Star Gate-Chapter 1527: Rules (III)

“Hahaha!” Ming Hao laughed uproariously. “Your words make sense, Fellow Daoist Hao Moon. But... who can enforce a lifespan restriction on exalted emperors? You can’t have them all commit suicide when they reach the required age, can you? To be honest though, living too long is pretty boring!”

“Isn’t it?” Li Hao nodded. “The key lies in the chaos’ incomplete rules. I find birth, death, sickness, and old age to be pretty normal, but exalted emperors can live forever and ever. At the very least, I’ve never seen an elderly exalted emperor!”

The group collectively blinked. Just listen to him speak! The chaos has an incomplete set of rules? This guy seriously likes to talk big! How big is the chaos?

So much bigger than you can imagine!

It’s so big that almost no exalted emperor has ever fully walked it. We’re generally active in the neighboring regions, with some staying in one region and never leaving it for their entire lives.

Some don’t even leave their worlds.

Who will unite the chaos? Who will consolidate it and lay down this set of rules for everyone?

Ming Hao was the strongest of the group as he was a fourth rank. “Wouldn’t it be an injustice to exalted emperors if such rules do exist? If I cultivate for so many years, but am constantly hounded by limited lifespan, isn’t that also unfair? Don’t we seek freedom in walking the path of dao?”

“Fair enough!” Li Hao nodded after some thought. “But... freedom is also relative. Unfettered freedom is indulging in the self to me! Unless one can exercise full self control, I think anyone needs some sort of rules to constrain themselves.

“Even though I think I can fully check my actions, sometimes I can’t either. For example, I want to kill bad people when I see them. But doesn’t that make you a bad person if you kill someone?”

The young man was now speaking of concepts that the rest found unreasonable. They smiled and didn’t say anything. So naive!

The guy was too young. It was fine to engage him in some casual chitchat, but one should not go as far as to take him seriously.

Li Hao, however, had grown quite serious. He was contemplating whether the current chaos was too chaotic and dark. The universe in its present state did not fulfill his expectations about the freedom of great dao.

Of course, limiting lifespans would not solve the problem at its root either. That would only cause powerhouses to stop at nothing to advance their cultivation. Thus, appropriate countermeasures and punishments should be installed in such a system, as well as a robust set of rules.

With limited lifespans and the death of elderly powerhouses, that would create opportunities for new generations. Even if there was competition, it would be limited to reasonable bounds.

Apart from this, general comprehension of dao should be deepened. Breakthroughs shouldn’t be made possible through simple devouring of resources. If that was the case, then there would be no end to slaughter and devouring others.

When dao universes could strengthen themselves through devouring each other, it became a key reason for wars. Cultivators should train themselves instead.

At the same time, competition was an innate personality trait that should not be snuffed out. If it was extinguished, cultivators would turn into blockheads. That would be equally undesirable.

Rules for the chaos...

Li Hao continued to mull over the notion in his mind. There really ought to be a set of rudimentary rules to the chaos. We can decrease conflict within that framework and have cultivators focus on enhancing their personal cultivation level.

As for how these rules should be established...

The young man didn’t dare think further on it. It was too frightening to brainstorm in more detail. He suddenly thought of someone—the Skyward master.

A ninth rank exalted emperor, one of space!

The Skyward master had apparently sought out large sums of dao masters back in the day. According to what Li Hao understood of the term, dao masters were cultivators who’d taken one dao to the very extreme of what was possible. Someone who would register on the Skyward master’s radar would be eighth or ninth rank at least.

Life and death, yin and yang, the five elements...

With all of these dao masters gathered in one location and even wanting to add time to the roster...

What did they want to do? Li Hao raised an eyebrow. Create a set of rules? One for all of the chaos?

Was that possible? The young man was daydreaming wildly. Actually, there must be a set of rules within the chaos. The chaos tribulations, for example, eradicate some things that shouldn’t exist. Do they count as a set of rules?

How are chaos tribulations born?

From where are they born? What is their basis of judgment?

Li Hao was briefly lost in thought. He was only a third rank, so these things were truly too far away from him. He shouldn’t be contemplating all these random things, but recent actions had given him food for thought.

He himself had killed numerous exalted emperors and large numbers of exalted emperors were starting to die in Red Moon Region. The war looked to engulf the entire universe.

Cultivators were obsessed with killing people and seizing their treasure. Even Li Hao himself was the same way. It was unavoidable. All that talk of the natural order of dao and going with the flow was just bullshit.

Some people thought that way themselves, some were forced into that line of thinking. Some did as they were told and others felt that they would be missing out if they didn’t follow suit.

The key lay in the lack of certain constraints. If they committed some wrongdoing in this part of the universe, they would simply run away to another part of the universe.

I can hop to another world or region after killing someone. The chaos is so massive, how are you going to find me?

The chaos was simply too vast. Journeys took a minimum of several months, and those were the short journeys. Durations of several years, decades, or even hundreds of years were normal. Getting lost on a turn could cause one to wander the chaos for countless eons. The traveler wouldn’t even know how long it’d been.

Li Hao turned over these matters in his mind. The young man didn’t have the ability to change anything at present. He simply felt the reality of the chaos was different from what he’d anticipated. The path of cultivation that people took was also different from what he’d thought.

His conversation with these exalted emperors had given him food for thought. Those of Silver Moon were also a group that enjoyed their freedom and pursued martial dao. They committed their fair share of murder, raiding, and looting.

But Silver Moon did not fall into disarray because of it—why?

Because there were checks and balances that were more or less in place!

The shackles of law, ethics, and their fellow man keeping them in check!

There was another point at hand—martial masters did not live for long. As dominating and overwhelming one was, it only lasted one hundred years at most, or a few years at least. Death was the foregone conclusion when old age came for the martial master.

Arrogance lasted only so long! The rise and fall of new and old were very fast!

Not all overlords of an age were tyrants. Sometimes they were good people who ushered in a period of peace.

But in the chaos, a villain was the overlord for a million years. How could anyone endure that?

No one could!

What Li Hao contemplated wasn’t of much help to his great dao, he was just letting his thoughts run wild. Traveling through the chaos wasn’t conducive to cultivating. And since he’d reached great perfection of the third rank, he had no need to cultivate lately.

That was how he had the time and frame of mind to consider these matters.

The young man suddenly felt that he could discuss them with a certain person... a certain cat.

“Senior Number Two, has the War Sovereign ever spoken of, or taught what we should do when cultivators that cannot be kept under control appear? Or if all cultivators are raging out of control?”

Number Two had been napping and usually ignored a certain someone when he disturbed it. But the question reminded it of something and it responded, “Then establish a system that everyone can accept, but the precursor is that you need to possess the ability to build it!

“Human desire is endless—not just human, but all beings. It is a saint that learns to keep themselves in check, but not all those in existence are saints. Therefore, immense strength is needed to establish and maintain these systems at times.

“As laws are gradually perfected, the first group of people subjected to them will rankle at their imposition. Some will resist and defy your rule. It will require multiple generations to perfect, maintain, and suppress these rules. That is how constraints and rules come to be!”

“Then is it correct to impose limitations of lifespan on cultivators?” Li Hao seemed to be conversing with the War Sovereign through space and time. He spoke with the august personage who’d spent its entire life with that legendary character.

“Limitations of lifespan?” Number Two sank into its memories and took a while to respond, “This should be the natural order of things. Unlimited longevity is a kind of injustice in itself! Whether you are an exalted emperor or someone else, living forever is a monopolization of resources to society and the entire world!

“For example, consider the minor world that an exalted emperor is born in. He can kill anyone who might challenge him in order to maintain an iron grip on his power. He can refuse to permit anyone else to have opportunities and perpetuate the situation for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years!

“The world may not improve during this entire time. In fact, the era will be going backward instead!

“Why is it that ancient powerhouses are enormously powerful and new age cultivators unable to surpass them? After so many years, whether it is the worlds or chaos, almost all of the positions of power are occupied by ancient cultivators. How many new faces have risen to the forefront? Apart from the minority of weak exalted emperors, almost all powerful exalted emperors are ancient existences...”

Number Two was simply repeating some notions that the War Sovereign had said to it before.

“A shorter lifespan actually more easily gives rise to unimaginable brilliance—the resplendence of civilization! Mundanes live for only one hundred years, but in these one hundred years, they might create marvels that one can barely conceptualize.

“Meanwhile, exalted emperors might not think of anything new for ten thousand years, much less innovate!

“Back in the day...” The cat’s tones turned somber. “When the one who taught chose to... leave, this was also one of the reasons why. Living for so long had become so boring. He wasn’t one of the oldest cultivators of the era—in fact, he was often viewed as one of the youngest. But to him, he’d accomplished everything fun in the world!

“He discovered that his teacher, friends, and commander had changed over the course of infinite longevity. He felt that this was such a tragic way to live. It was time to leave such an insipid era!

“If cultivators of that age were limited by how long they could live, then the nine emperors and four sovereigns would’ve remained heroes. People change when they grow old! The nine emperors and four sovereigns of Yin and Yang, even the Heavenly Emperor, were heroes at the start. They saved all life from abject misery and suffering. But because they lived so long, they changed.”