Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“It concerns another important research that we are working on.

The Observer continued. “Over the past thousand years of exploration of the ancient relics, we’ve discovered that many important facilities are still immaculate and as bright as new after billions of years of erosion. Judging from the casting materials and the anti-corrosion technology of the facilities, it doesn’t make sense at all. With the attributes of the materials themselves, the decay period of the elements cannot be changed no matter how sophisticated they are.

“After a batch of experts put in a lot of effort, they discovered a shocking phenomenon. Obviously, these were all facilities from the primordial ruins, and some were even components of the Skysplit Tower. Some magical equipment units seemed to have spent five million years in the river of time, while some other magical equipment units seemed to have spent fifty million years or even longer!

“Therefore, the experts discovered the secret of ‘change of the curvature of time’.

“Of course, it was not an unbelievable technique such as ‘time travel’ or ‘time reversal’. It was more like a special super hibernation that allowed the tower to stand in the center of the Pangu Universe for all eternity without being affected by time.

“I’m not very clear about the specific mechanism. You can think of it that way. Time has a dimension just like space does. The time that we perceive is the steady and continuous ‘three-dimensional time’. When the radius of the curvature of the three-dimensional time is changed, we will be able to jump to the mysterious, unbelievable ‘four-dimensional time’.

“Think about it. When sailing in the sea of stars, if you use a ‘four-dimensional space jump’, you will be able to cover a distance of tens of thousands of lightyears in the blink of an eye. You won’t be able to cross the distance even if you sail for hundreds of thousands of years. It is a change in space.

“It’s the same with the ‘time jump’. Once it is activated, the entire ancient relic will be able to jump forward in the waves of time from one peak of time to the next, saving the long journey in the valley. “All in all, the mechanism of the ‘change of curvature of time’ is not important. We’ve never considered it as a weapon, either. After all, we haven’t studied it deeply enough to analyze all the techniques, nor are we able to lock onto special targets. We can only make large-scale, indiscriminate changes. What’s the point of everyone being sealed in the river of time?

“However, when the army of ferocious beasts led by ‘Death’ and ‘Dragon Lotus’ marched into the primeval relics and savaged the City of Silver, and our leader ‘Gu Wuxin’ was preparing to launch his final attack, ‘Fuxi’, the mainframe crystal processor of the Heavenly Palace, suggested that we activate the Time Arc Varying Magical Equipment’ first and postpone the final decision by hundreds of thousands of years.

“What?”

Li Yao was greatly alarmed when he heard the name ‘Fuxi’.

Then, he realized that the ‘Fuxi’ mentioned by the Observer was the half super crystal processor left in the primeval relics after the division. It was not the same as the schemer behind the alliance who had awakened his self-awareness and was ambitious enough to represent mankind.

“Fuxi’ is the most cutting-edge technology of the Pangu Civilization. It has helped us solve countless problems over the thousands of years of research. Of course, we have applied a lot of technologies of the ancient civilization that we have analyzed to it, too, which has granted it extraordinary computational ability and deduction ability. When the Heavenly Palace was attacked, it was also Fuxi who controlled a lot of automatic defense facilities to resist the attack of the ferocious beasts.

The Observer continued. “Therefore, when the Fuxi proposed the proposal, ‘Gu Wuxin’, the leader, and all the other experts and scholars were confused, but they did not abandon the idea easily. Instead, they investigated the reason behind the proposal. They knew that the Fuxi would not speak without thinking.

“Fuxi did not tell us why it asked us to activate the magical equipment that can alter the curvature of time and enter the ‘super hibernation’ state. It only said that, according to the big data that it collected over the past thousand years and the current situation, we should combine the data and run the test again and again and come to the conclusion that the success rate of the ‘ultimate test’ that we are running right now is very low, far below 1%.

“However, if we can postpone the ‘ultimate test’ for hundreds of thousands of years, new variables might be introduced. The success rate will be increased to more than 1%, to 1.03%.

“The deduction involves a lot of algorithms of Chaos. For itself, the deduction process is in the black box state. It does not know what the so-called ‘variables’ are exactly. Therefore, it is just a suggestion.

“Our leader, as well as the experts and scholars, did not dare to underestimate the proposal of the Fuxis. After repeated studies, they believed that the ‘change of the curvature of time’ could be a fatal weapon. We’ve been living in the primeval relics for thousands of years. Generation after generation, we have been born and raised in this place. Our cells, genes, flesh, and soul have all adapted to the discontinuous, unstable time and space. Therefore, we can withstand the super long hibernation and wake up earlier. When we wake up, our combat ability will be much higher, too.

“As for the ferocious beasts, they are the deformed products of extremely unstable genes. They have never been affected by the changes of the out-of-time curvature. Therefore, it is very likely that they will die or wake up later than us after hundreds of thousands of years of hibernation. When they wake up, they will be very weak and lose most of their combat ability. “In other words, when we wake up from the super hibernation, it is very likely that they will still be rigid statues at our mercy. This is the conclusion that Gu Wuxin and many other experts and scholars came to after studying them.

“Anyways, the situation is already as bad as it can get. A couple hundred thousand years of hibernation won’t do us any harm. If worst comes to worst, we’ll still be in this uncontrollable state after several hundred thousand years. Why not give it a try?” “Just like that, with the activation of the ‘time curvature magical equipment’, the entire Heavenly Palace was soaked in the grey mist that was slowly solidifying. It jumped from the tip of one wave of time to the tip of another, which was ‘now’. You know everything that happened after that.

“It’s a pity that Gu Wuxin’s and the experts’ plans came to nothing. Most of the intruders did not die miserably during the freezing period, nor did they wake up a few minutes later than us. Everybody woke up almost at the same time. Many of them did not realize that time had frozen at all. The flames of war that spanned hundreds of thousands of years seemed to have never died down and were still burning

“However, the deduction of the Fuxis was not wrong. I finally know what the ‘variables’ it predicted were. They did not refer to the freezing of time itself at all, but to the other challengers who broke into the primeval relics for the ultimate test hundreds of thousands of years later, namely you, human beings!

“You are the biggest variable and the reason why the odds of passing the ultimate test are higher than 1%!

The Observer looked at Li Yao in expectation.

Li Yao was so excited that he couldn’t help but clench his fists. “You don’t mind human beings taking the ultimate test?”

“Why should I mind? The ‘Progenitor Replication’ project that my father was in charge of was meant to be the ultimate test for human beings!

The Observer smiled and said, “Although the situation right now is completely different from what we expected, although human beings are not under the control of the Pangu civilization, and even the Pangu civilization is gone, and human beings have established their own glorious civilization, none of that matters.

“Me, us, my father, and every expert, researcher, and leader of the Pangu Civilization, ‘Gu Wuxin’, we are too eager to know the secrets behind the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the ultimate test, and the black wall. If our civilization is destined to fall, we will die without regrets if we can get a glimpse of the shocking secret before we are annihilated.

“Gu Wuxin, the Way of Mass Destruction, Long Lianzi, my father, and I are not confident that we can pass the ultimate test at all. What’s wrong if you human beings introduce new ways of thinking and new ways to solve problems?

Taking a deep breath, Li Yao pondered for a long time and asked, “What is the so-called ‘ultimate test’ exactly?”.

“Shouldn’t you be the one to answer the question? After all, the tower was built by your ‘genetic prototypes’, or in other words, your ancestors!”

The Observer continued, “For billions of years, a hundred ancient civilizations have barged into this place, trying to crack the mysteries of the ultimate test. The Pangu civilization has been stationed here for thousands of years, too. We’ve been thinking hard about the answers to the mysteries hidden in the depths of the Heaven’s Origin Sector. If possible, we would like to dismantle the Heaven’s Origin Sector one brick after another, grind them into powder, and digest all the powder. But we’ve got nothing in the end.

“Nobody knows the rules of the ‘ultimate test’, nobody knows the conditions to pass the test, and nobody even knows when the final test will begin and end.

“Judging from the results of our research on the corpses of the previous hundred civilizations, the ultimate test has begun since the moment an intelligent being stepped into the ancient relics. The wilderness outside, which is made of countless space fragments, is a test. The city, which is made of debris from billions of years ago, is a test, including the worlds inside the Heaven’s Origin Tower that are full of killing intent. The snow mountain below our feet is part of the test, too.

“For different testers, the rules to pass the test are different. Maybe for a certain civilization, they can pass through the ‘Thunder Valley’ or the ‘Gravity Sea’ in such a way. But if the testers of another civilization follow the same pattern, it is possible that they will be wiped out ruthlessly. In fact, for different civilizations, the number of checkpoints inside the Tower of Heaven will change weirdly. When some civilizations enter the Tower of Heaven, they will have to face dozens, if not hundreds, of checkpoints such as the ‘Thunder Valley’, the ‘Gravity Sea’, and the ‘Snowy Mountain’. When the testers of other civilizations enter the Tower of Heaven, it will be like they have walked into the ‘VIP Passage’ and can reach… the final question.”