Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

According to the time on the surface, it was already late at night.

But the underground mine that had been forsaken for hundreds of years was ablaze with lights and filled with an obstreperous crowd. The collisions of metals and the splashing sparks were echoing everywhere.

Lurking deep inside the mines, Li Yao’s soul spread out in ripples and covered the entire mine while he observed the last preparations of the resistance warriors of Starlight in silence.

To be more exact, the resistance warriors who called themselves ‘Cultivators’ were different from the Cultivators of the Star Glory Federation.

They did not have perfect theories or beliefs, and they never thought about how they could create a new world. They were merely the descendants of the Cultivators in the past who were struggling in the hopeless desperation with their instincts of survival and revenge.

However, if Li Yao were in their shoes, he was not certain that he could have behaved better than the ‘Cultivators’ like Zuo Jingyun.

This was going to be the largest counterattack of the underground branch of Starlight in the past hundreds of years. Li Yao could tell from the eyes that were filled with light, their rapid breathing, and their hot sweat that all the warriors could not be more excited.

Wei Longtao, their general commander, was leading everyone in the work. He heaved the locomotive of the most majestic and intimidating earthly dragon into midair with hoists and chains. Crawling up and down, he added battle units to the vehicle and cheered up the warriors next to him, waving the maintenance tools in his hands.

Illuminated by the dazzling lights, his white teeth and his eyes that were filled with dreams were particularly eye-catching.

“Are you all ready? We have been losers below the ground for hundreds of years. Today, we are finally going big. Do not slack off at the most critical moment!” Wei Longtao laughed loudly. “Let’s make the wretched Immortal Cultivators open their eyes and see clearly what real Cultivators should look like!”

The hundreds of resistance warriors bashed their chainswords and vibration sabers on the earthly dragon and uttered roars of excitement.

Some of the warriors were playing instruments that were similar to harmonicas. Under the lead of Wei Longtao, everybody began to sing the same thrilling, blood-boiling battle hymn. While they were singing, everybody’s eyes were filled with tears. Looking at the black rocks around them, their eyes seemed to have pierced through the miserable, suffocating world to the ultimate battlefield.

Li Yao observed everything in silence and added every detail into his deduction model. His soul became clearer and clearer but also more and more… angry.

Right then, Li Yao sensed feeble quakes from the dark wall of the cave above their heads.

Cracks unnoticeable to the naked eye appeared on the wall quickly, spraying dust that was as small as sand.

They’re really here!

Li Yao thought something and sent two warnings into Han Te and Liu Li quickly. “Wake up now. Bring all the food, medicine, and ammunition. Be ready to retreat with the Fist King!”

The Fist King stuck his metal palm to the wall and sensed something. Ominous brilliance beamed out of his man-made eyes as he said, “Intruders?”

“Exactly,” Li Yao said coldly. “The intruders that have drilled into the ground!”

Hardly had he concluded his sentence when devastating alarms began to ring.

“Enemy incoming! Enemy incoming! Enemy incoming!”

“The Immortal Cultivators’ penetrators are approaching us quickly from above. They are less than three kilometers away from us!”

“The index of quakes is so high. It must be a super drill of an extremely huge size. Also, there is no stopping and adjusting at all. They have obviously discovered our accurate coordinates!”

Panicked exclamations were echoing everywhere, mixed with the alarms each higher than the last, which only made everyone even more panicked, especially the bandits and thugs who had just been guided to the underground world. If the place had not been an underground mine with no escape at all, they would have held their heads and fled in a hurry.

“Don’t panic, everybody. Listen to my command!”

At the critical moment, Wei Longtao roared like a bell being tolled. “Eighty percent of the earthly dragons have completed the final upgrading and loading of ammunition. The basic position of the ‘temple’ has been transmitted to your respective crystal processor, too. There is no time to delay anymore. All conductors, set off immediately and search for the precise coordinates of the ‘temple’ in a grid as we planned before!

“As for this place…

“I will cover the retreat for everybody. Not a single Immortal Cultivator will catch you!

“The final war has come. Take action now, warriors of Starlight. Let’s meet again at the ‘temple’!”

Wei Longtao’s voice seemed to boast amazing magic, filled with the power to convince and pacify other people.

Under his roars, the chaotic atmosphere in the place had entirely vanished. All the resistance warriors jumped to their feet like fully-wound machines that were full of fuel.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The drill-shaped excavation systems before the earthly dragons began to revolve slowly in deafening fulminations, releasing unstoppable mystic rays and high-frequency vibration fields that were enough to shatter the hardest rocks and minerals.

Countless warriors leapt out of their respective caves. Moving on the chains and the rails as steadily as if they were running on the ground, they soon jumped into their own earthly dragons.

“This place is about to be breached!” Zuo Jingyun showed up before Li Yao and the rest of them again. She extended her hands to Han Te and Liu Li and said, “Let’s go to my Cloud Penetrator!”

Quite a few earthly dragons had long finished their maintenance and modification and were standing by in their respective tunnels. They took off before other people and soon disappeared into the depths of the soil with the tracks all over their bodies rotating crazily.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

After they drove into the depths of the tunnels, the tunnels were all blown up by the crystal bombs that had been planted earlier. Materials similar to gels had been mixed into the crystal bombs, which stuck the collapses and made them as tough as iron. It was practically impossible to drill through the same way.

In the meantime, unpredictable explosions also echoed from everywhere in the vast mine.

They were the interferential quake sources that Starlight deployed.

For the hide-and-seek thousands of meters into the sunless rocks, optical senses were of little use. Soundwaves and the perception of quakes from the enemy’s drills and tracks were much more important to lock onto the target.

Right now, the earthly dragons of Starlight were in a hurry to escape. Naturally, they had to boost the performance of the drills and tracks, having no time to care about the problems of quake and noise prevention.

Therefore, the crystal bombs that had deployed everywhere before were detonated to create a lot of minor quake sources, making it hard for the Immortal Cultivators to tell which ones were the earthly dragons. That was the only approach for them to escape.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

There were also many resistance warriors who did not board the earthly dragons. Instead, with determination and fearlessness on their faces, they entered the half-fixed turrets that boasted massive firepower but had lost all mobility. Gritting their teeth, they aimed the turrets that were even thicker than their waist at the crags above.

On the crags above their heads, hundreds of interconnected cracks appeared at some point. Broken rocks and dust were falling nonstop, like the breath of a certain underground ferocious beast.

Everybody could feel the bone-numbing quakes approaching from all directions.

The broken stone and the dust smashed into the turrets nonstop in clinking noises, making everybody even more anxious.

“This is our day of glory!”

Wei Longtao ascended from the deepest part of the black smoke in the mine again. He was covered in a bronze-colored crystal suit, which had strengthened plugins that were similar to an Ares Extension. At first glance, he was like a bronze five-meter-tall chimpanzee. His eyes were bloodshot, and the steam popping up from his head was even more intense than the waste spurted out by the earthly dragons. His volume was raised to a higher level too as he shouted with explosive strength, “Hundreds of years of being attacked, hundreds of years of running, and hundreds of years of failures have made almost everyone including ourselves forget the name—the proud and glorious name!

“But after the battle today, whether we win or we lose, nobody will ever forget us! The light of the stars beyond the firmament will be our eyewitnesses, telling everyone in the entire universe that there used to be a group of fearless warriors who called themselves Cultivators!”

“Cultivators! Cultivator! Cultivators!”

All the resistance warriors screamed their most hoarse but most loud voices that had been mixed with blood!

“Cultivators…”

Zuo Jingyun escorted Han Te and Liu Li into the train. Looking at the fellow Cultivators who had stayed to cover the retreat, she bit her lips hard and said, “We will find the temple. I swear that we will!”

On the crags above everyone’s head, the gaps that looked like wounds ripped apart by deadly beasts continued expanding. The collapsing rocks grew larger and larger still in size. At first, they were the size of fingernails. Then, fists. Then, heads. Eventually, boulders almost five meters in diameter fell to every corner in the wasted mine, smashing the disorderly metal facilities into smithereens.

“They’re here! They’re here!”

Orange brilliance could be vaguely seen from the center of the interconnected gaps, which was the mystic rays released by the super-enormous drill that was digging down, as well as the flames when the dust was ignited because of the friction!

Chi! Chi! Chi!

The ear-splitting friction and shattering sounds were like the laughter of fiends that savaged everybody’s ears.

“Prepare to fight!” Wei Longtao bellowed and drew two extremely thick machine guns from his waist. Holding a gun in each hand, he aimed at the dome and shouted, “Let’s show them who we are!”

Huala!

Finally, when the laughter of fiends reached the loudest point, the dome was completely pierced through by a super-enormous drill!

The drill was more than ten meters in diameter, filled with sharp teeth and mincers on the surface, which were still rotating at a high speed and transforming broken rocks and dust into orange flames.

It was like a gigantic meteor from outer space that had crashed into the mine, raising a deafening explosion and tidal blasts that felt like a tsunami.

The black smoke deep inside the forsaken mine was driven away. Explosions that echoed everywhere were like eruptions of volcanos, whose orange brilliance illuminated the face of every resistance warrior. Even their droplets of sweat that were as large as beans were clearly visible.

Hum! Hum! Hum!

From the vertical caves up above that were more than ten meters in diameter, ominous noises that sounded like dancing wild bees came over.