Chapter 3608

In the departure lounge, the first to be notified they could board were Wu Bochong and his party, who were headed for Kathmandu.

A handsome ground staff member approached and respectfully said in fluent Chinese: "Mr. Wu, your flight is ready for boarding. We have a dedicated vehicle to take you to the apron. Would you like to depart now or wait a moment?"

The three elders of the Wu family were all from the Qing dynasty era, having emerged from a century of seclusion. Though they had hastily studied much of this world's common knowledge, foreign languages were still difficult for them to learn quickly. Fortunately, Wu Tianlin had been considerate of these senior elders and had already arranged Chinese-speaking service staff for them.

Wu Bochong asked the staff member: "How long can you wait at most?"

The staff member replied: "Currently, passengers on your flight have just been notified to board for both cabins. Economy class is expected to begin boarding in about ten minutes. Since we are departing from the VIP lounge via the passenger channel, we can go directly to the jet bridge, so you can still stay with your friends for up to twenty minutes."

Wu Bochong nodded and said: "Then please come pick me up in twenty minutes."

"Certainly," the staff member said respectfully. "Please wait here, Mr. Wu. I'll return in twenty minutes."

After saying this, the staff member turned and left. Wu Bochong looked at his boarding pass, which was entirely in English and Arabic numerals, and sighed to the other two elders: "The world changes so fast. In the past, traveling by canal from Suzhou and Hangzhou to the capital took from late March departure from Hangzhou Prefecture to late June arrival in the capital—two thousand miles of waterways, taking three or four months. Now, it takes only two hours by plane."

Wu Bocheng smiled and said: "Back then, we didn't even know the Earth was round. Later, Tianlin told me the Earth is a big sphere—though going south with a north-pointing chariot may seem to go farther and farther, you could eventually loop back around from the other side. I thought this brat was just teasing me, but if the Earth really were a ball, wouldn't people on the other side fall off? Then I took a flight once and saw it with my own eyes—only then did I truly believe it."

After speaking, he turned to Wu Bocheng and said with a smile: "Senior brother, this time you're going to Antarctica. After you've seen that so-called Antarctic point and walked around, won't you be able to return to Huaxia?"

Wu Bocheng smiled and nodded: "I've scribbled a few lines on the globe. Roughly speaking, the Earth looks like a hanging red lantern—Antarctica is at the bottom, where the tassels hang; the North Pole is at the top, like the string holding the big red lantern. No matter which pole you stand on, as long as you choose the right direction, you can reach anywhere."

Wu Bocheng raised his thumb: "Truly, senior brother—you always outshine us in research, no matter the era."

"Oh come on," Wu Bocheng said modestly, waving his hand. "It's not really about deep study. Tianlin just gave me a globe, and I played with it like a toy."

Wu Bochong said from the side: "Senior brother, although your destination this time, Antarctica, isn't too far away, it's said to be the harshest environment on Earth—without equal. You must be extra careful."

Wu Bocheng smiled: "With our three cultivations, as long as we avoid the Great Dashan Mountains and don't provoke national armies, we should face no danger anywhere."

Wu Bochong sighed: "Speaking of armies, nowadays' cannons are far more advanced than those of the Eight-Nation Alliance back then. With our cultivation, resisting the old red-coated cannons would be effortless, but modern artillery is utterly despicable—truly rogue-like in its precision. It's said that those high-temperature armor-piercing shells explode at temperatures capable of melting even the best steel. No matter how thick your steel, they can burn straight through. Even with three heads and six arms, we couldn't withstand such a thing—let alone the Yingzhu."

Wu Bocheng nodded and cautioned: "You two must be extra careful when entering the secular world. It's said that a certain baron was once blown into minced meat by a close-in defense cannon. This thing can track people, not only fast as lightning but also able to predict your trajectory. Before you even arrive, it fires dozens or hundreds of shells at where you're headed. There's no defense against such a thing."

The two nodded repeatedly, like pounding garlic.

In fact, the more they understood modern society, the greater their sense of dissonance grew.

Wu Bocheng murmured softly: "To be honest, before my seclusion, I thought that after emerging, I could roam the world fearlessly, invincible. I never imagined that over the past century, while our cultivation seems to have greatly improved, the world has advanced even more. Think about it: a hundred years ago, cannonballs could at most sink a small boat or destroy a house. But by 1945, a single atomic bomb could obliterate a city. Then, fifteen or sixteen years later, a Soviet hydrogen bomb could match the power of two or three thousand such 1945 atomic bombs. And reportedly, this is just a watered-down version they made because they feared the full power was too great—leaving only thirty percent of the original design..."

Saying this, Wu Bocheng countered: "You say, in the face of such heaven-and-earth-destroying weapons, what are cultivators worth? Even if placed before the end of the Dharma Age, if all cultivators from every sect were gathered together, this hydrogen bomb would strike—let alone who could survive, even having a whole corpse would count as heaven-defying cultivation."

Wu Bocheng chuckled: "Perhaps those who ascended could also destroy heaven and earth. It's just that we were born at the wrong time—in this Dharma-ending age, we could never cultivate to the point of passing the tribulation and ascending."

Wu Bocheng asked the two: "What do you think ascension actually was before the Dharma-ending age?"

Wu Bocheng said: "What else could it be? Like the Buddha said—directly going to the Western Pure Land, another world."

Wu Bocheng asked again: "Then where is this other world after ascension?"

Wu Bocheng spread his hands: "Who knows? We've never been there. Maybe another planet."

Wu Bocheng shook his head: "Even modern astronomers have studied this—not just Earth, but the entire solar system has no second place where humans could survive. The nearest star is four light-years away. If the post-ascension world were there, you tell me—if cultivators undergo tribulation and ascend on Earth, then fly all the way there, how many years would that take?"

The two stared at each other.

They hadn't studied modern knowledge as thoroughly as Wu Bocheng had, so they didn't know how to answer this question.

Wu Bocheng said sternly: "Even if they could fly at light speed after ascension, the journey alone would take four years. Moreover, some scientist studied relativity and said no object can exceed light speed."

Wu Bochong blurted: "Scientists study ordinary people—ascended cultivators are definitely not the same."

Wu Bocheng nodded: "You make a point, but I ask you: if ascension is real, then who is stronger—the ascended cultivators or Sun Wukong from Journey to the West?"

Wu Bochong said without hesitation: "If Journey to the West is true, then Sun Wukong is definitely stronger—he was already an immortal when he took on disciples, and later became a Buddha, that is, a god."

Wu Bocheng agreed: "Exactly. If Sun Wukong is real, then he is a god or Buddha, one level above immortals."

After saying this, he shifted tone: "But have you two considered that Sun Wukong's single somersault is only 108,000 li? Using the li of that time, that's about sixty kilometers. Even if he did one somersault per second, each covering sixty kilometers, that's only about one-fifth the speed of light. In other words, this already-deified immortal, somersaulting nonstop, would take forty to fifty years to cross that distance. Earth-bound cultivators undergoing tribulation and ascent wouldn't even rank among the immortals, so no matter how strong, they couldn't surpass the god-Buddha Sun Wukong. And that speed definitely wouldn't match his—perhaps the ascension journey would take hundreds of years. So you tell me: spending hundreds of years on the road—is that enjoyment or suffering?"

The two felt their heads buzzing. Wu Bocheng rubbed his temples and said: "Senior brother, you're going too far—this is all baseless speculation. Where would we even go to research its truth? And frankly, I've never in my life dreamed of ascending. If I could live like the Yingzhu, eat a Wan-gu Changqing Dan, and live five hundred years happily, I'd be content. Who has the energy to worry about how far Sun Wukong's somersault goes?"

"Exactly," Wu Bochong said with a smile. "Even the Yingzhu doesn't dare dream of ascending—how much less should we waste time on this? Senior brother, you yourself said earlier—there's no place near Earth where humans can survive. Maybe ascension from start to finish is just a scam."

As he spoke, he suddenly realized something and exclaimed excitedly: "I say, the talk of ascension is just like Sun Wukong—pure fabrication by later generations! As for the so-called Dharma-ending age, I think it's pure nonsense too! Perhaps Earth has always been like this since its birth. For thousands of years, cultivators have hoped to ascend, but no one has ever flown away. When we think about it, this doesn't add up—everyone says they can ascend, they can ascend, yet no one has ever been seen flying off. So to comfort ourselves, we made up the idea of a Dharma-ending age as a smokescreen, saying now is not like before, now is the Dharma-ending age, whereas before even dogs could ascend—just like in the late Qing, when elders always said morals were declining and people today aren't as good as before. I think it's just lying to children—maybe things weren't better back then either; maybe they were worse. We just weren't born in that era, so good and bad depend entirely on one person's mouth."

Wu Bocheng's eyes lit up, and he sighed: "Junior brother makes sense! Perhaps the highest cultivation realm is merely living for a thousand or eight hundred years, like the Yingzhu's master. As for ascension, it's all just cultivators' own guesses and wishes. Look—nowadays scientists also talk about interstellar travel and interstellar migration. But senior brother just said: even if it's light, reaching the nearest star would take years. Humans might not even survive to reach it in ten thousand years. Ascension might be the same—just a theoretical height, forever unattainable in reality."

Wu Bocheng chuckled self-deprecatingly: "You're right—ascension is probably just a pie drawn by cultivators years ago to feed future generations, a pie that can never be eaten."

As he said this, Wu Bocheng harbored his own private calculation in his heart.

He knew ascension could not be interstellar travel.

Before the Dharma-ending age, it was impossible for cultivators who succeeded in tribulation to appear like fools, flying from Earth to outer space, traveling through the cosmos for decades, hundreds, even thousands of years, just to reach another world—that would be pure madness.

He would rather believe ascension is actually a transmission mechanism.

In his view, ascension is more like an invisible imperial examination.

Only, the examiners are not a visible, tangible court, but those super-cultivators with heaven-piercing cultivation.

Just as the court uses imperial examinations to select new officials, super-cultivators also need to select new talent to infuse fresh blood into the upper echelons.

So they devised what is called the heavenly tribulation and ascension.

It's not that when your cultivation reaches a certain level, heaven truly sends thunder to strike you to test your fate. If there really were such a heavenly way, it would have to govern thousands of billions of star systems, hundreds of millions of billions of stars, and even more planets. The heavenly way would be dead busy—how could it have time to tend to a tiny shrimp on some planet? And then specially send you a thunderbolt? Do you really think you're that remarkable?

Wu Bocheng believes the so-called passing of the heavenly tribulation is actually just when your cultivation barely meets the minimum requirement for selection from above—then they notice you and give you a chance to take the examination.

The heavenly thunder might just be such an examination—nothing more.

Let you take the exam, give you a chance—if you can endure it, you prove you've passed the upper-level trial. Then, directly using great divine power, you open a gate and are transmitted over. You've thus entered officialdom. Afterward, you start from the grassroots, because the upper levels surely have their own superiors above them.

Just as imperial examinations require passing the county exam, then the provincial exam, then the palace exam—three rounds in all—perhaps passing the tribulation is only the first round, the county exam, for cultivators.

In ancient times, even if you passed all three rounds of the imperial examination, stood out alone in the palace exam, and became the top scholar, you were only qualified to enter the Hanlin Academy—merely a sixth-rank official. Entering the Hanlin Academy made you a minor shrimp—don't you still have to climb up bit by bit?

Even if you became top scholar and kept rising, eventually becoming prime minister of the current dynasty, doesn't the imperial family still press down on you from above?

Let you be even more capable—raise an army, rebel successfully, and become emperor—aren't you still just the ruler of one state?

What if your state is a small one? What if powerful enemies surround it? What if your luck turns worse again, you endure one round after another, and become a leader like a fifteenth-century African Dahomey or Zulu kingdom? When Portuguese colonists arrive, they seize the whole nation and force them to grow cotton and sugarcane—what can the emperor do? Even being exiled would count as ancestral virtue.

Anyway, wherever you are, it's all about grinding through—after this stage comes another. The greatest difference is that cultivators have long enough lifespans to grind slowly, able to live thousands of years or more—this in itself is a tremendous attraction.

Of course, if you fail to withstand the heavenly tribulation, turning to dust or dissolving into a scattered immortal, that's your own affair. One cruel aspect of ascension compared to the imperial examination is that you get no second chance.

Because Wu Bocheng has constructed such a logic in his mind, he is therefore more ambitious than Wu Bocheng, Wu Bochong, and even Wu Feiyan.

Even Wu Feiyan never dared to dream of ascension.

She thought simply—nothing more than obtaining the Hundred Reversals Elixir, living another five hundred years, and as for what to do after the second five hundred years, that was a problem for the next stage to consider; pondering it now was merely a waste of energy.

But Wu Bolin felt that if the Antarctic legend were true, ascension might no longer be an unattainable dream—why not set one's sights further ahead?