After saying all this to Mei Xuan, Li Chen himself was deeply moved.
On the surface, he was referring to the vile practices of Puppet Masters-flaying people for materials, using people as materials-but in truth, did this not also encompass the divisions between humanity's Dao Paths, their wars against one another, the gulf between rich and poor, exploitation, and all the rest?
Between individuals, between aristocratic clans and sects, and between Dao Paths, it was often a matter of either you dying or me perishing.
Preaching lofty ideals of universal great unity to enemies whose desire to destroy you never died was suicide.
But sinking wholly into this struggle and hoping to win through a clash of real blades and guns was equally unrealistic.
For if victory were that easy, the current balance of rival Dao Paths could never have existed.
Only by seeking truth and following the tide, then, could one grasp the power to sweep everything aside.
Only then could one forge ahead and turn a zero-sum struggle into a non-zero-sum one.
The answer Li Chen had reached was that technology changed the world. Technology alone was everything.
The ancients had believed that the human heart mattered most, and that changing people's hearts meant changing the world.
But Puppet Masters believed that both the human body and soul could be adjusted, and that thoughts and beliefs could also be reshaped.
Their inability to do so in the past merely reflected the infancy of their technology. Confined to tangible things, they could not directly alter people's minds and thoughts, and had to influence others' thinking through indirect means.
If technology could change people's hearts, then technology should naturally take precedence.
In terms of the Puppet Masters' methods, this meant adjusting primordial spirits, or even creating artificial primordial spirits.
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