# Chapter 25: The Path of Transcendent Civilization
Loranda limped out of the dead world.
There was really no helping it. Even though Holy Light possessed the power to heal flesh, it had its limits. The Holy Light of ordinary priests could only heal external wounds; internal injuries had to be handled by necromancers. While the Holy Light of high-ranking clergy could heal internal wounds, it couldn't guarantee a one hundred percent recovery.
As the most powerful Ultimate-rank Paladin in the current Mycroft World, Loranda's Holy Light was enough to revive the dead and restore bones to flesh. Yet even so, after being beaten back and forth seven or eight times by Joshua from heaven to earth, the Paladin now needed to lean on a walking stick just to move.
But even so, Loranda was still very happy — not because he had grasped the tail of the Legendary Path, but because he had finally understood one thing.
That some questions simply didn't need answers.
Why is the Multiverse the way it is? That has nothing to do with humanity. Before pondering such questions, the most important thing is to change it.
Why is there a mountain in front of the house? Why is there a river outside the door? Why are there wild beasts roaming around my home? Blindly pondering 'why' cannot solve practical problems. What must be done first is to cut a path through the mountain, build a bridge across the river, and capture or kill the beasts lurking around the house.
Humanity is a race that transforms the world for its own use. From beginning to end, this has always been the case — even with the Multiverse, it's no exception.
Joshua watched as Loranda crawled from the planet's core to the surface, then was teleported away by the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground's positioning transmission. He nodded slightly.
His friend's strength had improved, so Joshua was naturally happy. Both Loranda and Brandon were excellent opponents, full of potential. As a warrior, he could see that they would achieve Legendary status within the next few years.
After all, not everyone was like him — when he advanced to Legendary, he had the entire Grandia World's power and the Soulflame King state pouring into him. For ordinary Transcendent experts to advance to Legendary, it wasn't something that could be resolved by a single epiphany. It was more like learning — a long process of continuous thinking, intensive study, and gradual mastery.
Although Loranda's Legendary Path was somewhat complex, in general terms, it allowed him to use his special Holy Light to alter the properties of matter — making heat-resistant things heat-sensitive, conductive things insulators. Armor that was originally extremely sturdy would become as fragile as a cookie under the influence of this power.
For example, take a certain material that is an ordinary conductor at room temperature, but becomes a superconductor near minus two hundred degrees, and an insulator above two hundred degrees. Loranda's Holy Light, when applied to such a material, would randomly catalyze it into special properties that would normally require various 'states' to achieve.
Based on their brief exchange, Joshua could confirm that Loranda couldn't yet control this power well. But that wasn't a major problem. Judging by how easily he could transform Holy Light into nearly physical hammers and shields, Loranda had already deeply studied property and form conversion. He would soon master his own power.
"In that case, even without fighting, Loranda could become an excellent materials science expert."
As the teleportation light of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground faded, Joshua nodded thoughtfully. "The power of Legendary experts doesn't have to be used for combat. It can be used to develop technology, or to build infrastructure beyond the current era... This might be the most orthodox path of technological progress for a Transcendent Civilization."
Having communicated with many Legendary experts and obtained a large amount of data from the Unified Grand Database and the Metal Dragon God, Joshua was now very familiar with the Era of Radiance and the development path of pre-Era of Radiance civilizations. In his view, a Transcendent Civilization similar to Mycroft World would go through the following three stages.
First, the Primitive Barbaric Era. Due to mutations, a high-energy environment nurturing souls, or gradual evolution leading to thinking ability, intelligent beings gathered into groups. Like ordinary intelligent life, they went through basic steps like tool-making and language creation. During this period, different races might have different variations. For example, if some races were born with the ability to breathe fire or control flowing water, they would have obvious advantages in obtaining fire or crossing rivers and lakes.
In this era, Transcendent power was merely a tool, like an invisible third hand. Except that among the surrounding beasts there were Magical Beasts with similar Transcendent power, the methods of survival and technological accumulation were similar to ordinary civilizations. This era would begin from ancient primitive stone tribal times and continue until the gathered intelligent individuals of tribes were enough to form the prototype of a nation.
But in the second era, the early stages of civilization, everything became completely different.
At this time, the vast majority of Transcendent Civilizations would invest their wisdom in 'individual strength.' The person with the greatest individual strength would become the leader of the civilization and race. Whether fighting beasts, fighting other intelligent beings, or transforming nature, individual strength was the key point of this period. The initial social classes would also be born from this — those with great strength naturally belonged to higher classes. There was no situation where someone had great strength but low social status. This simple and crude method of division was completely different from how ordinary intelligent life divided rights and classes through 'rites,' 'customs,' 'bloodlines,' 'mandate of heaven,' and other methods.
For a Transcendent Civilization, this period would be extremely, extremely long. Because a system that divides classes by strength had an incredibly stable rule. For a king who had stabilized his rule and possessed super-strong Transcendent power, any reform or improvement that didn't suit his wishes could be easily snuffed out. As for technological progress, he could also learn and improve himself first — after all, to become a king, his talent must be first-rate. As long as he was willing, basically no genius could challenge his position.
Even in the case of coup or rebellion, he had far greater resistance than ordinary civilization leaders. If this king was strong enough, even if the whole world saw him as a Demon King, they couldn't affect his continued rule. Unlike ordinary intelligent civilizations that would undergo major reshuffling and progress every few hundred years due to systems, technology, or other reasons, even if a Transcendent Civilization's ruler died and the dynasty overturned, it was unlikely to bring major changes to systems and technology, let alone progress. Because the new ruler would definitely also be a powerful Transcendent expert.
An ordinary person could never become the leader of a Transcendent World.
Thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, even hundreds of thousands of years of feudal era, medieval era, or empire era — the long second era of Transcendent Civilizations could last this long. Civilizations that concentrated all wisdom on improving individual strength easily fell into extreme situations like 'the strongest ruling stably for thousands of years' or 'different strong individuals challenging and killing each other for thousands of years.' The stronger individual strength became, the easier it was to cause stagnation in technological and social system development. Many Transcendent Civilizations would self-destruct when they reached this point.
To break this endless cycle, only long-term accumulation could help. For example, after tens of thousands of years, a large number of Transcendent texts scattered among the people would have unconsciously popularized knowledge throughout the civilization. Long-term immersion in Transcendent power might even optimize racial talent. Everyone would possess some Transcendent power — even farmers could use spells to water and fertilize.
In this way, Transcendent Civilizations could finally walk the path of overall progress like normal intelligent civilizations. Because at this point, the wisdom concentrated on 'individual strength' was finally liberated by the popularization of Transcendent power, and could be used in all aspects of life, bringing about major reforms in systems and ethics. Of course, this was also the most dangerous time. Many Transcendent Civilizations exploded or accumulated massive contradictions during the reform process, leading to self-destruction.
Of course, besides this, there was another relatively rare possibility — a super-strong expert far exceeding the era's upper limit suddenly appeared in a Transcendent Civilization. After overwhelming the entire world, this expert actively led the civilization to progress, actively reformed the social system, and even actively popularized Transcendent power. By sheer force of will, they forcibly brought the entire civilization into the third era in a short time.
This was the departure from civilization's childhood, the later period of civilization's era — that is, the former Era of Radiance, and the current period of the Era of Falling Stars.
Joshua knew that the previous Era of Falling Stars was still in the second period. But because of the legacy of the Era of Radiance, the subtle guidance of the gods, and the sealing and cutting off of various civilization gathering areas by the Central Black Forest, the Era of Falling Stars did not produce a powerful 'ruler of all civilizations.' Instead, it blossomed in all directions, giving birth to many different types of social forms. They learned from and exchanged with each other, allowing both sides to progress rapidly.
But not long ago, right after Joshua solved the fire source problem of Mycroft World, the Era of Falling Stars slowly crossed into the third era.
The important marker of this era was: 'The top-level Transcendent experts actively use their power to help other members of civilization improve their technology.' In other words, Legendary experts actively popularize the technology they have comprehended, giving back to civilization, creating a win-win situation for both sides, accelerating growth.
In previous eras, although the strong were powerful, it was only their own strength. Kings wouldn't go mining in the mountains, and court archmages wouldn't make rain for farmers. Even if they occasionally did, it was only a special case. To ensure the stability of their rule, they would deliberately block the exchange of knowledge, solidify class divisions, and make it difficult for civilization to progress.
But in the third era, experts who had basically reached the limit of individual strength realized that only through the progress and exchange of the entire civilization, with countless thoughts converging, conflicting, grinding together, and creating sparks, could they, trapped by knowledge barriers, see the world from another angle and break through their previous limits. At this time, they would deliberately cultivate civilization, and even cultivate experts of the same level.
At this point, Transcendent Civilizations had obvious advantages. Take Joshua for example — with his power, building a Void Sky-Piercing Tower wouldn't even take two weeks. But if it were an ordinary civilization that had just completed industrialization and entered the near-modern era... no, even Earth civilization at the interstellar era would need decades of preparation and construction to build a super space elevator of the same scale.
Because as early as the second era, the experts of Transcendent Civilizations had already honed their technology and power to a level far exceeding the third era of ordinary civilizations. After industrialization, ordinary civilizations would need one or two hundred years to touch the edge of technology that could leave their home world. But as early as the second, or even the first era, the experts of Transcendent Civilizations could already enter and exit the Void.
Mycroft Civilization had actually just completed its Mana industrialization — similar to when ordinary civilizations had just finished industrialization. Its total population was roughly similar to industrialized civilizations of the same period. But due to the technological feedback from Legendary experts, the Era of Falling Stars could directly build Void Warships and other Mana technology creations of this level in less than ten years.
And because of civilization's progress and the popularization of Transcendent power, the number of Transcendent experts would increase, and naturally, the number of Legendary experts would also increase. Every time a Legendary expert appeared, it would bring a large-scale technological innovation. Take Loranda for example — if he formally became Legendary, Mycroft Civilization would undoubtedly experience a major earthquake and revolution in materials science. A Paladin holding the power to change the properties of matter and even energy, just by existing, could directly raise a civilization's related materials technology by several levels.
This was a mutually accelerating, win-win situation. Transcendent experts were no longer a ruling class high above in the eyes of ordinary people, and ordinary people were no longer food-wasting toys raised for fun in the eyes of Transcendent experts. The gap between the two sides gradually disappeared. And this final era might be what the former Era of Radiance and Sanctuary Civilization envisioned — 'all people are gods' or 'artificial divine race.'
But the problem remained the same old problem.
"Population..."
Thinking of this most important issue, Joshua couldn't help but sigh. "No matter how fast technology progresses, it needs population to maintain... Without population, no matter how powerful the warship, there's no one to pilot it. Low-cost automatic AI has low efficiency, and high-level artificial soul intelligence — like Number Three — is hard to come by."
After all, these were creations of Transcendent Civilization. Pure intelligent programs always lacked something when trying to run perfectly.
The current Era of Falling Stars Mycroft Civilization's problem was not 'technology.' With the Unified Grand Database and many Legendary experts, they had returned to the level of the Era of Radiance in some technologies. But having technology without people to use it — no matter how advanced the technology, it was useless.
A population of two billion could absolutely not support a Void-era civilization. Even the Shalt civilization had a population of tens of billions! Such a huge and complete civilization system could support a complete Void fleet!
"What a pity. If the teleportation energy consumption of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground wasn't so huge, and simply teleporting population wasn't cost-effective, I would really want to go to the Star Sea World to find the Midgardians."
Thinking that he still held the title of 'New God of Midgard,' Joshua couldn't help but recall the intelligent plant Midgardians of the Star Sea World. They had entered the interstellar era a thousand years ago. Both in experience and ability, they perfectly met the current needs of Mycroft Civilization. If possible, Joshua really wanted to go there and hire a batch of experienced crew members to come here.
But the Star Sea World was currently conducting a great purge of the Evil God's Minions. According to the Legendary expert who had also been to the Star Sea World, the Ocean Sage Faina, the Star Sea World had now launched a full-scale counterattack against Chaos. The Midgardians had joined a civilization alliance of surrounding galaxies to clean up the Plague Evil God's Minions. They were waging a holy war between Order and Chaos and had no spare strength to send out.
Located at the far end of the Multiverse, the immensely vast Star Sea World was a heavily affected area of Evil God invasion. If Mycroft Civilization would face a large wave of Evil God invasions in the coming decades, then the Star Sea World had already been invaded. It was just that because of its massive scale, it still had the strength to counterattack.
After eliminating all races that didn't meet the requirements, Joshua and the other Legendary experts unanimously agreed that the only alien civilization populations that could currently be employed or controlled by Mycroft Civilization were three races: the eight-legged fungi of the 'Star Shepherds,' the Shalt people, and some Abyss Demons.