Since the planet's unification, under the overall coordination of the True Understanding Research Institute, scarcely more than a dozen years had passed, yet the entire planet could already be said to have undergone earth-shaking changes.
These changes had touched virtually every aspect of the lives of the planet's billions of humans.
Yet to Chu Mu, these changes had still fallen short of his expectations.
What he sought was to discover, within this land where the extraordinary was forbidden, a path leading to transcendence.
The soaring advance of technology, in its essential sense, was a direction wholly distinct from the transcendence of flesh and blood.
The only thing that could somewhat satisfy his expectations was perhaps the exploration of biological genes, and the pseudo-transcendence it might bring.
This "transcendence" was much like the science fiction envisioned in this world: genetic modification that allowed carbon-based flesh-and-blood bodies to possess powers beyond the ordinary.
When scenes from science fiction became reality, it could be called an unprecedented technological advance for this human civilization.
But in Chu Mu's eyes, this power at the biological genetic level clearly did not qualify as transcendence.
True transcendence was a transformation in the essence of life. Power was merely something that came along with that transformation.
The power brought by such biological genetic modification, at least at the stage currently understood, had power as its core essence rather than the transformation of life.
In other words, its flaws and drawbacks were far too great. Like the Demonic and Heretical Paths of the Cultivation World, it consumed lifespan and potential in exchange for power.
Yet the Demonic and Heretical Paths of the Cultivation World at least had the entire Cultivation World as their foundation, allowing their flaws to be remedied from every possible angle.
But in this world where