Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Looking far away, Li Yao and Long Yangjun noticed that fiery snakes were surging out of a handful of caves like volcano eruptions on a wall on the south side of the Great Iron Plants. The fire was in the most eccentric violet color and condensed into hideous shapes in the midair, only to be ripped into shreds by the air cleaning system, as if countless incomplete ghosts had haunted the underground space.

The air cleaning system was overloading and squeaking because of the burn, sounding exactly like the shrieks of the restless specters.

Then, a third explosion that was even louder came over.

This time, Li Yao and Long Yangjun had both sensed the overlapping waves of spiritual energy darting out of the depths of the caves, powerful enough to blow away all the rocks on the wall.

Even some carts, which weighed dozens of tons after being loaded with minerals, were knocked away and did not fall after rolling for dozens of circles in the midair and being burnt into black, wasted iron.

It was indicative enough of the intensity of the explosions!

A lot of women and children immediately began to wail in the living areas, but the sounds seemed to be concentrated in one hut particularly. For the convenience of the workers, the families of the workers who belonged to the same factory or mine would live next to each other in the living areas. The families of the victims, after discovering that the mines in which their breadwinners worked had exploded, immediately lost their souls.

Staring at the burning caves, Xu Zhicheng seemed to have fallen into a frigid lake, not knowing what to do at all.

His eyes were extremely hollowed, and his body was all covered in sweat. His reaction suggested that it was his chest that just had an intense explosion and not the regular mining caves.

He looked even more devastated and desperate when he saw that the antifire spiritual puppets that were particularly resistant to high temperature and pressure went deep into the caves against the scorching flames.

Mine explosions were certainly no joke. If it was not dealt with in time, the whole mining area might collapse, and the Great Iron Plants would be destroyed.

Therefore, even someone as petty as Li Minghui had to spend a fortune purchasing the fully-automatic antifire spiritual puppets, as well as the excavators modified from crystal tanks with additional special antifire armor and tanks that were filled with super-compressed coolers, in order to deal with such emergencies.

At this moment, not only had tremendous antifire spiritual puppets marched in, but even the Immortal Cultivators deployed in the rest area up above were also charging into the most dangerous tunnels on the excavators to stop the fire and the collapse from spreading, which seemed to be a major reason why Xu Zhicheng was upset.

Observing his face in silence, Li Yao could easily tell that something was troubling the Grand Guardian.

Very soon, a few miners whose faces had been blackened hurried to come to the living area. Even though they had practiced the Serenity Arts for years, they could not stop the panic on their faces. They did not even have time to greet Long Yangjun before they cried, “Not good, Grand Guardian! It was the No. 37 cave that had explosions. The abandoned caves behind are affected too! The… things we hid there are half detonated and half discovered by the Immortal Cultivators!”

Xu Zhicheng’s body shook hard, and his face immediately became pale.

Li Yao was quick enough to support him and transmit a stream of gentle spiritual energy into his body so that his mind could be stabilized. He then listened to the Grand Guardian talking about the disaster in bitterness.

As it turned out, Nepenthe had been using the forsaken caves and tunnels to hide the weapons and magical equipment for tomorrow’s uprising. A large batch of crystal bombs was kept exactly behind the No. 37 cave. They were supposed to be distributed to every soldier tonight.

Those crystal bombs were all crudely made by the workers themselves. Naturally, the stability and heat resistance of the crystal bombs were close to zero. Nobody expected that the No. 37 cave before them would explode. The first explosion was actually not important, but it triggered the crystal bomb that was only one wall away, leading to a serial explosion and making the situation beyond rescue!

“Grand Guardian, so many spiritual puppets and Immortal Cultivators have marched in. They will certainly discover the crystal bombs that have not exploded yet!”

The few Nepenthe believers who came to report shouted, “Even if all the crystal bombs have been detonated, the color of the fire and the impurities in the air will still be different from a common gas explosion. The spiritual puppets and the Immortal Cultivators will certainly detect it in no time!”

“We can’t explain why so many crystal bombs are there at all. We’ve been exposed!”

“What do we do, Grand Guardian? We’ve been exposed. The Immortal Cultivators know what we are going to do. Give the order now!”

“Yes, Grand Guardian. Give the order now. There will be no time if we dawdle!”

Hardly had they finished when another few explosions echoed from the burning mines, except that they were not from deep inside the caves but more like explosions of crystal bombs in the midair mixed with feeble gunshots. It seemed that a minor engagement of fire had just happened.

“Not good!”

The few Nepenthe believers changed their face color abruptly and exclaimed, “The Immortal Cultivators must be trying to go to the hotspot through the few neighboring caves, but those caves are hiding our assets too. The brothers who are watching the assets… are already engaged in a fight with the Immortal Cultivators!”

With everything coming to this point, it was impossible to end the issue in peace.

Xu Zhicheng’s lips trembled for a long time before he roared loudly, “This is fate!”

When he looked at Li Yao again, his eyes became as determined and cold as before. He gnashed his teeth and said, “Fellow Cultivator Li, this is about the situation right now. We appreciate your kindness, but there is no time for us to take it slowly now. We’ve been exposed and have to start the uprising immediately. Are you going to stop us?”

Looking at the extreme chaos in the Great Iron Plants and the dancing flames, Li Yao was lost for words for a long time.

He thought that he had convinced the Grand Guardian of Nepenthe despite all the trouble. Little did he expect that the situation would escalate because of a minor explosion!

Was there really such a thing as “fate”?

Seeing that he was silent, and having no time to hesitate, Xu Zhicheng stared at Long Yangjun thoughtfully.

Long Yangjun shook her head slightly with a bitter smile. There was no telling whether she was laughing at herself or Li Yao. She took one step back and cleared the way for Xu Zhicheng.

“Tell all the Guardians that something has happened, and we can’t wait until tomorrow. Mobilize our guys and rise according to the plan to occupy the geothermal factory so that we can spread the ideas of ‘no horror, no worries, eternal tranquility’ to every district and every gap below the ground!”

Xu Zhicheng waved his hands aggressively. “We have absolutely nothing, and there is nothing we can lose now. Ask all our brothers and sisters to not be scared of the Immortal Cultivators’ swords and sabers because their blades will only send us to our real hometown that is ten thousand times better than this place!”

Surrounded by a few Nepenthe believers, Xu Zhicheng left the cave without looking back and dived into the fires that looked like tides and the darkness that felt like swirls.

Very soon, high-pitched sirens were ringing inside all the factories in the Great Iron Plants and repeated in the same rhythm.

The sirens were exactly the signal of fighting for the workers.

Inside every factory, every cave, and every living area, countless people wearing eye patches and masks, who seemed obedient and as humble as ants, stood straight and raised their heads high before they drew shabby blades from secret corners and lunged at the spiritual puppets closest to themselves, fighting iron with blood.

Some people who were stronger and wearing armor were even shouting and jumping at the few Immortal Cultivators in the area, with crude crystal bombs attached to their waists, trying to die together with the Immortal Cultivators. For the Immortal Cultivators who had extremely keen senses, such attacks were certainly futile if not ridiculous. However, for the Nepenthe believers who had activated the Serenity Arts to the maximum and were in absolutely no fear of death, they were simply marching relentlessly.

It was perhaps the only way that they could harm the Immortal Cultivators.

They would be satisfied as long as they could shower their blood on the Immortal Cultivators.

Even though their feelings and desires had been extinguished, their blood was still hot!

The air was like a pot of boiling porridge and an ocean where the torrents were raging unstoppably. The brainwaves of thousands of underground locals gathered together into the same cry, “Kill the Immortal Cultivators!”

The messy, blind, and unorganized uprising of Nepenthe began irreversibly!

Li Yao stared at the Great Iron Plants that was on fire and the underground locals who were charging at the fully-armed battle puppets and Immortal Cultivators while grabbing the most primitive weapons. His body seemed to be split into two parts, half frozen and half fiery.

The explosions in the mine seemed to be just an accident.

However, the Nepenthe believers were not real warriors at all but only desperate workers, farmers, and their families, as well as thousands of other pitiful folks who had been bullied, insulted, and exploited. The messy start of their hasty uprising was only an inevitability, just like their eventual failure!

“Do you know that for a moment, I was almost convinced by you?”

Long Yangjun’s face that was illuminated by the fire was devoid of sorrow or joy. She was truly like an indifferent onlooker as she remarked gloomily, “But the result is all the same. You can’t stop anything. You can’t change anything. Right?

“However, this great riot at least proves my theory indirectly. Perhaps this is how the Covenant Alliance originated in the beginning, isn’t it?”

Li Yao’s eyes were frozen for a long time before he finally turned to Long Yangjun slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. I just want to ask you a question. Are the Immortal Cultivators and the people of the Covenant Alliance really sworn enemies? Are the Imperium of True Human Beings and the Alliance of the Holy Covenant absolutely incompatible?”

Long Yangjun sighed and said casually, “Or maybe they are just the two sides of the same coin, a pair of abnormal conjoined twins, and an inseparable double-headed snake?”

Li Yao’s eyes rolled faster and faster.