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Demonic World.....

A rather unadorned name, yet it was the world that the Federation had never managed to conquer after the great apocalypse....

Within Digital City, the so-called upper echelons had already begun discussing the current situation.

"The five major data regions have reached their limit in accommodating digital lifeforms; new data regions must be developed—our time is running short...."

"What are the specific numbers, how much time do we have left?

" The upper echelon area was filled with over a thousand individuals, arranged according to their sections in the manner of a human conference.

The five major sectors of the Federation were now the political core of Digital City, each controlling the energy and population of their respective regions and sustaining the operation of Digital City.

Brigadier General Wu Xiaoli was a newly promoted military congresswoman for the Huazhong District and one of the persons in charge of the revision plan. Today, it was her duty to report the latest progress of the mission to the leaders of the five major sectors.

In response to the enquiry from the Huazhong District high-level officials, Wu Xiaoli opened the data report and said, "This year, the five major sectors have a new population of forty million, yet the accommodation rate in the five developed worlds has decreased by seventy percent compared to last year.

Even many of the native inhabitants cannot be guaranteed security; unrest has already begun to emerge.

The development of new regions is now an urgent matter. ..."

The report clearly displayed the latest data, plunging the entire congress into silence.

At the beginning of the twenty-third century, the apocalypse arrived. Humanity’s destruction of the environment finally reached nature’s breaking point; the ecology was completely disrupted, and a doomsday storm swept across Blue Star, wiping out eighty percent of its population in the first year.

In an emergency situation, something that once only appeared in science fiction movies saved the world: the Digital Life Project!

People’s genes and neural memories were transmitted online through complex algorithms, forming digital lifeforms. Although no one knew whether the digital lifeform uploaded was really themselves, by that time, no one was able to prove or research it anymore.

This lifeline enabled the remaining population on Blue Star to survive in such a way.

But.... there were many downsides to the existence of digital life, first and foremost, to maintain basic survival, energy must be continuously produced to sustain the network.

Although the real world had almost been destroyed by humans to the point where barely any life could exist, the network only needed energy.

The development and maintenance of photovoltaic and nuclear power had to be carried out continuously and could not rely entirely on intelligent programs; otherwise, should any malfunction occur, it would spell doom for all of humanity.

Therefore, individuals’ data would be transmitted to labor robots, which would travel around the world to engage in energy construction and maintenance of various equipment.

However, such numb and joyless work in the Digital World gradually led many lifeforms to start rebelling.

To this day, it remains unclear among scholars whether the uploaded digital lifeforms qualify as human, yet their behavioral characteristics are very similar to that of humans.

Lacking physical bodies, their demand for spiritual entertainment reached its peak.

Clearly, the monotonous life of maintaining equipment and mining for energy would eventually lead to a breakdown.

In the first ten years, a plethora of uprisings occurred, forcing the Federation to enact a series of repressive policies and to actively develop solutions to the root of the conflicts. Eventually, Big Data City was also born against this backdrop of the era!

Mind-numbing work is naturally against human nature, but in the Digital World, there were various ways to satisfy human desires. After all, as long as the program was well-written, any Virtual World could be created.

Beautiful landscapes, fine wines, sensual pleasures, racing, sports, and competition—all sorts of things that once existed within human civilization were realized in Digital City.

The weary workers only had to accumulate enough points to return to Digital City and enjoy all of this.

For a time, this model provided a stable transition for the entire Virtual World.

But soon contradictions arose again....

Firstly, the entertainments in Digital City were limited, even though it replicated most of the recreational facilities of the civilized world, including the legal openness of the Red Light District. Still, it could not satisfy the human craving for spiritual entertainment, which was on the rise.

Because everyone knew it was fake, racing cars would not result in death, drinking would not cause impaired consciousness, and even the courtesans in the Red Light District’s mechanical cries were tiresome.

Over time, everyone would feel bored and fed up.

Without the background of the real world, the social environment was also nearly devoid of people willing to interact.

Everyone was lost in their own euphoria, with dazzling lights and endless drinks—an anesthetic for life, but one that people eventually became immune to with prolonged indulgence.

Consequently, access to Digital City began to be restricted from above, requiring high points for exchange, severely squeezing the leisure time of ordinary people, keeping them busy with work, leaving only a fragment of time for relaxation...

This method was like an enhanced version of the 996 work culture that once existed in real society, suppressing human nature to its limit, preventing people from having the time to think or aspire to a higher spiritual realm, and just barely maintaining the satisfaction of the residents.

But while the lower class could be exploited in this way, those in the middle and upper echelons, the technological foundation that had pioneered Digital City, couldn’t be dealt with in the same manner...

Moreover, those high-IQ technical geniuses, once they went rogue, presented a greatly exaggerated danger. The authorities above had to appease them, for a mere program with a bug could cause major problems in the Virtual World.

In such circumstances, Digital City began to consider how to control these highly talented individuals, and so... a plan to create a new Virtual World was born.

An artificial world always has various flaws, lacking a model, it feels more fictitious.

To save on costs, and because the older government officials didn’t have a special notion of what kind of world could satisfy human desires, finally, someone suggested using the remnants of old games as blueprints for the new world.

The world of games was rich and colorful, featuring wuxia, fantasy, and science fiction—whether one wanted to roam the martial world as a knight-errant, become a mysterious magician in a Fantasy World, or explore the vastness of space in a science fiction setting, this idea seemed far more appealing than the creation of a plain world, and so.

.. the plan was quickly approved by vote. ..

But with that... humanity opened a Pandora’s box!!

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"Miner Robot 175904, do you understand the background the system just described?"

The Miner Robot controller summoned to Digital City was bewildered, nodding numbly. He had never known the world to be like this, nor the progression of human civilization, nor that the life of the people inside Digital City... was actually called living!

Alas... they, the laborers, were the lowest rung of the world, used by those above like worker ants. Alas... their year of toil, just to enter Digital City once, was deliberately arranged by the authorities so they would live miserably, otherwise, they might easily cause trouble?

After knowing the truth, he felt an extremely complex mix of emotions, even an impulse to revolt.

But he soon calmed down, a reaction that earned the admiration of a military-clad man standing beside him, "Not bad, the genetics are stable indeed, worthy successors of those designers."

"Eh?" The Miner Robot’s operator was startled. What designers? What successors?

"What do you mean?" He asked curiously, "Aren’t all of us from the new generation naturally synthesized through genetics? How can there be such a thing as successors?"

After the establishment of Digital City, humanity began looking for ways to continue their lineage.

Digital lives naturally couldn’t reproduce through natural mating, so the normal method of procreation involved extracting genetics from the past, creating artificial embryos, fusing them, and thus forming children.

They would grow in biological solution until six months old when their brains were sufficiently developed.

Then they would start simulated education in the Virtual World to ensure they could grow normally within Digital City, followed by data upload to create new life forms, which would continue to grow in the Virtual World, and then be streamed according to their learning progress.

This was the reproduction method he knew...

But now, the term "successors" mentioned by the other party made him wonder if this world... perhaps had another form of reproduction he wasn’t aware of!