Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao suddenly shuttered. Firefly was gone, and he was floating in front of a blue planet in a foreign space zone again.

A frustrated, depressed voice was echoing inside his ears. “We’ve failed. We’ve completely failed!

“It’s too strong and too dark. We cannot destroy it. Can’t!”

Then, Li Yao heard himself roaring, “No. The Vulture Plan has not failed yet. Even if I drift to the end of the universe, I will go on fighting and return one day!”

BAM!

The picture blossomed like broken glass. He found himself back in the cabin of Firefly faced with dozens of himself, who were all deep in thought.

“It seems that the Vulture Plan is indeed very important for us. So important that we could not forget it even though we were reincarnated after a long journey. We even gave ourselves the nickname ‘Vulture’ subconsciously in order to keep us from not forgetting it.”

The dozen Li Yaos merged together one by one. They mumbled, “Does the so-called ‘Earth’ exist in reality? If it does, is it really a regular planet without the slightest spiritual energy?

“I vaguely recall that there are legends of Pangu, Nuwa, and the Primeval Lord of Heaven on Earth, too. There are also dinosaurs, fossils, and prehistoric creatures. But they are vastly different from ours when it comes to details.

“On Earth, dinosaurs were just pure ferocious beasts. They were not intelligent creatures, and they never created a brilliant civilization.

“How is Earth related to the worlds of Cultivators? Was the earthling Li Yao really a common mechanic? How were we banished or escaped from Earth to the Heaven’s Origin Sector?

“Mysterious. It’s really mysterious!

“Do you not want to unveil the Vulture Plan and even return to Earth someday to find out the ultimate truth?”

After every sentence, two Li Yaos would meld into one. When the last questions were posed, there was only one identical self left in front of the real Li Yao.

Li Yao licked his lips and almost nodded on instinct, but a stinging pain suddenly came over from the depths of his soul. He was alarmed and suddenly blurted out, “Who are you exactly?”

The Li Yao in front of him smiled. “You know it. I am you, except that I am the part in your soul regarding the ‘Vulture Plan’ that has been locked and sealed!

“I have no idea why the part was sealed. Perhaps some people did not want us to know the truth?

“All in all, when you were striving for the Nascent Soul Stage just now, you caused a crack on the indestructible seal. That was why so many pieces of your soul leaked out and raised a series of questions for you!

“Now, you’ve found so many inexplicable points. Do you not want to find out the real answer?

“Come on. Let’s join together and break the seal. We will unravel the secrets of the ‘Vulture Plan’ and find out what exactly the so-called ‘Earth’ is.”

The stranger was talking in a bewildering way while he extended his right hand.

Li Yao held his breath, his eyes full of confusion. He could not help but raise his right hand and touch the stranger’s fingertips.

With a casual smile, the stranger mumbled, “Yes. Just like that. After we are completely melded, we will definitely find out the truth of every—Ahhh!”

His last word was disrupted by a miserable scream.

As it turned out, intense electric arcs suddenly burst out from Li Yao’s fingertips and pierced at the stranger. Caught unprepared, the stranger was immediately wreathed in electric arcs!

The stranger shrieked in outrage, “What—what are you doing? Do you not want to find out the truth?”

Li Yao sniffed. The confusion in his eyes was all gone, and they were now as clear as water and as sharp as blades. “Are you planning to fool me with such petty tricks? I don’t believe in your locks and seals!

“Let me think carefully about what you are exactly!”

Li Yao thought quickly. Pictures of the past quickly sild in front of his eyes, and he concentrated all his computational ability on scanning for the anomalies.

So, he found one!

It was during his fierce battle against Yan Xibei who had an ‘apocalyptic body’ on Iron Plateau. The two of them had fought so hard that they were stained with a lot of each other’s blood!

Li Yao’s pupils shrank violently. “You are the Blood Stripe Virus.”

When he said ‘Blood Stripe Virus’, the stranger shrieked even more twistedly than just now. The electric arcs ridded him of his disguise bit by bit, revealing a person identical to Li Yao, except that his face was as crimson as blood, which made him looked like a weird statue covered in a layer of red lacquer.

The Blood Stripe Virus, a mysterious alien species in the universe, boasted terrifying mind control and body transformation techniques. They were the masters of the Titan Warriors and the launchers of the apocalypse of the Flying Star Sector five thousand years ago!

Cold brilliant was spreading out like ripples in Li Yao’s eyes, as he sneered, “So, this explains a lot.

“Decades ago, you snuck into the body of Yan Xibei, the best warrior of Iron Plateau at that time, and bewildered him in secret so that he became one of the four kings of the Temple of Immortals. You then influenced him to refine the apocalyptic body and carry out your plan.

“Eight years ago, during the fierce battle between me and Yan Xibei, you saw that Yan Xibei was on the losing side. Therefore, you hid yourself in one drop of his blood and infected me when the blood touched my body!

“However, at that time, you were still very feeble. Therefore, you simply lurked and accumulated your strength.

“Right. When I was training in Yan Xinjian’s residence below Spider Den, there was a time when I was agitated and having hallucinations. That must have been you testing me because you had recovered part of your strength, wasn’t it?

“However, the result of your test was that my soul was still very solid, and it was not a good time to start swallowing me yet. Therefore, you settled down again.

“In the end, when I clashed with the star child from the Imperium of True Human Beings and my soul was seriously wounded by his self-detonation, you finally got your chance!

“When my soul was shattered and I was cast into a coma, you built the illusions of the Heaven’s Origin Sector deep inside my head, trying to stop my soul from struggling and push me into an eternal sleep. If so, you would have been able to occupy my body, which does not belong to you!

“But at the critical moment, you accidentally triggered the ‘Vulture Plan’, which had been hidden in the deepest part of my soul and woke me up!

“There was nothing you could do, and you feared that an attempted possession might alarm me. Therefore, you changed your methodology and continued influencing me in secret.

“Now that I think of it, the decisions I made recently are so weird!

“I have reached the superlative height of the Core Formation Stage in my twenties, and my combat ability is equivalent to that of the Nascent Soul Stage. My training speed is not slow. Instead, it is too fast!

“As the saying goes, more haste, less speed. My foundations are not steady, and my beliefs are not firm. The priority for me right now should be stabilize myself in my current level instead of making breakthroughs blindly. Is it really necessary for me to train in the four-dimensional universe?

“The war of two Sectors depends on the comprehensive capability. Even if I advance into the Nascent Soul Stage, I’m afraid that I still won’t be the decisive factor of the war at all!

“Besides, even if I wanted to train myself in the four-dimensional universe, I could have established a training room in Sparkle. Why did I have to build a starship for myself?

“Right now, I’ve finally realized that I was bewildered by you when I made those decisions!

“You meant to possess my body when I was trying to make a breakthrough by force in the four-dimensional space, when my soul would be most vulnerable!

“If I were on Sparkle, Professor Mo Xuan and the others would have been monitoring my training status closely. Should anything have gone wrong, they would immediately have broken into the room to rescue me, and they certainly would have discovered the anomalies in me!

“But on Firefly, I am all by myself. If an accident happens to me, I will have absolutely no one to turn to, isn’t it so?”

The bloody Li Yao in the front was gradually melting with mists of blood spreading out like the icy sculptures under the sun.

But his countenance was becoming more and more evil and weird. He smiled and said, “We are indeed smart. We got most things right, but we are afraid that we are wrong about one thing.

“It’s true that we have contracted the Blood Stripe Virus, but the life form of the Blood Stripe Virus is totally different from human beings, or any other creatures. They do not have self-awareness, thinking ability, or a soul!

“Therefore, I am not the Blood Stripe Virus; I am you. More precisely speaking, I am the other side of you.”

Li Yao’s eyelids were bouncing quickly. He could not have been any warier.

The bloody Li Yao opened his hands and smiled wickedly. “Don’t be nervous. When there is brightness, there is darkness. Brightness and darkness are just two sides of the same coin. You have always pretended to be chivalrous, determined, persistent…

“But, do ask yourself, are you really as righteous, resolute, and unwavering as you appear to be?

“When you struggled to survive in the magical equipment graveyard, did you never have the intense want to kill someone?

“Faced with your classmates’ mockery and watching them riding their luxury shuttles, were you not strongly jealous of them?

“While the overwhelming beast tide was coming at you, was there never a moment when you thought to give up everything and run away immediately?

“When Yan Xibei and Xiao Xuance preached their ideology to you, did you never have a second thought and wonder whether or not the path they’d been walking on was the right one?

“When you learned that the apocalypse from the Imperium of True Human Beings was about to hit the Heaven’s Origin Sector, did you never have dark thoughts in your mind and complained to yourself that the Heaven’s Origin Sector was burdened by the Flying Star Sector?

“Was there never a moment when you even thought that it would be best if the apocalypse changed its direction right then and lunged at the Flying Star Sector instead?

“It was the dark thoughts that you once had, your hatred, jealousy, fear, suspicion, wavering, fury, and confusion which gradually brewed, grew, and proliferated, that gave birth to me in the end.

“Who am I? I am just a tiny reflection of your soul in the abyss of darkness.”