Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

While they were talking, the metal lift pulled by chains had ascended to everyone’s feet. Before it came to a full stop, Wei Longtao jumped up almost five meters and dashed over to everyone. His legs were like two thick nails that were smashed into the ground.

Li Yao eyed the general commander of ‘Starlight’ in the underground world of the Land of Sins in silence.

He was a majestic, bearded man more than two meters tall. Huge scars could be found everywhere on the bulging muscles all over his body, as if his infinite vitality could not be restrained by his magnificent body and had torn apart his skin.

What was most eye-catching of all was his big eyes that looked like the lamps of the ‘earthly dragons’.

Although they were in the deepest and most profound underground world, the pair of eyes were still radiating like a sun, making him look like a man who was dreaming all the time, a real dreamer!

“Brothers from the Land of Sins, welcome to the temporary camp of Starlight. This place is a little bit shabby. Please try to overcome the difficulties.”

Before he landed, heartening laughter echoed from midair. He was apparently much warmer than Zuo Jingyun, who was as cold as ice.

“People here call me ‘Commander Wei’, but since you are not members of Starlight yet, you can simply call me ‘Wei Longtao’!”

Standing before the Fist King and Xiahou Wuxin, Wei Longtao looked at them with a smile. He had dwarfed the auras of the two experts of the Land of Sins by himself.

“Do excuse me.”

He crossed his hands toward the Fist King and Xiahou Wuxin and said with a smile, “The situation both on the ground and below is very urgent, which has forced me to invite you to this place in such a simple and violent approach. Please forgive us for the lack of manners.”

Xiahou Wuxin rolled his eyes again and again and suddenly said, “Forgiveness is unnecessary. Had it not been for your help, Commander Wei, we would have been killed by the skeleton lizards. There is really nothing to forgive. However, did you have eyes in Liberty City that could see us?”

“Exactly. He was indeed spying on us.” The Fist King was much more straightforward and directly changed ‘see’ to ‘spy’. “Otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to command the ‘earthly dragon’ to save the exact number of people he needed, who happened to be the best of the best among the thousands of bandits, exactly before the moment we were to be annihilated.”

“The Fist King is right. Not just in Liberty City, Starlight has inconspicuous eyes in all the Elysian Worlds and even many gangs in the Land of Sins.”

Wei Longtao did not deny it at all. Baring his white teeth from his fluffy beard, he said, “Fist King, Leader Xiahou, you must understand the dominance of the City in the Sky better than anybody else. If we did not have eyes and ears and were less informed, ‘Starlight’ would have been demolished ten thousand times. How could we have resisted for hundreds of years below the ground?”

“Therefore…” Xiahou Wuxin narrowed his eyes. “You simply watched the monsters projected from Manjusaka slaughter most of us and rescued us when only the last of us were left?”

“I did not have any choice,” Wei Longtao admitted frankly and confidently, as if it were not a scheme at all. “First of all, ‘Starlight’ is the greatest trouble for the Immortal Cultivators. Should our traces be revealed, we will certainly suffer incessant hunting and sieges. So, it was impossible for me to dispatch a large batch of earthly dragons to save you. I could only send Zuo Jingyun, our most awesome conductor of earthly dragons. Only she was confident in getting rid of all the hunters during the escape below the ground.

“One ‘earthly dragon’ has a limited capacity. Could it have loaded the entire Liberty City?

“Secondly, and more importantly, we have to ensure the purity of our team. We learned that lesson the hard way many times in the past. We paid a gory price to rescue the brothers on the ground, hoping to invite them to join Starlight, only to discover that a lot of spies from Manjusaka were among them. They caused severe damage to our organization.

“The operation this time is Starlight’s counterattack of the largest scale in the recent hundred years. Dozens of ‘earthly dragons’ have been gathered. There will be dire consequences if several spies are among us.

“So, we could only observe in secret and make sure that Manjusaka was really trying to kill each and every one of you before we could completely trust you and rescue you.

“Leader Xiahou, in your place, you know a hundred times more intelligence than the regular brothers from the Land of Sins do. You must understand our dilemma very well.”

Xiahou Wuxin was lost for words for a moment and could not help but nod.

“Thirdly,” Wei Longtao said casually, “we are faced with massive pressure from Manjusaka ourselves, and we just had a bloody battle three days ago. Trust me. The approaches through which Manjusaka deals with us are a hundred times crueler than what was used on you just now. They are absolutely beyond your imagination.

“After all, in the eyes of the Immortal Cultivators, you are merely chess pieces and toys, while we, the Cultivators of Starlight, are the real enemies!”

“Cultivators…”

Chewing on the word, the Fist King said, “So, Commander Wei, you came to our rescue at such great risks because you want us to join you?”

“Join us?” Zuo Jingyun, who was standing nearby, could not help but chuckle. “I’m afraid that you are not qualified.”

“What!”

A lot of the bandits rose and glared at her.

“Jingyun!” Wei Longtao frowned and scolded her. He then crossed his hands at the Fist King and Xiahou Wuxin. “Truth be told, when Starlight recruited new people and transformed ‘sinners’ into ‘Cultivators’, we were indeed very cautious, and it was not a common practice to enlist people from the gangs directly.

“For our organization, the size and the number of our crew are not important. What matters most is dignity, loyalty, and everlasting dedication to our cause!

“The life underground is unbelievably bitter and barren. Everybody is faced with the pressure of being buried alive by tons of rocks every second, which is hard for the experts in the Land of Sins, who are used to an exuberant and extravagant life, to adapt to.

“But the situation this time is a bit different. Since you have all come here, I do not want to keep anything from you.

“We were planning a once-in-a-hundred-years counterattack, and dozens of ‘earthly dragons’ are all set to go. But in the unexpected encounter with the Immortal Cultivators three days ago, we lost a great number of hands, mostly warriors.

“We are in dire need of a batch of new blood to accomplish our mission, which was the biggest reason why we saved you at great risks.”

The Fist King nodded. “What kind of mission?”

“The mission to search for the temple,” Wei Longtao said. “Legend has it that a temple of Cultivators has been sealed for a thousand years somewhere below the Land of Sins. The strongest Cultivator in legends is sleeping inside the temple, and it has the power to destroy Manjusaka. As long as we locate the temple, we will be able to change the Land of Sins!”

Xiahou Wuxin was amused. “A legendary temple? A sleeping Cultivator? Is such a groundless tale worth your efforts?”

“Indeed. Such a legend is illogical,” the Fist King remarked. “Manjusaka blocked the sky several hundred years ago. If the temple has been sealed since a thousand years ago, how could it possibly boast the power to destroy the City in the Sky?”

“We have naturally analyzed all of your suspicions. Cultivators are not superstitious, and we do not believe in any tradition or legend blindly. The so-called ‘temple’ is of course not as simple as its literal sense.”

With his hands behind his back, Wei Longtao spoke unhurriedly. “Just now, in the earthly dragon, Zuo Jingyun must’ve introduced the truth of ‘Judgment Day’ to you, or maybe you learned about it a long time ago, that it was not a civil war within the Martial Meritocrats Sector but a war between the Cultivators of the Martial Meritocrats Sector and the alien Immortal Cultivators.

“According to our intelligence, before the ‘Judgment War’ took place, the Martial Meritocrats Civilization arrived at the peak. It secretly established a ‘global automatic defense network’, whose central forces were the super-enormous autopiloting flying sword systems buried in every part of the entire planet.

“There were eighty-one enormous autopiloting flying sword platforms in total. Once activated, they could perform destructive strikes automatically on intruders from outer space, such as starships or assault cabins. They would essentially enshroud the entire planet in an impenetrable net of swords!

“Think about it carefully. If they could blow up the starships that are moving at a high speed, isn’t Manjusaka, which is fixed above the atmosphere, like a dummy target that will be shot down in no time?

“In that case, doesn’t the control center of the ‘global sword net’ count as a powerful ‘temple’?

“Inside such an enormous secret control center, some of the operators in the old days chose ‘artificial hibernation’ and went to the ‘standby’ state together with the control center. Doesn’t it make perfect sense?

“As long as we can find the control center and activate the ‘global sword net’ again, we will have a good chance of blowing up the City in the Sky. What do you think?”

The Fist King and Xiahou Wuxin were both slightly dazed. Looking at each other, they fell deep in thought.

Even Li Yao was quite surprised. He did not expect the truth of ‘the Cultivators who had been lost for a thousand years’ to be like that. However…

“The story is still illogical,” the Fist King said. “If such a ‘global sword net’ did exist, why was it not activated when the ‘Judgment War’ took place and the starships of the Immortal Cultivators came to attack the planet? If it was activated, the Immortal Cultivators must’ve located all the weapon launch platforms and destroyed all of them.”