Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Please?”

Dream Traveler extended another invitation to Li Yao.

“Wait. I have a question.”

Pondering for a moment, Li Yao said, “I want to know whether or not Zhang Daniu accepted your guidance and woke up his previous life with your help. By logic, this guy is quite suspicious, isn’t he?”

“Of course.”

“We are not targeting anybody in particular,” Dream Traveler said. “Even our own people have to undergo rigorous tests before they return to the Ark. Of course, we cannot miss the author of ‘Forty Thousand Years of Cultivators’. We tested him earlier and traced his memories from his previous five lives under my guidance. There was nothing special about him.

“Oh?”

Li Yao was greatly interested. “What did he do in his previous five lives?”

“Going back in time from this life, I’ve been an online writer for three consecutive lives. You know, writing some weird, sexy, popular books, lying to ignorant teenagers, and fooling them.”

Dream Traveler said, “From the previous life to the fourth life, the development of the reincarnation world was slightly different. There was no such thing as a ‘network novel’. He was a reporter of a tabloid. He wrote some celebrity affairs, made some shocking headlines, went to court with a minor celebrity, and so on.

“In his fifth life, he was still engaged in writing, but he was an author of adult action novels, which seemed to be his specialty. After years of hard work, he finally made a name for himself in the industry, only to be caught in an anti-corruption operation and sentenced to justice. That was basically everything.

“All in all, he is different from the normal ‘Observers’. He is just an ordinary person with no moral bottom line. The original purpose of his creation was purely for the sake of benefits. Or in his own words, ‘money and beautiful women’ did not inject souls into his work. Logically speaking, it is very difficult for such a person to awaken, let alone advance into an Observer. However, a lot of things that he could not write at all happened to appear in . Perhaps this is why Red Pole Star is particularly interested in him.

“In any case, although he was a greedy, lecherous, third-rate writer and tabloid reporter who was willing to write anything for money in his previous five lives, it was true that he had never been related to the Heaven’s Origin Sector at all. He was just one of the most inconspicuous nobodies. When the Earth was restarted, it was just a series of insignificant data. Even if the Heaven’s Origin Sector really wanted to find a spy, they would absolutely not find him.”

“Understood.”

Li Yao nodded. He took a deep breath and sat on the iron chair.

/

The grey mist lady and Dream Traveler were both relieved.

Li Yao suddenly asked Traveler Meng, “Do you have a watch? What time is it?”

“Yes.”

Dream Traveler took out a delicate, vintage pocket watch from his pocket. The shell of the watch was carved with eight-tentacled octopuses in the shape of a helix, giving off an oceanic vibe. “It’s 8:05 p.m.”

“A few seconds?”

Li Yao asked again.

“A few seconds?”

Dream Traveler was dazed for a moment.

“Yes, to the second. Tell me.”

Li Yao said coldly.

“Uh, it was 8:05:32.”

Dream Traveler frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Li Yao blinked his eyes. There was confusion on his face, as if he didn’t know why he asked for the time so precisely.

But he soon forgot about it and nodded at Traveler Meng. “Since it is a rule of the Ark Foundation, let’s begin!”

“Alright. Please relax and watch the clock. Watch the hour, minute, and second hand.”

Holding the watchchain, Dream Traveler dangled the watch in front of Li Yao and shook it.

The hour hand emitted a gloomy blue glow, the minute hand flickered with a ghostly dark green color, and the second hand flickered with a burning red glow. The small pocket watch emitted clicking mechanical sounds that filled the entire warehouse, suppressing the storm outside and causing the entire world to become exceptionally tranquil.

Staring at the pocket watch, Li Yao’s eyes turned into two immeasurable swirls. In the trance, his senses seemed to be hundreds of times sharper than before. He could clearly hear every breath and heartbeat of Dream Traveler, the grey mist lady, and the Spartan soldiers, as well as the sound of their blood flowing in every vein of their body. He could also see through the containers and see the awakened soldiers who were armed to the teeth and hiding in the darkness. He could even sense the torrential rain outside the military camp and count every drop in the wind.

Hum! Hum! Hum! Hum!

Countless mosquitoes unique to the rainforest were dancing around the dim lights on the beams.

No. Not ‘countless’, but 432 mosquitoes.

The 432 mosquitoes seemed to have turned into a clear mark that was deeply engraved in Li Yao’s heart.

“Very good. I can already vaguely feel your soul. What a beautiful, magnificent, and profound thing…”

Dream Traveler’s eyes were beaming with brilliance behind his gold-rimmed glasses, too. His eyes were like hazy chimneys that were spreading toward Li Yao. “Read a paragraph with me next. Don’t mind it. The paragraph itself is meaningless. It is just meant to resonate with our brainwaves so that I can dig into your memories. If you agree, blink your left eye.”

Li Yao remembered everything around him, including the bouncing pointer, the heartbeat of the awakened Cultivators, the distribution of every raindrop in the wind, and the trajectories of the 432 mosquitoes above his head. Then, he blinked his left eye.

“Blood-black nothingness begins to weave a network.

Dream Traveler said softly.

“Blood-black nothingness begins to weave a network.

Li Yao repeated stiffly.

“The cells are connected, connected, and connected to the main trunk.

Dream Traveler’s voice turned even darker.

“The cells are connected, connected, and connected to the main trunk.

Li Yao’s voice turned low, too. His pupils gradually expanded, and he was lost, as if he had been drowned in endless memories.

“Therefore, against the darkness, a pillar of water with a fountain spurting upwards appeared.

Dream Traveler’s voice was getting softer and softer, turning from a feather to dust. The pocket watch in his hand was shaking slower and slower, too, as if it had been frozen in midair by some weird force. In the end, it was really at a 45-degree angle from the ground and stopped moving!

“Therefore, against the darkness, a spring… that was spurting upward… appeared.

Before Li Yao could finish his poem, he found that the entire world had turned into a fuzzy swirl. Everything around him seemed to be a combination of sand and smoke. The secret port in the depths of the jungle was gone. What replaced it was a city with skyscrapers and glass walls that looked like ten thousand mirrors.

He was dreaming again. He was back in the maze that had been repeated many times over the past week.

However, this time, his mind was particularly clear. He knew that he was dreaming, and he knew that his real self was sitting in the warehouse of the military camp at the port. It was a ‘clear dream’.

“I…”

Li Yao saw himself.

He seemed to have two perspectives at the same time. One was the ‘god’s perspective’ that looked down from the sky at a 45-degree angle, while the other was the ‘first person’s perspective’ that he was in. Through different perspectives, he was quickly recalling his previous life and the soul-stirring and brilliant battles.

“So, I was already a member of the resistance organization in my previous life.

Watching the battles of superpowers that were even more brilliant than those in sci-fi movies, Li Yao suddenly realized what was going on. “No wonder I have a natural sense of familiarity with the ‘Ark Foundation’ even though I dislike the ‘Apocalyptic Organization’. I even feel that the Red Pole, their leader, is very familiar. As it turns out, I was a ‘Prison Breaker’ in my previous life!

And this was not the end.

Li Yao could clearly feel a force pushing him from behind, as if a pair of wings that could allow him to travel through memories had been inserted into his body. Presumably, this was the super ability of Dream Traveler.

The city turned into ruins in the thermonuclear war and was restarted in the ruins. The maze of mirrors made of countless glass walls collapsed one by one, but they were soon reconstructed into a new maze that was even larger and more complicated. Li Yao searched for his past in the dream and saw that he was almost always a member of the resistance groups in more than ten reincarnations. At the very least, he was an Awakener who woke up naturally and discovered the ‘Earth BUG’ before he was brutally wiped out. He even captured a memory piece from a long, long time ago. He recalled that he had been a mechanic and a racer in a certain life and passed through a ‘Earth BUG’ while he was racing.

It had been a long, long time ago. An unimaginably long time ago.

The memories of his previous life strengthened Li Yao’s determination and his combat ability. He could clearly feel that his soul was expanding like a blood-filled organ.

However…

The silver ball had been following him in the dream.

It used to be connected to the back of Li Yao’s head by a silver thread like a balloon, hanging in the air neither too far nor too close. But every time Li Yao recalled his previous life, the distance between Li Yao and it would be shortened. In the end, when the silver thread between Li Yao and itself was less than one meter long, it would hover above Li Yao’s head coldly.

Li Yao’s confused and uneasy face was reflected on the mirror-like surface before it was twisted into a weird and hideous appearance.

Li Yao didn’t remember encountering such a thing in his previous life.

Even ‘Cultivator Li Yao’ in ‘40,000 Years of Cultivation’ had never encountered such a weird existence.

“What are you? What are you exactly?”

The uneasiness in Li Yao’s heart reached its peak. He was so anxious that he could not control his emotions. He punched the silver ball and asked, “Why are you following me?”

BAM!

The mysterious silver ball, on the other hand, seemed to be too weak to withstand a single blow. It was blown into countless pieces by Li Yao’s punch. However, each of the curved pieces reflected a weird and twisted face that was smiling at him weirdly.

“Finally, you’ve come this far. You know who you are and your real destiny, don’t you?

Billions of faces spoke at the same time.

Then, countless faces turned into bloody mouths and swallowed him!

His memory turned into a nightmare, waking him from his nightmare.

He saw that Dream Traveler was vomiting blood and falling backwards. His face was twisted to the point that it was about to be fractured. Dream Traveler pointed at him and screamed, “You—you are not Li Yao!”