Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Who is he?”

“The game is over. What do you mean? What game?”

“Hey, hey, hey. Are you one of the crew members on the bridge? Did the meteoroid shower break the shell of the starship? Send someone to repair it. We need to continue the celebration!”

The citizens who had just fallen into confusion and panic, upon seeing that someone had come out to take “responsibility”, actually resumed their innocent temperament and started shouting like spoiled children.

The flowers growing in the sterile rooms had never experienced the harshness and ugliness of the outside world. It was impossible for them to imagine the appearance of evil and the thoughts of people like the puppet king, Lu Qingchen.

In the middle of the skyscrapers, in the middle of hundreds of giant flashing walls, there was deep pity in the eyes of the fat man who had a weird black spot on his forehead.

He seemed to feel sorry and angry for his ignorant compatriots. He felt sorry for their misfortune and angry at their failure.

“Tm sorry. There are no celebrations, no flowers, no food, and no wine. There are no workers to help you restore order. Your so-called order and your beautiful life are gone forever.”

The black spot on the center of the fat man’s eyebrow extended toward the center of his eyebrow, making his round eyes look even deeper, like two black swirls. “Because I blew up your ‘cycling machine’. Yes. The perfect magical equipment that claimed to provide endless energy and resources was blown

up one minute ago.

The picture blinked. A corner of the shell of Eternal Brightness appeared on dozens of giant light beams.

A shocking hole was left on the starship. Countless scraps, fuel, and the broken limbs of the crew members congregated into a fountain of steel and blood and sprayed into the dark vacuum. Very soon, they were frozen, shattered, and obliterated.

“Look, there’s nothing left.”

The fat man smiled and opened his hands.

There was nothing but silence. The noisy and restless crowd seemed to have fallen into a great nightmare in the next second. It was even quieter than a tomb.

All the residents of Bright City were dumbfounded. Their hearts were frozen, and they almost forgot to breathe.

For them, the ‘Cycle Machine’ was like a sky that would never collapse and a sun that would never die down. All their beautiful lives and even their small happiness of survival depended on the functioning of the ‘Cycle Machine’. No one had ever thought of what to do if the ‘Cycle Machine’ malfunctioned.

Everyone had fooled themselves by telling each other that the ‘Cycle Machine’ was absolutely reliable and would never malfunction.

But what they were seeing right now was ten thousand times worse than a malfunction.

The ‘cycle’ had been blown up by the lunatic!

All of a sudden, the entire Bright City fell into absolute silence. Everyone was so shocked that they forgot to react. It was not until an entire minute later that someone burst into tears. Very soon, the crying became continuous. When a spoiled child was faced with a problem that they could not solve, crying

was their only reaction.

“Why are you so sad? Even though the ‘recycling machine’ has been running at a high speed, it is just a trick to fool you. It cannot provide a grain, a screw, or a crystal the size of a fingernail at all.

The fat man in the picture said peacefully, “It’s been three hundred years. For three hundred years, you and your ancestors have been trapped in a big lie all the time, reduced to muddleheaded experimental subjects without you knowing. There was no ‘war that affected the entire universe’ at all. The

outside world was not corrupted or destroyed. No. You are not the last human beings. You are merely monkeys in the cages of the zoo.

“Somebody locked you up in this damn ship and raised you to be fat and healthy in order to harvest your souls, observe your reactions, and test the fastest, most stable, and most efficient way to turn the proud human beings full of self-awareness into… moving rotten meat.

“You don’t believe me? You are still fooling yourself and ignoring the suspicious points that are everywhere around the city? Open your eyes and see everything clearly!”

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

The picture changed again. It was the scene where ‘Eternal Brightness’ had just been built hundreds of years ago.

A lot of concepts and implementation details of the ‘Eternal Brightness Project’ poured down from the walls of the skyscrapers like a waterfall of data.

It included the scenes where a lot of human beings were sent to ‘Glorious City’ after struggling in metal cocoons and being brainwashed.

Brainwashing alone was not enough to build a firm belief. In the beginning, many people did not believe that the outside world was completely destroyed, or they thought that they would rebuild the world at any cost.

Those people were screened and sent out of Eternal Brightness for ‘handling’.

The only people left were those who were weak-willed, content with the status quo, and hated taking risks. Generation after generation, they lived and reproduced in this place, becoming more and more carefree and carefree. Eventually, they became what they were today.

“This—this—this is impossible!”

Countless residents of Bright City still had traces of the previous cake battle on their faces, but the fat below the cake was already shivering crazily. Their tears gushed out uncontrollably because of shock and fear, as if they were pigs who had just found themselves in a slaughterhouse after being tied up

bya conveyor belt.

“Ican understand your shock. Right now, your minds must be blank. So, I will allow you to be dumbfounded for ten seconds. But remember, your time is very precious. Survival is a race against time. It is a fight to the death. Ten seconds at most. Cherish your right to survival.”

The picture on the forehead of the plump man changed again. He seemed to be using the black spot as a substitute for the regular gestures. Very soon, he retrieved hundreds of pictures of the current status of the Star Ocean Imperium and the Sanctuary Alliance.

The grey mist, the cold space, the complicated, rusted tubes, the ‘soldier bees’ and the ‘worker bees’ that were wearing raincoats or chemical suits.

14.255.53.49

Thousands of starships gathered, clashed, exploded, and were destroyed. The experts stomped on the sea of stars and shattered the vacuum. The flags that covered hundreds of thousands of kilometers were flapping, igniting the fire in everyone’s heart.

In the magnificent Empyreal Terminus Sector and Empyreal Terminus, countless cities were connected to each other and swallowed the mountains and basins. Even though they were thousands of meters below the ground, they were still marked by the brilliant lights of human beings. The population

was ten thousand times more than that of Eternal Brightness!

The impactful pictures congregated into a destructive torrent and blew everything that the residents of Light City believed in into pieces.

“ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Confusion was written all over their faces. Their mouths were wide open, and all they could do was scream, not knowing what to do.

“Do you see? This is the real world. Although it is dark, cruel, cruel, and bloody, and full of crazy flames of war forever, it is the only way that the greatest strength of mankind can be released in the most intense collisions, the most painful suffering, and the most blissful moment. The power that cannot

be described by any super crystal processor, the power of seven emotions and six desires, and the great power of human nature!

The black spot between the fatty’s eyebrows turned into a giant exclamation mark.

Then, he bowed to the residents of the City of Light, who were both confused and at a loss, and said, “I almost forgot to introduce myself. You may call me ‘Puppet King’. I am your compatriot, a warrior who is unwilling to yield to any power, to endure any restraints, and to discover the greatest strength

of human nature at the cost of everything. I am a warrior who has pushed the pride of mankind to the limit and made the entire universe his enemy!

“Twant to save everyone. I want to crush this damn cage and laboratory. I want to restore everyone to the appearance of a true human being. I want everyone to live on proudly and fight to the end!

“However.

“The great name of ‘human beings’ is not something that you are born with, nor is it something that can be tainted by the walking dead. We are not born with the right to be the ‘spirits of all living creatures’. Can you really become real human beings? Is it worth my effort to save you? Hehe. It all depends

on your performance now.

“Fight! For yourselves, for the pride of mankind, fight with your instincts!

“Here are the rules. Listen carefully. I will only say it once.

“The ‘cycle’ has been shattered by me. Of course, it cannot provide any resources even when it is intact. All the resources that you’ve squandered over the past hundreds of years are inputted from the outside world, like bananas for monkeys.

“But now that I’ve caused such a large-scale destruction on Eternal Brightness, I believe that the ‘Project Eternal Brightness’ is coming to an end. You will end up being ordinary ‘work bees’ that are sent to the depths of the mines or the bottom of the starship to work until you die, won’t you?

“Oh, looking at your fat head, big ears, and osteoporotic appearance, you don’t seem to have the ability to do high-intensity work. In order to avoid wasting resources, you might directly ‘handle’ them? Well, it’s quite possible. It’s like cleaning a petri dish after an experiment.

“All in all, you are basically dead.

“Do you want to live? Do you want to… truly live? There is only one way.

“Look, this is the structural design of Eternal Brightness. This is the route to the cockpit and the critical cabins. I’ve already hacked into the cockpit. I can open all the gates on the way and rush into the cockpit to take over the starship and all the escape capsules!

“I know that you don’t know the first thing about steering a starship. It’s alright. I will monitor the entire process and help you.

“Lalso know that most of you are ordinary people who don’t even have the strength to truss a chicken. Of course, there are a lot of fully-armed warriors in the outer area of the starship. Maybe most of you will be killed, but you will have to go through the test of blood and fire.. I believe you’ve all heard the

phrase ‘an ant can bite an elephant to death’?”