Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

With the crash of ‘Crystal Light’ and the location of the Pangu Clan as the center, Li Yao launched a search with a radius of more than a hundred kilometers.

As it turned out, when he discovered the mysteries hidden under the vines, weeds, and creepers and set them on fire, he found a lot of debris of starships under the lush, living plants.

‘Azure Dragon’, ‘Tiger of the Sky’, ‘Gold Hammer’, ‘Nine-Headed Dragon’… They were all all all-terrestrial warships that could move freely in gravity-free vacuum and high-gravity atmosphere.

The warships, like ‘Lightspeed Crystal’, turned into twisted debris and were swallowed by the crazily growing plants. There were not many valuable discoveries inside.

However, Li Yao did find a lot of scattered bones near the debris of the warships. They were several meters long and dark gold, indicating that they belonged to the Pangu Clan instead of human beings.

Maybe, there had been a lot of human corpses in this place, too, but they had been swallowed by plants and fungi just like the flesh and blood of the Pangu Clan. Only the thickest, most solid golden femurs that could carry dozens of tons of weight were hard to destroy.

So, when Ding Lingdang, Long Yangjun, and Li Linghai’s leading human exploration fleet entered the tomb of the Supreme Emperor, the first thing they encountered was not Lu Qingchen’s ambush but a bunch of crazy Pangu Clan members?

Li Yao examined the damage of every starship carefully, leaving no traces behind, and inferred the cause of the wounds with his abundant experience in refining.

He discovered that most of the shocking wounds were caused by very low-level personal magical equipment, such as oversized chainswords and vibration sabers.

There were even traces of dark gold blood around the irregular cracks, which seemed to have been torn apart by the Pangu Clan barehanded. It did fit the description of the Pangu Clan’s brute force.

If it were an established battle squad of the Pangu Clan, they should not have been carrying only individual magical equipment such as chainswords and vibration sabers. They should not have been fighting human beings’ warships with their fists without any magical equipment.

Therefore, Li Yao suspected that the Pangu Clan encountered by the exploration fleet of human beings were the same as the previous Pangu Clan. They had lost their memories and rationality and degenerated into ignorant barbarians. Was it the effect of the ‘virus’ that Long Yangjun mentioned, or the ‘light of life’ that could thaw time and accelerate the growth of plants, or was it the result of billions of mutations triggered by the ‘light of life’?

Li Yao had no idea.

Although he was anxious that the answer would be revealed in the next second, he managed to hold back his anxiety and found all the crashed starships in the two to three hundred square kilometers nearby. He also collected enough components, high-nutrition drugs, and crystal fuel from them.

He was quite lucky. The maintenance workshop of a multipurpose support ship was mostly intact, and the maintenance platform was still usable.

Although it was impossible for the Giant God Soldier to be reborn, it was fortunate that the main structure of the ‘Arsonist’ was not damaged. Its shell had merely been torn apart by the meteoroid storm.

After replacing the crystal suit with hundreds of colorful metal patches and filling it with crystal fuel, it ignited a dark and stubborn flame.

Before marching toward the ‘origin’, Li Yao took a night’s rest.

There was no real day or night in the Tomb of the Supreme Emperor. After the blue sky and white clouds lasted for almost fifteen hours, the sky would be enshrouded in dense fog, which would last almost ten hours before it was replaced by a new blue sky that was exactly the same as yesterday.

Li Yao had a vague feeling.

This… primeval relic, whether it was named ‘Emperor Tomb’, ‘Divine Tomb’, or ‘Black Tomb’, was not prepared for the Pangu Clan but for human beings.

The reason was obvious.

The gravity here was the most suitable standard for the survival and combat of human beings, as were the oxygen and the impurities in the air, including temperature, humidity, and even plants, animals, and fungi.

Li Yao tested the toxicity of many kinds of plants, animals, and fungi and found that most of the creatures in this place were not poisonous at all. On the contrary, they were very beneficial for the body’s replenishment and recovery. It was truly a paradise where Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures could be found everywhere.

Even if an ordinary person lived a life of raw meat and blood in this place, ate a lot of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, and breathed the freshest air, they would slowly strengthen their flesh and blood, awaken their spiritual root, and become a cultivator.

Also, ‘one day and one night’, which was close to twenty-four hours, was also the ‘standard planet’ most suitable for the survival of human beings, with the most average rotation time.

For the giants that required cold air and low gravity such as the Pangu Clan, their ‘day and night’ were much longer than twenty-four hours because of the smaller density of the planets.

It was definitely not a comfortable place for the Pangu Clan.

“Why?”

Li Yao mumbled to himself, “If this is really the ‘control hub’ of the makers of the black wall, why is it so suitable for the survival and training of human beings? What is the so-called ‘black wall maker’ exactly?”

Just like the previous questions, the answer to the question could not be revealed until Li Yao reached the real entrance of the ancient tomb.

While he was resting, Li Yao released Little Black and scanned the five hundred square kilometers nearby with the monitoring crystal camera. After eliminating the interference of the trees and the fungi, he compared it with the map that Li Linghai had drawn in his previous explorations.

As he expected, the ‘origin’ where the ‘light of life’ was the strongest and where the plants were densest was the real entrance to the ancient tomb.

When the sky was painted with an intense blue color again, Li Yao led the way with his flaming saber and marched toward the deepest part of the forest.

A lot of plants and fungi were squeaking and shivering in the burning flames. But more branches and vines lunged at the ash behind Li Yao and swallowed him instantly.

The nightmare-like picture did not stop Li Yao from exploring the truth at all. He trudged forward in the depths of the forest. Three hours later, after more wrecked starships were discovered, he finally found the remains of a camp left by Li Linghai during his previous exploration!

It was a piece of a metal anti-radiation tent with ‘Deep Sea’ on one corner.

Such tents were meant to be used to build mobile laboratories. They could block all kinds of tiny radiation and ensure that the experiment results were accurate. Li Linghai told Li Yao that she had tried to carry and unfold a lot of tents in the tomb of the Supreme Emperor.

The two words ‘Deep Sea’ naturally meant the Deep Sea Fleet. They were Li Linghai’s personal weapons.

Having said that, Li Linghai did not want too many people to know such an important secret as the tomb of the Supreme Emperor. Therefore, she only brought a lot of spiritual puppets as her assistants during every exploration.

When Li Yao dug out three multipurpose puppets that had run out of energy and a lot of scraps of engineering magical equipment from the Star Ocean Imperium from the depths of the soil, he was even more certain that this was Li Linghai’s camp, the forward base of the Supreme Emperor, and the real entrance to the Supreme Emperor’s Tomb.

Then, what about the ‘door’?

Li Linghai told Li Yao that there was a literal ‘gate’ at the entrance of the tomb.

It was a black stele nine meters high, four meters wide, and one meter thick.

Nine to four to one. The square ratio of three to two to one was very solemn and perfect.

The gate, or rather, the black stele, was as precise as the first entrance. No matter how precise Li Linghai’s measurement equipment was, he could not calculate the slightest error. He had reached the peak in mechanics, materials science, and refinement.

However, the first entrance was always open to all. Any living creature that touched it would immediately be assimilated, melded, and absorbed. The second door was an extremely solid black stele. No matter how hard Li Linghai tried to stimulate or ram it, he could not open it at all.

Had he not received the information from the Supreme Emperor’s forward operating base and Black Star Emperor Wu Yingqi’s firm belief that it was the real entrance, Li Linghai would not have been able to connect a solid stele to the gate to the ancient mysteries.

The black stele further solidified Li Yao’s speculation that the primeval relics were prepared for human beings.

A gate that was nine meters tall and four meters wide was too cramped for the Pangu Clan, or rather, a behemoth more than ten meters tall like the Pangu Clan.

But for human beings, the two contradictory concepts of solemnity and exquisiteness were perfectly combined.

Besides, the unit of length named ‘meter’ was most suitable for human beings. Any intelligent human being would think of the length of their arms first when they set the unit of length. Therefore, the ‘one meter’ of the Pangu Clan was much longer than that of human beings. “In the primeval era billions of years ago, did a certain super civilization leave a gate to the future for human beings billions of years later in units of ‘rice’?

Li Yao thought to himself.

But now, the gate was gone.

Li Linghai told Li Yao that her camp and the forward base of the Supreme Emperor were right in front of the black stele. The distance between the three was no more than a hundred meters. Li Yao wouldn’t overlook a nine-meter-tall black stele no matter how tall the weeds and bushes were.

But…

Li Yao extended his telepathic thoughts and scanned in the direction where the black stele should’ve been. His heart was suddenly beating fast beyond his control. Humming noises were echoing inside his brain, as if they were the most sacred and mysterious chants in the ancient times.

“What the hell is this?”

Looking at the latest form of the black stele right in front of him, Li Yao was dumbfounded and exclaimed.