Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

In front of Li Yao’s eyes, although it was bizarre, it was a harmonious picture. Deep inside the dark and cold tunnel in the thin, man-made membrane of the asteroid belt, a child whose eyes were glittering in gold was hanging out with a bunch of half-human-half-demon children.

Just like the adult miners, they had shouldered the burden of life too early and allowed the whips and shackles to pierce deep into their flesh. Under the threat of berating, whipping, and death, they grew tenaciously like weeds and cockroaches. In the rare free time, the child whose eyes were glittering with gold gradually became the leader of all the other children. He led the children to collect the debris of the broken mining magical equipment in the depths of the mines, repair them, and modify them into all kinds of weird new magical equipment. He also led the children to deal with the supervisors and the mine owners in various ways to buy more food and rest time.

Deep inside the young man’s eyes, there was too much maturity that did not belong to his age or even his era.

The new magical equipment refined by him out of the remains of outdated magical equipment was far beyond the category of ‘mining magical equipment’. Even the crystal tanks that the supervisor rode on could be pierced through easily.

Gradually, when he and his companions turned from children into teenagers and from teenagers to teenagers, they were no longer loose sand. Instead, he had gathered them into an iron fist, a saber, an army, and a bunch of furious, lawless thugs who were willing to perish together with the stars! “When I grew up in the asteroid mines, the storm of resistance swept from the center of the sea of stars to every world under the reign of the demon race. Resistance groups and rebels appeared in our asteroid mines, too. However, at that time, the resistance groups and the rebels were still at a very low level. They were not so much well-trained warriors as civilians who were roaring because they could not bear it any longer but did not know what to do after that.

The picture that the gravekeeper presented was gradually dyed with intense redness. “Like other miners, my foster parents joined the resistance and participated in a strike on a large scale. The resistance at that time lacked clear goals and ideologies, and they never thought of overthrowing the reign of the demon race with violence. They only hoped to negotiate with the mine owner to reduce the astronomical mining quota and improve the working and living environment of the miners in order to reduce the death rate. That was all.

“My foster parents and my uncles all thought that such reasonable conditions would definitely be accepted and that there would be room for negotiation.

“But they’ve underestimated the despicableness, cruelty, and shamelessness of their rulers. Or rather, they don’t know how crazy and brutal their rulers are when they are faced with a surging tide of resistance. “Faced with the demands of the miners, the mine owner pretended to agree at first. He only said that he needed time to negotiate with the miners and pacify them temporarily. But it was just a stalling tactic. When the fully-armed army arrived at the asteroid mine, the mine owner immediately turned hostile and started a bloody slaughter.

“More than half of the miners, including my foster parents, were butchered.

“My friends and I joined the resistance, too. But in front of the well-trained professional soldiers and the fierce arsenals, our half-awakened abilities and the messy talents of my friends were absolutely useless.

“I remember that I tore apart dozens of biochemical beasts bare-handed. My brain almost spontaneously combusted because of over-exhaustion. The protective mechanism of my body was triggered automatically, and I passed out.

An unbelievably hot-blooded scene appeared in front of Li Yao’s eyes. The young man with bright gold eyes had a layer of short hair growing on his lips. The edges of his face were gradually revealed, too. The bones of his body were starting to show, too.

In the meantime, the bulging muscles all over his body when his blood was boiling in fury were even more unbelievable than the reactive plate armor of crystal suits. He seemed to be wearing armor made of flesh and blood outside of his normal body.

His hair, which had been standing up like iron needles, was dancing crazily. He was jumping up and down on the surface of the planet in fury, searching for the traces of the biochemical beasts and the experts of the demon race everywhere. Even though the barrage was raining upon him, he did not care at all. He dashed through the gaps of the bullets and drew close to the enemy.

Li Yao had seen him blow up the most solid bone armor of a biochemical beast more than ten meters tall barehanded.

Then, they saw him carrying a demon beast that weighed at least dozens of tons and rushing forward like a natural hammer, smashing all the demons who failed to dodge into meat pies.

It was not until all the demons on the battlefield considered him to be a monster and bombarded him with all their firepower that he finally staggered and fell to the ground despite the heavy fire. His blood, which was bright gold, had soaked the entire planet.

“I’m very lucky.

“If it were ten thousand years in the middle of the ‘Great Dark Age of Thirty Thousand Years’, when the reign of the demon race was at its peak and the social structure was relatively stable, monsters such as myself would’ve been sent to the most advanced biochemical laboratories to be dissected and studied.

“But by the end of the Great Dark Age, the reign of the demon race had already collapsed. The demon emperors and the demon gods were minding their own business and planning for their own benefits.

“Our mine owner lost almost half of his miners in the slaughter to suppress the insurrection. The mining base was a mess, too. There was no telling when production would resume. The daily economic losses were astronomical. He was in so much pain that he wanted to die.

“The amazing abilities that I showed in the battle made his eyes light up. He thought that he had everything he needed. Not only did he not kill me, he even helped me treat and replenish my nutrition. Of course, he did not forget to plant dozens of barriers that he thought were ‘absolutely safe’ inside my body. “After a while, my surviving companions and I were sold to an arena at an unbelievably high price. “It was a place named ‘Death Valley’, perhaps the most bloody, dark, and stinky place in the Great Dark Age of thirty thousand years. “I fought with all kinds of nightmare beasts in the ‘Valley of Death’ and participated in cruel and insane competitions. Through the grinding of blood, weapons, mountains of corpses, and seas of blood, I gradually recalled many things, including the methods to train and build war machines, the tactics to command the ground troops and fleets, how to boost morale and the astronomical resources to operate… In short, every time I was seriously wounded and my soul was seriously overdrafted, something would appear in my brain out of nowhere, something that could help me be reborn and advance by leaps and bounds.

“Other than my old friends, I also got to know a lot of gladiators. After years of consecutive victories, I became the crownless king of all the gladiators. They shared a similar background to me and had a blood feud with the rulers of the demon race. They were mortal enemies.

“Once again, I rebuilt my own army. “This time, I will not allow myself to fail again. Never!

Dozens of flickering pictures appeared in front of Li Yao’s eyes.

The young man in the picture, whose eyes were glittering with gold, was wearing the hide of a ferocious beast and holding a saber that was stained with blood. Faced with the ferocious beasts or the war machines that were made of iron and steel, he leapt into the sky fearlessly and slashed his saber down. In the glamorous scenes where broken limbs were flying, flames, and electric arcs, he gradually grew into a real young man. After every satisfying slash, when the young man with golden eyes landed on the ground, more and more gladiators were standing behind him. In the end, a murderous army was indeed gathered around him.

“I taught the gladiators around me the wisdom and techniques that I awakened in a trance. I taught and improved them according to their features. Then, I built our own armed forces in secret with the remnants of magical equipment around us. Before the master of the ‘Valley of Death’ discovered us, a strong troop of human beings that had not appeared for tens of thousands of years had already taken shape.

The tomb watcher’s voice was full of mockery. “When the owner of the ‘Valley of Death’ discovered that dozens of seals were not enough to suppress my strength, it was already too late. I appeared right next to his bed and blew up his head before he could jump up from the bed.

“I’m afraid you already know what happened next.

“I rose to fame with an army of gladiators and won every battle. I defeated all the fleets of the demon race that came to annihilate us and gradually unified all the rebels and resistance groups. I became the well-deserved leader of the rebels. In only a hundred years, I completed the cause of overthrowing the reign of the demon race, tearing apart the ‘Great Dark Age of Thirty Thousand Years’, and reuniting the entire universe!

A magnificent battlefield appeared in front of Li Yao’s eyes. The rise of the Supreme Emperor in only a hundred years was reduced to less than half a minute.

In half a minute, he saw with his own eyes how the army of gladiators under the command of the Supreme Emperor seized the arsenals of the enemy, how they occupied the crystal mines one after another, how they developed and refined the first batch of crystal suits, how they carefully built the starships that belonged to the human beings, and how they won the most gratifying victories. It wasn’t that the rebel army had never encountered a desperate situation where they were at the end of their rope and had to be ambushed from all sides. But every time, the Supreme Emperor would use inconceivable methods to reverse the situation and counterattack in a desperate situation. In the end, the enemy, who was certain to win, was defeated and completely routed. Many victories had left Li Yao dumbfounded and amazed. He found it hard to believe no matter how he thought about it. It was not ‘as if God was helping him’, but ‘the Supreme Emperor is God, the ‘True Destiny’ of the Pangu Universe. No force could stop his rise and progress!

Li Yao had once thought that his miraculous rise was a legend.

It was not until he saw the rise of the Supreme Emperor that he realized what a real ‘legend’ was. His own rise could only be described as low-key and conservative.