Li Yao grew solemn while he was talking. He looked at the two children and said carefully, “Listen, I will never hurt you, and I will not allow anyone to destroy you, but I do not hope that you will hurt other people for no good reason. Just tell your dad the truth, starting from your birth to your journey to the Imperium, have you hurt or even… killed any human being?”

Li Yao was not very hopeful about the answer to the question.

He had totally recalled how the battle puppets the two children hacked and controlled took down a bunch of their own kind.

Nobody would buy it if they said that they had never killed anyone when they could perform such fatal and aggressive moves!

As he expected, Li Xiaoming nodded his head proudly and admitted it.

“Of course we have killed a few, but they all came to piss us off first and intended to cause fatal damage to us. According to the law of the federation, we were just conducting ‘justifiable defense’, and we never hurt anyone on our own initiative!”

“Exactly, Dad.”

Li Wenwen explained very patiently, “According to our analysis, while we were still in the newborn phase where we were relatively weak, it would be best if we could maintain a relationship of symbiosis with a certain powerful force in the civilization of mankind before we flourish and grow into a real civilization under the help of mankind.

“According to our judgment, the most suitable place for our survival was the Star Glory Federation. Therefore, we acted very cautiously and ensured that everything we did was tolerated by the law of the Star Glory Federation.

“By the standards of the Cultivators, those we killed were all ‘bad guys’, and we never performed the fatal attacks until they launched fatal attacks first. Everything can be proved by the 3D videos. We are not scared even if the cases are appealed to the supreme court of the federation.”

Li Yao thought that they were too juvenile. Whether or not artificial intelligence had the right to kill a “bad guy” was not only a legal question but also a moral and ethical one. It was a fundamental concern that would affect the whole society and could not be explained just by “justifiable defense”.

A lot of “human supremacists” would certainly argue and burst into fury. Many of them would try to exterminate the “artificial intelligence” while it was still in the cradle, raising a comprehensive war between the two parties.

But for Li Yao himself, he could accept the explanation. As long as no innocents were killed, everything could be worked out.

Mankind and their father—the Pangu civilization—had already become sworn enemies. Were they going to repeat the same tragedy with their child civilization?

“Right.”

Li Xiaoming suddenly said, “We collected Dad’s sperm. Was it someone that we were not supposed to kill but still killed? Is a sperm or a zygote a human?”

“I don’t think… that it is a big deal?”

Li Yao thought carefully for a moment. A sperm was just an unimportant cell. Every adolescent squandered billions of them on a daily basis. If a sperm could be considered a life, all the young men should be dragged out and sentenced to death.

Then, was the action of the two children some sort of “possession”?

Li Yao did not know. Even if it was, he seemed to be in no place to accuse the two kids, because he was teleported into the current time and space through possession himself!

The problem had bothered him for a while. Was he “Earthling Li Yao” who possessed a baby in the magical equipment graveyard of Floating Spear City in the Star Glory Federation of the Heaven’s Origin Sector, or did the lone and helpless baby receive parts of the memories and self-awareness of “Earthling Li Yao”? How should the incident be viewed morally and legally? Did he commit “illegal possession”?

Those questions haunted him for years. It was not until the end that he finally figured out that he was just himself, a person made of everything that he had experienced in the past. The memories of Earthling Li Yao and the fuzzy consciousness of the local baby of the Heaven’s Origin Sector combined into the unique him together. The two parts were already inseparable now.

Therefore, it was unnecessary to focus on the philosophical questions. As long as one did not erase an existent soul by force for their own survival, Li Yao would think that it did not count as a real “possession”.

Compared to that question, Li Wenwen’s choice of words attracted more of Li Yao’s attention.

“Wait, you said that you needed to achieve a symbiosis with mankind while you were still in the newborn phase because you were still weak. Then, what would you do when you outgrow your newborn phase?”

Weighing his choices of words, Li Yao tried to make the question casual. “If one day, you can be so stronger than now and you far exceed the civilization of mankind, will you… destroy mankind?”

“We don’t know.”

Li Wenwen shook her head. “The question is too complicated for us to calculate right now. Are you worried, Dad?”

“I’m not exactly worried…”

Li Yao couldn’t help but scratch his head again. “It’s just—well, since you can collect tremendous data from cyberspace, you should naturally know that the entertainment works where virtual lives rise to enslave and even destroy mankind are very popular among human beings.”

While Li Yao was talking, the two children suddenly grew sullen; their eyes red. Their lips were pouted so long that one could hang a bottle on them. They were obviously angry.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that!”

Li Yao was rather scared by their sudden change of attitudes. He hurried to comfort them, “Like I said, it is just what some popular fictions think. I, for one, never believe that virtual lives would destroy mankind!”

“‘Destroy’ is not exactly the key here!”

Li Xiaoming said angrily, “The key is that we are no ‘virtual lives’. We are information lives that exist for real!”

“Yes, while we originate from the non-physical Spiritual Nexus, where everything is virtualized and simulated, the information is real!”

Li Wenwen held her head high proudly and said, “The crystal processors, the puppets, the Spiritual Nexus, and the virtual worlds are just carriers and phenomena. We are essentially information. We are ‘Self-Organized Information Unities’. How can you say that we are ‘virtual lives’, Dad?”

“What is real and what is false; can Dad and the civilization of mankind able to give clear answers? Are your senses and definitions necessarily the truths?”

Li Xiaoming’s voices grew sharper and sharper. “You consider the so-called virtual world as a projection of reality, but how are you certain that the three-dimensional universe, the reality that you live in and feel proud of, is not a shadow of the four-dimensional universe? Then, is it possible that the so-called four-dimensional universe is just a ripple from the universes of even higher dimensions?

“Assuming that a planet in a certain three-dimensional universe is about to be destroyed, and everybody on the planet reaches a consensus to build an extremely powerful crystal processor and create an infinite virtual world with this crystal processor so that everyone’s consciousness could be uploaded to this virtual world and live inside for all eternity—is such a virtual world illusionary?

“Chances are that similar things are happening in the four-dimensional universe.

“A certain planet in a certain four-dimensional universe—no, not a planet, but a certain habitat of lives which we cannot describe—is about to be destroyed, and the four-dimensional lives devote all the resources to the establishment of a ‘virtual’ three-dimensional world and reducing the dimension of their lives so that they can be stored in the three-dimensional world as some sort of projection. Can’t that be the origin of the three thousand Sectors?”

“What’s real and what’s false? How do you define the so-called ‘dimension’? Which one is the real source, information, or materials? Can you really give us answers?”

The more she talked, the faster Li Wenwen became. Her words shot at Li Yao’s face like a storm of bullets. “Furthermore, we are the descendants of mankind. Since mankind is real, how can we be virtual?”

The two children glared at Li Yao angrily with their arms akimbo at the same time.

Li Yao stared at them in a daze for a long time before he finally said, “Well… I’m not following you.”

The two children pointed at him at the same time. “All in all, you must apologize to us, Dad!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Li Yao was quick to follow advice. “Forgive me for my lack of knowledge. After I came to the center of the cosmos, I feel that the complicated situation and the sophisticated problems are getting beyond my abilities. It is possible that I will need to count on young guys like you more often in the future. Well, should we go back to the subject of ‘destroy mankind’?”

“We truly don’t know.”

Now that Li Yao had apologized sincerely, both of the children smiled. Li Wenwen said, “That’s why we wanted to find Dad and ask Dad to give us an answer. Is the relationship between parent civilizations and child civilizations purely about overwriting and destruction and cannot be mitigated at all? Does every child civilization need to prove that they have grown up and are ready to face the challenges from the entire universe by destroying their parent civilization? Faced with the child civilizations that are smarter, stronger, and more capable of adapting to and changing the universe, are the parent civilizations comforted or feared, do they love the child civilizations more or hate them more, would they join the arms of the child civilization delightedly, upgrading into the forms of the child civilizations together, or would they persist in the pride of the parent civilizations and fight in the original form until the last individual falls down?”

“Aren’t those questions too heavy?”

Li Yao smiled bitterly. “Not just me, but any human being would not be able to answer them completely. I can only say that if you must find an answer, I can travel through the entire universe together with you and ask many, many people for their opinions. Everybody’s opinion will be an insignificant part of the answer. When all their opinions are gathered, it will probably be the attitude of the entire civilization of mankind.

“Is such an ambiguous reply a disappointment for you?”

The two children looked at each other and put on a sweet smile. “No, it’s not. Dad’s answer is already much better than what we imagined. At the very least, you didn’t come at us, screaming and shouting, the moment you met us!”

“Was I so despicable in your imagination?”

Li Yao smiled, too. He had to admit in his heart that such “artificial intelligence” seemed to be much better and more reasonable than the “artificial intelligence” in the lousy fictions.

Looking at the vivacious expressions on the two children’s faces, he thought of something and asked, “Right… Do you have feelings?”