Chapter 472 - 407: The Sole Solution for Human Civilization to Survive the 22nd Century

Chu Bamboo fell silent as he looked at the cultivation method for the Third Divine Power his good brother had given him.

Third Divine Power: Memory Manipulation

Ability Description: Instantly erases all memories from a target’s mind and overwrites them with my own—of course, it’s also possible to choose to overwrite their mind with only a portion of my memories!

However, it can only be used once... because memories can’t be precisely deleted, partitioned, or Rewritten. Plus, it damages the brain. A second attempt would turn the target into an idiot!

...

After a long silence, Chu Bamboo pinched the bridge of his nose, unsure of what expression to make. In the end, all he could do was sigh.

’As expected of my other self...’

He had worried before that the enemy might use this method to plant moles! Now, here was his other self, already probing the possibility of sending moles to the enemy. Clearly, this ability wasn’t as powerful as Regression, but for gathering intelligence, it was far more helpful.

’It’s just... that bit in the Divine Power’s description, about how it supposedly can’t be finely controlled...’

’That makes sense. It only takes up one Divine Power slot, after all!’ Chu Bamboo shook his head. He believed that if the first three Divine Power slots had been Memory Reading, Memory Deletion, and Memory Infusion, it definitely wouldn’t be so difficult to control.

Chu Bamboo memorized the technique, of course. He might not have a use for it right now... but it couldn’t hurt to know.

Chu Bamboo flipped back to where he’d left off in the diary and continued reading, his brow gradually furrowing.

"Just as I predicted... James wasn’t an isolated case! Howard, that guy from Israel, the two from England and France, and a few other survivors... they’ve all had memories implanted! Everyone except Lovers! And the implanted memories probably aren’t all identical..."

"I tried to turn them! But it was useless... They have no emotions! Yes, just as we suspected... the Outer Civilization has a method for shattering emotions!"

"May 6th, ’27. In Black Africa and South Asia, Golden Dawn simultaneously held a blood sacrifice of unprecedented scale! My penetration into these two regions is weak right now... so they pulled it off! I suspect they’ve already created a very powerful entity..."

"This is bad. I need to find a way to break through again! Otherwise, if they show up at my door, I’m toast..."

"I almost died. Luckily, my foundation was deep enough, and I broke through to the Fourth Realm on the verge of death! This time, the Celestial Mandate was: Nine Deaths, One Life."

’Huh?’ Chu Bamboo’s eyebrow twitched. ’The implication is that the blood sacrifice allowed the other side to create a Fourth Realm entity? Terrifying!’

The corner of Chu Bamboo’s mouth twitched slightly. But then he remembered he also knew the awakening method for the Blood Sacrifice Technique, and he instantly felt a bit better. He had no plans to use it, but just having the option was reassuring. He calmly continued reading.

"Curious, are you? Just like the name says, you just have to nearly die nine times, and that’s it... Sound easy?

Easy, my ass! Each of those nine times, I truly felt like I was going to die... I’d completely given up hope of survival, thrown all caution to the wind, backed into a corner with no way out. I went through that nine times in a row before I finally broke through!"

"You want to replicate that sense of desperation... Can you? You have the ability to reset on death. How are you supposed to replicate that...

Or are you planning to replicate it in the real world?

Heh, setting aside whether you’re even willing to take that risk... considering you’re only at the First Realm in reality... that’s gonna take a *long* time!"

Chu Bamboo: "..."

That really did give him a headache.

With a wry smile, Chu Bamboo kept reading. Then he discovered... a section was missing!

"Miss Guan used my flesh and blood to create a physical body for Z... Now, I guess Z really could be considered my child, right? We’re connected by blood... I have mixed feelings."

Chu Bamboo: "!!!"

"’50. The first winds of the Great Mars Tide are already stirring! Although conventional wisdom suggested the full-scale eruption of the Great Mars Tide should be in the 22nd century, continuous monitoring has now all but confirmed that the tide doesn’t just build up until the 22nd century for a single cataclysmic eruption... There have been smaller-scale outbreaks before! And this is undoubtedly one of them..."

A pensive expression crossed Chu Bamboo’s face. ’No wonder I always felt like ’49 and ’50 were some kind of threshold. Turns out there were off-world factors involved... not that I had any idea at the time, of course!’

"Just as you expected, we pulled through! You must be curious how we managed it..."

"We implemented a strategy of nationwide Genetic Modification!"

Chu Bamboo’s pupils constricted. A possibility suddenly struck him, and for a moment, it felt as if his heart had stopped.

"Hahahaha, that’s right! We’re not just Industrial Cthulhu anymore! We’re also Genetic Cthulhu..."

"Full cooperation with them allowed us to beat the clock, sparing no expense... We genetically modified the entire populace before the great calamity struck! We turned every citizen into a First Realm genetically modified human."

"No, to be more precise, we performed Genetic Modification on... people who had already had children and had confirmed they would not be having any more!"

"When a Transcendent undergoes Genetic Modification—be they a Body Cultivator or a regular Cultivator—their genes maintain a certain stability! But... it’s different for ordinary people! The chances of an ordinary person with these genetic modifications giving birth to a child with deformities increases dramatically!"

"Therefore, we couldn’t let this Genetic Modification pollute the human gene pool."

"Ultimately, the strategy we settled on was this: between the ages of eighteen and twenty, the state mandates matchmaking while also giving you the choice to have children. If you miss that window... at twenty, you can still choose not to get the Genetic Modification. But if you do choose it, it comes with mandatory sterilization... No kids during that window means no kids, ever!"

Chu Bamboo: "..."

Chu Bamboo felt conflicted, but he also had a sharp realization: this was probably the fundamental reason humanity managed to survive that ordeal!

’...An entire population of the Extraordinary! Everyone, Extraordinary.’

Chu Bamboo took a deep breath. Granted, this type of "Extraordinary" was a different concept from a Cultivator... but there was no denying that a stronger physique meant a greater ability to survive in harsh environments, with higher resistance to contamination!

With the entire population becoming Extraordinary... the difficulty of withstanding the calamity naturally decreased!

It was like a devastating famine sweeping across a country. An industrial nation and an agricultural nation would face it in completely different ways—

The industrial nation might not even experience a ripple in its food prices... but the agricultural nation would suffer fields littered with corpses, people resorting to cannibalism, and perhaps even the fall of a dynasty!