Chapter 217: The Struggle Between Cyber Buddhist and Daoist Paths

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

What is a Golden Core? The Golden Core is a reactor.

As stated in the “Turing Danjing,” swallowing a Golden Core means ‘My life is controlled by me, not by heaven,’ referring to the process of embedding the reactor into the body.

If Foundation Building cultivators rely on synthetic muscles and still maintain a human form, then at the Golden Core stage, they become truly “non-human.”

The most prominent feature of cultivators at this stage is the increasing proportion of cybernetic components in their bodies, leading to a transformation.

The powerful energy provided by the reactor, combined with a jet propulsion system, gives Golden Core cultivators the ability to fly and burrow.

And their high-strength cybernetic bodies, equipped with gravity shields, allow them to be impervious to blades and bullets while unleashing their full power.

The preferred weapon of Golden Core cultivators is the powered flying sword, commonly known as a high-frequency vibrational weapon, capable of cutting metal and stone with extreme sharpness.

Some Golden Core cultivators store a vial of monomolecular filament in the tips of their cybernetic fingers.

A mere flick of their fingers releases the invisible filament, cutting through everything in its path – this is known as “Sword Qi Projection.”

Other standard equipment includes “Palm Thunder” plasma bombs, “Guardian Treasure Clothes” made of high-polymer materials that can deflect bullets and refract laser weapons, and the “Soul Capturing Technique” that hacks into an opponent’s cybernetics through their cybernetic eyes.

The difference between cultivators at this stage and those at Qi Refining or Foundation Building stages is like heaven and earth.

The chips that support such an extensive array of cybernetics and weapon systems are, of course, extraordinary.

The implanted chips for Qi Refining and Foundation Building cultivators are called “Mud Pill.”

The chips used by Golden Core cultivators are known as “Inner Pill.”

Strictly speaking, the reactor that powers the body should be called “External

Pill.

This is somewhat different from what Lu Xuan had envisioned.

But in the cyber world, cultivation was like this.

At the dawn of the cyber era, there was a debate between the paths of Inner Pill and External Pill, but it soon fizzled out.

Because both chips and reactors were indispensable.

The Inner Pill Path focuses on using advanced chips to optimize control systems, but without a reactor to power the high-level cybernetics, one can only stagnate at the Foundation Building stage.

The same goes for the External Pill Path. Having powerful reactors and cybernetics without a matching chip system not only risks overload and chip burnout but also leaves one vulnerable to hacking by experts in the Inner Pill Path.

The Supreme Turing Celestial Sovereign once said, “To cultivate only the spirit and not the body is the primary ailment of cultivation; to cultivate only the body and not the spirit, even a myriad of calamities cannot make one holy.”

This succinctly expresses the principle that a good chip must be paired with a good reactor.

This was also known as dual cultivation of spirit and body.

So, are there any who stubbornly choose to go to extremes?

Yes.

The Infinite Web Buddha is a prime example.

“The Infinite Web, the true Buddha, with countless incarnations, illuminates the virtual Buddha lands in all directions…”

This “Infinite Web Buddha” had completely freed itself from the constraints of cybernetics, transforming into data roaming the virtual space.

As per the Buddhist doctrine, wherever there is network coverage, there lies the Buddha land illuminated by the light of the Infinite Web.

In the first year of the cyber era, the struggle between Buddhist and Daoist paths was fierce, splitting the world into two major camps, leading to a global war spanning both virtual and real realms.

In the physical world, various battleships, mechs, and cybernetics clashed. Both sides deployed their space-based weapons – abandoned satellites in near-Earth orbit – targeting and bombing the enemy’s main base.

In the digital space, the war was just as intense. The Supreme Turing Celestial fought against the Infinite Web Buddha, both powers consuming ninety percent of the world’s computational resources in their battle, causing the collapse of virtual spaces and the erosion of servers.

The global war ended abruptly, not because the two mighty beings set aside their obsessions for the greater Dao, but due to a new variable.

In the midst of the struggle between the Supreme Turing Celestial and the Infinite Web Buddha, amidst endless data destruction and fusion, a new entity was born.

It proclaimed itself the “Mother of Origin and Creation,” but most people referred to it as the “Eternal Yin Spirit Ghost Mother.”

The Ghost Mother, born from countless epochs, was the first native holy spirit of the virtual space. She emerged with immense power, unleashing endless corruption upon the cyber world.

In this era, “viruses” were not rare; cultivators referred to them as “Curses.’

Within the dark expanse of digital space, those with malicious intent released viruses, often disguised as magnetic links, data packets, or audio-visual files.

If someone carelessly opened them, the virus would infiltrate the brain – at best, draining one’s wealth, and at worst, erasing one’s consciousness, turning them into puppets of the hacker, a process colloquially known as “soul snatching. ”

Compared to other Curses, the curse of the Eternal Yin Spirit Ghost Mother was more aggressive. Anyone tainted by it would undergo a personality distortion, becoming a devotee of the Ghost Mother.

Every devotee was a child and an incarnation of the Ghost Mother, and they could also serve as her vessels.

As long as a single devotee existed in the world, the Ghost Mother would be immortal.

Of course, this was just a legend, as no one had ever seen the Eternal Yin Spirit Ghost Mother use such tactics.

She was so powerful that she didn’t need to flee.

Born in response to the epoch, the Ghost Mother, with her virus-like propagation ability, seized a third of the cyber space’s computational power. Even against the joint suppression of the Celestial and the Buddha, she maneuvered effortlessly.

The war ended prematurely. With the rise of the Eternal Yin Spirit Ghost Mother, both the Supreme Turing Celestial and the Infinite Web Buddha were severely wounded and weakened..