Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

‘Spiritual root transplantation’ was not the only insane plan that Li Yao discovered in the Mausoleum of Chaos. For the entire day that followed, they had been exploring the southeast area of the second floor. They had found tremendous ancient books and jade chips inside the research rooms.

Most of the ancient books were made of natural materials such as unrotting spider threads or silk, which allowed the explorers to learn more and more shocking experiment plans. Li Yao also took the opportunity to hide a few critical jade chips. But he was truly stunned, his heart racing fast, after he read the jade chips in secret.

Right next to the research room of the ‘spiritual root transplantation’, quite a few associated research rooms were about methods to strengthen the spiritual root.

Li Yao was aware that, for ancient Cultivators, the spiritual root could be classified into ‘heavenly spiritual root’, ‘abnormal spiritual root’, and ‘ruderal spiritual root’. Even modern times, it was well acknowledged that the quality of different spiritual roots was different. The Cultivators with better spiritual roots often had a very high training efficiency and advanced faster than their peers.

As for the methods to strengthen the spiritual root inside the research rooms, they were all about stimulating the spiritual root and improving its quality with the veins and blood of demon beasts, thereby granting different attributes to the spiritual root and bestowing the Cultivators with the ‘naturally-endowed techniques’ and ‘bloodline force’ of the demon beasts.

Some of the methods were about cutting off the messy branches around a ‘ruderal spiritual root’, like gardening, so that the main stem of the spiritual root would be thicker and healthier.

In one of the most creative projects, the ancient believers of Chaos even tried to melt two spiritual roots into one!

Should the project have succeeded, a Cultivator would have boasted two spiritual roots!

It was not difficult to estimate what benefits it would bring to the training of the Cultivator.

However, the researches about spiritual roots had all failed.

Even so, a lot of experiment files and data remained.

Most of the data had been locked with spiritual stripes. A lot of jade chips were even installed with barriers and other rune arrays. The members of the Blade of Chaos could not estimate the value of the information stored inside for now and simply piled them up aside.

But for Li Yao, it was more than easy for him to crack the chips and read all the information.

He took the opportunity to transmit all the experiment data into his brain. His understanding about the spiritual root reached a whole new level.

Right next to the research rooms about the spiritual root, another area of research rooms was focused on the studies of ‘man-made cores’.

Yes. Synthesizing an artificial core and transplanting it into the body of a weak Cultivator in the Refinement Stage, turning the subject into a magnificent Core Formation Stage expert instantly!

The believers of Chaos seemed to have combined the marrow crystals, which contained abundant spiritual energy, with a lot of cores of demon beasts before restricting them with special rune arrays in order to simulate the power of the gold core.

Such a procedure was like transplanting a ‘super-compressed crystal reactor’ directly into the body of a Cultivator, which was unfathomable even after forty thousand years.

Li Yao did not know whether he should pity the ignorance of the ancient Cultivators or be awed by their insanity.

Without an exception, the experiments all failed. A Cultivator was a whole. The improvement of a body part would not necessarily bring up the overall combat ability significantly.

Transplanting a gold core into the body of a Cultivator whose flesh was not strong enough to accommodate it was like inserting a military-level power rune array into a civil shuttle, which, if driven at its full speed, would certainly be ripped apart.

Besides, the man-made cores made of marrow crystals and demon cores were anything but steady.

Strong rejection reactions were inevitable between marrow crystals and demon cores, and among demon cores of different attributes. The Cultivators who were transplanted with such man-made cores were more like walking bombs and only suitable for suicidal attacks.

Still, Li Yao gladly accepted all the information. While the specialists were busy studying the structure of the Mausoleum of Chaos and analyzing the usages of different types of spiritual stripes, he absorbed the tremendous experiment data without anybody knowing.

He increasingly felt that the journey was worthwhile.

The data of so many experiments, despite their failure in the end, still provided valuable for his own training. The eye-opening, extraordinary direction of training also pointed out a new possibly of evolution for him!

After witnessing the incredibility of ‘spiritual root transplantation’ and ‘man-made cores’, another research project named ‘weaponized humans’ caught Li Yao’s attention.

In the era when the ancient believers of Chaos lived, because of the thousands of years’ war in which Cultivators and ordinary people alike were involved, a lot of heavily wounded soldiers whose bodies were crippled were made.

The so-called ‘weaponized humans’ project was meant to combine flying swords and other magical equipment with the wounded soldiers and even to replace the bones of the soldiers with Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. Eventually, unparalleled experts who boasted the advantages of magical equipment as well as independent self-awareness, which allowed them to carry out combat missions on their own, would be created!

After browsing through the tremendous data, Li Yao discovered that the research on the ‘weaponized humans’ actually made some progress. Many broken limbs of the soldiers were successfully combined with flying swords. Some of them even completely absorbed the flying swords into their bodies and turned their bones into magical equipment.

When he first entered the Mausoleum of Chaos, Li Yao had seen a lot of skeletons that were emitting bright golden or bronze colors, not rotten even after tens of thousands of years.

Maybe, they were the ‘weaponized humans’.

According to some of the experiment files, such ‘weaponized humans’ had been manufactured on a large scale and appointed as the guardians of the Mausoleum of Chaos.

However, why did they attack each other and eventually all perish in the end?

“It’s too marvelous and incredible. The imagination of the ancient people is indeed as vast as the universe! Compared to such inspiring modification plans, the influences that the Blood Stripe Virus left on the Titan Warriors and the modification plan that Yan Xibei had in mind on Iron Plateau are like child’s play!”

The mental devil mumbled in great fascination deep inside Li Yao’s brain. “Most of the research conducted inside the Mausoleum of Chaos seems to be for the purpose of giving tremendous abilities to an ordinary person quickly so that they could compete with Cultivators!

“Think about it. If those plans really worked out, they would have been able to transplant a spiritual root into the brain of an ordinary person, stuff a man-made core into his stomach, and replace some of his limbs, or maybe all, with magical equipment. A super warrior who had the capability equal to the Core Formation Stage would thus be created instantly!

“How many years will it take to build a Core Formation Stage Cultivator traditionally? Twenty years? Fifty? A hundred? What about the odds of success? 1% 0.5%? 0.01%?

“When all the technology matured, such super warriors might have been produced in only several months!

“Great. This is too great! A manufacturing plan for mass-produced Core Formation Stage experts!”

Li Yao breathed hard and mumbled to himself, “I thought that the Mausoleum of Chaos was simply a research base of the demon race.”

“What’s the difference?” the mental devil said with a smile. “Have you not discovered that the research projects have one thing in common with the training methods of the demon race?”

Li Yao raised his eyebrow. “What is it?”

“If Chu Zhengqing’s same-origin theory is correct,” the mental devil said, “then injecting the Demon God Virus and turning a human into a demon, and the research regarding the ‘mass-produced Cultivators’, have one thing in common, which is that they can endow an ordinary person with tremendous combat ability in a very short amount of time!

“Think about it. How is the civil war of the Cultivators forty thousand years ago interpreted in the formal education that we received?

“In the last years of the war, all the three thousand Sectors were seriously ruined. Cultivators perished incessantly. All the worlds were lacking soldiers. Eventually, they had no alternatives except to transform animals into demon beasts as replacements for the Cultivators in the war.

“However, in the war of the Cultivators of such a scale, every Cultivation sect must’ve had a lot of affiliated cities or even kingdoms that would send armies made of ordinary people to join the war with them!

“Before they tried transforming animals into demon beasts, had it never occurred to the Cultivators, who were running to a dead end, that they could improve the combat ability of the ordinary people quickly and make them stronger?

“Think about it. If the Star Glory Federation is faced with a great war, and there is a method to improve the combat ability of an individual rapidly, will the method be implemented on military dogs instead of soldiers?”

Li Yao felt his heart turning cold.

With the memories of Ou Yezi, who had been a mighty ancient Cultivator forty thousand years earlier, Li Yao knew the ancient Cultivators better than most people.

The ancient Cultivators, who regarded ordinary people as ants, were different creatures compared to modern Cultivators. In the eyes of the high and majestic ancient Cultivators, the life of an ordinary person was perhaps not as valuable as some precious animals.

Since the ancient Cultivators could inject the Demon God Virus into animals and transform the animals into demon beasts, was it unlikely that they ran experiments on ordinary soldiers in order to refine them into more powerful war machines?

Could it be that the Mausoleum of Chaos was actually the base of an ancient Cultivation sect where they secretly refined ordinary soldiers? Were the demon race, the spiritual root transplantation, and the weaponized humans all part of the refinement?

But that did not seem very plausible.

The mental devil continued voicing its thoughts. “If that was the case, the birth of the ‘demon race’ would be easy to understand. Since the body of the ordinary soldiers was too weak, and it was difficult for them to withstand the shock and pain during the transplantation of the spiritual root and the core and the replacement of their body parts, the ancient Cultivators awakened some of the recessive, primeval genes. Perhaps they only did it to strengthen their bodies so that they would be able to shoulder more pain and modification.

“Tsk tsk tsk. Think about it. The magnificent body build of the demon race, with a man-made spiritual root and gold core, equipped with bones and limbs that are made of flying swords… That’s the most perfect ultimate weapon!”

“It’s a shame that things went out of control eventually,” Li Yao said coldly.

The mental devil smiled and said, “Out of control is the regular status of the universe. In the long river of time, nothing is controllable at all.”

Right then, Li Yao suddenly heard a miserable scream in the research room next to him!