Chapter 151: What Is Time Travel?

Chapter 151: What is Transmigration

The subsequent courses were two relatively foundational subjects: polity construction and military literacy. These mainly covered the territorial political and military structures, accompanied by various case studies presented to Li Hongshen and his peers.

These two courses were by no means unimportant, but for Li Hongshen, they were relatively less critical.

Aside from certain management experiences and case studies, these courses focused more on teaching how to make subordinates loyal to oneself.

At the same time, these methods aimed to build a relatively balanced management system, as a stable management system can effectively enhance a territory's combat effectiveness.

However, for a talent like Li Hongshen who relied entirely on his innate abilities, the issues of loyalty and human hearts—which troubled others so deeply—were not problems at all.

As long as he maintained a balance among his territorial citizens, kept them competitive and vibrant, and established clear laws, that was enough. As for loyalty, he never considered it, nor did he ever need to.

During this class, a boastful phrase had crossed his mind:

"What is loyalty? Can anyone explain to me what loyalty is? I am not interested in the loyalty of my subjects; I have never once raised the loyalty rating of my subjects."

Of course, he did not voice such words in class. Instead, he very earnestly discussed with his classmates how to manage subjects, how to make them offer their loyalty, and other such topics.

After all, this course had an exam, and these questions were tied to his grades. Moreover, they might come in handy during future transmigrations.

Finally came the most crucial and vital subject of all: the Transmigration Theory course. This class was directly related to the transmigration internships that Li Hongshen and the others would undertake in the second half of the year.

Their first year at Central Lord University was divided into two parts. After the military training in the first half of the year, the rest of the time was spent in the main world studying various theories.

Once the second half of the year began, frequent transmigrations would commence. From then on, they would either be in the middle of a transmigration or preparing for one.

First, the instructor explained the classification of worlds. Based on different tiers, worlds were categorized from tier zero to tier thirteen.

These tiers roughly corresponded to the tiers of Lords, taking into account the size of the world, the level of its internal laws, the world's power, and other factors.

The higher a world's tier, the fewer such worlds existed; the lower the tier, the greater their number.

However, no one knew how many worlds existed within the World Sea, nor did anyone know the exact quantity of worlds in each tier.

This was because new worlds were born every moment, and worlds constantly perished every moment, turning into nutrients to nourish other worlds across the cosmos.

Even civilizations could only record a tiny fraction of them—merely the tip of the iceberg within the World Sea.

Corresponding to such a multitude of worlds, their traditional trade of transmigrating to discover new worlds was roughly divided into three methods.

The first method involved predecessors having previously visited a world, subsequently obtaining its coordinates or bringing back a keepsake from it.

Later generations could then locate that world through the coordinates or the pheromones on the keepsake, and then transmigrate there directly via the civilization's gateway.

The second method involved interacting with the World Sea through the civilization by burning origin points, followed by stating one's general requirements.

For instance, specifying high-tech worlds, psionic-side worlds, magic-using worlds, worlds with special professional templates, and so on.

The civilization would then help screen the pheromones it could acquire and facilitate the transmigration. This method carried a relatively high degree of uncertainty because it resembled using a fuzzy search engine; the results might not match what one actually desired.

It was much like searching for a certain type of website, only to find that the search might be blocked, or that another site had hijacked the target's pheromones. You might think you had found the desired adult site, only to enter and discover it was merely a card-dealing gaming portal.

This transmigration mode was quite similar, easily entrapping transmigrators within certain worlds.

For example, thinking one was entering a minor world, only to arrive and discover it was merely an affiliated world of a major world, whereupon the native inhabitants would teach the intruder a harsh lesson before they fled back to the safety of civilization.

Despite having all sorts of shortcomings, this mode remained the most commonly used transmigration method among Lords.

Because it provided a general direction, Lords were usually satisfied, knowing they could undoubtedly acquire the resources they wanted in that world—and if all else failed, they could simply transmigrate a few more times.

The final method was a transmigration mode exclusive to chosen-one Lords: completely random transmigration. With good luck, one might enter a suitable world and reap a massive harvest of desired resources.

With bad luck, one might land in bizarre realms such as Great Old Ones-invaded worlds, eerie worlds, abyss worlds, anomaly worlds, and the like, where one might perish directly without even having time to escape back.

Consequently, almost no one utilized this random transmigration mode unless a Lord encountered unstoppable danger within the World Sea and was forced to use a random transmigration scroll, gambling on a sliver of a chance to escape.

Moving further down, the curriculum touched upon more sophisticated transmigration operations. The simplest was physical transmigration, where one's entire body descended directly into the target world.

However, this mode was only suitable for lower-tier worlds weaker than oneself, and one still had to seal one's own power to avoid being directly expelled by the world.

Another method was soul transmigration, possessing a native or directly taking over a native's body to operate within the current world.

Yet another option was direct reincarnation. However, this placed heavy demands on one's technique—testing the transmigrator's skill in both the art of reincarnation and their acting prowess while growing up.

Both physical and soul transmigration fell into the more aggressive category. Their advantages were speed and relative ease, but they faced a high risk of world expulsion and easily attracted the attention or aversion of the world's consciousness.

Once arousing the aversion of the world's consciousness, one had a high probability of turning into a walking taunt beacon, effortlessly drawing enemies to make trouble, even encountering fatal vendettas while simply walking down the street.

Reincarnation transmigration, on the other hand, carried lower risks. First, the world consciousness would consider you a native. Once you survived the growth phase, you could relatively easily stretch your muscles and securely acquire resources in the alien world.

If necessary, the transmigrator could even configure their own settings, such as sealing their own memories and awakening them after a certain age to reclaim their memories.

If the awakening failed and they died, they would directly return to the civilization, and so on—maximizing the mitigation of various risks through such methods.

Yet, despite the lower risks of reincarnation transmigration, only a small minority of Lords were willing to adopt this approach. Primarily, this method spanned a lengthy timeframe, and secondly, not everyone was willing to be treated as someone else's son or grandson.

Furthermore, for those with rich emotions who had experienced the heartbreak of severing foreign-world attachments once or twice, they would never want to use this transmigration mode again.

After completing this theory class on transmigration, Li Hongshen felt as though he had realized something, and the questions that had weighed heavily at the bottom of his heart and which he had consciously avoided finally dissipated completely.

Time slipped away amidst various classes, and Li Hongshen and his peers were about to welcome the very first transmigration of their lives.

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(End of this chapter)