Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Senior!”

Gao Kangda, Zuo Jingyun, and other resistance warriors of Starlight greeted and bowed at Li Yao at the same time.

Their eyes that were filled with both reverence and admiration made goosebumps appear all over his body.

“Don’t! Don’t call me a senior. I am just your ‘fellow Cultivator’!”

Li Yao was the worst at dealing with awkward situations like this. However, so many Cultivators of Starlight were looking at him earnestly. It seemed inappropriate to be silent. After pondering for a moment, he said frankly, “Captain Gao, and all the fellow Cultivators here, you must’ve heard the process of the whole thing from the fellow Cultivators of the underground branch, haven’t you? Right now, we are still in the middle of the emergency and have to fight a bloody way out while seizing every second. There’s no time for small talk, so I’ll go straight to the topic!

“I am not the Cultivator who has been lost for a thousand years. It is perhaps always a very wonderful tale. Whatever you may think in your mind, this is the truth. Even if I lie to you and say some ambiguous things, the day will come eventually that I am exposed. We will all be awkward by then. So, it is better to point everything out right now.”

“Well—”

Zuo Jingyun and Gao Kangda looked at each other, more or less disappointed at Li Yao’s outspoken denial.

“I understand that, for the weak resistance groups like ‘Starlight’ to struggle in desperation, you have to encourage yourselves with some groundless hope in many cases. That is perhaps how the tale of the Cultivator who has been lost for a thousand years originated, right?”

Having no time to bother with everyone’s disappointment, Li Yao simply went on solemnly, “But it is impossible to defeat the Imperium of True Human Beings and save your family and homeland purely with groundless tales!

“Besides, while I am not ‘the Cultivator who has been lost for a thousand years’, I am definitely an authentic, common Cultivator. You have all seen my strength with your own eyes. Such an ultimate weapon like ‘Colossus’ is not to be produced, maintained, and used by a single individual either!

“You should know the significance of the arrival of a Colossus that belongs to the Cultivators, right?”

Gao Kangda, as a resistance warrior who had traveled far and wide for more than twenty years, and with his profound understanding about the industrial system based on his working experience in the mining group, immediately realized what he was talking about. He asked in excitement, “Senior, where are you from exactly? Is there another ‘Starlight’, one that is more ancient, powerful, and authentic, in the depths of the universe?”

Li Yao smiled and said, “I know that you are not the Starlight that originated from the Martial Meritocrats Sector at the beginning but was only organized decades ago by some resisters who had enough of suppression and exploitation. But in my eyes, you have done an excellent job and totally deserve to be called the real Starlight.

“No. The universe is a vast place. There are more Cultivators than you think. I am not from Starlight but a force a hundred times more powerful, where there are at least hundreds of Cultivators whose combat abilities are on par with or slightly lower than mine!

“Shouldn’t such a piece of news be a better boost for your morale than ‘the Cultivator who has been lost for a thousand years’?”

Li Yao slightly bragged about the Star Glory Federation here.

However, if “slightly worse than” could be defined as the level secondary to the Divinity Transformation Stage, which was the Nascent Soul Stage, it was possible to make up a team of a thousand Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators taking the eight worlds of the federation as well as the two “special districts”, namely Firefly and Boneyard, into account.

Together with the Colossi of the Black Wind Fleet that had been captured, the number of the Colossi in the federation nationwide was close to a hundred. Almost every battle-type Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator had the opportunity to receive training with the Colossi.

If the Imperium of True Human Beings was not regarded as a united whole, the Star Glory Federation was not significantly worse than any force within the territory of the Imperium, including the four “Kurfürst” families.

Therefore, although Li Yao was bragging, he certainly had enough confidence to do so!

“There are a hundred people who are as strong as you!”

Gao Kangda, Zuo Jingyun, and the rest of them were all shocked. They stammered, “Is… Is it true?”

“There’s no need for me to lie to you. If I were to deceive you, I could have followed your preconception and admitted that I was ‘the Cultivator who has been lost for a thousand years’.”

Li Yao said solemnly, “All in all, I hope you can understand two things, fellow Cultivators.

“First of all, your resistance is definitely not meaningless. Like the flames ignited in a dark night, however feeble and flickering it is, there is always a chance for it to illuminate the entire Imperium! Therefore, I am very happy to see that ‘Starlight’ exists for real. I also hope that the fellow Cultivators here will fight side by side through bloody battles until the flames that we ignited illuminate every planet!

“Secondly, there is still hope. I believe that drastic changes will happen to the Imperium of True Human Beings before long. As long as you persist for a while in the universe, you will certainly witness the arrival of the changes. By then, everything will be different from right now, and there will be a great room for the survival of Starlight!

“So, don’t be frustrated or desperate, and just live on stubbornly. Tell everybody everything that happened to the Martial Meritocrats Sector, or the Land of Sins. Another day of your survival will mean another triumph for us!”

Gao Kangda and Zuo Jingyun looked at each other and said gravely, “Are you saying that the force you are at will surface eventually and create more miracles like what happened this time?”

Li Yao smiled. “As you have put it yourself, it is a ‘miracle’, and miracles do not happen on a daily basis. However… you are not wrong. We will definitely surface and raise the banner of ‘Cultivators’ openly at the center of the cosmos!”

Gao Kangda nodded his head thoughtfully.

Just like Zuo Jingyun and all the other crew members, he was eager to figure out everything.

But as a member of Starlight, he had seen too many betrayals and defections and understood the cruelty of the interrogational methods of the Imperium. Naturally, he knew very clearly that he should not learn what he was not supposed to learn.

“Got it.”

Gao Kangda said solemnly, “The main body of ‘Great Mountain’, our armed mining starship, is fine. Now, my brothers are seizing every second to fix the shell. By estimation, the ability of space voyages will be recovered within one night at most. I will bring all the fellow Cultivators out of here safe and sound!”

“Excellent!”

Li Yao took a long breath in relief. Then he asked, “If you can break out of the siege, do you have a destination?”

“Well…”

Gao Kangda hesitated and said, “We had a few secret bureaus before. However, judging from the operation, our organization had been so deeply infiltrated that it was no better than a sieve. I don’t think that the few ‘secret bureaus’ will be safe. We’ll be walking into a trap if we go there.

“If left with no choice, we have to wander in space for a while and make a living by robbing the carriers of the Imperium.”

“Robbing the carriers of the Imperium, like…’space pirates’?”

Li Yao thought of something and asked, “Captain Gao, you are from the space. I believe you must’ve been quite informed when you dealt with the army of the Imperium, didn’t you? How much do you know about the space pirate groups in the Imperium?”

Gao Kangda was slightly dazed. Then he replied, “In our most difficult times, we sometimes did robberies and other things that we were not particularly proud of. However, we were different from the scoundrels who had no boundaries. Our targets were the starships from the noble families of the Imperium, which were shipping goods for the nobles and the warlords, and we never disturbed civilians. Therefore, we lived in peace with the traditional space pirates, each minding our own business. The best we knew were their names and active areas.”

“Then—”

Li Yao asked, “Have you ever heard of a space pirate named ‘Boss Bai’, or a force named ‘Big Bai Space Pirate Gang’?”

“Boss Bai…”

Gao Kangda thought hard for a moment, before he nodded his head affirmatively. “Yes, I have. He only started the business in recent years, but he did quite a few great jobs when he began his career. He is a notorious bandit who has risen to fame in the circle of the space pirates! Our organization never had any encounter with him. But we heard the news about him every once in a while and knew that he was a cunning, cruel, and most brutal man. The carrier fleets of the four Kurfürst families, the arsenals of the fleets of the Imperium, or other space pirate groups—he never lacked the courage to rob any of them, and he never failed any job!

“After all, the Imperium is too large. Boss Bai’s group of space pirates seem to be active in the few Sectors in the fourth quadrant of the Imperium and have nothing to do with us at all. Why did you mention him all of a sudden?”

“Nothing in particular. I only want to suggest to you that, if you truly have nobody to turn to, you can always jump to the area where Boss Bai is active to try your luck.”

Li Yao smiled. “Trust me. Wherever Boss Bai is at, the army of the Imperium must be too busy resolving their own crisis to spare enough attention on the small fry like you. There will be a greater room of activities for you.

“In the meantime, if you ever have the opportunity to meet Boss Bai, just describe everything I did on the Land of Sins for him, and he will naturally realize who I am. Then, there is a 50% likelihood that he will give you selfless help and provide tremendous support for you to live through the difficulties.”

“Is he an old friend of yours, senior? That’s great!”

Gao Kangda said, “However, there is only a 50% chance? What about the other 50%?”

Li Yao said solemnly, “Well, the other 50% chance is that he will find you and even myself to be great troubles. When he learns that I told you to go to him, he will kill all of you at the earliest opportunity!”

Gao Kangda: “…”

Li Yao: “We are only talking about the situation where you have absolutely nobody to turn to. Isn’t it even riskier to wander purposelessly in space? The death rate will certainly be well above 90%. So, it is better to try your luck at Boss Bai’s place! You can try to adulate him harder. For example, you can say that ‘the guy who asked me to find you thought most highly of you and believed that Boss Bai was the only person in the entire cosmos who could resist the infinite wrath of the Imperium and provide a shelter for all of us’, or things as such. I imagine that he won’t be too heartless… or maybe he will?”