The Book of Technology
The book floating in Yi Xuan's mind was called the Book of Technology. It had appeared there when he first transmigrated.
But after discovering that this was a world of immortal cultivators, Yi Xuan had devoted himself to cultivation and paid the book no mind. After all, when one could ascend to heaven in a single step and become an immortal cultivator, who would bother with technology that had to be learned, understood, mastered, and finally applied one step at a time?
Later, after he was confirmed to be a person without roots, Yi Xuan gave up cultivation for a time. With nothing to do, he remembered the Book of Technology in his mind and decided to study it.
To his surprise, its contents were completely different from what he had imagined. Yi Xuan had thought the Book of Technology contained only all the scientific knowledge from his previous life.
But the scientific knowledge humanity had possessed in his previous life was not particularly powerful in this world of cultivation. Even something like a nuclear weapon probably wouldn't amount to much against this world's top immortal cultivators. After all, the very level of life of cultivators at that height had completely transcended the bounds of humanity.
Yet when Yi Xuan studied it, he discovered that the book contained far more than the technology of his previous life. It even held an unknown number of technologies humanity had yet to master in that life. A casual look was enough for him to find technologies such as antigravity, controlled nuclear fusion, and artificial intelligence capable of surpassing the human brain.
Of course, those were just the tip of the iceberg. There were many more technologies that even Yi Xuan, who had studied science in his previous life, could not understand at all.
The technologies in the Book of Technology were fully accessible to Yi Xuan. Whenever he needed one, the book would imprint it completely into his mind.
Yi Xuan also realized just how powerful the Book of Technology was.
From that day on, Yi Xuan resolved that, since he was a person without roots and could never become a legendary immortal, he would walk a path different from that of this world.
One day, he would use the power of science to stand at the summit of this world. He would even use it to visit the legendary Immortal Realm, where one went after ascending.
After that, Yi Xuan began conducting scientific research in the Cultivation Realm.
But he ran into difficulties right from the start.
The seeds of technology had never been planted in this world, so whatever Yi Xuan wanted to make, he had to start from scratch. Even an ordinary mechanical device required an enormous amount of preparation.
First there were the materials. Purification, smelting, and forging all required specialized machinery, to say nothing of the subsequent processing, treatment, assembly, and other procedures.
Modern technology had developed on the foundation of accumulated knowledge. As someone who had once earned a master's degree in science and engineering, Yi Xuan found that, deprived of all kinds of tools and computers in this ancient-like Cultivation Realm, he seemed less capable than an ordinary worker.
Fortunately, this was not truly ancient times. Yi Xuan soon discovered that he could use many things from the Cultivation Realm as substitutes for technological products.
No powerful machinery to extract and fuse materials? No problem. The Cultivation Realm had the art of artifact refinement. Any kind of material could be obtained, and its purity was guaranteed.
No way to make electronic components? No problem. Had he heard of the Cultivation Realm's formations? PCBs, chips, microcontrollers, capacitors, resistors-none of them were needed. A single formation disc solved the problem perfectly.
Power? That was even less of a concern. The Cultivation Realm might lack many things, but power was the one thing it had in abundance. One need look no further than Spirit Stones, the currency used throughout the Cultivation Realm. They were themselves a form of power storage. Every immortal cultivator could even be considered a mobile power bank, since the True Essence in their bodies was a precious source of power.
But even though the Cultivation Realm offered plenty of ways for Yi Xuan to solve his problems, the computer before him had still taken him nearly ten full years to build.
Now it had all been worth it.
"Master! Primordial No. 01 at your service."
A voice suddenly came from the computer. Hearing it, Yi Xuan nodded. It seemed his idea had been right.
The voice belonged to the artificial intelligence Yi Xuan had installed in the computer. He had named it Primordial No. 01.
Primordial No. 01 was not artificial intelligence in the traditional sense of the term on Earth. That kind of artificial intelligence had to be trained an untold number of times on big data before it could be put to use.
But Yi Xuan had no access to such resources. Where was he supposed to find a large database to train an artificial intelligence in this Cultivation Realm, which didn't even have a network?
So Yi Xuan improvised, asking Shi Zhenghao to help him find something: the sphere he had placed inside the computer tower earlier.
Shi Zhenghao had obtained the sphere from a demonic cultivator. Imprisoned inside it was a soul, a blank soul stripped of all its memories.
Demonic cultivators often used such things when cultivating certain evil arts.
For a soul whose memories had already been erased by an Evil Cultivator, Yi Xuan's method of handling it could be considered a way of giving that person a new life.
Otherwise, even if the soul fell into the hands of someone from the righteous path, there was no good way to handle it apart from letting it dissipate into the world. After all, a soul like that could no longer be reincarnated.
Yi Xuan had placed the soul in the computer he had built, then combined it with the artificial intelligence program he had written, perfectly forming a rudimentary artificial intelligence.
Compared with an artificial intelligence made purely of programs, it also had one advantage: it possessed a basic prerequisite for becoming human—a soul!
"No. 01! Begin self-diagnostics!"
"Who are you speaking to?"
"Uh!" Yi Xuan had expected some problems at the beginning, but he hadn't thought one would arise at the very first step.
"Primordial No. 01! Please begin self-diagnostics."
"Understood. Performing self-diagnostics."
"At this level, artificial intelligence really isn't much different from an idiot!" Yi Xuan complained weakly. He hadn't expected Primordial No. 01 to drop the ball on recognizing its own name right out of the gate, failing to recognize No. 01.
It could recognize commands only when Yi Xuan addressed it as Primordial No. 01.
Fortunately, all artificial intelligence had to go through a learning process. Having already spent ten years on this, Yi Xuan didn't mind giving it another ten to learn.
"Self-diagnostics complete! System status: good."
Hearing No. 01's response, Yi Xuan nodded and said, "Primordial No. 01!"
"I'm here!"
"Treat the name No. 01 as equivalent to Primordial No. 01!"
"Entry recorded!"
"No. 01!"
"I'm here!"
Seeing that No. 01 had adapted to the change he had just made to its name, Yi Xuan said, "Prepare to receive information, and organize, categorize, and learn it at the same time!"
At Yi Xuan's command, a cylindrical object rose from the middle of the box that housed the computer tower.
If any other immortal cultivator had been present, they would surely have been surprised to discover that the cylindrical object was a Jade Slip, a very common item in the Cultivation Realm. Immortal cultivators generally used Jade Slips to record information, such as Cultivation Methods.
Yi Xuan had discovered that Jade Slips in the Cultivation Realm could not only store information extremely quickly, but could also hold a surprisingly large amount of it. They were countless levels above the hard drives of his previous life, so he had used a Jade Slip in place of the computer's hard drive.
That also made entering information very simple. Yi Xuan only needed to use his Divine Sense to enter the knowledge the Book of Technology had passed into his mind, in the same way immortal cultivators normally recorded information in Jade Slips. It was both efficient and convenient.