The Soul Cluster, a three-dimensional static universe.

Orion spiral arm of the Milky Way, the planet of the solar system.

in a megacity.

On the crowded streets, Mu Cang, dressed in pure white clothes, was walking leisurely.

As he walked, he continued to observe with interest the various people who passed by.

The reason why he was interested was because Mu Cang discovered the intelligent life in this cluster...... There was no soul.

"Sure enough, it's a pure materialistic world, but there is no soul, only a spiritual consciousness based on the network of neuronal systems in the material brain, and ......."

Mu Cang walked slowly and chuckled, "The root spirituality hidden in the depths of consciousness."

If there is no soul, there will be no ghosts.

Man, when he dies, dies, everything is empty.

At least this is true of all intelligent beings in all cosmic space-time and space that Mu Cang can observe.

The rules for this cluster...... It's a bit harsh.

「…… Now for a piece of news......

"The successful completion of the ...... [Guanghan Palace] Moon Star Base represents that Longhua Aerospace has entered a new era chapter......

「…... The abundant helium-3 resources contained in the soil on the surface of the moon star are enough to support the use of nuclear fusion energy for 100,000 years......

Mu Cang glanced up at the huge display screen on the building opposite, where the beautiful hostess was smiling and broadcasting the evening news.

The content described in the news is that this mortal country called [Longhua] at Mu Cang's feet has been ahead of more than 200 other countries in the world, and has established a research and development base on the moon star 380,000 kilometers away from this planet.

Putting aside the so-called national divisions that exist in the surface era, this news can completely represent the carbon-based intelligent life on this planet, which has entered a new stage in aerospace technology.

Therefore, in general, it seems that this carbon-based group can be regarded as an earth-like intelligent civilization with profound development potential, which is visible to the naked eye and is moving all the way towards the era of stars and seas.

Pity...... It just seems to have potential.

Because through the eyes of the gods who almost 'see' through the future, Mu Cang, who stopped at this moment, already knew.

In just another 30 years, around 2100 AD, the planet will be plunged into a great war due to various reasons such as competing interests between countries and the displacement of hegemony.

The war with a huge scope and high intensity will greatly damage and even destroy the industrial and scientific research foundation of the entire terrestrial human society, and then lead to a great regression of civilization of the entire human race.

At the same time, the severe environmental damage caused by the war, as well as the great lack of natural and human resources caused by the war, will also make it difficult to rebuild the civilization on this planet.

It will not be until nearly six centuries later that the technological level of human civilization on this planet can be restored to the era in which it is now.

At that time, this carbon-based intelligent group will have the opportunity and ability to set foot in the starry sky again and develop aerospace.

Unfortunately, on the long road to a true interstellar civilization, the war that swept the world and the subsequent regression of civilization were only the smallest 'levels' that this terrestrial race would face.

In the future, they will face many more difficult difficulties.

For example, energy issues.

In this vast three-dimensional universe, all intelligent civilizations that have entered the age of atomic energy will sooner or later find that the seemingly beautiful cold nuclear fusion is impossible to achieve in reality.

The so-called cold fusion actually refers to the nuclear fusion reaction that can be used as an energy source at room temperature and pressure, rather than the thermonuclear fusion carried out in the interior of stars, hydrogen bombs, nuclear weapons, and magnetic confinement fusion reactors.

This fusion method is not only clean, clean and safe, but also extremely convenient and simple to operate and maintain.

It sounds amazing, and it feels very suitable for use as a smart civilization in the sub-interstellar era.

Unfortunately, cold fusion is a beautiful idea that can only exist on paper.

In this universe, unless there are advanced civilizations that have broken through the technological singularity and then entered the superhuman upheaval stage.

Otherwise, under normal circumstances, there is no physical principle that can support such a cold fusion reaction.

Therefore, for a group at this stage of the Earth-Star civilization, nuclear fusion is only a difficult path to go through thermonuclear.

However, this will lead to many problems such as miniaturization, stabilization, and safety of thermonuclear fusion energy, which will be a difficult problem that must be solved in front of all intelligent civilizations, including the Earth Star.

It is very difficult to break through this difficulty.

But there are many, many more difficulties like this.

These difficulties will be like a huge filter, stubbornly intercepting all intelligent civilizations from stepping deeper into the starry sky and moving towards a higher level of technology.

For example, in addition to the energy problem, there is also the health problem of human beings in the space age, and the speed of spacecraft.

Although eight centuries later, the Earth-planetary human race was able to perfectly realize the mature and cheap space travel between the Earth and the moon, and then was able to make full use of the abundant helium-3 resources on the surface of the moon and star to promote the development of their own civilization.

But this can only be regarded as just beginning.

If the terrestrial wants to travel to and colonize more distant planets quickly and safely, they need to continue to improve their spaceflight technology, as well as ...... themselves.

Because the Earth humans, the primate intelligent creatures born on the surface of the earth, all of their bodily functions did not evolve to adapt to the weightless environment of space.

Therefore, long-term space travel will inevitably bring a large number of serious health problems to the Earth astronauts.

The first problem is that the damage caused by long-term gravity anomalies will continue to occur at the level of terrestrial human cells, which in turn will continue to reduce their physical fitness.

Eventually, it will cause cancerous changes in various organs and tissues, large-scale malformation and necrosis of the neuronal system, and infertility.

If the Earth-planetary humans want to simulate artificial gravity......

It is a pity that Mu Cang can clearly 'see' that it will take at least another thirty-five centuries for terrestrial humans to be able to do this in a preliminary experiment.

Moreover, at that time, they were only using various other complex force field technologies to simulate the gravitational field, rather than the real distortion interference gravitational force.

For thousands of years before the technology of artificial gravity, Earth-based humans could only rely on rotating cabins to simulate the gravitational field, and at the same time continuously optimize the overall structure and facilities of the spacecraft to minimize the harm of the weightless environment in space.

But even so, in the first few centuries, there were many astronauts who made a lot of contributions to human astronautics and suffered from various diseases throughout their lives.

It will not be until the advent of mature genetic screening and regulation technologies that this tragic situation will be greatly changed.

However, this so-called 'genetic ascension' road, the earth-star human civilization has done its best, and it can only advance to the level of longevity for thousands of years, enhanced function, intellectual growth, and no disease.

If you go any further, you will not be able to enter.

This is because technological development can lead to more controllable genetic engineering, which allows humans to evolve more efficiently, such as increasing the number of heritable traits in a population, or combining profitable heritable traits.

However, no matter how much protein is tossed, it will only be a fragile thing that will permanently change its chemical properties after only being exposed to a high temperature of a few hundred degrees Celsius.

It can never be turned into diamond, and it can never be compared with titanium alloy in strength and melting point.

Therefore, we want to count on the so-called genetic adjustment technology to 'get" some kind of fantasy superhumans such as Wolverine, vampires, and Hulks who do not follow the laws of conservation of mass and energy at all.

It's better to count on one day

An alien daddy suddenly descended on the earth and made the global human race collectively soar with kindness.

It can only be said that the rules of this universe are too strict.

It is so strict that there is no shortcut that allows humanity to achieve all kinds of extraordinary miracles, and there is no basic rule 'soil' for the stable existence of such extraordinary miracles".

Therefore, in Mu Cang's view, the human species on this tiny planet will be able to walk smoothly in the future, and there is only one way: human-machine fusion-mechanical ascension.

At the same time, more important than energy and health is the development and evolution of sub-lightspeed aerospace technology.

Mu Cang can 'see' that the future terrestrial humans have made countless hard efforts to advance the spacecraft to 10% or more of the speed of light in a vacuum.

They started by using large space lasers to accelerate the lightsail vehicle.

Its overall structure is somewhat similar to the Dyson Harrop solar wind power generation satellite once launched by Mu Cang's hometown "Blue Star Lighthouse Country".

Of course, it is certainly much more sophisticated and powerful than it in terms of structure and power.

Subsequently, on this basis, the Earth man also added unconventional lasers such as sun-pumped lasers and nuclear explosion-pumped lasers to this long-lasting space program to strengthen the driving force of the spacecraft.

Unfortunately, this series of technologies can only push the speed of the spacecraft to 20% of the speed of light in a vacuum.

This speed is the complete limit, and there is no way to advance.

Even after many centuries, the human civilization of Earth and Earth has developed a sufficiently mature and powerful plasma-free propulsion technology, which can only propel the speed of the spacecraft to 30% of the speed of light in a vacuum, and it will not be possible to do it at all.

It's as if there is an invisible threshold, blocking the way of the terrestrial humans.

At this point, there is only one way left for humanity to go.

That way is the curvature engine technology.

But this technology requires a crucial 'thing' - strange matter. (For details on the general principles of warp navigation techniques and the setting of strange substances, see chapters 164 and 181 for details)

It's a pity that for this kind of supernormal matter that only exists in the core of neutron stars and inside wormholes, the terrestrial humans trapped in the solar system can only sigh.

Because human civilization, which only has 30% of the vacuum speed of light spacecraft, cannot reach the depths of the vast universe across thousands of light years to complete the feat of exploring wormholes and excavating neutron stars.

Therefore, the terrestrial human beings can only reluctantly fall silent, and turn the direction of development and research to the solar system and to themselves.

About 70 centuries later, the Earth-star civilization, which has been deeply internalized and scientific research for nearly 2,000 years, has embarked on the road of mechanical ascension under the premise that the development of aerospace technology is almost nowhere to go.

They have researched and developed a set of mature consciousness upload technology, and resolutely mechanized their own race from top to bottom.

It is a nanoneuron technology that looks like a tube of cyan medicine that can be slowly implanted into the human cerebral cortex by means of conventional injections.

This kind of nanomechanical neurons, which can be controlled remotely, will gradually disassemble the brain cell neurons in the human brain one by default.

On the premise of retaining the synaptic connection information and the original cell structure of the brain cell, the functions of the original neuron are gradually replaced, and they are slowly optimized.

At the same time, the whole process of nanoneurons gradually replacing all brain cells in the human brain will also be replaced in days and days to carry out extremely gentle whole brain replacement.

Although this is essentially a kind of chronic suicide, because when a person's last neuronal cell has been completely replaced, then he is completely dead on a biological level.

But in this process of neuronal substitution, which lasted for decades, the continuity of the person's consciousness was never interrupted.

So from that perspective,

His consciousness as a whole has not changed, but the carrier of consciousness has changed and become stronger.

Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that those human beings who have undergone the nano-mechanization of the whole brain have not lost their spirituality, but continue to exist normally.

In other words, this mechanical ascension path of the terrestrial humans...... Go the right way.

They have not lost inspiration and creativity.

On the contrary, it is because of the completion of this whole-brain replacement process.

It is precisely because the functions of nerve tissues such as myelin sheaths and axons in the brain have all been completely replaced by nanomachines.

Therefore, the original neural reaction speed of human beings was only a few hundred meters per second, and it has also jumped to a sub-light speed of hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second.

With this terrifying speed of nervous reactions, humans will be able to subjectively and completely control the speed at which they react to the passage of time.

A minute in the old era can be as long as a century for humanity in the new era.

In addition, every moment of subtle changes in the nano-synapses and mechanical brain structure of human beings who have undergone whole brain replacement can be remotely synchronized with the central intelligent system cloud backup consciousness.

In this way, in the event of any accidental physical damage, the new human will also be able to be resurrected.

It is a resurrection of the true spiritual consciousness, not a simple reproduction of data templates.

At this point, the Earthstar civilization has stepped into a truly new era.

They have become new humans far beyond the past.

Free to read.