Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Firepower deterrence!” Kou Ruhuo bellowed. The hundreds of spiritual puppets formed a rhombus-shaped battle formation, the crystal cannons on their shoulders opening fire at the same time. More than a thousand clusters of unstoppable mystic rays immediately raised countless blasts and airwaves inside the primitive forest.

Many animals were evaporated before they had the chance to scream. Still more animals fled to the deeper parts of the forest amid devastated cries.

The overwhelming malicious intent a moment ago was entirely gone.

The firepower deterrence lasted a whole minute, paving a wasteland a kilometer wide and dozens of kilometers long in front of them.

Li Yao took the opportunity to record the firepower of the spiritual puppets and evaluate their combat ability.

It was obvious that the spiritual puppets of the Imperium of True Human Beings had a combat ability three to five times higher than Xiao Xuance’s Grand Illusionary Soldiers did.

As for the firepower deterrence itself, Li Yao did not have any objection.

He had personally explored many world fragments, too. He knew that one needed to demonstrate their dominating firepower when they were exploring an unvisited land—especially if they were faced with the low-intelligent, primitive animals—so that the ferocious animals would be scared and keep their distance from them.

Otherwise, the ferocious animals that did not know what was best for themselves would likely lunge over one after another. Even if they could not pose a fatal threat, a lot of spiritual energy and ammunition would be wasted, too. It could be quite a nuisance.

With the display of power, whatever the animals lurking inside the primitive forest exactly were, they had been taught a good lesson about respect.

Without the harassment of the animals, there was nothing to stop them from advancing, so they successfully flew over to black cube.

The closer they got to the black cube, the better they felt the splendidness and incredibleness of the building.

Measured from whichever direction, every edge of the building was precisely ten thousand meters, without even an error of one millimeter.

By achieving the best in the largest and smallest scale in such a way, the building was informing the visitors a million years later of the formidability of the Pangu civilization!

Li Yao and the three Immortal Cultivators flew around the black cube. They discovered a slot that pierced through the cube on one of the surfaces. The slot was equally straight, precise, and boring.

It was perhaps the ‘gate’ of the black cube.

It was a ‘slot’ from a long distance away, but it was actually more than a hundred meters in width. Covered in a vague mist, they could not tell exactly what was inside the black cube.

Dead bodies of the Pangu Clan and human beings were lying all around the ‘gate’. They were mostly broken because of tearing and gnawing.

It must have been done by the animals and vines that proliferated after the city fell.

However, all the animals and vines only dared to touch the surroundings of the black cube but had no courage to invade it.

“Chances are that there are better-preserved corpses inside, maybe even Colossi!”

The four of them and almost eight hundred spiritual puppets fell into the black canyon like dust.

The moment that he broke into the black cube, Li Yao’s eyes were entirely blocked by the black mist. Even the communication channel was jammed, with background noise echoing nonstop.

He could only hear his own heartbeat and see the reflection of his glittering eyes.

But the black mist soon dispersed. Li Yao finally got a general picture of what was inside the giant, black cube.

And he could not help but gasp hard.

He did not know how he should describe everything in front of his eyes. It was even stranger than the ‘red inferno’ a moment ago that was caused by the Blood Tide.

The black cube was hollow. As a large building ten kilometers in both length and width, it did not have any levels or walls inside. The entire space inside was a whole without the slightest blockade. It looked like a warehouse, a factory, and more importantly, a farm.

The reason it looked like a ‘farm’ was that giant, black pillars thousands of meters high occupied the entire black cube. Every black pillar had countless branches, and every branch had countless metal vesicles that looked like wheat ears or corn cobs.

Most of the metal vesicles had been broken. They were lackluster and dry, like the empty cocoons of the insects after they broke out.

But a few metal vesicles remained intact on the surface. Dark red brilliance was being emitted from them!

Most of the vesicles were three to four meters in diameter. From every metal vesicle, more than a hundred metal tubes were connected to the black pillars, as if they were transmitting energy and nutrition from the pillars.

Li Yao ran a simple calculation. Every black pillar that was six to eight kilometers tall boasted almost a hundred branches, which could ‘grow’ almost ten thousand metal vesicles.

When he was flying among the dense black pillars, he felt that he was a small mosquito darting into a primitive forest. Everything felt both large and weird. He found it almost impossible to catch his breath.

Li Yao scanned the broken metal vesicles with the mystic rays, only to find nothing worth noting after more than ten tries.

When he scanned the nineteenth metal vesicle, however, he finally found… the skeleton of a human being inside it.

The skeleton was only 1.6 meters long. Judging from the skull, the teeth, and the limbs, it was a male human.

His bones were intact. There was no sign of fierce resistance or struggle. His death was rather ‘peaceful’ or even ‘tranquil’. He seemed to have died of natural course.

What was odd was that, given the development of his bones, he should have been a teenager. Yet, he was crouching in a cluster like a fetus in the womb.

Did the Pangu Clan capture the young man, stuff him into the metal vesicle, and sustain their life functions in a certain way? Li Yao pondered to himself, but he somehow felt that his guess was not right.

After scanning almost a hundred broken metal vesicles, he discovered three skeletons of human beings from the primeval era.

Other than two teenagers, the third one was at least thirty years old.

Despite their different ages, they all died a peaceful death, and they were crouching in the same posture that looked like a fetus.

What exactly was going on here? Did the Pangu Clan really capture so many human beings? They didn’t have any reason for that! What’s the purpose of such an attempt?

Li Yao flew hard toward a metal vesicle that was emitting dark, red brilliance.

The metal vesicle should have been filled with a dark red liquid, but after hundreds of thousands of years of corrosion, all the liquids had volatilized. The only thing left was a dark red membrane that was attached to the translucent shell of the metal vesicle.

Li Yao narrowed his eyes and looked inside through the translucent shell.

Strange. There are occasionally bodies in the broken metal vesicles, but this perfectly-preserved metal vesicle has nothing inside.

While he was baffled, he heard Tang Qianhe’s exclamation.

She had also found a seemingly perfect metal vesicle that was emitting dark red brilliance.

Li Yao hurried over to her.

Inside the metal vesicle that she found was a super tiny corpse, like… a newborn baby!

Did the Pangu Clan baptize their magical equipment with human babies, too?

Having seen such a brutal scene in person, Li Yao could not help but burst into fury.

But that was still not right. If the place was meant to baptize magical equipment with the pure souls of babies, or for other evil purposes, all the dead bodies should be babies. Why were adults twenty to thirty years old mixed among them?

The souls of adults were not as pure as those of babies. Even one of them might ruin the final product. It was certainly not a fair deal.

Nothing inside… Babies… Teenagers… Adults…

Black pillars like trunks and straws, metal vesicles like wheat ears and fruits, hundreds of tubes that were transmitting nutrition and energy…

When all the details were connected, Li Yao was so shocked that he almost bit his own tongue.

He finally thought of an extremely shocking possibility.

The first sealed metal vesicle that he scanned might not be empty at all.

Something that was invisible to the human eyes was probably growing inside.

A zygote.

This place was not a prison where human beings were interrogated or exploited by the Pangu Clan.

On the contrary, this was the factory where the Pangu Clan manufactured human beings!

“This is—” Utterly shocked, Li Yao looked at Tang Qianhe, brimming with curiosity.

Staring at the metal vesicle, Tang Qian replied, her voice both hollow and depressed, “I’m not clear. Let Master Su tell you.”

Su Changfa and Kou Ruhuo, on the other hand, had already flown to the center of the ground. They were circling around a transparent cube around ten meters in diameter.

When Li Yao and Tang Qianhe joined them, they were still unable to move their eyes away from the transparent cube.

Li Yao squinted and observed carefully. The transparent cube seemed both like a control pivot of the entire factor and a huge monument. After hundreds of thousands of years, it was still glittering in refreshing spiritual energy.

Deep inside the cube, three sophisticated, octagonal, three-dimensional runes were floating and flashing!

Li Yao had never seen such delicate, flawless runes before.

Their power had even exceeded the category of runes but lay in a certain mysterious, inviolable law of the universe!

For some reason, when the mystic rays from the three runes pierced through him, Li Yao’s cells—deep down to his gene strands—were seething uneasily. He had an extremely uncomfortable feeling of being restrained.

Li Yao only felt better after he gritted his teeth and grasped the grip of his chainsword. He asked Su Changfa in a low voice, “What is this?”

The old Immortal Cultivator was silent for a long time.

It was not a silence that suggested his reluctance to give the answer but a silence before the outburst of a volcano that suggested he was accumulating his strength.

Staring at the three runes deep inside the cube for a long time, the old Immortal Cultivator finally sniffed and said coldly, “One day, you might get in touch with something called the Path of Ultimate Benevolence.

“The three runes here, once parsed, represent the three fundamental runes of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. You can call them the heavens’ laws if you want.

“Hehe. In the legends, violating the heavens’ laws is an unpardonable crime. Burning you into ashes and forbidding you from an afterlife are the lightest punishments!”

The Path of Ultimate Benevolence? Overjoyed, Li Yao hurried to asked respectfully, “Senior Su, what do the three ‘fundamental laws’ mean exactly after they are parsed?”

Su Changfa took a deep breath. His bones were cracking so loudly that the sound was clearly audible despite the thorough coverage of the crystal suit. He declared, one word after another, “The three fundamental laws of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence are as follows!

“A human being may not injure an individual of the Pangu Clan or, through inaction, allow an individual of the Pangu Clan to come to harm.

“A human being must obey orders given to ‘it’ by the Pangu Clan except when such orders would conflict with the First Law.

“A human being must protect its own existence from being harmed by others as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.