Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

When the leader of the Ultimate One Sect smiled, every scale on his body seemed to shine. The new force inside his body made his voice no longer as mild as water but as irresistible as the thunders in the sky.

“Don’t you see, Yanzhi? Everything has been within the Ultimate One Sect’s plan. For the last hundred years, we have been pulling your nose!

“Everything you did was merely to clear all the obstacles for the Ultimate One Sect!”

“What?” Ba Yanzhi’s face paled. Every wound on his body was opening like the lips of a baby, but there was no more blood that could flow out right now. He bellowed, “It’s impossible. It’s simply impossible!”

The leader of the Ultimate One Sect explained, “A hundred years ago, the Ultimate One Sect was the first to produce the Ultimate One Demon Soldiers with the Divine Water of Kunlun. We planned to unite the three thousand Sectors with the demon soldiers and wreathe all the stars in the universe in the radiance of the righteous Ultimate One Sect.

“However, other sects soon copied the formulas of the Divine Water of Kunlun through the captives or the bodies of the Ultimate One Demon Soldiers, and they created various kinds of demon soldiers of their own. Our great plan suffered a minor setback.

“More importantly, as more and more demon soldiers were created in the Cultivation sects, the problem that they could not be controlled gradually surfaced. Mutinies were happing all the time. The Ultimate One Sect was also a victim of such uprisings. We experienced dozens of insurrections ourselves.

“How were we going to control the three thousand Sectors if it went on like that?

“Hehe. Right at that time, you rose up and declared war on the world of Cultivators.

“The Ultimate One Sector gathered all the Cultivators above the Nascent Soul Stage and discovered, after thorough deduction and calculation, that the fire of insurgency could not be extinguished. Even Ba Yanzhi failed and died, a second, a third Ba Yanzhi would stand up!

“It was better to go with the trend than to blindly resist it!

“If we could not unite the universe as Cultivators, what’s wrong with achieving our purpose as ‘demons’?

“For a hundred years, your army led the charge in the frontline, helping us annihilate countless hostile sects and Cultivators whom we have wanted to kill for a long time!

“The core members of the Ultimate One Sect, on the other hand, lurked in the darkness after we pretended to be destroyed by you and continued our experiment and refinement!

“We gathered the ‘Divine Water of Kunlun’ of different formulas from countless sects and tested them on mortals. After decades of experiments, we have finally created the most perfect ‘Divine Water of Chaos’!

“Look at our new bodies. How impeccable, how splendid, and how magnificent!

“This should be the real appearance of demons!

“In the meantime, the members of the Ultimate One Sect gradually leaked into your army, too.

“The universe is too large a place, and you’ve been dedicated to the war on the frontline all this time. How would you know what was happening in a certain Sector among the sea of stars?

“Hehe. It doesn’t matter if I tell you the truth now. While you were fighting bloody battles in the frontline, the Ultimate One Sect took control of more than three hundred Sectors!

“The bumpkins have just left their farmland and washed their feet clean. Do they know anything about the management of a city or a province? They will still have to count on us in the end!

“Even your army of billions of soldiers has been seriously infiltrated by us from your logistics to your combat units!

“Oh, right. It is not appropriate to call us the ‘Ultimate One Sect’ anymore. Right now, we are the ‘Ultimate One Demons’. We are the supreme dominators of the demon race!”

Dozens of crystal bombs seemed to be exploding inside Ba Yanzhi’s throat at the same time. He could not utter a word.

“Yanzhi, I have always thought highly of you,” the leader of the Ultimate One Sect praised. “You accomplished every task assigned to you satisfactorily without any complaint. Even such an arduous mission as to clear our enemies for us has been completed by you!

“Right now, the ‘Empyrean Terminus Sect’, the greatest force of the Cultivators, as well as most of the remnants of the Cultivators, have been annihilated by you.

“The demon soldiers that are loyal to you suffered heavy casualties, too.

“This is the perfect occasion for the rise of the Ultimate One Demons. We are finally realizing our dream of uniting the universe. You should be greatly credited. Haha. Hahahaha!”

Ba Yanzhi’s face turned from pale into purple. He vomited a mouthful of blood. “You—you have even given up the heritage of the Ultimate One Sect? As the leader of the Ultimate One Sect, you are willing to turn from a Cultivator into a demon?”

“Don’t you understand? Cultivators have no future now!” the leader of the Ultimate One Sect sneered. “For thousands of years, the three thousand Sectors have been attacking each other, and all the spiritual energy and crystals are now running dry!

“Cultivation is based on the inhalation and exhalation of spiritual energy. What’s there to Cultivate if you don’t have spiritual energy?

“It is the reason the Cultivators’ training has been becoming more and more difficult and there have been fewer and fewer mortals whose spiritual root was awakened in the past thousand years!

“I remember that, four hundred years ago, when I first joined the Ultimate One Sect, even my least talented fellow disciples would be given five crystals monthly for their training. Also, because of the dense spiritual energy in the headquarters of the Ultimate One Sect, the speed of training was very fast. It was not unusual for one to advance into the next level after only a couple of years!

“However, by the time I became the leader of the Ultimate One Sect, the few mother lodes in our territory had all been emptied. Even the most talented disciples were offered only two crystals every month. As for the common disciple without impressive aptitude, they were given a scattered crystal the size of a peanut every three months. The density of the spiritual energy in our headquarters had become much thinner, too!

“Under such circumstances, even those who advanced into the next level every ten years were ‘prodigies’!

“That was the legendary ‘Era of Doom’.

“The Era of Doom is the end for the Cultivators. However talented and determined you are, without spiritual energy and crystals, your endeavor will only be in vain.

“You must adapt yourself in difficult times. In the Era of Doom, Cultivation is a dead end. We must find a new training system in order to survive.

“Whichever of the thousands of sects in the three thousand Sectors understood the logic would be able to move faster than others, and they would be the dominators of the universe!

“Hehe. As it turns out, it was us who understood the logic first!

“Drink the Divine Water of Kunlun and turn into demons. The focus of the training of demons is the minor universe inside their bodies so that they can trigger the force deep within. Their demand for natural spiritual energy is much smaller than Cultivators’.

“Besides, the three thousand Sectors have been wrecked by the Cultivators. In the harsh, blighted new worlds, demons have more advantages to survive!

“Therefore, in the Era of Doom that can potentially last tens of thousands of years, demons will certainly be the dominators of the three thousand Sectors.

“Maybe, after a long period of rest, the spiritual energy in the universe will become dense again, and crystals will be generated one more time. The Era of Doom will come to an end.

“By then, our descendants will naturally turn from demons into human beings again, and we will inherit and pass on the legacy of the righteous Ultimate One Sect!”

Ba Yanzhi did not know that the leader of the Ultimate One Sect had been thinking so far ahead, nor did he expect that he had been involved in the Ultimate One Sect’s scheme since a hundred years ago. He could barely stand on his feet now.

Right then, the shouts and yells on the ground were louder and louder. Another troop of demon soldiers with finely-made armors charged into the battlefield, with two words carved on their breastplates.

Ultimate One!

Ba Yanzhi shook hard and almost fell from the sky. He moaned in disbelief, “Xiao Changsheng, you’ve defected, too?”

“He hasn’t defected. Your deputy commander Xiao Changsheng has been with the Ultimate One Demons all the time!” the leader of the Ultimate One Sect said casually. “Yanzhi, do you know your biggest weakness?

“You are too innocent and naïve. You don’t know how to understand people.

“You always prefer to classify others according to their species. In the past, you thought that Cultivators were good and the demonic Cultivators were bad. Later, you thought that Cultivators were bad and demons were born good, kind, and righteous. So, you trusted and supported all the demons unconditionally and without a prejudice!

“As your leader in the past, and considering your contributions to our cause, I will give you one last lesson. You cannot divide people in such a way!

“There are no distinctions between humans and demons, deities and devils, Cultivators and demonic Cultivators!

“They are absolutely the same!

“There are only two kinds of people in the world—winners and losers!

“Of ten thousand people, there can only be one winner. The remaining 9,999 people are all losers!

“When we were Cultivators, I was the winner, and you and those ants were the losers.

“Right now, we are demons. I am still the winner, and you and the ants will be stomped on and end up being our servants, slaves, and cannon fodder again!

“One day, when the Era of Doom passes and demons turn back into human beings, we will still be winners, and you will still be grass, ants, and dust beneath our shoes. Do you believe it?

“Do you understand why you are wrong?

“The resources of the world are limited. If there are ten thousand people, it is already not bad if one of them can be fed. The remaining 9,999 people are destined to starve!

“But right now, you are trying to feed 9,999 people out of the ten thousand? Isn’t it the most hilarious dream?

“You’ve been living in that dream for a hundred years. Finally, you’ve woken up now. Any last words before your death?”

Ba Yanzhi staggered and waved his hands hard, as if he were trying to find a solid wall in the air to lean on. He breathed hard, with desperation leaking out of his every pore. He struggled to say, “But I don’t understand!

“The Divine Water of Kunlun can turn spiritual animals into demon beasts. Why didn’t you create an army of demon beasts to fight you instead of bringing disaster to the innocent ordinary people?”

The leader of the Ultimate One Sect smiled. “Animals are too stupid. It is not easy to control them even after they are modified into demon beasts.

“However, that is just an insignificant reason.

“The more important reason is that spiritual animals are too precious.

“Breeding a spiritual animal will consume a lot of time and effort. In a world where spiritual energy is running dry, herding spiritual animals is already extremely difficult. Isn’t it too wasteful to modify them into demon beasts?

“In the meantime, the lowborn are everywhere like wild grass. Isn’t it much more cost-effective and convenient to modify them than to work on the spiritual animals?”

Ba Yanzhi was more than infuriated and shocked. “Cost-effective? What are the lives of ordinary people in your eyes? Are they even no match for the spiritual animals?”

“Of course not,” the leader of the Ultimate One Sect remarked casually. “How can the ants and grass be compared to the divine birds and beasts?”