Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Great!” Liu Li exclaimed in joy, only to grimace in pain because she accidentally moved the bruise on her body. She then winked at Han Te and said, “Did you hear? Sister Yun believes that we will grow into Cultivators!”

“Sister Yun…” Gulping down the synthesized food that Zuo Jingyun had brought over, Han Te smiled, somewhat embarrassed. “I did not expect you to be such an amiable person. When we saw you on the earthly dragon earlier, we thought that you were a real mean woman!

“Speaking of which, other than my masteress, you are the first real-life Cultivator that we have met. There is so much we want to know about the Cultivators and Starlight. Can you tell us more about them?”

“Yes,” Liu Li said. “We only know a thing or two about the Cultivators. What exactly do we need to do in order to become Cultivators? What can we possibly change the world into? Can you tell us the answers, Sister Yun?”

Zuo Jingyun coughed lightly and began to hesitate. With a bitter smile, she replied, “In fact, I do not know much more about the Cultivators than you. I often question whether or not someone like me is qualified to be called a real Cultivator, or if I’m just a counterfeit among those great people. Sometimes, I also wonder about the significance of Starlight’s struggle.”

“Well…” Liu Li and Han Te looked at each other in bewilderment. Then, they glimpsed at Li Yao in confusion, too. “Why?”

“The dull theories are always boring to talk about. How about this? Let me tell you my story.” Zuo Jingyun combed Liu Li’s hair with her cold, rigid metal fingers subconsciously. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Yes, of course we do!” Liu Li and Han Te nodded at the same time.

“I was sort of born into ‘Starlight’. Unlike you, who were born and raised under the violent and vicious sunlight in the Land of Sins, I grew up inside a fulminating earthly dragon deep below ground.”

Caught in the memories from a long time ago, Zuo Jingyun was somewhat in a daze. She mumbled, “My hometown was a very, very long earthly dragon. My mother was a mechanic of the vehicle, and my father was a warrior and an explorer.

“Ever since I can remember, the noise of drills shattering rocks has filled my ears. There was nothing but bumps and quakes below my feet. As far as my eyes could reach, the whole world was a long, narrow pathway, and it was the pitch dark rocks outside of the pathway. Occasionally, the starry, colorful minerals could be found.

“Do you know? For a long time, I even thought that the whole world was just a hard and suffocating rock, and human beings made their living by digging holes in the rocks like metal bugs. I could not imagine mountains, rivers, the blue sky, or the white clouds, not to mention the infinite sea of stars that’s millions of times vaster than the sky.

“My whole world was exactly such a long, narrow channel, with the complicated gears and dials, the leaky tubes, and the flavorless synthesized food.

“The adults were busy at work twenty-four hours a day. The earthly dragon would encounter all kinds of bizarre faults every second, and we often encountered rocks or even metals that were too hard to pass through. Everybody screamed and shouted in the middle of the steam, banging their wrenches and drills loudly. The children like me would follow them and learn how to maintain and maneuver the earthly dragon and how to distinguish the thousands of minerals and metal resources from the moment we knew how to talk.

“At that time, everybody was occupied with only two things.

“Firstly, drilling the underground world and searching for the mines and city ruins left by the Martial Meritocrats Sector a thousand years ago. The pitiful fuel, food, and other resources that we excavated maintained the functioning of the earthly dragon and our internal organs.

“Secondly, avoiding the penetrators sent by Manjusaka. If we could not, we would be engaged in fierce battles with them in the underground world.

“The penetrators sent by the Immortal Cultivators did not need to carry civilians but only accommodated the most fundamental warriors. So, they were much swifter and more violent. But after all, they were searching a large range. All we needed to do was lurk and hide in silence. Also, because our ancestors had lived hundreds of years below the ground, we were practically the natives of the place, and we were as familiar with the complicated terrain as we were the lines on our palms. Therefore, the two parties were generally on par with each other. We were able to slip through their fingers every single time.

“Of course, I was too young to know what Manjusaka was or the difference between ‘Cultivators’ and ‘Immortal Cultivators’. I thought that the brutal penetrators were our natural enemies and that they were attacking us by the same logic as eagles hunting rabbits.

“Every earthly dragon was a moving village. Occasionally, a lot of earthly dragons would gather to exchange assets and information and to perform large-scale maintenance and upgrade. Those days would be the greatest festival for all of us. The children would even decorate the earthly dragon of their ‘village’ with all kinds of paint and compete on the awesomeness and beautifulness of the earthly dragons.

“However, in my childhood, such festivals were rare. The sieges of the Immortal Cultivators on us increasing in frequency, and the dragnets they established grew ever more thorough. A lot of earthly dragons were discovered by them and blocked in tunnels and caves when billions of tons of rocks were detonated by their crystal bombs. Our earthly dragon suffered several attacks, too. We lost a third of our cars and almost half of the crew.

“In such a desperate war, I gradually learned everything from my parents. I learned about the glorious history of the Cultivators and Starlight, and how foul the ‘Immortal Cultivators’ from Manjusaka were.

“At that time, I laughed at many of my parents’ theories, and I did not think that the Cultivators or Starlight were ‘glorious’ at all.

“My parents told me that the Cultivators were the pride and hope for the civilization of mankind, and Starlight would certainly deal a heavy blow to the Immortal Cultivators after resisting for hundreds of years below the ground.

“At that time, I was younger than you are right now, but I could vaguely tell that my parents were bluffing. There was the blue sky, the white clouds, and the boundless sea of stars outside, as well as countless sinners suffering miserable tortures who were waiting for us to come to their salvation. But we were pressed and beaten hard in the underground world like tortoises, living nomadic, panicked lives every day. What kind of ‘pride’ and ‘hope’ could such Cultivators have brought? And how were they ‘glorious’ in any sense?

“Also, we were attacked all the time, and the situation looked worse and worse. I met a lot of my friends only once in the gatherings before I heard that their earthly dragons had been discovered by the Immortal Cultivators and crushed together with themselves. Then, what kind of ‘heavy blow’ did we deal to the Immortal Cultivators? Was it the drills and the fuel of the enemy’s that we forced them to consume?

“All in all, I was in the rebellious phase of my life. I did not feel that being a Cultivator was anything remarkable. I even thought that I was terribly unlucky to have been born in an earthly dragon of ‘Starlight’ and to be forced to live such a lackluster and hopeless life. I dreamed every day of escaping from the underground world, from Starlight, and from the goddamn Cultivators, to the brilliant sunlight where I could live an unburdened, unrestrained, and entirely different life.

“Such a day finally came.

“Because of the serious shortage of hands, we were forced to recruit new members on the surface. It was the first time I had gotten in touch with real sunlight, breathed fresh air, and seen the large, fluffy clouds in the sky. I screamed and roared in such ecstasy that my voice must’ve flown to the horizon.

“To this day, I cannot forget the feeling when the first ray of sunlight pierced through my pupils and made me blind for ten minutes.

“We found a bunch of bandits or slaves in one of the Bloody Worlds. They used to be a very influential gang in the local area, but because they were too big, they were annihilated by the coalition of almost ten gangs. The few survivors left had turned into slaves.

“We destroyed the gangs and rescued the slaves. After interrogation and vetting, some of them who could be educated were brought to the underground world with us.

“After that…”

Zuo Jingyun’s voice became hoarse and disrupted. Pain quickly flashed on her face, and she could not help but scratch the joint of her left shoulder and the metal arm.

Intrigued by the story, Liu Li and Han Te could not help but ask, “What happened after that?”

Frowning, Zuo Jingyun said, “Later, one of the slaves betrayed us and led a large batch of Immortal Cultivators to us. The earthly dragon that I was born and raised in was completely destroyed. Both of my parents died in fighting. I lost my left arm but struggled to escape to the ruins of an underground city, managing to survive the disaster.”

“Ah!” Liu Li’s eyes widened as she lowered her head somewhat in embarrassment. Thinking for a moment, she grabbed Zuo Jingyun’s right hand and said, “I’m sorry, Sister Yun.”

It was not until this moment that Li Yao and the Fist King finally realized why Zuo Jingyun was so hostile to the bandits and thugs from the Land of Sins. They could not help but grow fonder of the one-armed female warrior.

Zuo Jingyun smiled and touched Liu Li’s head with her artificial arm. She said, “It was something that happened a long, long time ago, which I have almost forgotten. You have nothing to feel sorry for.

“Ever since that moment, I have stopped thinking of the golden sunlight, the blue sky, the white clouds, and the winds of freedom. All that is on my mind is revenge.

“Although I do not understand the concept of being a ‘Cultivator’ very well, it can’t be wrong to go against the ‘Immortal Cultivators’ and butcher them as well as their accomplices, right?”