Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The scene was slowly frozen in the echo of ‘Kunlun’.

Then, it was the last illusionary world.

Li Yao’s soul appeared in the secret chamber more than twenty thousand meters below the ground that could block radiation and spiritual waves, and he was staring at the thick fluid inside the crystal pool in midair.

The fluid seemed to be a quiet ocean that boasted its own self-awareness. Now and then, a tiny spindrift would be raised, and thousands of telepathic thoughts would spurt out.

The telepathic thoughts formed bright gold, dotted lines in midair. When the lines connected, brilliants stars were formed. The number of stars grew larger and larger, expanding into one galaxy after another.

It was a star map, one that was meant to guide the latecomers to find Kunlun.

BOOM!

As billions of stars flooded into Li Yao’s brain as if a dam had collapsed, the explosive force immediately blew him out of the memory pieces of Ba Yanzhi and pushed him back to the depths of the White Silver Death Desert.

He was illuminated by various colors, as if he were crouching inside an enormous egg made of glass.

While Li Yao was in the deep meditative state, intense streams of heat were emitted from his body without him knowing. The high temperature melted the sand and generated such a weird ‘eggshell’.

“Ugh—”

Cold sweat was popping up of his forehead nonstop, and he was shaking. The gory scenes of war were still flashing in front of his eyes, with the echoes of shouts and yells.

He did not calm down again until he breathed steadily for a whole minute.

He had never had such experience after he forming the ultimate core!

Clutching the Hidden Star Box that looked like a crystal brain, Li Yao felt stunned.

Although he had guessed that demons and human beings might have shared the same origin, he had never thought that the truth would be so cruel and unpredictable!

There are no distinctions between humans and demons, deities and devils. There are only winners and losers!

The hideous laughter of the leader of the Ultimate One Sect was still echoing right beside his ears. He could not help but bite his lips hard until his hot blood was flowing out.

So, this is the truth.

Li Yao rubbed his face hard and quickly sorted through everything that happened forty thousand years ago.

First of all, Ba Yanzhi was indeed ‘Chaos’ and the creator of the demon race, but his ‘creation’ was quite coincidental.

Ba Yanzhi used to be merely the manager of the Infinite Planet for the Ultimate One Sect. The Infinite Planet was just a remote, barren, and underdeveloped planet in the territory of the Ultimate One Sect.

Judging from Ba Yanzhi’s demeanor, he could not have been very popular in the Ultimate One Sect. Apparently, nobody liked him, and it was sort of a banishment to assign him to the Infinite Planet.

However, as it turned out, Ba Yanzhi discovered a relic of the Pangu Clan on the Infinite Planet, where there was a black spring and a mysterious stone that were left by the Pangu Clan.

Li Yao did not know what was on Ba Yanzhi’s mind at that time. Whatever his purpose was in the beginning, he had kept the stone to himself.

Later, it was the time of war. The water of the black spring boasted the marvelous effect of curing the incurable, despite the side effect of growing horns, tails, and dense hair. Left with no other choice, Ba Yanzhi was forced to promote it on the Infinite Planet and created the first batch of ‘demons’.

Li Yao did not know how he should comment on Ba Yanzhi’s action, but he put himself in Ba Yanzhi’s shoes. If one of his family members was heavily wounded, and it was the only way to treat them, he was afraid that he would have resorted to the medication, too.

Human beings. What are human beings? If a thing has the soul of a human being but a completely different shell, are they human beings, too?

The question had once raised heated debates in the history of the Star Glory Federation, when the rights of the ‘spectral Cultivators’ were being acknowledged.

The spectral Cultivators were a whole new life form that was the combination of the soul of human beings and artificial bodies. The artificial body was not necessarily the shape of a human being. Back when Li Yao was in the Star Glory Federation, he had a good friend named ‘Wei Qingqing’. After she turned into a spectral Cultivator, she had always been fond of flying everywhere in the appearance of a ‘green bird’.

In the ancient times, when the ‘spectral Cultivators’ were mentioned, one’s first impression would often be the haunting, hateful poltergeists.

But things were different in the Star Glory Federation. During the unceasing war against the demon race, many soldiers of the federal army had been killed on the battlefield. As the drugs and magical equipment such as ‘Soul Manifesting Powder’ and ‘Soul Concentration Gear’ were applied, more and more soldiers were saved in the form of their souls.

For the soldiers who had ‘sacrificed’ for their country, it was naturally inappropriate to regard their souls as ‘hateful poltergeists’.

In the history of federation, after decades of debates, the advocates of souls had won the argument in the end.

From then on, the law dictated that all objects with the soul of a human being, regardless of what they looked like, would be considered human beings. Legally speaking, they would all be treated as ‘natural people’ equally.

After a hundred years of development, citizens of the federation had become very used to the spectral Cultivators. Prejudice or distress could be rarely seen. Ding Yin, Wei Qingqing, Professor Mo Xuan, and many other Cultivators who had turned into spectral Cultivators after they died were able to contribute to the civilization of mankind in their new bodies!

But what if their bodies were not artificial bodies made of crystals and metals but bizarre-looking biochemical shells whose cells had been modified on a large scale?

Could the souls who resided in such bodies be called human beings?

The problem was too tricky for Li Yao to answer at that moment.

However, whether they were human beings or not, in the eyes of the ancient Cultivators who were short of soldiers because of the prolonged war, the mutants who had drank the ‘Divine Water of Kunlun’ were clearly the best slaves and soldiers.

For the keenest Cultivators, such as those of the Ultimate One Sect, they even realized the difficulty of training in the Era of Doom and simply turned themselves into demons, too!

Maybe, the Ultimate One Demons were the ancestors of the saint-blood demons and the silver-blood demons later, and the majority of the ordinary people, or rather, the ants in their words, ended up being the bronze-blood demons and the black-blood demons?

The scheme of the Ultimate One Sect succeeded. In the Era of Doom, when the spiritual energy was running dry, demons were indeed a new species that were more adaptive to the harshness of the universe than the Cultivators were. Swept by the flag of the bloody demon, the world of Cultivators fell apart and was entirely wiped out in the end.

In the heaven-splitting final battle, Ba Yanzhi’s demon army and the Empyrean Terminus Sect, the last survivors of the world of Cultivators, both suffered heavy casualties, and the Ultimate One Demons stole the fruit of victory without the least effort!

However, the Ultimate One Demons did not see one thing coming.

Not only did Ba Yanzhi get away, he had also discovered the secrets of the ‘Divine Stone of Kunlun’.

“Kunlun. What is Kunlun exactly?” Li Yao mumbled to himself.

In the legends, Kunlun and Penglai were two divine mountains in the primeval era where the ancient sages lived.

However, in the deepest part of his cells, from the memory of his ancestors of the primeval era, Li Yao had seen a few enormous starships whose names were ‘Kunlun’ and ‘Penglai’.

If Kunlun is the name of a starship left by the Pangu Clan, everything will make sense.

In the primeval era, the Pangu Clan had a base on the Infinite Planet. They left a few gifts in the place, including the ‘Divine Water of Kunlun’ and the ‘Divine Stone of Kunlun’, which contained the coordinates of a ‘Kunlun Warship’.

Maybe, they left the ‘Divine Water of Kunlun’ in the hope that, when the creatures on the Infinite Planet grew certain wisdom, they would drink the water of the black spring and accelerate their evolution so that they could find the ‘Kunlun Warship’ and the legacies of the Pangu Clan.

Whatever the purpose of the black spring was, Ba Yanzhi, who had lost everything, could only take his chances. Leading a batch of remnants, he followed the star map inside the Divine Stone of Kunlun and finally reached a place that was very close to the ‘Kunlun Warship’, which was here, the Blood Demon Sector!

However, after he made his way here, Ba Yanzhi’s body was already extremely weak. It was impossible for him to lead a new adventure.

At the last moment of his life, he drank a type of brand-new, highly-modified ‘Divine Water of Kunlun’. More ‘primeval cells’ inside his body were triggered, allowing him to advance into the highest level. But problems had been left, too!

Later, his exploration must’ve succeeded, at least during the first time. He really found ‘Kunlun’ and managed to excavate the remains of the enormous body of the Pangu Clan from ‘Kunlun’.

It is not hard to imagine that he also retrieved a lot of legacies of the Pangu Clan from ‘Kunlun’ together with the remains!

Later, he studied the legacies at the center of the White Silver Death Desert below the Star Swallowing Sea, hoping to find a way to defeat the Ultimate One Demons. He also created countless dangerous biochemical weapons!

Li Yao suddenly realized why Ba Yanzhi had chosen to establish his base in such a desolate, unpopulated place.

It was because Ba Yanzhi had been studying the most contagious, lethal stuff. Only the depths of the Star Swallowing Sea surrounded by the White Silver Death Deserver where no creatures could survive was secure enough!

In such a place, even if there was an accident, the venomous gas and poison would not affect the outside world!

As it turned out, accidents did take place later.

At first, it was not the leakage of venomous fog or poison but that Ba Yanzhi’s body could not hold it together any longer.

He had triggered too many primeval cells. The ‘genetic locks’ that controlled his body had all been shattered, forcing him to return to the original point of life and turn into a pool of thick fluid.

Maybe, that was why he was addressed as Chaos.

No nose, no mouth, no hands, no feet, and not a hole on his body. Were they the descriptions for Chaos in the ancient legends?

However, Ba Yanzhi, who was in the form of Chaos, had not died yet. His unbelievable resolution supported the fire of his life to continue burning. He went on carrying out his research, and he saved his life story, the truth of the birth of the demon race, and the primeval star map that marked the location of Kunlun inside the Hidden Star Box.

Perhaps, his research could have succeeded, and Ba Yanzhi’s subordinates who had received a lot of legacies of the Pangu Clan had their chances to defeat the Ultimate One Demons.

But an expected accident suddenly destroyed the entire base. A certain weird virus spread out in the enclose base unstoppably, triggering even crazier mutations inside the bodies of the Cultivators and the demons, who killed each other until none were left.

At last, the branch of demons under Ba Yanzhi’s command was buried deep inside the great desert of a remote world along with all their secrets.

As for Ba Yanzhi himself, he was addressed by the rulers of the following era, the winners, as Chaos and vilified as a dreadful destroyer!