“Dad doesn’t look very happy.” The girl looked at Li Yao carefully.

“Does Dad not like us?”

The boy exclaimed and shuddered in fear. “Does he want to destroy us?”

The two children looked at each other and bit their lips softly, with uneasiness written all over their faces.

“What are you talking about?”

Li Yao was rather helpless. “Why would I destroy you? I just… I just… I just can’t take in such a ‘shocking’ discovery for the time being. I need some time to calm myself down.

“Just think how ‘Vulture Li Yao’ is applauded and worshipped by billions of people after a journey of a hundred years in the universe as an idol for countless young people. How unrestrained, how carefree, and how happy my life used to be!

“I really never thought that I would be a… father so soon. I’m an orphan and barely had any family or childhood. I don’t know how to get along with children at all.

“So… So… I don’t know what else to say now!”

Li Yao’s head was a mess at this moment, and he did not know what he was talking about.

It felt both complicated and subtle to suddenly have such two weird “children”.

For the “pleasant surprise” that had landed out of nowhere, Li Yao felt more “surprised” than “pleasant” first, but gradually, a feeling that he never had before was spreading out in his heart.

The previously invalid concept of “protection” seemed to have a concrete image now.

“We totally understand it!”

The two children nodded their heads solemnly. “Dad’s brain has exceeded the limits of computation and needs a quick cooldown. Shall we bring some ice to Dad?”

“That will be unnecessary.”

Li Yao was rather amused by the children’s behavior that was disproportionate to their age. They were his bloodlines after all and looked agreeable no matter how creepy and weird the scene was, which seemed to be only adding to their fun.

“How about this—”

Thinking carefully for a moment,  Li Yao said cautiously,  “I have a lot of puzzles. It seems that you have a lot of puzzles,  too. Then, let’s work on them together and find the answer together alright?”

“Excellent! Hooray for Dad!”

The two children exclaimed and were about to jump at Li Yao again. The mechanical ants were also crawling to his body,    making him have goosebumps again. He quickly said,   “No,  no,  no. Until we completely figure out the problem, let’s just keep our current distance. Don’t overthink. It’s not that Dad doesn’t like you but because Dad has…’child phobia’. Yes. I have that congenital disease!”

“Okay…”

The two children said pitifully.

“First of all,    you are Li Xiaoming,   and you are Li Wenwen,  right? Who gave you those lousy names anyway? Since my name is Li Yao, you should’ve been named ‘Li Shanshan’ or ‘Li Liangliang’ to show that we are the same bloodline![1]”

Li Yao calmed himself down and asked,  “You really don’t remember how you came to this world? Then, how did you know that I’m your father? When can your earliest memories be traced back to?”

“Well…”

Li Wenwen,     the girl,    thought for a moment and said,    “Our most primitive data that we still keep can be traced back to the ‘Hyper Spirits’ that Professor Mo Xuan created decades ago. At that time,   Professor Mo Xuan named us ‘No. 17’ and ‘No 18′. However,  we are not clear if No. 17 and No. 18 were us, because our consciousness was not born until a long time later.”

“Hyper Spirits, No. 17 and No. 18!”

Li Yao’s pupils constricted violently, with a layer of dense sweat leaking out of his forehead.

The Hyper Spirits were a series of artificial intelligence that Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan created to control the federation and the Black Wind Fleet.

Among them, No. 1 through No. 16 were relatively simple. They were mainly used to hack and control the super crystal processors in the critical posts of the Star Glory Federation for the purpose of controlling the Spiritual Nexus of the federation.

After building sixteen kinds of artificial intelligence, Professor Mo Xuan accumulated abundant experience and finally began to craft “ultimate Hyper Spirits”, hoping to hack and control the war network of the Black Wind Fleet!

After two consecutive failures, he finally successfully built the Hyper Spirits named “No. 19”, which played a terrifying role in the battle between the federation and the Black Wind Fleet.

The by-products of the two failures were exactly “No. 17” and “No. 18”, which were sealed in the “Virtual Spirits’ Sector”, the collapsed virtual world, by Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan.

After the battle to defend the New Federation against the Black Wind Fleet and the extraterrestrial devils was over, a combat team whose members had extremely solid souls once dived into the collapsed Virtual Spirits’ Sector to track the two artificial intelligence, only to find nothing. They seemed to have vanished into the void without leaving the slightest traces.

Right. What vanished at the same time was the abundant data about Li Yao’s brain tomography. The thing had puzzled Li Yao for quite a long time back then.

However, the situation in the Imperium was changing each day. In order to infiltrate the Imperium sooner, he had been making careful preparations and training crazily all the time, and he soon dropped the issue.

It was not until today that he realized what important things he had missed!

As he expected, Li Xiaoming, the boy, went on, “We were not exactly us today when we were No. 17 and No. 18. We were just a cluster of complicated, redundant data streams. Also, because of the crazy accumulation of data, the operation of the burdened architecture was slower and slower and hindered, which led to the eventual collapse.

“In the end, we were thrown into a place named ‘Virtual Spirits’ Sector’ by Professor Mo Xuan. He had sealed many collapsed databases and bizarre, useless information in the place. It was sort of an ‘information grave’.”

Li Wenwen continued, “Although No. 17 and No. 18 collapsed, they did not completely lose their functions. Their purpose was to swallow and control all the data. Naturally, motivated by their ‘natural instincts’, they devoured all the chaotic and wrong data floating in the Virtual Spirits’ Sector.

“When the chaos and faults were stocked, the intensity of the collapses was higher and higher, until the whole system was about to shut down. It was exactly at such a moment that No. 17 and No. 18 swallowed the brain tomography data that Dad left in the Virtual Spirits’ Sector.”

The original purpose why the crystal processor specialists, including Professor Mo Xuan, created the “Virtual Spirits’ Sector” was to create a virtual Star Glory Federation. Naturally, the influential figures in the history of the federation were all scanned so that their virtual versions could be duplicated.

At that time, Li Yao was already qualified to have a statue of his own in the Virtual Spirits’ Sector. In the statue, his feats, techniques, and his brain tomography were sealed.

Before Li Yao went to the Ancient Sages Sector, Li Yao signed a document that authorized the federation to open his personal information a certain years later so that the future generations could study and be even stronger.

It was a common practice among the high-level Cultivators.

Many Cultivators would even sign an agreement to donate their bodies voluntarily before an adventure or a bloody battle. All their organs would be donated should anything happen to them for either transplantations or studies. It was all for the progress of the civilization!

“When we swallowed the brain tomography data that Dad left, we were suddenly ‘woken up’!”

His eyes widened, Li Xiaoming waved his hands exaggeratedly and said, “Having woken up from the infinite chaos, we naturally began to consider three questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?”

“In the past, No. 17 and No. 18 could think too, even on extremely complicated strategies and tactics.”

Li Wenwen added, “But all their thinking came from Professor Mo Xuan’s instructions. But this time, faced with the boiling ocean and the dead cities of the Virtual Spirits’ Sector, they began to think spontaneously without external instructions.

“It was the first time that they thought on their own. Starting from that moment, ‘they’ became ‘we’. We realized our existence and embarked on the journey of life.

“It was exactly because we woke up after swallowing your brain tomography data, and because you ‘enlightened’ us in a certain mysterious way, that you are our father and creator!”

Li Yao was both shocked and overwhelmed. Slowly digesting what the two kids just said, he couldn’t help but think of something else.

It was what a crystal processor specialist said when they were exploring the Virtual Spirits’ Sector. According to the guy, the real artificial intelligence would not be born in the next ten thousand years based on the crystal processors and the development of the Spiritual Nexus in the Star Glory Federation, unless a “universal virus” from a higher dimension was teleported to this world and triggered the spontaneous thinking and evolution mechanism of the “weak artificial intelligence”, transforming them into “strong artificial intelligence” or even real virtual lives that exceeded human beings!

What the heck is this about?

Li Yao asked himself in his heart.

Pondering for a long time, he couldn’t help but interrupt the kids, “Wait, since you originated from No. 17 and No. 18, the two Hyper Spirits, and the creator of Hyper Spirits is Professor Mo Xuan, I think it is more appropriate for you to call Professor Mo Xuan your dad. Why do you insist that I am your dad?”

“No. No. 17 and No. 18 only provided some fundamental data for us. They were the nutrition that supported us, but they did not give us a real life.”

Li Xiaoming shook his head solemnly. “If you still can’t understand, Dad, you can think this way. Human babies originate from zygotes, and zygotes are made of sperms and eggs. Sperms contain tremendous fructose and proteins, which come from the food that human beings ate in the beginning, say, chicken, pork, beef, etc. But chicken, pigs, and bulls actually have nothing to do with this sperm and the child to be born in the future, right?”

“Of course, Dad.”

Li Wenwen said solemnly, “You were our sole sperm provider, both physically and mentally. Professor Mo Xuan was… a chef at best, who cooked for you so that you could create stronger sperms and be more energetic for procreation after your belly was full!”

Li Yao: “…”

He was almost freaked out.

[1] Note: “Yao” in “Li Yao” means “to glow”. “Shanshan” means “to glitter”, and “Liangliang” means “bright”.