Master of Kaidan
Chapter 458: Exploitation

Chapter 458: Chapter 458: Exploitation

Draining the pond to get all the fish, as the saying goes, refers to the practice of draining a body of water to catch fish, symbolizing a focus on immediate gains without planning for the future.

But what if, after every time the fish were caught, the environment would reset the next day? Just like a game refresh, every time you enter an instance, there are new monsters?

Following this logic, so-called corruption in the dream seems to make sense—

Just like cutting meat from a living donkey (Note 1), the tender and juicy meat is usually the fresh cuts, but as the number of cuts increases, the donkey’s regeneration speed slows down. At that point, the donkey that can no longer provide tender meat can only be killed off.

This is probably the reason why people in the dreams of this world become numb and rigid as the number of deaths increases.

And when this numbness accumulates to the point where it is difficult to provide enough "Identity," the corruption mechanism will perform a "reset" on a person. Just like when a real person entering Infinite City dies and turns into a bad omen, the world’s reset will completely drain all of the Consciousness entity’s "Identity," thus transforming it into a Kaidan, or a corrupted creature.

And those who die completely will permanently lose this part of their consciousness, but because of the separation between reality and dream, the physical body in the real world is still alive. Hence, at most, symptoms like headaches, lack of energy, and nervous exhaustion occur, which do not take long to recover from, enabling the person to log in again. Therefore, those who log in again are like new donkeys ready for slaughter.

Although this is just a guess based on the existing information by Feng Xue, considering that Ghost Hand feels he could be killed in the dream, this guess is probably very close to the truth.

After all, he is a Kaidan, existing primarily in consciousness. Regular dream deaths are one thing, but if he were to be completely drained of his Consciousness entity to form another Kaidan, that would mean true death, with the real-world’s protein body being rather insignificant.

In other words, for others, it’s like canceling a network account, no matter how many years the account was managed. If the person in the real world is alive, they could just re-register a new one.

But Feng Xue himself is a life from the net, and once canceled, even if there are backup data, the recovered account wouldn’t be himself anymore.

Although this sustainable practice of draining the pond to harvest the flesh might sound inhumane, from the perspective of a Kaidan, it is without a doubt a stroke of genius. If one had to describe it, it might be how a sweatshop feels to a capitalist, perhaps?

"However, thinking about it this way, there’s no reason to lock down real-world technology!" Feng Xue looked out the window, feeling somewhat puzzled, but when he saw the still-bright lights in the deep of night, he suddenly had an epiphany—

Locking the tech tree is for the purpose of making sure people get a good night’s sleep!

Without electric lights, and with low productivity, humans could only work from sunrise to sunset (since candles and oil cost money). When cheap electric lighting became widespread, humans’ sleep times were pushed back.

And with the advent of the information age, staying up late is probably becoming the norm.

Looking at it this way, it seems more beneficial to choose an agricultural age, but without the electrification of the Industrial Revolution, productivity is limited. Limited productivity means population restrictions, and there’s a clear difference between five hundred million people sleeping twelve hours a day and five billion people sleeping eight hours a day—any elementary school student could figure that out.

"It really is necessary to come out and see," Feng Xue mused with a sigh. Simple as this setup might seem, finding the right balance is tricky, and this predecessor must have experimented with many worlds.

"Speaking of which, virtual reality games are essentially a similar structure. But first, the number of players is not as high as the number of people dreaming, and second, players can’t guarantee the same strong vitality as the corruption refresh mechanism forever. However, the fact that players’ consciousness can become like a Kaidan suggests there might be a refresh mechanism at play there too, not certain though. But speaking of the overall structure, it can only be considered a low-end version, far from the perfection of this world’s Dream System."

Feng Xue took out his notebook and recorded his inspirations about this world’s structure. For a moment, he somewhat understood why Infinite City would send higher-level Kaidan to other worlds where Kaidan existed.

"So I’ve become a student from an underdeveloped country sent to learn advanced technology?"

Feng Xue mumbled to himself, setting aside whether or not he was a double-dealer as a student, the knowledge he acquired was undeniably his own.

Although his moral baseline did not allow him to engage in actions that oppressed humanity, the structural organization of the world itself still had many aspects worth learning from.

For instance, the organization that, no matter how desperate, as long as it wasn’t extinct, would definitely pass down its experience.

Even though from the standpoint of factions, the Dream Guardians were absolutely opposed to Kaidan, their existence was essentially helping Kaidan preserve its last spark.

"If it weren’t for the example of this world, I would have never thought to nurture a hidden force that opposes me..."

Feng Xue jotted down notes on hidden forces and antagonists in a little notebook, planning in his mind how to establish such a power.

There’s a saying that "Enemies always understand you more than friends," but for Kaidan, understanding meant the survival of a seed, the seed kept by enemies to defeat you could become the key to your continuous resurrection.

"So it’s fair to say Kaidan is really quite interesting. Come to think of it, if a classic hot-blooded manga boss were to carry a Kaidan core, then everything suddenly seems to make sense!"

Feng Xue felt his brain trembling, endless inspiration bursting forth; he even had the urge to immediately find a purer world to experiment in, but considering that "Jeston Laboratory" was still awaiting results, he suppressed his restless heart, deciding to put together this Immortal Kaidan first.

...

While Feng Xue was recording his experiences in his little notebook, at the top of the tallest building in the small city he was in, a dozen young men and women sat on the window sill, meditating and practicing Qi Refinement in a posture suggesting that a gust of wind might toss them down at any moment.

Logically, even if there were seekers who were content to die in the evening after hearing the Dao in the morning, it would be impossible, after only a few days since an Immortal’s tribulation, in this era with slow information Transmission, for so many to gather in a small city.

But the Dream Guardian Organization, after all, was an organization with tentacles spread throughout the Dream World; once information on Immortal Cultivation emerged, besides mobilizing their own people, they had also carried out some operations targeting ordinary people.

That is—suggestive experimentation.

After all, the problems between the Dream World and the Real World had been emerging for decades in this world, and the high-tech environment within dreams naturally did not lack research on how to bring Dream System technology back to reality. Now, the topic of Immortal Cultivation had exploded on the network (within dreams), with many desiring to Cultivate in reality but frustrated by their inability to command their real-world selves.

In such times, the Dream Guardian Organization only needed a plausible pretext to attract a large number of experimental subjects. By implanting the suggestion to "strive for Immortal Cultivation in reality," even if only one percent, or even one thousandth of these individuals took the bait, it would trigger a Cultivation frenzy. Within this frenzy, naturally, more people would not resist the temptation to try out Stealing Heavenly Mechanism.

With the setting of "fated death" in place, the Dream Guardians held no psychological burden about getting people to Cultivate "Stealing Heavenly Mechanism."

After all, if they can’t die, just steal and be done with it!

Fate has bound this world for so long, couldn’t they now turn around and exploit Fate instead?