Cultivation Online

A few hours had passed since the drill began, and Yuan had just slain his 50th Celestial Being. Meanwhile, the soldiers around him were still struggling with their third or fourth opponent.

A few more hours passed, but Yuan’s points remained the same, as Celestial Beings had stopped spawning for him.

With nothing else to do, he decided to study the Limitless Cultivation Technique instead.

Meanwhile, somewhere within Gaia’s Heaven, two individuals watched the ongoing drill through a massive screen.

One of these individuals possessed a tall, slender figure and long, pitch-black hair that cascaded down their back like a curtain, clearly a woman.

”Who is that man with fifty points already?” asked the black-haired woman.

The other individual, an old man with long white hair and a neatly trimmed white beard, responded, ”That’s Sergeant Yuan, a new soldier who joined the military a little over a year ago. However, very little is known about him. There is essentially no record of him prior to joining the military, as if he’d appeared out of thin air.”

The black-haired woman then made a graceful gesture with their hand, summoning a system screen before them. It displayed Yuan’s information, including details that weren’t accessible to the public.

”T-That’s...!” The old man exclaimed in surprise. ”Perfected Heavenly Refinement?! But when I looked at it before, it showed Inexhaustible Heavenly Refinement!”

”His information was altered.”

”That explains it...” the old man muttered. ”If I had suspected that his information had been altered, I would’ve dug deeper. This was my mistake.”

After a moment of silence, he continued, ”This is the first time someone has achieved the Perfected Heavenly Refinement physique. However, it doesn’t match his cultivation.”

The black-haired woman did not respond, only continuing to read through Yuan’s information in silence.

”Truly a peculiar individual... I would like to meet him.”

”Y-You?” The old man wore a shocked expression after hearing those words.

”Not right now. There is still so much I need to learn about him before I decide if it’s safe to meet him. For all we know, he could be a Celestial Being.”

”A Celestial Being?!” the old man exclaimed in disbelief.

”It’s just speculation right now. His existence is clearly otherworldly, but whether he is a Celestial Being or not is a different matter.”

”Is it possible to ask... you know...” asked the old man.

”If only it were that simple...” sighed the black-haired woman.

She continued a moment later, ”With all that said, I’m not too worried. After all, General Mei seems to trust him, and I trust her judgment.”

”General Mei, huh?” the old man sighed bitterly. ”If I could, I would hand my position over to her rather than that poisonous bastard surnamed Gu. Unfortunately, there are rules within the military that even I cannot ignore.”

”Maybe you should—”

”No, I won’t intervene,” the woman interrupted. ”I have faith in General Mei. I believe she is destined to overcome this challenge on her own, without my assistance.”

She turned to look at the screen spectating the drill and continued, ”Especially if she has someone like that on her side.”

Time passed swiftly, and before anyone realized it, an entire week had already passed since the drill began.

Yuan, who had been cultivating for the majority of the drill, suddenly opened his eyes as a notification had appeared before him.

When the new soldiers, who had never participated in a drill before, saw the notification and realized the entire past week had only been a warm-up, many of them began to despair.

If what they’d experienced had only been the warm-up, they could hardly imagine how outrageous the real drill would be.

After another day, once all of the Celestial Beings had been defeated, the 3-day countdown began.

The moment the break began, many soldiers collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily as they tried to recover from their exhaustion.

”Hey, newbie. If you’re already this exhausted after the warm-up, you won’t last ten minutes once the real thing begins,” an experienced soldier remarked.

”W-What is the real thing like...?” the new soldier asked nervously, almost afraid to hear the answer.

”You’ll find out in three days.”

Meanwhile, the soldiers stationed near Yuan silently stared at him while they rested.

Although they had spent the entire warm-up fighting almost nonstop, they had all noticed that the Celestial Beings had stopped spawning for Yuan at some point.

”There have been fewer than ten people who have managed to clear the warm-up...” one of them suddenly remarked.

”And he’d done it without his weapon.”

”Now that you mentioned it, where is his weapon? I heard that he uses a minigun, too.”

”Who knows?”

”Does a monster like him even need one?”

Weapons primarily served to assist their wielder’s control over Limitless, allowing them to use it more efficiently and unleash greater power while consuming less energy. However, Yuan had little to no need for such assistance, so his weapon was mostly for show.

Time continued to pass, and in what felt like the blink of an eye, their 3-day rest period came to an end.

Shortly after the notification appeared, the sky once again turned pitch-black.

This time, however, instead of countless smaller openings, a single massive slit resembling an eye slowly opened across the darkened sky. From beyond it, an ominous black fog began pouring into the world.

Of course, this wasn’t ordinary black fog. It was actually countless Celestial Beings packed so densely together that, from a distance, they resembled a massive cloud of black fog.

”Holy shit...”

The new soldiers stared at the scene in bewilderment, their eyes wide and mouths agape.

Even the seasoned soldiers who had witnessed and endured it multiple times before couldn’t help but swallow nervously.

”Now this is more like it...” Yuan mumbled with a calm smile on his face.