Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

At the frontmost part of the place that seemed both like a prison and a cemetery were thirty-six hibernation cabins that were streamlined and larger. They looked much more advanced. Observing through the translucent holes on them, it could be seen that thirty-six hibernators were also crouching inside like babies.

But different from those who were found guilty of ‘instigation, insurgency, and jeopardy to national security’, the hibernators had complicated, shining nails smashed all the way down from the back of their head to their spine every few centimeters. The tops of the nails were connected to each other with solid and complicated mechanical structures. They also spread to their limbs and extended to their fingertips, like some sort of weird external skeleton.

Li Yao thought for a moment and realized that the nails were probably bashed into the gaps on their spines in order to control their spine, their central nerves, and all their limbs and organs.

Even if they escaped hibernation, there would barely be any room for their resistance when their spine was confined in such a shackle.

In conclusion, they were not passengers but prisoners.

It did make sense on second thought. This was a carrier that jumped and sailed among different Sectors in the heartland of the Imperium of True Human Beings. Judging from the structure and the performance of the engine compartment, it was not suitable for carrying out a super-long space jump mission. Its voyages would not take very long, and there was no need for the crew members to hibernate.

Li Yao keenly sensed vague spiritual energy from the hibernators.

He was particularly drawn to the cluster at the center of their eyebrows that was still bouncing feebly like virtual neurons even though they were deep asleep.

It was the place where the spiritual root was located.

Their spiritual roots are all awakened. Are they Cultivators, or are they…

There was a small crystal processor next to the hibernation cabin of each of the thirty-six people whose spiritual roots were awakened. The physical information recorded on them was much more detailed than that of the ordinary people. It included their major level, minor level, familiar arts, and even a few clips of their battle videos.

However, their name and background were not included. There were only simple numbers, as well as new crimes: dereliction of duty, treason, and crimes against humanity.

Most of the prisoners whose spiritual root was awakened were found guilty of one or two of those crimes. One of them was even charged with all three. He also happened to be the strongest of them and was at the beginning level of the Core Formation Stage. He was bound tightly by a particularly thick shackle. A hundred crystal wires extended out of the topmost part of the shackle and reached his face from the back of his head, piercing into his brain through his nostrils, ears, and eyes.

Judging from the horrible look on his face and his rapidly shivering eyeballs, his soul was still suffering indescribable torture in the frozen hell even though his fleshly body had been sealed in the extremely low temperature.

If he is a Cultivator, it will be understandable that he committed treason and crimes against humanity, Li Yao thought to himself. But what about ‘dereliction of duty’? Even if they were just fabricating crimes for him, such a crime should still be too weird for a Cultivator, right?

The warehouse that was as cold and gloomy as a refrigerator was utterly silent. Only several spiritual puppets were patrolling mechanically according to the routes that they were preset with, which only added to the creepy and rejective atmosphere of the place.

After thinking for a moment, Li Yao retracted his telepathic thoughts and focused his attention back on the engine compartment at the rear of the starship that was drowned in smoke, fire, and poisonous air.

The whole engine compartment had no secrets at all before him. The lick of every flame, the explosion of every fuel transmission tube, and the action of every Immortal Cultivator in the damage control team disintegrated and separated like translucent virtual pictures and appeared in his brain in the most fundamental data and models.

Boom!

When a squad of the damage control team ran past the pathway next to the engine compartment, Li Yao made up his mind. One of the tubes of ancillary catalysts that he had sabotaged earlier by remote manipulation immediately broke apart. The catalysts immediately expanded by thousands of times after they were vaporized and led to new explosions when they collided with the poisonous gas. Everybody was swallowed by the venomous flames. Some were even blown dozens of meters away because of the blast and hit the end of the pathway brutally.

The spot turned into chaos. Explosions and screams were everywhere. All the lights and surveillance systems were in disorder. The wounded fled from the fire with their crippled arms or legs. Those who were lucky enough to be unhurt had breathed in poisonous air, too, because of the damage to their crystal suit. Confused and lightheaded, they ran amok in the gas and the fire like headless flies.

In such turmoil, none of them noticed that their captain disappeared into the poisonous air that was as intense as ink the moment he was blown to the end of the pathway by the blast!

Li Yao opened his fingers and grabbed the captain by his head, with such force that the helmet of his crystal suit was squeaking and seemed to be on the verge of exploding.

Spiritual energy slithered over like vipers, cutting off all the rune arrays and the crystal chips on the crystal suit that could transmit information to the outside world. It also pierced through the crystal processor and paralyzed the crystal suit into a fully-enclosed iron coffin.

It was not until then that Li Yao dragged the captain to an inconspicuous corner. He had carefully studied the structure of the engine compartment, deduced based on the current damages, and released hundreds of telepathic thoughts to stay on alert. Nobody would disturb him in the next five minutes.

BAM!

Li Yao slightly increased his strength. The helmet of the crystal suit, which was made of super alloys and special porcelains and could resist the close-distance shot of a storm bolter, broke apart immediately. What was most amazing was that the head below the crystal suit was not hurt at all. There was not even a bloody scratch when the helmet exploded into pieces.

The captain had a pale face, not knowing what had happened at all.

But when he looked at Li Yao’s fiendish air and immeasurable eyes, he was like a hyena faced with a velociraptor and could not even think of resisting. He did not even have the strength to scream anymore.

Li Yao curled his lips. Having no time to waste on him, Li Yao gradually turned his left eye red. From deep inside the pupils beamed out demonic bloody streaks, which even crawled out of the eyeball and proliferated in midair before they all pierced into the eyes of the captain.

In utmost fear, the captain cramped as if he had suffered an electric shock. Hissing sounds echoed from his throat, but they could not be condensed into a scream at all. There was not any substantial resistance, either.

In the end, his both eyes were bloodshot, and bloody streaks protruded out of his face as if an enormous spider was lying on his face.

“Alright. Go ahead.”

The mental devil grinned.

The chasm between the two parties was too huge. Li Yao did not need to play any tricks of interrogation or language games but simply let the mental devil break the opponent’s defense line in the mind and hypnotize him.

“Who are you? What is your mission?” Li Yao asked.

The bloody streaks on the captain’s face were wriggling and absorbing the secrets in his brain cervixes like eelworms. Half a second later, he replied clearly and quickly, “We are the 221st carrier of the ‘Triones Shipping Group’. We are carrying a regular shipping mission to transport a batch of assets to the Heavenly Eye Group’s space base in the Martial Meritocrats Sector.”

The Heavenly Eye Group?

Li Yao pondered to himself and realized that it was probably the force of the Immortal Cultivators that controlled Manjusaka. After thinking for a moment, he asked, “Were you caught in a cosmic storm during your voyage?”

“Yes,” the captain said. “We encountered a fairly large cosmic storm soon after we set sail from the ‘Spiritual Snake Sector’ twelve days ago and only managed to arrive here through all kinds of difficulties.”

“Are the goods that you are shipping the people in the hibernation cabins? Who are they exactly? Why are they being sent to Manjusaka?”

“They are all prisoners.” The captain’s eyes glazed, but his head was very clear, and the speed of his speech was higher and higher, as if a mysterious force was reading information from his brain forcefully. “They are the felons that have been sentenced with life imprisonment and death with reprieve. They are going to serve their term in the prison in Manjusaka.”

Li Yao was slightly surprised. “Is there a prison in ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’?”

“Yes. There is an extremely large private prison, which ranks among the top in terms of scale and level even taking all the space prisons of the Imperium into consideration,” the captain said. “The ‘Triones Shipping Group’ and the ‘Heavenly Eye Group’ have a transportation contract. We send a large batch of prisoners from everywhere in the universe to them to serve the term.”

“I saw their crimes. Instigation, insurgency, dereliction of duty, treason, jeopardy to national security, and even… crimes against humanity,” Li Yao said. “There were only the names of the crimes but not the details. Do you know how exactly they committed the crimes?”

The captain hesitated for a moment. “We are only responsible for shipping. Other people are in charge of capturing them. I only know some hearsays.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Another few bloody streaks popped out from Li Yao’s left eye and darted into the guy’s eyeball. “Tell me all the things that you have overheard. Now!”

The captain trembled. His eyes shook quickly, and he spoke as if he were in a dream. “They seem to be the miners on a certain remote resource planet in the Spiritual Snake Sector. Because they were dissatisfied with their working conditions, or maybe because the compensation after several accidents in the mine was not given to them in time, they had strikes first and then illegal demonstrations, which escalated into armed rebellions. After they were suppressed quickly, all the key personnel in the riot were sentenced to life imprisonment and death with reprieve and sent here to serve their term.”

That explains a lot, Li Yao thought to himself. No wonder all the prisoners looked rather strong despite their genders and ages and although their spiritual roots were not awakened. They were actually miners.

“What about those who are confined and guilty of ‘dereliction of duty’ and other crimes? Are they miners, too?”

“No,” the captain said. “They seem to be the managers of the local mining group. They are all Immortal Cultivators. But because they dealt with the emergency unsatisfactorily and were too merciful during the suppression of the illegal demonstrations and the armed rebellions, which led to the escalation of the incident, they were found guilty of ‘dereliction of duty’ and sent here.

“Rumor has it that some of them were rather sympathetic to the rioters. They were suspected to have been infiltrated and polluted by the Covenant Alliance. That was why their sentence was rather harsh, and they were even found guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’.”