Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Boom!

The bloody wings on Li Yao’s back immediately interwoven into a helix. From the center of the helix, a dazzling light almost as brilliant as a starship’s exhaust flames when it was moving at full speed spurted out.

The savaging light was so intense that it even rushed to a thousand meters away and melted through seven layers of cabin walls that were made of superalloys!

The Mystic Skeleton Blood Wing let out roars like a primeval beast. The quakes of the armors turned into blasts, blowing away the brawny mutated prisoners as if they were dry leaves and branches. Li Yao’s speed was immediately accelerated to the highest, as he charged at the defense line of the Immortal Cultivators against the bullets and mystic rays that were like a thunderstorm!

Dozens of Immortal Cultivators were blown to midair by him at the first contact. Before they had the opportunity to struggle, the crystal suits all over their bodies had fallen apart. The storm bolters, the machine guns, the crystal cannons, and all the other firearms were attracted to Li Yao.

Li Yao did not even bother to look at the Immortal Cultivators. Now that their battle formation had completely collapsed, they could be taken care of by the mutated prisoners who were now swarming forward.

The two wings behind Li Yao were folded in the front. The feathers made of mystic rays and spiritual energy revolved rapidly into an invincible drill, which dug into the indestructible gate, the last defense. The metals were melted, and white smoke was popping up. An orange, highly-heated channel was drilled through!

Stomping on the melted metal, Li Yao marched in unstoppably like a bloody tornado and barged into the control center at the most central area of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, facing hundreds of research-type and admin-type Immortal Cultivators, who were biochemists, specialists of crystal processors, and the managers of the platform of “slaughter stream”.

Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

When all the Immortal Cultivators looked at him in shock, fear, and desperation, none of them noticed that the crystal cameras that were distributed everywhere in the control center were aimed at the awe-inspiring and dominating Mystic Skeleton Blood Wing at the same time, or that their crystal processors, which were still functioning at a high efficiency, had been implanted with abundant lethal viruses.

“Come on.”

Grinning hideously, Li Yao extended his arms to the maximum. Almost a hundred storm bolters, machine guns, crystal cannons, chaotic fire crossbows, and Taiyi Lightning Railguns were slowly unfolded behind him in the shape of a sector, and crystal bombs spurted out of his dozens of Cosmos Rings like raindrops. They were distributed around him evenly like well-formed chess pieces, spreading out slowly.

“If you are so eager to watch, I’ll show you what a real Cultivator is today!”

…

In the “temple of Cultivators”, the control center of the global sword network below the ground of the Land of Sins, under Wei Longtao’s highly agitative persuasion and the threat of countless spiritual puppets, most of the resistance warriors of Starlight had already collapsed.

Somebody collapsed to the ground, their faces pale, their eyes glazed, and their minds empty.

Some even sobbed against the wall, not for the upcoming fallout but because they had never really existed. Everything they knew was a lie. Their resistance, their endurance, and their pride were all jokes!

“No. It’s impossible. None of this is true!”

“Zuo Jingyun”, the bald, tattooed female warrior, and few others were the only ones left who were still resisting stubbornly. But their stubbornness was more because of the hatred when their blood family members were killed and the infinite fury of Wei Longtao’s betrayal than for the belief of “Cultivators”.

“How is this happening? Is there—Is there really not ‘a Cultivator who has been lost for a thousand years’?”

Of the two little fellows from the Desolate Worlds, Liu Li was holding the pot of Gold Barley seeds tightly, while Han Te was holding Liu Li. Both of them felt each other’s messy breath and hopeless voices.

For the first time in their lives, they felt the deepest confusion and the infinite malignance of the world of the adults.

Not far away from them, Xiahou Wuxin and Xin Xiaoqi, the pair of master and disciple who were in a rather unique relation, simply chuckled in their desperation, with the obvious determination of death in their eyes. They had already made up their minds to fight until their last breath today.

Perhaps the Fist King was the only guy who was still calm at this moment, because he was not literally a “guy” at all.

For him, he did not have emotions such as anger, desperation, fear, or frustration. As long as his metal body could continue to move, and his crystal processor could still select the tactic from the policy database that was most pertaining to the current situation, he would simply continue fighting as vigorously as before.

“Just wake up already. Stop dwelling on your fantasies!”

Looking at the army of spiritual puppets that were drawing close, Wei Longtao said earnestly, with sweat the size of beans leaking out of his forehead, “The Cultivators have been doomed to extinction since a thousand years ago! Those ghosts, those old-fashioned antiques, and those childish morons are unqualified, incapable, and impossible to survive in this world! Only the Imperium and the Immortal Cultivators are the sole dominators of the entire sea of stars! Zuo Jingyun, you are the warrior that I have the highest hope for in our organization. We can work for ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ as members of ‘the Heavenly Eye Group’ together. The most brilliant future is awaiting us, which will be a hundred, a thousand, a million times better than the sunless life we have right now like a rat in a gutter!

“Come on. Believe me. I have never made a wrong choice, and it is not going to be an exception this time. I will lead everybody to hope!”

He extended his hand to Zuo Jingyun in the most sincere way.

Her face rigid, Zuo Jingyun stared at Wei Longtao’s big hands with her almost transparent eyes for a long time. Taking a deep breath, she spat out two words.

“Damn you.”

The bald female warrior raised her saber and aimed at her leader; the tip of her saber shivering.

“We-we are Cultivators.”

Looking at each other, Han Te and Liu Li gritted their teeth and lifted their weapons like Zuo Jingyun, before they looked at each other again in uncertainty. “Aren’t we?”

The Fist King extended his fist. Xiahou Wuxin and Xin Xiaoqi supported each other to raise their sabers. Countless resistance warriors also gnashed their teeth while weeping hard, raising high their blades that had been dented.

“There will always be Cultivators.”

Looking at Wei Longtao, Zuo Jingyun declared, one word after another, “Even if you can kill all of us, you cannot kill all the Cultivators in the sea of stars. One day, our successors will show up. They will.

“Do you remember why our organization is named ‘Starlight’? Every glittering star in the dark universe represents a Cultivator. As long as there is starlight in the universe, there will forever be a Cultivator burning themselves out there somewhere!”

Wei Longtao felt that his rough face was itching, as if somebody were stinging it with needles.

For some reason, he did not have the courage to look Zuo Jingyun in the eyes.

“Alright. You are asking for your own death. That’s not my fault. Then… just go to hell with all the dummies in the space!”

Pointing at the starships of Starlight that were on fire on the enormous light beam above the temple, Wei Longtao laughed aloud to cover his frustration.

The thousand spiritual puppets around that were remotely controlled had all been unfolded into the battle form. Lethal brilliance was condensed in the dark barrels at the same time while all of them were aimed at the center of the temple.

The last Cultivators of the Martial Meritocrats Sector stood next to each other, shoulder by shoulder. Clutching to their chainswords and their vibration sabers, they let out the deafening roars.

Right then—

A few weird stripes flashed on the enormous light beam that was floating above their heads to sap their morale. In the next, the picture blinked and switched from the space battlefield to the inside of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”!

The 3D light beam that was as vivid as a statue manifested an unbelievably glamorous, violent, and dominating black crystal suit in front of all the Cultivators, the Immortal Cultivators, and the defectors.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The mystic rays and the barrage around the black crystal suit, like the wings of colorful butterflies, covered everyone’s eyes in the most eye-catching yet dangerous way, as if the whole world were under his savaging and suppression. Everything was blown up into smithereens, and explosions were taking place everywhere!

“This is—”

Utterly shocked, Wei Longtao could not recognize what was going on at all, and his beard was shaking nonstop.

Zuo Jingyun also opened her mouth wide. Her intuitions told her that it was unlikely to be a scene where the Immortal Cultivators butchered the Cultivators. Instead, it was more like…

Han Te and Liu Li were lost for words for a long time. Looking at each other, they found nothing but confusion on their faces.

All the Cultivators were dumbfounded, so shocked as if a series of crystal bombs had been detonated right on the tips of their noses.

From the broadcast rune arrays on the two sides of the light beam, the most violent music exploded out. The stormy drumming almost bashed everyone’s eardrum and heart at the same time.

However, even the most violent music could not suppress the roar of the master of the black crystal suit that was triggered by his soul. “Open your goddamn eyes and observe. THIS IS WHAT CULTIVATORS DO!”

What’s this? Cultivators?

There was nothing but dead silence in the “temple of Cultivators”. Everybody, be they a Cultivator or an Immortal Cultivator, was frozen into an ice statue, including the spiritual puppets that had entered the battle. The remote signals from “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky” seemed to have been seriously jammed. The slaughter machines were all shivering slightly with their heads tilted. Some of them were even roaming about, opening and closing the weapon compartments but unable to lock onto a target.

“This—This is the interior of ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, and the most central pivot of control, no less!”

Xiahou Wuxin, who knew a thing or two about the bloody Flower of the Other Shore, was the first to realize what was going on. He roared in ecstasy, “The Cultivators in the space have broken into the most central part of ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’. They are on a killing spree. Rivers of blood are running in the control center!”

“This wretched man has been lying to us!”

Holding Liu Li’s hand hard, Han Te mumbled, with hot tears flowing out of his eyes, “Look. What a strong Cultivator! The legend is true. The Cultivator that has been lost for a thousand years does exist. The strongest Cultivator in the sea of stars has arrived!”

The young man roared out with the strength that almost ripped apart his chest. Wei Longtao trembled with a face as pale as a dead person’s.

“It’s… It’s impossible!”

Looking at Li Yao on the light beam, who was slaughtering the enemy unstoppably, he stuttered, “There is no such thing as a Cultivator that has been lost for a thousand years. Everything is clearly under the Immortal Cultivators’ control. Everything—”

Before he realized what was going on, a metal storm had already rushed to his face!

“Cut the crap. Let the battle begin,” the Fist King said casually.

Inside the “temple of Cultivators”, roars and cries echoed, and flames of spiritual energy soared to the sky. A lot of resistance warriors of Starlight were repeating what Li Yao had just said.

“Open your goddamn eyes and observe. THIS IS WHAT CULTIVATORS DO!”