The Programmer Cultivator

The Hongmeng Realm has no satellites, nor could it ever.

Even a Seven-Star or higher Spiritual Treasure of the Reconnaissance Dao—no, a Four-Star or higher Magical Treasure—could completely outclass the Celestial Universe’s satellites in every respect, provided it was aimed correctly. To be precise, it would outclass their quantum satellites.

Despite this, satellites could never emerge. For Artifact Cultivators, especially those who specialized in Reconnaissance and calculation, it wouldn’t actually be that difficult to create such a thing with a bit of effort.

One could even say it would be a simple task. But with the Holy Lands and Blessed Lands in power, a ’Celestial Eye’ satellite like that could simply never come into being.

The Holy Lands would forbid it, the Blessed Lands would not allow it, and the Upper Sects would never agree. Cultivators tend to have many secrets and are extremely protective of their privacy.

In such an environment, trying to hang a ’Celestial Eye’ over everyone’s heads would be an act that invites public fury.

After all, if the Celestial Universe’s quantum satellites wanted to monitor someone, they could maintain surveillance twenty-four hours a day. They could see through anything from any angle, watching you with perfect clarity even as you took a shit on the toilet.

If Hongmeng’s Artifact Cultivators were to create such a thing, it would be capable of comprehensive detection and scanning under any conditions.

While the benefits would be numerous, what secrets could the Upper Sects—whose main strongholds aren’t within a Blessed Land Grotto Heaven—possibly keep? What hidden reserves could the various Noble Families still conceal?

Given this culture, it would be impossible unless a legendary figure like Jian Cheng appeared—an Artifact Cultivator specializing in Reconnaissance—and blanketed All of Hongmeng with a Celestial Eye network. And even then, he would have to withstand the backlash from every Cultivator in the realm, single-handedly suppressing an entire era to prove his Dao.

Only under those circumstances could Hongmeng possibly shatter its entrenched culture and usher in a so-called ’Skynet’ or ’Celestial Eye’ era. Otherwise, it’s nearly impossible for satellite-like Artifacts to appear.

And in truth, there isn’t much need for them anyway. The Holy Lands and Blessed Lands are suspended high overhead. If they so wished, they could easily use their Grotto Heaven Blessed Lands as ’Celestial Eyes.’ With a Grotto Heaven as a foundation, they could create something hundreds, even thousands of times more powerful than any satellite.

And yet?

Hanging high overhead, have any of the Three Great Holy Lands or Nine Great Blessed Lands ever created such a thing?

Well... the Celestial Secret Grotto Heaven might have something similar, but it’s absolutely just scratching the surface.

Even so, the major Upper Sects and ancient Noble Families are already wary of the Celestial Secret Grotto Heaven, guarding against them at all times as if they were thieves.

If this is how they treat an established Blessed Land, one can only imagine what would happen if anyone else tried to do the same.

For all these reasons, while the Hongmeng Map is quite comprehensive, creating a real-time GPS-like map for tracking, akin to opening a Celestial Eye, is no easy feat.

This is especially true here in the Hengduan Mountain Range, where there are no Sect Arrays for Reconnaissance. In a place like this, there are only a handful of ways to achieve real-time positioning in Hongmeng, most of which rely on the Grotto Heaven Blessed Lands suspended high in the sky.

The only reason Zhang Deming could create this gadget was by using the points of light in the sky of his Spirit Nurturing Space to provide a vantage point, allowing for a bootleg version of real-time positioning.

’Well... you could hardly call it "positioning"!’

It was really just a rough sketch of the area within a two-kilometer radius of the user, viewed from a strange, god’s-eye perspective. It combined a pre-loaded map with the Surveillance Elf 1.3 from his Spirit Nurturing Space.

Given the Surveillance Elf’s level of intelligence, anything beyond that two-kilometer radius would only show a general direction to keep the user from getting lost. It was completely incapable of displaying things like distance.

It was a total knock-off, completely incomparable to the map apps from his past life. It wasn’t that the techniques were inferior; it was that the social climate for an unmanaged, automated system simply didn’t exist.

After all, with so many things already hanging in the skies of Hongmeng, Cultivators weren’t keen on adding anything new up there.

It’s not as if no one had ever had this idea. Quite a few High-Tier Cultivators knew about the Celestial Universe Federation, including many Great Cultivators who specialized in the Dao of Reconnaissance.

Could anyone who had cultivated the Reconnaissance Dao to such a high level be a fool? When they learned about the Celestial Universe’s use of satellites, did you really think no one considered it?

No, many of them did!

But the timid ones merely thought about it; once they understood the stakes, they gave up.

The more cautious ones made some clandestine moves, but before they could even put their plans into action—or more accurately, before they could even finish setting up—they were nipped in the bud by various powers and forced to abandon their efforts.

Then there were the desperate ones, on the verge of death, who decided to risk it all in one last gamble. Without exception, they all met their doom, and it wasn’t unheard of for their factions to be dragged down with them.

Creating satellites, strictly speaking, would be a form of progress. But when a culture has already solidified, the wheels of a new era cannot turn.

The saying ’man’s will can conquer the heavens’ doesn’t just refer to defying fate and achieving Destiny Alteration; this is another form of it. When the masses are united with one heart, no ’wheel of progress’ can simply roll over them.

There were many such examples in his past life. Take a classic case: the ancient ’Transmigrator,’ Wang Mang. His policies were certainly groundbreaking for his time, weren’t they?

His methods of political governance were nearly a thousand years ahead of his time! But what a shame. Given the culture back then, did the wheels of progress turn?

They didn’t, did they?

And why not?

Because he threatened the interests of too many people, especially those of the Noble Families who held absolute power at the time.

As a result, his ’wheel’ was shattered. Under the United Force of the dynastic Noble Families, not even a single spoke was left. Instead, all that remained of him was a legacy of infamy.