Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

At the center of the cosmos—where the arms of galaxies congregated, stars collided, and spiritual energy surged out—the place was like an enormous swirl that absorbed most of the spiritual energy in the vast universe and reformed it into a bizarre, unbelievable world.

As far as one’s eyes could see, all the stars seemed to be nearby, and one could catch a couple of stars as long as they reached out for them. It was much livelier and more prosperous than the dark, barren, and desolate edge of the cosmos.

At the long distance, it could even be seen that colorful rivers of stars were interweaving, splitting, and condensing, running incessantly as if they had nurtured billions of creatures!

No sound could be conveyed in the vacuum of space. However, the running rivers of stars seemed to be letting out the most deafening sounds that polished the souls of all living creatures.

The nearest nebula was even more incredibly splendid.

It seemed to have been made from the powder of billions of colorful gems, with countless fireflies dancing inside. That was the only way it could unleash such soul-stirring brilliance.

The nebula was in a roughly oval shape, but almost ten arms extended out from two sides like the limbs of an insect.

At the end of the oval that was slightly constricted, a thick arm extended out with an obvious expansion on the end, which made it look like the tail of a scorpion.

The most violent exchange of spiritual energy and materials went on between the nebula and the arms, decorating the entire nebula in explosive brilliance every day. Tremendous spiritual energy and materials were spurted out of the nebula as surging high-energy particles and overwhelming radiation after they were transmitted at the expansion at the end.

At first glance, it was like a scorpion that was spurting out venom.

That was how the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy got its name.

The reactions of spiritual energy and materials in the nebula were very intense by themselves and could be sensed clearly from hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, making it a natural lighthouse in the universe.

When the high-energy particles and the powerful radiation were spurted out through the ‘tail’ irregularly, the intensity of the internal reactions would be further increased by several levels.

Also, the high-energy particles and the powerful radiation pointed at fixed directions, creating the best sailing route in the sea of stars.

Therefore, setting the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy as the destination of the jump was the option with the highest precision.

As the ‘tail’ of the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy began to expand slowly, emitting very dangerous deep-violet colors, and the expansion at the end turned into scorching white and spurted out visible multicolored mist, the deep, profound space not far away from the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy where there seemed to be nothing was stretched by a pair of invisible hands!

From the three-dimensional point of view, the picture could not have been weirder.

There was not the slightest reference substance nearby. The whole space was melted and inseparable, but a tiny proportion of it was being dragged nonstop like a noodle.

When the ‘space noodle’ was extended to the maximum, there was finally a ‘fracture’.

The fracture was like a hollow tube and an exit of a journey through time and space. It threw out a tiny grain of rice!

The wormhole disappeared immediately, and the torn space regained its prior tranquility. Except for the feeble space-time ripples that spread out at the speed of light, nothing seemed to have happened at all.

The tiny grain of rice, on the other hand, was fully revealed under the illumination of the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy.

It could not have been more than fifty meters long. Compared to the boundlessness of the universe, it was no better than a grain of sand.

The surface of its shell was covered in rust and dents caused by the collisions of meteoroids and dust. An emblem of the lightning trident of the Imperium of True Human Beings was painted on the head of the starship. Below the emblem was a weird name.

Jingle Bell!

It was the Star Glory Federation’s multipurpose exploration starship of the ‘Heavenly Eye’ model.

It was the first greeting from the edge of the cosmos to the center of it, informing the entire universe that they were there!

“Is—Is this the center of the cosmos? Such brilliant stars. Such overwhelming spiritual energy. Such a beautiful universe!

“I am finally here!”

Li Yao was still on the bridge of ‘Jingle Bell’, but he had set the starship to be completely transparent. Everything around seemed to have entirely vanished, and he seemed to be standing right in the middle of the sea of stars, bathing in the most prosperous brilliance of the three thousand Sectors. With a mixture of excitement and other feelings, Li Yao almost could not help but cry out to express his ecstasy.

Before his spiritual root was awakened, in the small magical equipment graveyard in Floating Spear City in the Star Glory Federation, when he looked at the dense purple clouds in the sky and heard his foster father telling him bizarre stories of beyond the stars, Li Yao had made up his mind to travel to the center of the cosmos one day and make the name of ‘Vulture’ Li Yao resound in every Sector and every star.

Today, he had finally come to the peak of all stars and the center of all Sectors.

More than a hundred years had passed, and he had finally fulfilled his wish.

“The final jump was almost perfect. I have been directly teleported into the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy, and the scorpion-like nebula is right before my eyes!

“Judging from the intensity and angle of the high-energy particles that the nebula has spurted out, my landing point is perfect, too. It is neither so far away that I have to micro-adjust the coordinates with a second jump nor so close to the nebula that I will be exposed to the blast of the high-energy particles and the powerful radiation.

“Hehe. This means that my luck parameter is increasing. Is fate finally in favor of me?

“Or does it mean that my speculation is correct and the Earth is right here somewhere in the center of the cosmos? Because I belong here in the first place, I am no longer in conflict with the world around me, and no force is ‘rejecting’ me anymore now that I have returned, right?

“In any case, Imperium, I’m here! Covenant Alliance, I’m here! Earth, I have returned!”

Li Yao bashed his chests and shouted out loud.

He had every reason to be excited. It had certainly not been an easy mission to complete the Black Wind Fleet’s hundred-year journey in reverse in only one month.

Jingle Bell did not jump to the Imperium from the federation in one try.

It was very difficult to control the precision in such an attempt. Even if the destination was set as the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy at the beginning, with a minor error of one decimal in one of the parameters, or if all the initial parameters were perfectly correct but the astronomical environment near the destination had slightly changed in the past hundred years, Li Yao could have reached somewhere unknown after the space jump. For example, a military base of the Imperium that was heavily guarded or right in front of hundreds of main-force warships of the Imperium.

Besides, the fundamental architecture of ‘Jingle Bell’ was the single escape capsule of the Pangu Clan, which was fifty meters long at best. How much fuel could have been loaded even if the toilets were filled too?

There was too little fuel to support a super-remote space jump across billions of stars.

Therefore, Li Yao had adopted the approach of ‘frog jump’.

When the Black Wind Fleet marched to the edge of the cosmos, it had also carried the mission of establishing a brand-new sailing route for the Imperium. Therefore, they had left countless automated resource warehouses along their expedition route. Those places were some sort of ‘courier station’ in the sea of stars.

Not much fuel was left inside the courier stations, but it was more than enough to supply a super-mini starship like ‘Jingle Bell’ for a medium or short distance jump.

In such a way, Li Yao jumped station to station. After every courier station he reached, he would refill the fuel and slightly adjust his direction.

When he was not far away from the Imperium, he spent an entire day locking onto the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy, his final destination, and he hit the bullseye accurately!

“However, this is not the time to be carefree.”

Taking a long breath, Li Yao activated all the surveillance magical equipment on ‘Jingle Bell’. He then raised his wariness to the highest, ready to summon his crystal suit and his Colossus.

Like a beach landing, the most dangerous moment in a space jump was the moment when the space jump had just finished.

‘Jingle Bell’ was the most advanced stealth exploration starship of the federation. After it entered the cruise state, it could almost cover all the radiation and energy reactions from itself.

However, the moment when a space jump was completed, the spreading space-time ripples when the three-dimensional space was ripped apart could not be disguised in any way.

The space-time ripples that spread out at the speed of light could be discovered by the enemy.

By ‘enemy’, it did not necessarily refer to the patrolling fleets of the Imperium of True Human Beings.

The universe was too vast a place. Even the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy alone had a hundred desolate worlds and almost ten Sectors. The odds were not high that he would run into an army of the Imperium the moment he jumped over.

Even if he did run into them, he could communicate with the army of the Imperium because ‘Jingle Bell’ had been highly modified and had nothing that would expose Li Yao’s identity or the existence of the federation on the surface.

However, other than the people of the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance, there were other dangerous hunters in the profound sea of stars—alien species.

Since a long, long time ago, Li Yao had been curious about one thing. The three thousand Sectors included millions and even more galaxies, with too many habitable planets with atmospheres to be counted.

Even on the ‘uninhabitable’ planets without atmospheres, a lot of low-level lives in vastly different forms from mankind had been discovered.

In such a colorful and prosperous universe, why were there no powerful civilizations other than the civilization of mankind?

It was said that human beings had encountered some strong and intelligent alien species during the expedition to explore the universe. There were even cases where one single individual from such species annihilated a whole legion of mankind.

However, most of the alien species had been fighting on their own. No matter how strong they were individually, they were always suppressed by the army of mankind in the end.

It was their fatal weakness that they did not have a civilization.

It was not until a long time later that Li Yao learned the answers from the incomplete information on Kunlun and in the underground laboratory in the Ancient Sages Sector.

Millions of years ago, in the vast space that human beings called the three thousand Sectors, there could have been hundreds of civilizations.

However, most of the civilizations were destroyed, or rather, ‘assimilated’ by the alliance of the Pangu Civilization.

The alliance of the Pangu Civilization was not made of the most lenient creatures. Instead of joining each other under the lofty ideals of ‘harmony, friendship, and unity’, they were more like an alliance made of the thirteen most powerful carbon-based civilizations in the universe who made up their mind to destroy all the other weaker carbon-based civilizations.