Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The sky where dark clouds were roiling, the village that had been burnt to the ground, the villagers who were struggling in pain and blood, and the soldiers who were chucking with hideous smiles… With the gory inferno as the stage, Professor Mo Xuan’s skin fell apart one piece after another. Boundless fire flowed out of his body as silver liquid metal. Unaffected by gravity, it surged to the sky, stream after stream, and condensed into a shadow that was much more magnificent, like a silver statue almost five meters tall.

The statue vaguely looked like Professor Mo Xuan at the beginning, but then, bubbles that looked like cysts popped up, leading to the abnormal changes on its surface.

It changed into the appearance of the old, weary Immortal Cultivator Su Changfa first, before it became the star child, Xiao Tianbao, the retard who pretended to be Xiao Xuance’s foster son. Then, it transformed into more than ten different appearances continuously. At last, the human facial organs were all melted, and the skull and limbs all retreated into its body, turning the statue into a perfectly round ball!

Li Yao was rather shocked to observe all the changes. He could not help but gnash his teeth. “Who’s your own kind? You are obviously an extraterrestrial devil. Speak now. What have you done to Professor Mo Xuan?”

“Extraterrestrial devil? That is just the name made up by the ignorant. If classified according to such a standard, aren’t you also an extraterrestrial devil, my own kind, since you were infected by the Blood Stripe Virus?”

The silver ball floated in midair and released eccentric brightness. Professor Mo Xuan’s absolutely calm voice came over from the center of the ball. “I have not lied to you from beginning to end, although I did keep part of the truth to myself. However, had I known that it was you, I would’ve told you everything candidly.

“I am Mo Xuan, but I’m not just Mo Xuan. I am also Su Changfa, star child Xiao Tianbao, and a lot of people from the Flying Star Sector. I am the condensed state of all of them. I am a new human being, version 2.0!”

“What the heck…” Li Yao felt a headache the moment he heard ‘2.0’. Narrowing his eyes, he warily said, “I understand it now. You have swallowed Mo Xuan, Su Changfa, and the star child as an extraterrestrial devil!”

“Melted, not swallowed. I thought that you should’ve been able to tell the difference between the two concepts because you’ve had similar experiences,” the silver round ball said casually. “What are the so-called ‘extraterrestrial devils’? It all began from the collapse of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago…”

“Ten thousand years ago? Are you kidding me, professor?” Li Yao furrowed his eyebrows and shouted, “The fiercest battle is going on out there, and you are playing this trick with me? Vulture Li Yao definitely deserves his name. This is not the first time that somebody’s intentionally stalled for time. Why don’t you begin from the time when Pangu created the universe?”

The silver ball shivered, as if it was smiling friendlily. “Don’t be so hasty, my friend. I have never meant you any harm this whole time. Now that I know it is you, I am even more reluctant to hurt my own kind. Several minutes matter little for a strategic battle where thousands of starships are involved, and you can only make the most sensible judgement after you grasp enough helpful information, right?”

Li Yao thought quickly for a moment and snorted. Then, he slightly loosened his fists that had been clenched.

“Since I’m having this conversation with you, I can save a lot of explanation work about my background,” the silver ball said. “Do you still recall the array of super crystal processors in the Star Prier’s House below the earth of Spider Den in the Flying Star Sector, which were deployed to monitor and calculate ‘apocalypses’? Other than Yan Xinjian and Bai Xinghe, you were one of the earliest modern people who unearthed them.”

Li Yao frowned, not knowing what the silver ball was going to ramble on about. Such a way of stalling seemed too blatant.

However, the mainframe crystal processor in the Star Prier’s House was indeed a national treasure for the Star Glory Federation.

It was the essence of the crystal processor technology of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago and also the earliest Gai-level super crystal processor in the Star Glory Federation. Even to this day, the other two Gai-level super crystal processors and the hundred Jing-level super crystal processors still could not get rid of its influence. A lot of super crystal processors were even directly duplicated and simplified from the artifact.

It was with the enormous computational ability of the super crystal processor that the federation was able to develop Kunlun at such a high speed, build a reasonably perfect Grand-Unified Spiritual Nexus in only a hundred years, and grasp the four-dimensional communication technology whose delay was almost zero. As a result, the technological gap between the federation and the Imperium was reduced to one generation. The federation even slightly surpassed the Imperium in the fields of certain crucial technology. That was why it was capable of competing with the Imperium at a local battlefield!

Besides, had it not been for the super crystal processor, Li Yao and the rest of them would not have noticed the anomaly of the expedition army of the Imperium at all. If they did not know that such an enormous army was coming for them, the twisting stories that followed would not have happened at all.

It was safe to say that the super crystal processor in the Star Prier’s House was the greatest contributor for both the Star Glory Federation and Li Yao himself to achieve what they had achieved today!

“Ten thousand years ago,” the silver ball continued, “in the last years of the Star Ocean Imperium, during the civil war in which the demons and the so-called ‘extraterrestrial devils’ joined hands to transform the Blood God, the Supreme Emperor’s strongest clone, into the Mad Armageddon, the Flying Star Sector was one of the most important battlefields at the edge of the cosmos.

“The battlefield was terribly difficult to conquer because of the Star Prier’s House.

“The Star Prier’s House at that time had already been confiscated by the army loyal to the Supreme Emperor and modified into a large military surveillance base that covered the dozens of Sectors at the edge of the cosmos.

“The troops that belonged to the Mad Armageddon were perfectly clear when they jumped, gathered, or cruised in the dozens of Sectors nearby. Their every move was monitored by the government army. They could never expect to win such a war.

“To conquer the edge of the cosmos that included the Heaven’s Origin Sector, they must conquer the Flying Star Sector first, and in order to conquer the Flying Star Sector, they must sabotage the Star Prier’s House!

“The Star Prier’s House had been armed to the teeth at that time. Every forsaken tunnel on Spider Den was crammed with vigilant soldiers of the government army. There was no way that the location could be taken by brute force.

“However, the operation of the Star Prier’s House was purely dependent on the array of the hundred super crystal processors. The thing about crystal processors is that they can be conquered from within.”

Li Yao was greatly alarmed. He blurted out, “Crystal processor virus?”

“Yes,” the silver ball said. “Extraterrestrial devil is just an ambiguous collective name made up by the stupid, like flowers, birds, fish, bugs, and human beings are all called ‘living creatures’. In fact, their life form and way of reproduction can vastly differ.

“For example, the Blood Stripe Virus passes on its lineage by special germs and microorganisms. Its boasts the technique of modifying living creatures with the minerals below the earth that it has absorbed. It can lurk deep inside meteoroids and cruise for billions of years in the universe, waiting to be reincarnated in someone else’s shell.

“Some other extraterrestrial devils, in the meantime, have completely abandoned the carriers such as germs, microorganisms, and parasites. Instead, they choose the Spiritual Nexus as the carrier and consider computational ability as the source of their life. It may be inaccurate to call them a crystal processor virus, but you can’t find a more suitable word from the vocabulary of human beings.”

Staring at the silver ball without blinking, Li Yao mumbled to himself, “I finally get it. Your real body is actually an ancient crystal processor virus from ten thousand years ago!”

“No, you get nothing. That is not ‘me’. Just like all other viruses, a crystal processor virus does not boast self-awareness. It is neither righteous nor evil, neither bright nor dark. It is just a cluster of chaos. At most, it can be called…”

The silver ball pondered for a moment, with ripples spreading out on the surface. “It can be considered my antecedent at most.

“However, if it is easier for you to understand in such a way, you may consider it so. Yes. My antecedent was an ancient crystal processor virus from ten thousand years ago. It was produced by the Mad Armageddon’s army and specially compiled and modified targeting the mainframe crystal processor in the Star Prier’s House. The sole destiny of the program was to destroy the mainframe crystal processor of the Star Prier’s House. Nothing more.”

Li Yao blinked and bulged his eyes wider and wider.

This was certainly the gravest trouble!

The enemy’s real body was a crystal processor virus designed to break the mainframe crystal processor in the Star Prier’s House!

Most of the super crystal processors in the Star Glory Federation, as well as the Grand-Unified Spiritual Nexus based on those super crystal processors, adopted technology derived from the super crystal processors in the Star Prier’s House!

If the super crystal processors in the Star Prier’s House could be compared to a grandpa, the other super crystal processors would be the children and grandchildren. Such a virus that targeted the grandpa could certainly strike the entire family who shared the same genes with the grandpa!

Li Yao felt that the whole world was incredibly sticky as if it were melting. He could barely catch his breath in his anxiety.

“My antecedent… might’ve accomplished its mission, or it might not have. I don’t remember it now. As a crystal processor virus, there was really no need to keep such an enormous memory database.

“It is unimportant whether or not the mission was accomplished, because when my antecedent was produced, it was already the end of the civil war, and the Star Ocean Imperium collapsed soon after. All three thousand Sectors fell into chaos and darkness. My antecedent was perhaps exhausted during the fierce battle against the firewall and the antivirus telepathic thoughts. Then, it fell into hibernation in some of the seriously broken crystal processors and the scattered Spiritual Nexus.

“In the thousands of years that followed, the natives of the Flying Star Sector slowly developed a small-scale, interspace Spiritual Nexus on the three habitable planets including Iron Plateau. A lot of crystal processors from the Star Ocean Imperium were repaired and put back to use. My antecedent sensed the beautiful feeling of being brushed by boundless data. It was woken up and ready to take action again.

“However, at that time, the crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus in the Flying Star Sector were still rather underdeveloped. It was not enough to completely activate all the power of my antecedent.

“The real opportunity presented itself five thousand years ago, when your ancestors arrived at the Flying Star Sector.”

Li Yao was greatly alarmed. He immediately understood what Professor Mo Xuan was referring to. His sweat grew even colder than before.