Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

As a matter of fact, it was what was going on right now.

After killing, burning, and looting for a while, a lot of the mobsters congregated into destructive torrents and flooded at the Netherwind Channel.

Perhaps it was because the big nobles were all gathered in the Netherwind Channel, and they intended to use the heads of the nobles as the stairs for them to rise on the reformists’ side.

Or maybe, they simply did not want the big nobles to escape but want them to end as miserably as themselves.

The order in the city was entirely gone. Li Yao and his companions struggled to move forward in blood, screams, flames, and explosions. They countered countless mobsters who were on a killing spree. Their eyes were all bloodshot; their faces twisted so hard that they were foaming as they killed and sabotaged everything that they saw.

Those people were no different from animals.

No, even the most brutal animals did not have the evilness that surrounded them.

“The ‘ecological equilibrium’ of the billions of devils deep inside their souls has been completely broken.”

Long Yangjun said, “In other words, those people have been devilized. In the meantime, the violent brainwaves that are being released by their souls that have completely gone out of control are likely to raise quakes and resonations, resulting in the loss of control of even more devils in people’s heads. This is an unexpected but very typical ‘arrival of devils’.

“Now you should understand that I did not lie to you, right? How can there be so many devils that come from the extraterrestrial lands? Most of the devils live inside the heads and hearts of human beings in the first place.”

“Mankind, our father, is truly incomprehensible.”

With the slaughters and brutality reflected in their eyes, Li Xiaoming and Li Wenwen sighed in confusion. “If the purpose is to preserve the whole as much as possible, shouldn’t some people sacrifice themselves in order for the rest of the people to evacuate in order?

“If the city falls into chaos before the enemy comes, and everybody has a war against everybody else around them, how many of them will be able to escape in the end?

“It’s just like all the threads under our control are built for the general purpose. As long as it is beneficial for the completion of the task, any thread can be sacrificed without any hesitation or resistance. They will never act on their own.”

“Perhaps that is the feature of mankind or any life.”

Lost for words, Li Yao thought for a long time and could only say, “If you accept that a brilliant, ever-evolving civilization can only be born if everybody has independent self-awareness, you must also accept that some of the people are selfish and not to be communicated with. It is the inseparable bright and dark sides of the civilization of mankind.

“If everybody is turned into something like a machine or a thread, they will certainly sacrifice themselves without any hesitation or even any complaint under such circumstances… But if you think about it more carefully, that may be an even more horrible picture!”

“You do have a point, Dad.”

The kids thought carefully for a while. “Keeping the variation of the individuals so that they can view and modify the material world in hundreds of different modes of thinking is perhaps beneficial for the whole civilization to survive in the cruel universe, but keeping the independence of the individuals will inevitably lead to what is happening right now. It is a price that has to be paid. We… We need to consider carefully before we find the solution to the dilemma.”

The consideration was for the future. Right now, they had to seize every second to arrive at the Netherwind Channel.

After taking care of quite a few teams of ferocious mobsters, everybody was stained with blood or even fresh human tissues on their crystal suits, which became the best warning. Few other mobsters were bold enough to take advantage of the team that seemed rather small in number and kept a distance from them while they marched to the entrance of the Netherwind Channel.

When they passed by the largest hospital in town, Li Yao slightly slowed down.

The hospital had been fully inhabited—no, crammed with heavily wounded soldiers who were covered in bandages.

Most of the wounded soldiers couldn’t have basic treatment. Not only were the medical cabins filled with nutrition drugs few, but even their bandages hadn’t been replaced for days even though the bandages were dirty and filled with blood.

Had the soldiers not been strong, healthy fighters or low-level Immortal Cultivators, who boasted a high vitality, they would’ve kicked the bucket a long time ago.

But however vigorous they used to be, they were dying right now and did not seem to have much time left.

They had all suffered heavy wounds on the city defense line a few days back when they covered the nobles to retreat.

The moment they were no longer of any value, they were immediately abandoned by the nobles and piled up here like decaying, salty fish.

Even though Li Yao was a Cultivator, he couldn’t help but feel sympathetic toward the poor and pathetic Immortal Cultivators.

The only comfort was that Li Yao knew the army of the reformists would soon break into the downtown area and rescue the dying soldiers.

It was not exactly because Li Yao had high hopes for the moral standard of the reformists, but because the wounded soldiers were the best materials for propaganda. For nothing other than to reveal the ungratefulness and heartlessness of the big nobles, the reformists would take good care of the wounded soldiers and use them as the most powerful weapon in the psychological war, exactly like how they used Zhang Guanglong, the deputy leader of the Furious Tide Sect.

Soon after they left the hospital, the road ahead of them was completely jam packed with people. It was impossible to pass.

Further ahead, based on the highly-rising mountain was a splendid alloy gate that was dozens of meters in both length and width with a weight of almost ten thousand tons. Behind the gate, it was the body of the mountain that had been hollowed out and the main part of the Netherwind Channel.

It was a gate of survival and hope.

But right now, it had become a gate of death and destruction.

A hundred burning, exploding crystal tanks were heaped before the gate, blocking the road to the gate completely. A team of Exos with extremely fierce firepower was hiding on the fortresses on the two sides of the gate, raining flying swords, cannonballs, and scorching metal particles upon their partners a moment ago crazily.

The terrain here was extremely tricky. On the two sides of the road were high, steep precipices. No matter how many people had come from the downtown area, they had to cram forward through the narrow road in the middle. Therefore, all that it took was a few elites and enough firepower to claim countless lives. The place was barely conquerable.

When the mobsters marched forward, they were immediately blown back by the stormy forward. After more than ten futile charges, their morale hit the rock bottom.

As mobsters or even “devilized people” who had lost control of their souls in the first place, they were not determined to conquer the place. Instead of charging at the Netherwind Channel, they might as well go back to the downtown area to burn and kill without restraint!

But right at the moment, the ten-thousand-ton gate behind the burning tanks and the fixed firing points were slowly closed under the pull of the giant gears and hinges.

It seemed that the escape on the Netherwind Channel had reached the last moment, and few starships were available inside.

Should the gate be closed, it would be impossible for the people outside to squeeze in.

As a result, the soldiers and the bottom-level officers who lingered in the firing points to buy more time for the big nobles were immediately dumbfounded.

They had just killed thousands of their partners in the old days. The freshest blood was on their hands. Even if other people could all surrender to the reformists, how could they be accepted?

No, before they met the reformists, they would’ve been torn into shreds by the crazy beasts outside!

Realizing that, the soldiers and the bottom-level officers in all the fortresses and crystal tanks howled in fury and desperation, abandoning their positions and running toward the gap of the gate that hadn’t been entirely closed.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Some people even turned around the crystal cannons and fired at the gears and hinges at the edge of the gate, trying to destroy the locking system of the gate.

They all turned into crazy mobsters from accomplices of the nobles in half a second.

The mobsters who were about to retreat in their low morale were greatly encouraged, too. They shouted and passed the burning tanks, charging at the undefended gate.

Li Yao and his companions were naturally at the vanguard. Boosting the power rune arrays, they turned into five streaks of brightness and crawled in at the moment before the gate was closed.

Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

By the time everybody landed, almost twenty sections of broken arms had landed next to them, which all belonged to the guards who attempted to stop them from breaking in.

Like the gods of killing, Li Yao and Long Yangjun pushed forward in a storm of blades. Not any guard could resist their one attack. Even the crystal tanks were easily chopped and torn apart before they exploded in spluttering electric arcs.

After Li Yao gripped a crystal bomb that flew at him with only one hand and threw it back to where it came from, nobody had the courage to stand in the way of the mysterious yet strong squad.

Li Yao’s team pressed forward and reached the departure point of the Netherwind Channel without meeting any obstacle. It was a secret dock deep inside the mountain.

Tens of thousands of nobles and their squires were waiting for their starships to refill the fuel and prepare for the jump anxiously inside the dock. The news that the gate had been lost made them even more nervous. They hurried to ask their subordinates to work faster.

The Netherwind Channel was designed to accommodate one starship and accelerate it to a high speed to break into the four-dimensional space for a jump at a time. Also, the gap between two consecutive jumps was at least two minutes.

Almost eight starships were still waiting, which meant that it would take at least twenty minutes for everybody to evacuate.

But it was a big problem whether or not the mobsters who had broken into the gate would give them another twenty minutes.

“Let me go first!”

“I’ll go first. Just give me your terms!”

“Bulls*it! If you don’t let me go first, nobody will be leaving!”

Dozens of nobles who seemed to be CEOs, leaders, and captains, without their usual manners, opened their arms like crabs and argued with each other vehemently.

Suddenly, dozens of flying swords, in fatal brilliance, were focused on the most awe-inspiring noble of all of them, blowing up his spiritual shield as well the protective magical equipment. Then, his half body and his head were completely ripped apart, burnt up, and obliterated!

Before anyone realized what was going on, the cocky noble a moment ago had only half of his body that had been blackened left, which fell to the ground into powder!

“There’s no need to fight.”

Li Yao strode to the nobles and released the daunting vibe of the Divinity Transformation Stage as he casually said, “Get out of the way. We’ll go first!”