Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Gus rubbed his arms silently.

He felt goosebumps all over his arms.

He discovered that the gods’ ideas were quite weird. They were indeed beyond the comprehension of mortals.

“All in all, Li Yao, the Fist King, and I have been fighting like this for a long time. Of course, if we run into a more ferocious enemy, we will join hands occasionally.

Lu Qingchen smiled and said, “To make a long story short, in my last battle, we did encounter an enemy that was too ferocious for us to deal with. In order to deal with the enemy, I lured it into a giant planet that was full of lightning and thunder and simply perished together with it.

Gus was stunned for a moment.

“What is lightning exactly?” the young man asked curiously.

He had a feeling that the name contained mysterious and immense power.

“I almost forgot that there is no lightning in your world. The boxing champion was too scared of me to add the lightning setting in this place.”

Lu Qingchen thought for a moment. He pointed at the pale crack on the horizon and said, “You can consider the giant scar that tore open the sky as a frozen lightning. The power contained in the lightning is thousands of times stronger than that of steam. Not only can it support the splendid life of a strong civilization, it can also turn the strongest experts into powder instantly. Their souls will not be able to escape the interference of the electric current. Not even the tiniest brainwave will be left.

“On the planet where I fell, billions of lightning bolts were interweaving, swallowing, and splitting. My self-awareness was gradually awakened.

“Ten-thousand times stronger than steam?”

Gus was shocked.

The young man could not understand at all.

His intuition told him that Lu Qingchen was bluffing. Even the strongest devil had its limits. How could there be a force ten thousand times stronger than steam in the world?

However, when he thought of everything he had seen when he was training and fighting in the ‘hell’, especially the starships that were passing by above his head, and the brightness and destruction when they opened fire, he subconsciously wanted to believe Lu Qingchen’s words.

“It’s up to you whether you want to believe it or not. After all, when I fell from the lightning planet, my heart was as calm as still water. I’ve done my best. Whether or not I can change Li Yao, the federation, the civilization of mankind, and the Pangu Universe, I can only resign myself to fate. My journey has come to an end. I can face the destruction of everything calmly.

Lu Qingchen smiled and said, “I didn’t expect that fate would play such a big joke on me. My consciousness was not torn apart or destroyed by the most furious lightning. Instead, it melded with the original lightning life on the ancient planet and turned into an unprecedented super lightning life form!

Gus listened in a daze.

“On second thought, maybe it was neither luck nor coincidence.

Lu Qingchen explained, “At that time, the ancient giants that gave birth to the lightning creatures were walking into their doom. If there were no accidents, the lightning creatures would have been buried together with the planet where they were born. However, survival and reproduction were the natural instincts of any creature, including the lightning creatures.

“The moment they captured me, the lightning creatures must’ve realized that, if my soul was torn apart and destroyed, it wouldn’t help them solve their dilemma at all. In the near future, they would still have to die.

“However, if you can meld with me, absorb all my wisdom and will, or grant me unparalleled power of lightning, there is a one in a billion chance that we can run away from the planet that is about to collapse and the hell that is destined to be destroyed!

“Just like that, in the Big Red Spot of the ancient giants, in the eternal super lightning storm, the old Lu Qingchen and the old lightning life disappeared. In their place, a new generation of lightning life with Lu Qingchen’s will was born!

At this point, Lu Qingchen could not help but dance with joy.

Gus thought that his appearance was in line with the arrogance of the ‘birth of the devil’.

“Although I have been reborn, the fundamental problem has not been resolved yet. I, who have become a lightning life-form, am still trapped on the ancient giant star. It won’t be long before I am torn into pieces by the drastic changes of the star together with the planet.

Lu Qingchen said, “Therefore, after much deliberation, I could only send out distress signals to the outside world.

“Mayday signal?”

Gus was dazed for a moment. “Will somebody come to your rescue? I mean, do you have other friends in the world of the deities and devils?”

“No. Everyone was drunk, but I was sober. A sober man in pain is always alone. How could I be friends with the drunk men who were overwhelmed by hot blood, courage, and justice?

Lu Qingchen smiled. “However, most of the time, there are enemies besides friends who can save you!

“At that time, for various reasons, my teacher Li Yao was no longer in the Pangu Universe. Oh, the Pangu Universe is the world where the deities and devils live. Right now, it is Li Yao’s good friend, the Fist King, who is guarding the world.

“The boxing champion is our boxing god, right?” asked Gus.

“Yes. I’m talking about the creator of the Fist God’s World, your creator, the supreme ‘god’.”

Lu Qingchen grinned evilly. “However, he is not a real god. He might not even be a real human being. In fact, he is a highly-automatic spiritual puppet, or rather, a robot with super high intelligence.

“Machine… Human?”

Gus chewed on the weird term and frowned. “What is that? I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple and easy to understand.

Lu Qingchen said, “Don’t you believe in ‘Machinery and Steam’? Take the steam machines that your father experimented on in the basement and Luo Xinglong’s steam cannon for example. There are a lot of tubes, gears, bearings, ball bearings, and all kinds of components inside. They are quite complicated, aren’t they?”

Gus thought for a moment and said, “It’s complicated.”

“No. In my opinion, it is far from complicated enough.

Lu Qingchen said, “Please close your eyes and imagine such an existence. It is made of billions of gears and billions of tubes, and it is tens of millions of times more delicate than a steam cannon. Steam of different temperatures and pressures is flowing inside the tubes that are as thin as the hair of a cow, driving different parts and performing calculations and movements that are even more complicated than nerves. Sparks as brilliant as stars are born in the collision of gears and bearings, like the wisdom shining inside the brain of a human being.

“If such a ‘super mechanical construct’ does exist, it wouldn’t be strange if it developed self-awareness and turned into a real life form, turning into ‘him’.

“Yes. This is the real face of the boxing champion. The creator of the world of forbidden machines is an extremely complicated super machine in the first place!