:

"After the discussion just now, I am confident that I can produce a few test Communication Magic Tools within two days; you should take one to Evereska, as I need to verify a few key questions."

"No problem."

Xia Duo agreed immediately; in fact, he had some guesses about the questions Niya wanted to verify, which could be considered standard technical verification experiments, but since Niya was so dedicated, he certainly could not dampen his wife's enthusiasm.

"By the way, are you going to attend the collective wedding at Code Plaza tomorrow?" Niya asked again.

"Collective wedding?"

Xia Duo thought for a moment, and only then did he remember that one of the newlyweds in tomorrow's collective wedding was a member of the Progress Society, and it was the first collective wedding to have both Mages and Progress Society members; he had no reason not to go.

"Of course I'm going; A Fu Lin is getting married tomorrow, and as the leader of the Progress Society, I must go to offer my blessings."

In fact, when the Territory first started the New Life Movement, Xia Duo attended almost every collective wedding, but later, whether it was because Laidun learned to be "bad" or the residents learned to be "bad," they would hold a collective wedding even for just a few pairs of newlyweds, which annoyed Xia Duo, so he stopped attending the later ones.

However, the previous collective weddings only involved ordinary people in the Territory, while tomorrow's collective wedding includes Mages, and they are doing it together with ordinary people without any special treatment.

For such a meaningful historical moment, even if the other party were not a member of the Progress Society, Xia Duo would be willing to go in person to offer his blessings.

"Then I will go too; there are quite a few newlyweds from the Savile Territory, and as the lord, I should also be there."

"Alright then, we will go together tomorrow."