The Mech Touch

In just a single announcement, the Evolution Witch or rather the Red Collective defined the term 'cultivation method' and split it up into four different categories.

The nature and selection of the categories betrayed the Red Collective's ambition to take control over the practice of systematic cultivation.

The collies could not control all forms of cultivation among red humanity. It was impossible to stop humans from absorbing E energy radiation in a passive manner. Anyone who thought about it were fools without doubt.

However, it should still be possible for the RC to impose its authority over systematic cultivation.

By taking control over the drafting, testing, certification, proliferation of cultivation methods, the collies hoped to establish strong dominion over a brand-new means of pursuing power.

The stakes were high. Practicing the wrong cultivation methods, or practicing the right ones incorrectly, could lead to severe danger up to and including death to a lot of people.

It was one thing if the cultivators merely risked their own lives. It was another thing if they practiced a demonic cultivation method and started to absorb the life force of their friends and family!

The Guardians of Order and all other humans who possessed a justifiable amount of paranoia towards the reckless and selfish practices of the Five Scrolls Compact played a useful role for once.

The faction possessed a much stronger interest in letting the RC claim as much control over how humans interacted with systematic cultivation.

Even the proponents of cultivation such as Ves and the Evolution Witch did not deny the need to establish proper supervision and enforcement within this new and promising domain.

The only groups that opposed the considerable expansion of the RC's authority over systematic cultivation was the Red Association and the Red Fleet.

The mechers and the fleeters acknowledged the need for the RC to impose order in the cultivation community, but the old hegemons did not want the collies to interfere with their own business!

Ves had been involved in the tense and acrimonious negotiations to resolve this contradiction.

The Interim Leadership Council turned into a shouting match as the councilors from the RA and the RF refused to play along unless they received special treatment!

Although it galled the ardent supporters of the RC quite a lot, there was no way to proceed without the cooperation of the Red Two.

The RC had no choice but to capitulate on this matter. The RA and the RF received their much-desired exemptions.

The complete secret agreement was extremely complex and multi-faceted. It basically came down to the recognition that the mechers and the fleeters gained the right to play around with systematic cultivation without the collies butting into their business.

Technically speaking, the RA and the RF essentially secured the right to create and manage their own uncurated cultivation methods. They took over all of the responsibilities normally undertaken by the RC.

That meant that the mechers and the fleeters became responsible for anything that went wrong. If one of their cultivation methods went awry or ended up killing a lot of people, they would bear all of the blame.

Another important point in the secret agreement was that if the RA or the RF ever allowed one of their exclusive cultivation methods to leak and spread uncontrollably among the public, the RC had a right and obligation to intervene to stop this travesty from doing any further damage.

In short, the Red Collective was able to spread its authority across all of human society with the very glaring exceptions of the Red Association and the Red Fleet.

This would probably turn into a persistent source of frustration among the collies. Perhaps the only consolation was that the RA and the RF granted the RC expanded rights and permissions.

The RA permitted the RC to conduct research into mechs, including restricted fields such as neural interface technology, so long as the projects were related to cultivation science.

The RF granted the RC the right to freely produce and field warships up to a certain threshold. There was no need to collect RF Warship Tokens first.

The exchange of benefits was enough to placate the factions with a vested interest in the Red Collective.

Nobody was completely satisfied, but everyone could at least live with the compromise.

There was no need to mention this deal to the public, though. The Evolution Witch completely skipped any mention of the compromise and continued her effort to establish the authority of the Red Collective.

"Make no mistake. Power must be earned. The most powerful forms of structured cultivation can transform baseline humans into transcendent beings that can wipe out the population of an entire planet, all without relying on mechs or other forms of technology. Such power cannot be attained at will. They can also extend your natural lifespans by thousands if not tens of thousands of years. Only a working combination of talent, hard work, discipline, patience and a willingness to work for a large amount of RC merits will allow you to ascend beyond the limitations of your human frailties."

Not everyone had a strong yearning for power. These people were realistic enough to understand that they were not chosen ones who were destined to attain greatness.

Yet nobody could resist the allure of extending their lifespans. Life-prolonging treatments were hard to come by.

Even the wealthier and more powerful individuals faced increasingly more obstacles in their attempts to obtain the high-grade life-prolonging treatment serums necessary to live beyond 3 or 4 centuries.

If engaging in systematic cultivation allowed them to expand their lifespan by several times at a fraction of the cost, then it had suddenly become a lot more attractive to all of the middle-aged and elderly citizens of red humanity!

The ultimate pursuits of cultivation were power and eternity.

Almost everyone wanted to live forever. If systematic cultivation could enable people to live much longer than their human limitations, then they were bound to embrace it a lot more enthusiastically than before!

The popularity of the RC rose even further after more and more listeners made this realization!

Third-raters and second-raters were especially ecstatic about it as they lacked almost complete access to life-prolonging treatments.

Ves recalled the insane adventure he went through just to recover a vial of high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum from the Starlight Megalodon.

This was how desperate the space peasants could be in their quest to expand their longevity!

While the Evolution Witch effortlessly managed to stoke people's expectations towards cultivation, Ves inwardly shook his head.

He knew that there was little point in pursuing longevity alone. Red humanity was in a dire state at the moment, and the Red Tide Offensive had already toppled 3 out of 5 defensive bands.

It was ridiculous to drool over expanding your lifespan by thousands of years when red humanity was slowly losing the Red War!

Without power to defend their own presence in the new frontier, humans were bound to get wiped out regardless of whether they evolved to the point where they could live for millions of years!

The kind of immortality attained through cultivation did not make people invincible and impervious to getting killed.

Such a mythical state could only be attained when a cultivator had far surpassed the limitations of a mighty God King!

The more clever and insightful leaders already figured out this caveat, but it was not a big deal to let the ignorant dream about living forever. Impossible ambitions had always driven humans to unleash their potential and produce amazing results.

The Evolution Witch smiled wider as she could feel red humanity's rapidly growing fervor towards self-evolution.

The more people embraced her ideology, the greater her hold on their lives!

"The Red Collective permits every human to cultivate with moderation. In order to raise individuals who can fully practice the more productive and complex cultivation methods, the Red Collective is in the process of founding, sponsoring or supervising cultivation academies. These brand-new institutions provide full-time education programs that are most suitable for transforming teenagers and adolescents into professional cultivators. Each of them provide discounted access to premium curated cultivated methods to pupils who demonstrate sufficiently high talent and other qualifications. Cultivation academies must also provide individual courses and training programs that teach people of all ages how to practice a specific free or premium curated cultivation method. More and more cultivation academies will arise on every settled planet over time."

This was a big deal. The RC clearly copied the model of mech academies from the RA. This helped to make it easy for red humanity to understand how cultivation academies were supposed to work.

While it was a big commitment to let children enroll into cultivation academies instead of more conventional schools, this may be the only chance for space peasants to gain access to the more promising premium curated cultivation methods!

It was clear to Ves that the Red Collective wanted to train and indoctrinate entire armies of powerful and obedient cultivators.

By getting to them when they were still at young and impressionable ages, these future cultivators should be much more easier to control and put into action than others!

The biggest issue with cultivation academies was that they directly competed against sects.

The organizations that possessed the means and ambitions to engage in their own forms of cultivation were quite upset that they had to compete with cultivation academies for highly talented recruits.

In fact, not every collie felt enthused about educating so many people. This was a responsibility that could easily be shifted to third parties.

The Evolution Witch spread her arms. "Change is coming. The measures that I have announced will change our society forever. It will not take long before our entire order has transformed. Many of you will not be able to fully adapt to the rapid pace of change, but I must ask you to be strong and tolerant towards the new phenomena that will invade your daily lives. So long as the Red War looms over our civilization, we must soldier on and push our evolution until we become strong enough to repel the native aliens."

For all of the wonders she introduced, the god pilot still had to remind everyone what was at stake.

"Progress is life. Resistance is death. If you wish to doom yourself, then that is your personal choice, but do not drag down other red humans. If you still harbor objections towards cultivation, then I must ask you to remove yourself and allow the rest of us to save our lives as well as our civilization. As long as the Red Collective represents our collective will to evolve and grow stronger, it will enforce its mandate on you and everyone else. We can debate on alternative approaches after we have solved our existential crisis."

Perhaps people developed the impression that the Red Collective was 'soft' compared to the more domineering Red Association and the Red Fleet.

The Evolution Witch did not want that impression to stick, so she made sure to give people a little warning. Her God Kingdom even started to grow sharper in order to emphasize her ominous words!

"Now that you have learned multiple different means on how you can engage in systematic cultivation, let us meet your new leaders. Some of red humanity's best and brightest have volunteered to undertake the critical responsibility of shaping and growing the Red Collective until it is able to cement its place in our civilization. No leader is infallible, but as there are multiple of them, they should be able to keep each other in check, thereby preventing the RC from straying from its fundamental mandate. No appointment is permanent and guaranteed for life."

Ves did not mind if he could not keep his position in the Upper Council on a permanent basis.

The first generation of leaders had an opportunity to set the customs and traditions of the Red Collective.

Getting in first meant that he could still steer the Red Collective in a direction that would continue to favor himself and the Larkinson Clan long after he left the Upper Council!

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