Chapter 847 – The Sleeping Curse

The dire consequences of excessive emotional harvesting began to manifest after several generations.

Prolonged emotional overdraft caused the faint light flowing within the White Crystal People’s bodies to grow increasingly dim and sluggish.

“Emotional numbness” became a widespread mental illness. Those afflicted found it difficult to produce strong emotional fluctuations such as joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness, and the light within their bodies resembled dying embers on the verge of extinguishing.

Even more severe was “emotional desolation”—the faint light within the afflicted went completely dead, rendering them utterly incapable of producing even the slightest emotion. Their skin took on a cold, stone-like luster, as though they were ambulatory white crystal statues.

Emotional numbness and emotional desolation remained incurable to this day. Norton Prism’s warnings before his death had gradually become reality.

To make matters worse, the White Crystal People discovered that in their state of emotional exhaustion, they could no longer coax the white crystal trees into naturally condensing the fruits of life to bear their offspring.

Reproduction—once a natural and effortless means of racial continuation—had become a luxury available only to the emotionally wealthy.

The loss of reproductive ability caused by mental illness spread like the deadliest of plagues, sending the White Crystal People’s population into a cliff-edge decline. More and more white crystal tree farms fell into disuse.

What followed was a dramatic contraction in society’s total emotional energy output.

The shadow of energy scarcity loomed over the entire civilization. The Radiant Nobles perched at the top enacted increasingly harsh Emotional Tax Acts to maintain their own emotional health and extravagant lifestyles, forcibly extracting the last vestiges of light and warmth from the already depleted Dustlight Folk.

The Dustlight Folk were subjected to exorbitant emotional taxes, their emotions were drained even faster, their emotional illnesses worsened, birth rates dropped further, populations continued to shrink, total energy output hit new lows, and the nobles raised tax rates yet again to maintain their quotas… Society had plunged into an irreversible vicious cycle.

To this day, in the gray urban districts where the Dustlight Folk congregated, the emotion of despair had become their only stable emotional “output”—the last energy they could trade for survival resources.

Yet when despair itself became fuel to be traded, what followed was a wave of suicides sweeping through the entire lower class.

The conclusion of this memory, much like the microcosm of White Crystal civilization itself, sank into boundless gray darkness.

The owner of this memory—a White Crystal Person whose inner light flickered unsteadily like a candle guttering in the wind—had ventured far from the city alone with the sole motivation of completing a solitary act of self-termination.

In the city, it was subjected to daily forced collections of its already meager emotions. Even its last scraps of private sorrow and pain were quantified and extracted to sustain the cold city’s insignificant operations.

Its heart had become a wasteland, no longer capable of illuminating a single color representing any emotion.

In its final conscious thoughts, one idea rang with absolute clarity and persistence: to return to being a white crystal tree would perhaps be far happier than continuing to exist as a “person.”

As a tree, it could stand quietly in stillness, needing neither thought nor feeling—only instinctively absorbing light and growing freely.

No more enduring the agony of having emotions stripped away. No more bearing the despair of a civilization’s collapse.

That would be a complete, silent liberation.

After digesting this memory, Mo Lan began contemplating viable rescue plans.

The root cause of the White Crystal civilization’s crisis lay in the excessive harvesting of emotional energy. The widespread mental illness, loss of reproductive ability, and spreading despair all stemmed from this.

To break this deadlock, the most direct and effective method was to introduce a stable, reliable alternative energy source completely unrelated to emotions. Ideally, the acquisition cost of this new energy would be far lower than emotional energy—only then could the entire emotional exploitation system be dismantled at its economic foundation.

However, iterating on energy technology was no simple matter.

In worlds dominated by ordinary intelligent beings, like Earth or the material side of the Dreamweaver World, energy relied on the world’s own physical resources—whether coal, oil, water, or tourmaline. White Crystal Star had none of these.

As for whether other usable energy materials existed, that would require deeper exploration and research.

In worlds dominated by extraordinary intelligent beings, like the Valen world and the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins, energy technology could only be mastered by spellcasters—and the White Crystal People didn’t meet the requirements.

Without reference materials to consult, the question of how the White Crystal People could harness magical energy was a subject that would require in-depth research before any results might emerge.

Mo Lan was a Card Sorceress. Her Card Magic could convert magical energy into various resource cards. Her reason for seeking out zero-level worlds and endangered worlds wasn’t solely to obtain Source Mana crystals—more importantly, it was to promote her Card Magic.

The Source Mana crystals granted by the world consciousness were a one-time gift, but the magical energy provided by Card Magic contractors was continuous.

Comparing the two approaches, rather than expending effort searching for physical energy sources that might not even exist on White Crystal Star, it would be far better to develop a specialized magical cultivation method for the White Crystal People. She could guide them to become spellcasters, then sign contracts with them, turning them into Card Magic users.

At that point, they could use disposable magical energy to purchase various energy cards directly from the Card Shop, resolving society’s energy crisis once and for all.

In this way, the extinction crisis of the White Crystal People and the challenge of world advancement could be solved simultaneously, while her Card Magic could rapidly take root in a White Crystal civilization.

Of course, the prerequisite for all of this was developing a cultivation method suited to the White Crystal People.

And that certainly couldn’t be accomplished without the White Crystal People’s own cooperation.

The owner of this memory might be a good candidate.

Her mind made up, Mo Lan immediately urged her flying carpet forward, racing in the direction the White Crystal Person had departed. “I hope I’m not too late!”

The flying carpet swept over a stretch of low white crystal tree shrubs before Mo Lan finally caught sight of the White Crystal Person’s figure once more.

In a relatively open clearing, it was using those semi-transparent hands to mechanically and slowly dig a narrow, shallow pit in the ground. There was not a shred of hesitation in its movements—only the deathly stillness that came after all hope had been exhausted.

Apparently deciding the pit was deep enough, it slowly lay down in the earthen trench that was just large enough to accommodate its body. Then, with cold hands, it began scooping the excavated soil—flecked with fine crystal particles—and covering its own body, handful by handful.

Its hollow gaze stared up at the cool, bright sky above. The massive butterfly-wing collectors drooped limply against the sides of its face.

Just as the cold soil was about to reach its chest, its vision went black, and it lost consciousness entirely.

Seeing the sleeping curse take effect, Mo Lan let out a small sigh of relief.

She hadn’t yet decided where to set up her research base, nor how she should present herself to this White Crystal Person. So she simply let it fall into slumber—once she was ready, she could lift the curse and wake it.