Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Along with the description of the voice, black silhouettes once again appeared in Li Yao’s sea of consciousness. One could vaguely make out the bizarre shapes of people.

Some of them were wreathed in glamorous flames. Some of them had sharp limbs on their arms and back. Some of them had glamorous wings. Some of them had tentacles that could be both long and short at the same time, as if they had been combined with an octopus. Some of them seemed ordinary, but they could release sharp spiritual waves that congregated into sharp blades.

The super-powered Cultivators ran wild on the rusted desert with their superpowers. They killed each other, conquered broken towns, explored military bases that were full of weeds and shrubs, raised deadly beasts that were highly mutated, and even tried to refine the first batch of magical equipment with poor technology, which was to melt the powder of crystals into flames and metals to build the most primitive storm bolters.

Just like that, the organization of the mutants gradually expanded and almost occupied the entire wasteland.

“At that time, the ‘Radiation Clan’ and the ‘modified people’ who stayed on the ground, especially in the heavy radiation zones, were a bunch of guys who hated the authorities and the underground world.

The voice said, “They believed that the wars initiated by those in power destroyed their homes, killed their family, and turned them into ghosts. But the nobles, magnates, and their lackeys fled to the underground and hid themselves in the shelters and the underground military bases comfortably, escaping the scourge of the war. But they were left on the ground, enduring the suffering that was worse than death.

“Therefore, after the Radiators and the modified people grasped the superpowers, the order on the ground was slightly restored. The light weapons left in the abandoned military bases were excavated, and the ‘superpower legions’ were established. The vanguard was immediately pointed at the underground.

“They are going to dig out all the shelters and kill all the rich and powerful, as well as their family and friends, to vent their fury because of the thermonuclear war.

“In the meantime, the mutations on the ground, the surging spiritual gas, and the expansion of the Radiators and the modified people were naturally discovered by the governments that were still functioning underground. The remaining forces of the superpowers could not allow such precious and dangerous forces like ‘spiritual energy’ to fall into the hands of a bunch of animals and lunatics.

“A new, smaller but more intense war broke out.

“This war can be regarded as a continuation of the Third World War, or it can be regarded as an independent war. It is known in history as the ‘Superhuman War’.

“The two sides of the battle, the Radiators and the modified people on the ground, against the leaders and the elite soldiers in the shelters. One side has the brutal instincts honed in the wasteland and the superpowers brought by the crystals, while the other side is highly organized and disciplined. The Iron Legion is armed with industrial weapons and the ultimate killing machines.

“The claws and teeth against the turrets, the wings against the missiles, the howls of the beasts against the roars of the tanks, and the mobs with spiritual energy against the steel mincing machines that were moving in an orderly manner. The outcome was self-explanatory. The Radiators and the modified people were utterly defeated. The underground people secured a complete victory and grasped all the meteorite fragments. From then on, the study of spiritual energy was incorporated into the rails of industrialization, science, and large-scale application. The civilization officially entered a new era.

“Other than that, the ‘super battle’ brought an unexpected benefit, which laid a solid foundation for the salvation and advancement of our civilization.

“Before the ‘Supernatural War’ broke out, there was still a deep grudge and hatred between the superpowers below the ground. Most of them still clung to the concept of ‘nation’ from decades ago and regarded other countries as their greatest enemies.

“However, the appearance of the superpowered people and the outbreak of the ‘Supernatural War’ transformed the main conflict between the two countries into one between the underground government and the forces on the ground. When the first batch of radiationers and modified people with superpowers from the ground marched into the underground shelters and launched their attacks, many underground governments that were unprepared were seriously damaged and almost broke apart. They lost the legitimacy and control of the government forever.

“It is safe to say that, although the struggle between the Radiators and the modified people failed, the old national system was seriously undermined. In order to fight against the unpredictable and dangerous superpowered people, the leaders who hated each other and were full of doubts had to unite. The dialogue mechanism that had been interrupted for decades was restored. A new global coalition organization named ‘Earth Council’ was established on the remnants of the United Nations.

“The purpose of the Earth Council was to destroy the threats and challenges posed by the mutants.

“The remnants of the superpowers and the ultranationalists would not abandon their country’s glory and hatred so easily.

“Before, after the ‘Battle of Super Spirits’ was over, when the Radiation Clan and the modified people were completely defeated and all the special ability users were under the national surveillance and control, when the research on spiritual energy was formalized and the great industrialization took place, the Earth Council only existed in name. The governments of various countries were about to embark on a new path of Cold War and full-scale confrontation.

“At that time, the scientists of various countries received a shocking prophecy from the research of the meteorite debris.

“The falling meteoroids a few years ago were just the vanguard of a larger meteoroid shower. They were just ripples in front of the raging tides. They were just the scattered raindrops before the storm.

“The real main force of the meteoroid shower has entered the edge of the Solar System. In a hundred to a hundred and twenty years, they will attack the central area of the Solar System along the trajectory of the vanguard. “Of course, from the scale of the universe, the size of the Earth is so ‘small’ and it is moving fast in orbit. The odds of the meteoroid shower hitting the Earth directly are not very high.

“The meteoroid shower is not coming for Earth.

“Their target is most likely the most massive celestial body in the solar system, which is the eternal star that grants us energy and life—the sun.

“Judging from the amount of crystals contained in the meteoroids and the amount of energy they can trigger, if the main force of the meteoroid shower hits the sun, it will definitely trigger a chain reaction and trigger the biggest solar storm in billions of years.

“By then, half of the solar system will be drowned in the flames of destruction. Water, Venus, Earth, and even Mars will be swallowed by the sun. Even if the storm sweeps over the planet for only a few seconds, it will be enough to burn the atmosphere of the planet and vaporize all the rivers, lakes, and oceans. Even if we hide in the shelters thousands of meters below the ground, we will not be spared. Even if we survive the storm and return to the bare earth, how are we going to survive it?

“This is the real catastrophe, the complete destruction of the Earth. Nobody can escape from it.

The voice paused for a long time on purpose so that Li Yao could consider the seriousness and desperation of the word ‘catastrophe’.

It was true that, even in the forty-thousand-year-old era of Cultivation, Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators who had grasped the most advanced spiritual energy and a strong body seemed insignificant and helpless when they were faced with the solar storms of the Empyrean Terminus Sector and the Empyrean Terminus Planet. If the intensity of the solar storms had been increased by 1%, the entire Empyrean Terminus Planet might have been destroyed.

In the primeval era billions of years ago, when the study of spiritual energy had just begun and there were no sources of spiritual energy except for a few meteorites, what about the Primeval Race?

“The experts and scholars of various countries reached the same conclusion independently from different perspectives and proved the authenticity of the apocalypse.

The voice said, “This is a catastrophe a hundred times more terrible than a thermonuclear war. No nation can resist it alone. Threatened by the destruction of their civilization, the remaining forces of the superpowers finally let go of their hatred and started trying to save their civilization in the framework of the ‘Earth Council’. From that day on, the concept of ‘nation’ gradually retreated from the stage of our civilization, and the Earth Council became the supreme governing body of our civilization.

“The time limit is only a hundred years. Obviously, we cannot stop the meteoroid shower from attacking the solar system, nor can we stop the solar storm from breaking out. It is also impossible for us to create a shield that covers the entire planet. The only feasible plan with a 1% success rate is to run away. In a hundred years, we will develop advanced or ‘make do’ navigation technology in the sea of stars. We will carry all the survivors and run away from the planet. We will wander in the universe and go to somewhere far away.

“Let’s put aside the difficulties and obstacles we will have to face in order to develop the best navigation technology in the sea of stars in a hundred years. The biggest question is, where are we going to run to?

“The sea of stars is vast, but there are very few planets that are habitable for the intelligent carbon-based creatures. If a star is the first factor of life, then the closest star to the sun is ‘Proxima Centauri’, which is 4.2 lightyears away. Even if we can cruise at 1% of the speed of light, it will still take us 420 years to reach it. However, Proxima Centauri is a ‘red dwarf’. It is more than half the size of the sun, and its temperature is much lower and lackluster. It is impossible for it to provide us with much energy. It is also difficult for us to create a fertile, habitable planet.

“If the neighboring stars are so difficult to reach and utilize, it is even more so for the stars hundreds of lightyears away. Even if we develop advanced hibernation technology and hibernate all the refugees for a thousand years, it will still be difficult to find a place of rebirth where milk and honey flow among billions of stars.

“Just when all the astronomers and biologists were troubled by the question and had a headache, an energy scientist came up with a shocking idea.

“Since we are looking for a place with abundant resources and energy, and the meteorites that land on Earth are so marvelous that they boast endless vitality and mysteries, why don’t we march toward the source of the meteoroid shower?