Chapter 3672: The Collapse of Belief

Lin Wanner's view, Ye Chen deeply agreed with it.

The path of cultivation, by its very nature, is a model of extremely high individual resource consumption, using the purest spiritual energy to infinitely strengthen personal strength; from a macroscopic perspective, it is itself a form of extreme waste.

Such a highly concentrated allocation of resources is equivalent to squeezing dry a planet capable of sustaining billions of people for the use of only a few million or even fewer cultivators; this model makes it difficult to truly build a genuine human civilization, and can only be a carnival for a small elite group.

Therefore, according to my and Lin Wanner's speculation, it is very likely that even before human civilization was formally established, a batch of interstellar colonial cultivators had already arrived on this land; like passing locusts, they exhausted Earth's cultivation resources and then left without looking back.

The teleportation array built inside the Four Treasures Pagoda, put bluntly, was their channel for madly plundering resources from Earth; they dispatched vast numbers of cultivators like worker ants to frantically search for cultivation resources across the entire globe, and after draining this place into the Dharma-ending age, they left without looking back, embarking on the next leg of their journey.

Thinking of this, Ye Chen asked Lin Wanner: "Miss Lin, do you think they might have once encountered Earth's ape-men? When ape-men had just learned to walk upright and just understood using stones as tools, they already possessed the strength for interstellar migration; if the two species met tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago, that scene would indeed be somewhat fantastical."

Lin Wanner nodded slightly and said seriously: "The scene the Young Master mentioned is very likely to have actually occurred in history."

Having said that, Lin Wanner looked at Ye Chen and said: "Moreover, I suddenly thought of another question."

Ye Chen curiously asked: "What question? Miss Lin, please speak."

Lin Wanner frowned and whispered as she walked: "I am wondering whether some of the myths and legends passed down for thousands of years might originally have been real; nearly every ancient civilization has had some special records, some in the form of murals, some in pictographs, and the content recorded is mostly so-called divine traces; perhaps they also once coincided with those cultivators in history."

Ye Chen nodded and said: "That makes sense; even the legends about dragons and some divine beasts may not merely be the ancients' imagination; perhaps such things truly existed, only they came with those cultivators and left with them, so afterward no one saw them again, leaving behind only some records that later generations find hard to discern as true or false."

Lin Wanner smiled and said: "Young Master, if we were to make public the things we are discussing, would it not completely change what this world looks like in the eyes of billions of people?"

"It certainly would." Ye Chen sighed: "There are far too many things here beyond human comprehension; who would have thought that Earth, which humans pride themselves on and even call a cosmic miracle, might merely be a piece of junk discarded after being messed with by another group?"

Lin Wanner also sighed: "And their method of interstellar migration is too hard to imagine; could it really be achieved just by relying on teleportation arrays for trans-stellar transmission? Even if they came from the nearest neighboring star system, that would still be four light-years; if they truly arrived in the blink of an eye via teleportation arrays, that would completely overturn humanity's entire understanding of the universe."

Ye Chen smiled wryly: "Perhaps overturning cognition is secondary; the most important thing is that many people would fall into panic—when there are no neighbors, every day one longs to find a neighbor, but once they know a neighbor could possibly blink into their own room, their mood would be entirely different."

After speaking, he self-mockingly said: "Think about those native cultivators on Earth—they are indeed pitiful, basically just picking up a bit of trash left behind by others and forcibly entering the Dao, each still dreaming of defying heaven, changing fate, and ascending through tribulation, while resources have been completely looted by others; how could the leftover scraps possibly support anyone cultivating to that extent?"

Lin Wanner perceived that Ye Chen's mood was somewhat lost to some degree; she knew it was a collapse of belief, or perhaps the bewilderment and dazedness of a frog jumping out of a well—originally thinking the sky was only as big as the well's mouth, although the sky is greater than oneself, it is also limited in size; after all, the ratio of sky to oneself might be a hundred to one, or at worst ten thousand to one, but upon jumping out, one realizes this gap might be ten trillion to one, like the difference between a giant mountain and a speck of dust.

Thus, she tightly grasped Ye Chen's hand, changed the subject, and asked him: "Young Master, how should we go from Shu West to Jin Ling now? We have no identification on us, and our normal identities have already exited the country for Argentina; if our identity information suddenly appeared in the domestic transportation system, it would trigger an alert."

Ye Chen thought for a moment and said: "I will have Chen Zekai send a private jet over; let's see if we can use connections at the airport to clear customs and board directly."

Lin Wanner shook her head and said: "Young Master, those who know we went to Antarctica would certainly know we could not possibly return to the country suddenly this season; smart people would know beforehand and afterward, and upon a little thought would realize something must be fishy; such matters should only be told to the most trustworthy people, and others had better not be informed."

Ye Chen agreed: "Miss Lin makes sense; then, according to Miss Lin's opinion?"

Lin Wanner smiled: "Still look for Old Sun and Old Qiu; they are the ones I have watched grow up, and they even know my secret of having lived four hundred years; for this matter, they will not be surprised at first, nor will they think much about it, and thirdly, they will not leak it."

Ye Chen laughed: "Exactly; seen this way, they are indeed the most reliable people."

Lin Wanner gazed at Ye Chen with her big eyes and said seriously: "In my eyes, the only one truly worthy of trust in this world is the Young Master; those few can only rank below him."

Ye Chen smiled and nodded; actually, Lin Wanner is the same in his heart.

Having made up their minds, Lin Wanner then called Sun Zidong.

Qiu Ying Shan, as an overseas Chinese who has made great contributions, has many connections and prestige in Jin Ling locally, but if speaking of the entire Huaxia region, Sun Zidong still has more influence.

Upon hearing Lin Wanner say they were in Shu West, Sun Zidong almost asked no questions and immediately began making arrangements for the two.

He first dispatched dedicated personnel from the confidential department nearest to Shu West to drive to the small town at the entrance of He Ming Mountain, while simultaneously arranging a business jet at the airport; the operating company of the business jet has deep background and can completely bypass any airport security checks and big data, sending Ye Chen and Lin Wanner directly to Jin Ling.

In Jin Ling, Qiu Ying Shan has also made preparations; the car drove directly into the airport, and as soon as the two landed, they were taken straight back to Zijin Mountain Villa.

Lin Wanner arranged everything, and the two then set out on foot from He Ming Mountain, step by step.

As the two continuously walked out of the deep mountains, they encountered some backpacking donkey friends along the way; after leaving the mountains, they arrived at a small town at the mountain's base.

When they reached the small town, two green off-road vehicles with special license plates were already waiting there; they did not know Ye Chen and Lin Wanner's identities, only knowing that two special VIPs needed escort all the way to the airport apron, and these confidential personnel had all undergone excellent training; after putting the two in the car, they asked no extra questions or spoke a single extra word along the way, directly sending the two to the airport.

At dusk, an old-model Gulfstream G500 that appeared ordinary on the outside took off from Shu Du Airport and flew eastward all the way to Jin Ling.