Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The words slashed Ba Yanzhi right in the face like an invisible blade. He roared and pointed his broken saber at the leader of the Ultimate One Sect. “Wang Qianyi, I will show you the strength of the grass and ants!”

“I am not in a hurry to kill you. Why do you have to ask to be killed?” The leader of the Ultimate One Sect considered him as nothing more than a fish swimming in a cooker, not bothered by his fury at all. “Right now, there is no hope for you. However, considering your contributions to the Ultimate One Demons, I will give you one last opportunity.

“Abandon everything in your past and join the Ultimate One Demons!

“After all, the name of ‘Ba Yanzhi’ has some value among the demons. Under your name, the demons that are scattered in all the three thousand Sectors can be unified and will submit to the flag of ‘Ultimate One’ faster!

“Do not turn down the offer hastily. Look down. The demon soldiers loyal to you are being massacred, and their family in the rea will soon be controlled by the Ultimate One Demons, too. The life and death of those people all depend on your decision!”

Ba Yanzhi was dazed. His arm that clutched the broken saber was shaking slightly.

“Also…”

With a pair of mysterious eyes, the leader of the Ultimate One Sect said casually, “I know that you took away a stone back when you were exploring the mysterious black spring on the Infinite Planet. Hand the stone over to me, and I guarantee that all of your subordinates will be spared. It is even possible that I will give a few Sectors to you.”

Ba Yanzhi rolled his eyes and observed in a coarse voice, “So, you’ve known about the existence of the ‘Divine Stone of Kunlun’ all along! I remember it now. Ten years ago, somebody tried to assassinate me. At that time, I thought that they were sent by the Cultivators. But as I thought about it carefully later, I found that their target was not me but the ‘Divine Stone of Kunlun’!

“The assassins were sent by you, weren’t?

“I will trust you no more, Wang Qianyi!

“You think I don’t know the secret of the ‘Divine Stone of Kunlun’?

“The cave on the Infinite Planet was probably a relic of the Pangu Clan in the primeval era, and the black spring was also left by the Pangu Clan! The Divine Stone of Kunlun was a map of the Pangu Clan. Whoever unravels the secrets inside the Divine Stone of Kunlun will be able to set off to ‘Kunlun’, where they will find the real legacy of the Pangu Clan!

“You want to swindle me out of the Divine Stone of Kunlun? In your dreams!”

Ba Yanzhi burst into laughter. His shaking arm became as tough as iron again. He clenched the handle of the saber so hard that the skin on his palm broke. His blood vaporized into red steam and circled around the incomplete body of the saber, extending its aura to almost a hundred meters long before he slashed at the leader of the Ultimate One Sect!

The leader of the Ultimate One Sect kept his hands behind his back and did not dodge at all. The mystic rays that were flowing among his scales congregated into a raging dragon above his head that opened its bloody mouth and swallowed the bloody aura of blade that Ba Yanzhi triggered, leaving absolutely nothing.

“Capture him alive. We must elicit the whereabouts of the Divine Stone of Kunlun from him,” the leader of the Ultimate One Sect said casually.

However, a deafening explosion echoed below everyone’s feet. A gargantuan floating mountain, which had hidden in the ground deeply earlier, was now rising into the sky again and soon surpassed everyone’s head!

Li Yao observed carefully, only to discover that there was a bull-headed, muscular man more than ten meters tall below the floating mountain.

The bull-headed muscular man pushed up a floating mountain that must have weighed thousands of tons by force with his magnificent arms and even soared into the sky!

The crazy action drained the energy of every mitochondria inside his every cells. Every inch of his skin was exploding, as if fireworks of blood were blossoming on his body.

The floating mountain turned into an unstoppable warship, and he turned into the spurting exhaust flames of the warship!

“Zhang Niuer!”

Ba Yanzhi was shocked, his tears flowing out.

Hiu!

The bull-headed muscular man broke apart all of a sudden, turning into a cluster of bloody fire. The immense impetus pushed the floating mountain into a shooting star that darted toward the Ultimate One Demons brutally.

Before his body crumbled, Zhang Niuer finally recovered his speech, which had been confined for a hundred years. He roared in a voice that could split the sky and the earth, “Big brother, go now!”

The floating mountain rocketed at a high speed, triggering flames that looked like red lotuses. The flames dyed the black and white world red and eventually burnt the cold, cruel illusionary world into ashes.

In nothingness, Li Yao sensed that many telepathic thoughts were flashing fast. Ba Yanzhi had come to the end of his life. It was his last memory piece.

The new illusionary world was… the underground temple in the Mausoleum of Chaos!

However, it seemed to be a time when the Mausoleum of Chaos had just been built. At least, the statue of the member of the Pangu Clan at the center of the temple was not there, and the scale of the temple was not as impressive as the present day.

The place was indeed an enormous war base. Countless demon soldiers were busy at work inside the temple. Out of his expectations, Li Yao saw a lot of Cultivators on the spot, too.

Perhaps, under the pressure of the Ultimate One Demons, the mortal enemies in the past had been left with no choice except to collaborate with each other now.

Ba Yanzhi was no longer as sharp and magnificent as he had been in the previous illusionary worlds.

He was already very old. His beard and hair, which used to protrude out, were now dangling down from his forehead and chin like weeds that had dried up.

His body was no longer brawny and turned into a mere skeleton, with wrinkled skin attached to it in multiple layers, which made him both ugly and look sleazy. His left arm and left leg had completely vanished. However, the wounds had not recovered but were enveloped in purple venomous fog, indicating that he had been suffering from the pain of corrosion.

But his back was still as straight as a spear, just like a hundred years ago!

Ba Yanzhi was sitting cross-legged on a complicated, enormous array, surrounded by colorful, octagonal spiritual stripes. He was holding a vintage wooden bowl that was filled with a deep, green liquid.

There was nothing to heat the bowl, but the bowl seemed to be boiling, with bubbles popping up nonstop.

“Great General, you can’t take it!”

One of the weasel-like demon soldiers was trying to talk him out of it.

“Green General, you have been experimented on with different formulas of the Divine Water of Kunlun countless times in the past hundred years. Your body is deformed and in an utter mess. We cannot determine how many impurities are inside your blood even when all of us analyze it together!

“The latest Divine Water of Kunlun was produced by mixing the raw Divine Water of Kunlun with almost a hundred types of poison. It is a by-product in a perilous accident!

“We have experimented on the ‘Thunder Mammoths’ that weighed dozens of tons with the liquid, with more failures than successes. Some of the Thunder Mammoths were indeed modified into more terrifying beasts, but the majority of them were killed on the spot!

“Great General, you cannot take such a ferocious medicine randomly! Should there be anything wrong, your body will be destroyed, and your cause will be no more!

“Great General, please think about it carefully!”

“I’ve made up my mind,” Ba Yanzhi replied calmly and resolutely. “We’ve finally got rid of the pursuit of the Ultimate One Demons after so much trouble and fled to this place. We are so close to the real ‘Kunlun’. I cannot allow our endeavor to be sabotaged because of my insufficient strength.

“Strength. I need more strength!

“Only after we find ‘Kunlun’ can we expect to compete with the Ultimate One Demons, to avenge our families, and to… take back the entire universe!”

Ba Yanzhi raised his head and drank all the simmering green liquid.

The spiritual stripes that were dancing around him suddenly accelerated. The runes all shone and shot into his body rapidly.

After each rune that entered his body, Ba Yanzhi’s eyes would become slightly larger. His dried body was being filled up again. His bones were expanding inch by inch, tearing apart his skin, healing it, tearing it apart again, and healing it again!

“Hoooooooooo!”

Inhuman roars echoed from Ba Yanzhi’s expanding chest. The entire process of evolution that took billions of years seemed to be played backwards on his body fast.

At first, his canine teeth protruded out, and golden hair grew all over his body. He turned into an enormous ape more than ten meters tall.

His body continued expanding, with dense bone spurs extending out of his skull and his spine, shining coldly like the sharpest sabers. Then, his hair disappeared, his skin was replaced by thick hide, his hands turned into spiky claws, his head was twisted, and his bloody mouth was enlarged with dense tusks protruding.

Eventually, two huge bones pierced out of his shoulder blades and continuously grew. Two layers of bright green membranes grew out of the bones, turning them into two massive wings.

Feathers, wings, claws, tails, antlers… After displaying the features of almost a hundred different ferocious beasts, he was even showing the fins and the characteristics of certain shellfish.

Li Yao clearly sensed that Ba Yanzhi was going further and further down the path of ‘atavism’.

Maybe at the beginning, he had still been able to tame his genes and only reveal the features of apes, smilodons, or tyrannosaurs. But very soon, the force went out of his control as he assumed the appearance of the sarcosuchus, iron turtles, and nautilus.

Ba Yanzhi was returning to the beginning point of evolution and the original form of all life.

In the end, he turned into a cluster of a thick, translucent liquid that looked like glue, with materials shining in the middle like stars.

Maybe, this was the real appearance of ‘Chaos’ in the legends.

For some reason, Li Yao recalled the chaotic-blood demon on the Skeleton Island whose genes completely collapsed because of the strengthening drugs overdose.

Perhaps he was not killed, either; he was simply back to the original point of evolution.

The demons and Cultivators nearby were all greatly shocked, but there was nothing they could do about the translucent fluid.

A moment later, the cluster of fluid wriggled slowly and condensed into the shape of a human being one more time. Arms, feet, and facial organs gradually appeared, too. Ba Yanzhi resumed his appearance from his peak years. He was even more perfect than that time, with the dominating aura resembling that of the Ultimate One Demons flowing around him before.

“Great General, you’ve made it!”

All the demons were overjoyed.

“Yes. I’ve made it!”

Ba Yanzhi’s eyelids suddenly twitched, and he seemed to be collapsing into fluid again. However, he stopped the trend hard with his unbelievable tenacity.

He observed his hands that were full of strength carefully, and he grinned.

“Let’s go and find ‘Kunlun’!”