Before he came to the Imperium of True Human Beings, as a Cultivator from the Star Glory Federation, he always had a misunderstanding about the main contradiction within the Imperium and thought that the exploitation of “true human beings” over “hominoids” was the major problem.

It was not until he came to the Imperium and saw the society in different facets and the conflicts of interests that Li Yao learned the typical “ordinary people who are bullied by the Immortal Cultivators” working in the assembly lines and the industrialized farmlands were in fact not the most miserable people at all.

It was true that those ordinary people were mistreated, but they often had a stable source of food, clean water, safe houses, and a small sum of wages. In order to boost their enthusiasm for work and to exploit more surplus value from them, the Immortal Cultivators even offered them certain entertainments. For example, Wuying Qi’s “slaughter stream” was exactly an anesthetic for the labor forces to give them mental pleasure.

As the saying went, it was better to be a dog in a peaceful world than to be a human in a war. In the areas that the authorities of the Imperium could and would implement effective governance, public services of the minimal degree were still provided and the infrastructure was worked on to maintain the order of society. Also, theoretically, there were laws that protected the justifiable interests of most people. Even though the flawed laws were often broken by the Immortal Cultivators blatantly, they were still better than nothing.

After all, the Immortal Cultivators’ government was still a government, not the headquarters of bandits.

The “forgotten towns” numbered beyond 10,000 meters below the ground, on the other hand, were not even qualified to be enslaved and exploited. In other words, they did not have a chance to be a slave even if they wanted to. Naturally, the authorities of the Imperium did not provide any public services for the area, and the people here were entirely left to themselves.

In the dark and silent world, there was no sunlight and little drinkable water and food. The seismic damage was hundreds of times more powerful than on the surface of the planet. Collapses were happening all the time, and destructive magma might spurt out at any moment. Li Yao did not know whose life was more miserable, the slave workers who sat behind the assembly lines in the magical equipment factories for their entire lives or the abandoned folks below the ground who had been forgotten by the entire universe?

In the metaphor that Long Yangjun told Li Jialing, she mentioned the ocean. It was true that the world of the abandoned folks was like an undersea plateau. No matter what intense tides were surging on the surface of the ocean and how many ferocious beasts were fighting, the mud at the bottom of the ocean would not be affected at all. In the eyes of the dominators of the ocean, the fish and shrimps that struggled to survive in the mud did not exist at all.

However, Li Yao could understand why Long Yangjun brought him and Li Jialing to this place. Right now, Blackstar the Great had activated his plan and probably controlled the entire capital planet. Whichever city they were to hide in, it would’ve been barely possible to dodge the dragnet of surveillance cameras.

Most of the towns below the ground were still more or less controllable for the authorities. A lot of crystal cameras had been established in those places and connected to the wireless network. So much as they left a fuzzy shadow in one of the crystal cameras, tremendous pursuers might be coming after them.

The forgotten towns numbered beyond 10,000 were the only places that did not have the Spiritual Nexus or the crystal cameras. Utterly ignored by the high-level Immortal Cultivators, such places were the sanctuaries for them to heal and rest without concerns.

Being from a world with sunlight, Li Yao and Li Jialing naturally looked slightly different from the human beings below the ground who were almost transparent. As they wandered in the town casually, they attracted the attention of a lot of locals.

However, most of the locals were just hiding behind the stalagmites and the fungi, enshrouding themselves with the intense fog as they observed the intruders cautiously, not having the courage to make any eye contact.

Wherever Li Yao and Li Jialing watched, the locals would shrink their necks and disappear into the mist.

Only the innocent children were bold enough to stare at them. Seeing that they did not look malicious or dangerous, the few bravest kids finally followed them like a tail and mimicked their walking posture.

Li Yao turned around and grimaced at the children. The children exclaimed and dispersed in a hurry. After a while, seeing that Li Yao had no other actions, they gathered again and grimaced at Li Yao exactly like he did just now, before they shouted in a weird tone, “Black eyes! Yellow eyes!”

The children who were born in the underground world had never seen the real sunlight. Even the illumination rune arrays above their heads were set at the dimmest level due to the shortage of energy and could barely illuminate the interconnected chains among the stalagmites and the stalactites. The brightest thing that the children had ever seen was probably the rolling magma.

After ten thousand years, their eyes had been through mutations. Their slightly red pupils gave them a certain ability of night vision and made Li Yao’s black eyes and Li Jialing’s brownish-yellow eyes the outliers in this place.

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The children’s giggles caught the adults’ attention. Several hands suddenly extended out of the fog and dragged the children back. Their laughter was suffocated by the crude hands.

Li Yao slightly frowned. Feeble spiritual energy circled between his eyes, allowing him to see through the hazy fog and clearly observe the locals of the underground world who thought they were hiding very well.

Li Yao discovered a very weird phenomenon. As the locals aged, their abilities to express their feelings seemed to be weakened.

The innocent, carefree kids could still cry, laugh, play, and express their emotions freely.

But the tall, big adults were always frowning, with alert and panic slightly beaming out of their eyes, as if they were ready to hide in a crevice at any moment. Li Yao and Li Jialing’s arrival seemed to have disrupted the solemnity of the place, making them extremely uncomfortable.

For the seniors who were older and had wrinkles all over their faces, they did not even have the shimmer in their eyes anymore. Like statues made of stalactites, they squatted next to the wall for a long time without moving, as if they had been melted with the underground world.

Li Yao also saw some other people wearing gray capes. They were as tranquil and hollow as the girl who delivered them the food a moment ago. Sitting cross-legged in random places of the underground town casually, they seemed to have entered a weird hibernation state, their breath little to none.

Narrowing his eyes, Li Yao asked solemnly, “Have the people here all been brainwashed by Long Yangjun, their feelings and desires erased?”

He thought that it must be what happened, but Li Jialing shook his moment after a brief hesitation and said, “I asked Sister Long too, but she said no. The people here had been lifeless and placid before she came.

“Sister Long said that intense feelings and desires are based on abundant materials and advanced interaction of information. As the saying goes, only when you are warm and full will you look for fun. If you are not even fed and the basic safety of your life is not guaranteed, there will be no place for ‘feelings’, ‘desires’, or ‘free will’.

“Sister Long said that living in the highly-developed post-industrial and post-informational society, modern people can easily find ten thousand types of food to stimulate our appetites and ten thousand entertainments to trigger our intense feelings. Most of our desires are met. As time goes by, we begin to take the desires and feelings of such a high level for granted.

“However, in the worlds that are in a serious shortage of materials, such as in the ancient times or the underground world before us, the inadequacy of food is normal, safety is not guaranteed, and there are few ways of entertainment. Everybody’s mind is empty and unfulfilled. How can the people have intense feelings and desires like the people on the surface of the planet?

“Think about it. If a child is born in this place, he has never seen the sun, the singing birds, or the colorful flowers; he does not know what is a forest or an ocean, much less the popular stars; he does not have games or virtual friend-making platforms; the sole meaning of his life is to survive and reproduce; and he has to worry about the shortage of food and the rampant earthquakes and magma every second; how will he not become numb and nonchalant like the residents here?

“Sister Long said that the adults here were exactly like this when she came to the underground world a few years ago. They were silent all year around like stubborn rocks because they had nothing else to do in their lives, and there were no resources to support the tiniest feelings and desires.

“It’s true that she taught the locals certain tricks to repress their pain, contain their desires, and tranquilize the mind, but she wasn’t the one who started it. If there were abundant resources in this place and the locals could enjoy the best food and the most interesting video games, only idiots would’ve followed her and studied the inhumane tricks!

“Sister Long also said that not just this place, even the Covenant Alliance must be in a similar situation by her estimation. If you have a hamburger, will you eat bread instead? If you have a piece of bread, will you starve yourself? If the Covenant Alliance had abundant resources that everybody’s feelings and desires can be satisfied, who would ever abandon the most beautiful things in their life? The problem is that it doesn’t! The many worlds under the governance of the Covenant Alliance are the harshest areas in the first place. I estimate that they have wasted whatever left of their resources in the chaotic battles in the past ten thousand years. It is because they cannot live on anymore that the people have to abandon their feelings and desires and dedicate all the resources left to the only thing that matters—continuity of life.

“Sister Long also said—”

“Enough!”

Li Yao interrupted Li Jialing’s eloquence. “It has occurred to me that something is seriously wrong with your stance, my young friend. Why can’t you stop quoting ‘Sister Long’? Even if you are not considering it from the perspective of Cultivators like me, you should at least support feelings, desires, and free will as an Immortal Cultivator, shouldn’t you? You haven’t picked up anything good after learning after me for half a year, so why are you so deeply deceived by Long Yangjun when you’re only with her for ten days? You need to work harder on your firmness!”