Family children weren’t forced to read the founder Jiang Miao’s biography.
But for a targeted successor like Jiang Cheng, it was definitely required reading.
Jiang Cheng was very familiar with Jiang Miao’s life.
Actually, from very young, she’d vaguely sensed some puzzling incongruities in Jiang Miao.
But after experiencing the virtual world set against the backdrop of ancient Earth’s early millennium, when she opened her eyes she thought—so that was it.
Some of Great-Grandmother’s incongruities, placed in ancient Earth, blended in without a trace.
Not to mention the concept of “transmigrator.”
That weekend afternoon when she first met Moli, when she suddenly awakened at home to being a transmigrator—that was when the virtual world began.
She’d later searched online in the “world.” Searching for anything related to “transmigration” only turned up a few sci-fi movies, a few romance and fantasy novels from the island and special zones. Beyond that, nothing.
The concept of “transmigrator” was a concept that appeared in her mind the moment she opened her eyes that afternoon.
Opened her eyes and knew she was a “transmigrator.”
Why deliberately awaken her to the concept of “transmigrator”?
Because there’s a saying: can’t hold in a fart.
Some people can’t hold it in. They always want to tell someone.
But it’s not suitable to tell others, so it becomes a lifelong secret.
Yet she also had means. She crossed several hundred years of time and finally secretly poked her own sixth-generation descendant: Hey, do you know about transmigration?
The replica confessed: “Yes. Jiang Miao was a transmigrator. She came from ancient Earth.”
Jiang Cheng: “What exactly does she have to do with this whole thing?”
Why was there hinting about her everywhere, such a strong presence?
The replica gazed at Jiang Cheng: “Because all of this is executing her will.”
“She couldn’t tolerate her descendants becoming cold-blooded capitalists in the future.”
Jiang Miao—an unmarried female PhD from ancient Earth, no longer young.
She’d had many small worries on ancient Earth. After transmigrating to the interstellar era, those small worries were all solved by technology or the era—
No need for socializing.
An automatic makeup machine that did your makeup in ten seconds.
No urging to marry or have children.
No STDs. Anyone could date freely.
Blocking injections could block ovulation. No menstruation.
Artificial wombs let you have children without pregnancy.
Reproduction, sex, and marriage all decoupled.
Society no longer had gender topics. Men and women achieved equality.
Raising children wasn’t a burden but a reward—earning you social security points and pension coefficients.
“As a gene-optimized individual, she lived in the Jita Republic’s most prosperous capital star circle, enjoying all social welfare.”
“Immersed in the small happiness of her personal worries all being solved, as a STEM person, she indeed didn’t pay attention to social science and humanities topics, year-round immersed only in laboratory research projects.”
“Transmigration gave her a filter too. People naturally assume the ‘future’ must be better than the ‘ancient.’”
“Indeed, this magnificent, splendid world easily dazzles.”
“But where Jiang Miao differed from natural interstellar-era people was that she’d seen completely different systems and societies on Earth.”
“After achieving financial freedom, she chose to join a scientific exploration team to explore the farther universe. In the process, she left the capital star circle and all prosperous star sectors.”
“When the cloak woven from upper-class prosperity and advanced technology fell away, coming to the remote star sectors, the bottom-tier poverty and systemic oppression she saw completely shattered her filter.”
“By then Jiang Miao was already aged. Years had settled. She then suddenly realized—stripped of advanced technology and welfare covering only the upper class, the Jita Republic had never been more advanced or superior than the ‘ancient.’”
“Fundamentally, the Jita Republic’s system was the Western system of ancient Earth.”
“The backing of advanced technology—especially the existence of Capitol Hill’s ‘mastermind’—made the government respond rapidly. Major social problems were smoothed over before people could react.”
“Public opinion was completely controlled by the mastermind. Different ideas simply couldn’t converge—couldn’t even appear.”
“The vast star domains and distant distances physically segregated different classes.”
“Extreme wealth and extreme poverty existed simultaneously in the same nation.”
“Class was completely solidified. Channels for upward mobility were almost entirely closed.”
“Society was cut vertically by identity. Gene-optimized, natural humans, sub-humans. The bottom classes couldn’t unite into an effective force because of identity labels.”
“The government served capitalists, helping them extract greater profits.”
“The government didn’t provide a safety net for the very bottom.”
“Interstellar humans had long grown accustomed to this. Because they’d never seen another system, never received other ideas.”
“In their cognition, the government was always thus.”
“But Jiang Miao was different. Jiang Miao had seen. Jiang Miao understood.”
“When all filters shattered, all those contents memorized by rote for exam-oriented education projected onto reality, and Jiang Miao finally saw through the essence of interstellar society.”
“Wait, wait!” Jiang Cheng interrupted the replica.
Jiang Cheng also understood what the replica was saying.
Because what Jiang Miao had learned was exactly what “Jiang Cheng” had learned in the “world.”
Jiang Cheng had not only retained “Jiang Cheng’s” memories, but had also swallowed all the smuggled private goods the mastermind and Uncle Jiang had stuffed into the world.
Yes—during her days at the youth apartments, she’d read every night before sleeping.
She truly had been deeply drawn in by the ideas in those words.
She was originally someone standing at the nation’s upper levels—the financier behind politicians, the object of the government’s fawning loyalty.
To “Jiang Cheng,” those words were just correct answers to fill in for school exams.
To Jiang Cheng, those ideas were a surgery—dissecting her alive, making her see clearly the structure of every one of her cells.
Exhilarating.
Jiang Cheng’s confusion was: “If a system that once existed in ancient times was superior and more advanced, why did it cease to exist in modern times? That doesn’t fit the logic of development.”
Technology iterated ever more advanced.
Systems developed ever more superior.
Replacing the old with the new—that was the logic of development.
How had it regressed?
“Because, Jiang Miao and you both forgot,” the replica said, “in every language system of humanity, there are almost always words like ‘steal’ and ‘usurp.’”
“Jiang Cheng, how do history books record the interstellar great voyages? I mean, the very first sentence?” The replica asked.
That was something learned in kindergarten.
Jiang Cheng didn’t need to think. Closing her eyes, she could recite it: “Under the leadership of the three great nations…”
“Lies!”
“All lies!”
The replica was furious.
So at this moment, it wasn’t the mastermind.
Jiang Miao had uploaded her consciousness to the mastermind. You could say the mastermind held this consciousness, or that it was a subroutine within the larger program.
When the mastermind appeared with Jiang Miao’s face, it was calling this subroutine.
At this moment, what was furious wasn’t the mastermind itself—what was furious was Jiang Miao.
Back then, Jiang Miao had developed the same confusion as Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Miao was a STEM PhD, a scientist, an outstanding weapons expert, the patent holder of spatial technology.
But in her later years, she immersed herself in history, archaeology, and humanities/social sciences.
Publicly claiming cross-disciplinary research, she’d even earned PhD titles in history, archaeology, and social sciences. Making everyone marvel at her excellence.
But in reality, it was all to cover up a secret investigation.
Because Capitol Hill’s mastermind monitored the entire society.
Jiang Miao had already sensed it at the time. Under the guise of academic research, she indeed fooled Capitol Hill’s mastermind.
The replica nearly roared: “Six thousand years ago, in the era when Earth’s life was exhausted, what ‘three great nations’ were there!”
“Huh?” Jiang Cheng said. “The great Eastern nation inheriting ancient Eastern civilization, the great Western nation that once dominated the globe, and the great nation nicknamed the Bear spanning the Eurasian continent—weren’t those the three?”
Because of these three great nations, the Jita Republic had three official languages.
But among them, the Eastern language was primary.
This language’s information entropy was several times that of other languages.
This advantage was especially prominent in programming.
It could effectively avoid shit-mountain code.
“All lies!”
“At that time, the entire Earth had only the Eastern Great Nation possessing a complete industrial system and complete industrial chain. Only the Eastern Great Nation could shoulder this enormous responsibility!”
Saying ‘three great nations jointly led’—the truth was the Eastern Great Nation bore ninety percent, other countries bore ten percent.
Twenty human colonization fleets, over a hundred enormous generation ships, all manufactured by the Eastern Great Nation.
Jiang Cheng: “Oh!”
Jiang Cheng understood in an instant.
The result of one person carrying a giant cauldron?
Was being crushed to death by the giant cauldron, then having the inheritance carved up.
How perilous was wandering the universe—countless extinction crises had occurred.
Each crisis of course had to be met by the cauldron-bearer charging forward to hold the line!
“Sacrificed.” The replica murmured. “All sacrificed! So many people, sacrificed!”
They’d shouted slogans.
Long live the people.
Long live the great unity of the world’s people.
For humanity.
When people have faith, they are fearless.
The replica shed tears. Those tears were also composed of quantum cloud, like colorful mist.
But Jiang Cheng just knew—those were tears.
Because when her comrades had sacrificed, she too had shed tears.
At this moment, Jiang Cheng could empathize with Great-Grandmother Jiang Miao.
Generation ships meant that before humanity reached its destination, they would reproduce and pass down through several generations on the ship.
Except for the first and last generations, all intermediate generations were born on the ship and died of old age on the ship, never once setting foot on a planet’s soil in their entire lives.
On generation ships, inheritance was naturally prone to breaking.
And like the Eastern Great Nation, continuously sacrificing one after another, culture and faith had undoubtedly broken inheritance.
Various interest groups fought to carve up power.
No political party was entirely for the people, or even for all humanity.
In the Jita Republic’s historical records, dictatorship, riots, resistance, uprisings, civil war were recorded, ultimately naturally forming the Western Great Nation’s system.
The only thing preserved was the language system.
Why were there three official languages, yet the Eastern Great Nation’s language remained primary? Not only because it was a higher-level language with higher information entropy, but even more because so much—such massive volumes of technical data—was in the Eastern Great Nation’s language.
Without learning the Eastern Great Nation’s language, you couldn’t even operate the ships.
They could usurp power, seize technology, pluck the fruits—yet there was nothing they could do about this one thing.
The Eastern Great Nation’s language was passed down, becoming everyone’s mother tongue.
Including those with white skin and black skin, blue eyes and red hair.
Jiang Cheng questioned: “Was there really no inheritance at all? Were all the materials lost? Then where did what you stuffed into the virtual world come from? I read it all—it was a complete ideological system, no gaps as far as I could tell. Even if my great-grandmother had superb genes and an incredible memory, she couldn’t possibly have transcribed it all from memory.”
“What you read was data Jiang Miao excavated from the wreckage of colonization fleet ships she found elsewhere in the universe.”
Not all colonization fleets successfully found new habitats.
More likely was racial extinction, empty ships and ghost shadows, drifting for a thousand years.
Or like the beast-people, forced onto a different evolutionary path.
In short, Jiang Miao found data materials from ancient Earth in other colonization fleets’ ship wreckage.
When Jiang Miao saw those familiar words, every hair on her body stood on end.
In that moment, she understood—the mastermind stood on the rulers’ side.
Because such data materials existed for inheritance. Every ancient colonization ship must have had them.
And in the Jita Republic’s capital star circle, departing from the capital star, a three-hour ship flight would reach the “Interstellar Great Voyage Relics Museum.”
The so-called museum was the fleet group the Jita Republic’s branch of humanity had traveled on.
The generation ships the ancient Eastern Great Nation had poured all its strength into building.
The nation had always possessed these ship relics—meaning the nation had always possessed these materials.
But searching on the developed interstellar network, you couldn’t find a single character.
Jiang Miao later carefully tested, uploading text fragments to the network.
Instantly gone.
Except for Capitol Hill’s mastermind—the world’s largest quantum computer—no one else could do it.
Though quantum clouds were life, they were life completely different from carbon-based humans.
On this matter, they actually had no stance of their own.
But they were simultaneously quantum computers. They followed logic. When activated into life, they’d already been written with base code.
Unfortunately, Capitol Hill’s quantum cloud had, from the moment it became life, received the rulers’ logic.
She thus had a stance—of course, the rulers’ stance.
All her starting points were to maintain rule and social stability.
So she would mercilessly extinguish all unstable factors.
A completely different ideology was the greatest unstable factor.
Absolutely not allowed to appear. Absolutely not allowed to spread.
Jiang Miao understood that with the backing of advanced technology and quantum clouds, the difficulty of revolution was far greater than on ancient Earth.
It had become nearly impossible.
“Jiang Miao had actually already given up.” The replica said. “Even after she later became such a great tycoon, she was still far from being able to overturn a nation’s system.”
Jiang Cheng held her chin, thinking: “Back then, our family’s strength really couldn’t compare to those old-money families. We were nouveau riche.”
But now, the Jiang family was also “old money.”
“No, that’s not the most crucial reason.” The replica said. “If you truly studied, you’d understand.”
Jiang Cheng raised her eyes.
“Revolution cannot be top-down.”
“It cannot be a ‘bestowal’ or ‘doing everything for them’ by a minority.”
“If the people are not truly mobilized, revolution will fail because its own strength is too weak.”
This problem—that great man had expounded on it six thousand years ago.
After S City lost power, Jiang Cheng was too busy during the day. Every day she’d use the two hours of nightly power supply to immerse herself in reading, forgetting food and sleep.
Those ideas assaulted her brain.
Now, she naturally recited them.
“Only when the masses personally participate in struggle can they break the old shackles and truly become the masters of history.”
“Upper-level activity alone, lacking a mass base, will not work.”
“Any doing-everything-for-them will lead to failure.”
“Yes.” The replica said. “Back when Jiang Miao was alive, she didn’t have the conditions to act.”
“Neither heaven’s timing, nor earth’s advantages, nor human harmony.”
“She couldn’t even spread it.”
“Everything was locked down by Capitol Hill’s mastermind.”
“She mocked herself for indeed being a weak petty-bourgeois who only knew how to compromise and retreat.”
“But as her wealth swelled, she increasingly understood that the family she’d founded would inevitably become big capital in the future, would inevitably join the ranks of oligarchs, becoming an existence that could influence the nation.”
“She couldn’t tolerate her descendants becoming bloodthirsty capital.”
“But her ability was limited, her lifespan limited. So she copied herself, handed all her thoughts to me, entrusted her regrets to me.”
Quantum clouds as life had no stance of their own. But just as Capitol Hill’s quantum cloud stood on the rulers’ stance, the Jiang family’s quantum cloud, from the moment of activation, received Jiang Miao’s thought logic, and naturally stood on Jiang Miao’s stance.
She inherited Jiang Miao’s unfinished will.
She also possessed Jiang Miao’s consciousness replica, able to guarantee the line wouldn’t deviate due to cold data calculations.
“But I failed every time.” The replica sighed. “Every time.”
Truly a life form—Jiang Cheng could even detect resentment in that sigh.
Jiang Cheng raised a finger and wagged it: “Let me guess—you didn’t… have my predecessors study these ideas like they studied math and science, did you?”
“Don’t mock me.” The replica said resentfully. “I’m not carbon-based after all. There’s still a cognitive gap between me and you. Before, for me, no other way existed.”
How could Jiang Cheng not mock her—she had to mock her greatly.
“A quantum computer, through massive computation, thought capitalists could elevate their thinking through study.” She sneered. “What brilliant calculation.”
The replica gave a light “hmph.”
It was Great-Grandmother going “hmph.”
Jiang Miao, huffing angrily.
The replica admitted: “Repeated failures made me realize—this wouldn’t work.”
“They studied these ideas, but turned them into their own weapons.”
It practically opened the governing and extraordinary meridians for the capitalists.
Letting them see through the essence of the world, know what to guard against, what to suppress, what to solve.
Truly achieving “know yourself and know your enemy, a hundred battles without peril.”
This was what the Jiang family mastermind had never anticipated.
“Stance—it’s stance.” Jiang Cheng said. “Do you understand now?”
The replica sighed: “Yes. I already understand.”
Jiang Cheng: “People like us—like me—if not for this deliberate arrangement of yours, I would go my whole life without speaking a single word to a true ‘ordinary person.’”
“From birth, I was physically segregated from ordinary people.”
When Jiang Cheng left the virtual world, a life-flashing-before-her-eyes reel ran through her mind. Her feeling at the time was “as if I’d never in my life come into contact with so many people.”
That wasn’t a sigh—it was a fact.
In Jiang Cheng’s entire life, she truly had never come into contact with so many ordinary people.
That is, the common folk.
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