Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The Fist King’s crystal processor clattered, and vague smoke popped up from the joints of his metal skull. He said casually, “I don’t understand what you are talking about, Boss Bai.”

His hands in his back, Boss Bai looked at the gantry cranes in the port that appeared to be the debris of a giant and said, “When you came to me with the crushed Cultivators, you were just an inconspicuous spectral Cultivator, with a combat ability in the Nascent Soul Stage at best, and you did not know the first thing about starship battles.

“However, as resources, particularly crystal processors, were provided for you incessantly, you were like a hungry sponge sucking and absorbing all the knowledge, growing into a qualified fleet commander at an astonishing speed.

“Furthermore, after crafting a few new artificial bodies, your combat ability leaped from the Nascent Soul Stage to a weird level that was on par with the Divinity Transformation Stage. It was something that even that monster Li Yao couldn’t have achieved.

“Today, the starships that you can command at the same time are even more than what I am capable of. You are even confident enough to swallow the starships of the twenty-eight pirate gangs that are in a mess. It is needless to mention your weird abilities in cyberwarfare. You’ve truly become someone else during the past half year!

“Other people who do not know you well may think you are always like this, but I’ve been observing you closely enough to know that all your changes were completed within half a year. Such a shocking speed of advancement reminds me of the thorns in the deserts on the dry planets. In a drought, they will be only a cluster of dry and rigid whiskers, but as long as there is one heavy rain, they will immediately split apart and cover the entire planet after absorbing enough water!

“The ambush on Li Wuji’s fleet is the same. Your calmness and your perfect control of the timing were remarkable. Even I couldn’t have done a better job. It makes me wonder—if I were to lead a fleet and start a space battle with you, Fist King, which of us would be the winner?”

While talking, Boss Bai stopped and turned around, staring at the Fist King thoughtfully.

At this moment, they had reached the deepest part of the forsaken port, far away from the heat at the docks and harbors.

They were surrounded by rusted garbage and the gigantic loading and unloading magical equipment. Nobody was around but them.

After Boss Bai said that, the whole world suddenly became quiet, as if an invisible glass cover had fallen and enveloped the two of them.

The rusty, abandoned port was about to become a hellish battlefield.

Boss Bai and the Fist King, two monsters with extremely weird backgrounds and extraordinary abilities, confronted each other at the mountains of wasted metals.

The cheerful atmosphere a moment ago was entirely gone, and the only thing left was the fighting will that had been finally unleashed. What should happen had finally happened.

“Finally, it’s our turn now?”

The Fist King’s voice that was as stable as a machine did not shiver at all. He said calmly, “Boss Bai, you destroyed the sturdy defense of the Blue Sky Market with Li Wuji and the twenty-eight pirate gangs first, and then you swallowed Li Wuji and the twenty-eight pirate gangs with the cooperation of the Cultivators’ fleet. Now, you are kicking the ladder and devouring the fleet of the Cultivators too?”

“Fist King, you are overthinking.”

Boss Bai wandered around the Fist King, like a velociraptor searching for the flaw of the prey. “Believe it or not, I do not mean any harm to the Cultivators. Besides, swallowing the fleet of the Cultivators recklessly will only bloat the Big Bai Pirate Gang and undermine my combat ability. I am already having indigestion right now, and I will be killed by the excessive food if I keep on eating.

“Rest assured, I have never planned to give the Cultivators a hard time.

“But the critical question is, Fist King, are you really a ‘Cultivator’?”

The sharp question pierced into the Fist King’s body deeply, casting the “permanent battle puppet of auto-learning and auto-upgrading abilities” into a long silence.

“If you are not a Cultivator, who are you?”

Boss Bai’s eyes were sharper and sharper, and his voice became more and more creepy. “Or to be more exact, ‘what’ are you?”

The Fist King replied, “Is it important?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I’m just curious.”

Boss Bai chortled and opened his hands. “Space pirates are meant to explore the unvisited lands, figure out all the unanswered enigmas in the universe, and move all the strange, interesting items to our homes for collection purposes. How can I tolerate such a huge mystery like you hanging around me all the time and turn a blind eye to it? Isn’t that so, Old Gao?”

This time, the Fist King was truly astounded. “What… did you call me? Everybody knows that my surname is ‘Lei’. Even though ‘Lei Zonglie’ is perhaps not my real name, what makes you think that my surname is ‘Gao’?”

“Perhaps it is not a surname, but the name of a clan, or a very unique title—”

Observing his face, Boss Bai asked suspiciously, “Do you not have any impression of the name ‘Gaoists’?”

“‘Gaoists’? A very unique clan with a surname of Gao?”

The Fist King was even more confused, and it didn’t help at all when he activated all his computational ability. He shook his head. “Boss Bai, if you insist on fighting me, I’ll have nothing to say, and we’ll just see which of us is stronger, but I truly do not have any clue about this ‘Gaoists’.”

Boss Bai narrowed his eyes and observed the Fist King for a long time while he sensed the changes of the super tiny chips inside the Fist King’s shell. Not detecting any sign of disguise, he thought for a long time and finally retrieved an item the size of a fingernail from his Cosmos Ring. He tossed it over and said, “Take a look at this.”

“This is—”

The Fist King picked it up. Brilliant rays shot out of the nine crystal cameras on his metal mask as he scanned it quickly, only to discover that what Boss Bai had thrown to him was a crystal chip.

To be more exact, it was a crystal chip that had almost been entirely melted and destroyed due to high temperatures.

However, even though almost 100% of the surface of the chip had been melted, it was still obvious that the chip was in a different style from the traditions of the Cultivators.

The twisted stripes on it looked like some sort of complicated and tedious language, which was organized and expressed very differently from the runes of the Cultivators. It naturally carried a certain weird rhythm.

The Fist King searched his entire database and did not find any information on the words, which was quite strange. The words did not even belong to Pangu, Nuwa, or any other primeval species.

The Fist King touched the words on the chip with his metal finger, feeling that he had heard a distant voice that was both familiar and strange from the chip, which was incomplete and almost melted.

“I’ve never seen such a thing before…”

Holding the chip in his hands, the Fist King studied it for a long time, before he admitted frankly, “The structure to squeeze a hundred layers of metal slips, the weird language system carved on the surface, and the mechanism to make energy travel between worlds and metals are all vastly different from the training methods that I have known. It does not even look like a product of our world.

“Boss Bai, where exactly did you find this? What’s the relationship between this weird chip and the so-called ‘Gaoists’… or me?

“Why were you certain that I would recognize this item, and why did you regard me as one of the ‘Gaoists’?”

“It seems that you are truly unaware of anything. Then, this whole thing is even more intriguing now.”

Boss Bai had been observing the Fist King’s movement all the time. Raising his eyebrow, he grinned and said, “You’re right about one thing. This weird chip is indeed not a product of this world. To be more exact, it is not even a product within the range of the three thousand Sectors, the territory of human beings created by Pangu. It is probably from another world of human beings from somewhere extremely far away, or even on the other side of the general universe.”

“What do you mean?”

As long as he wanted, the Fist King could cancel the procedure of “being surprised” anytime. So, he retained extreme calmness despite hearing such astounding news and even turned on the cooling rune arrays of his main crystal processor in time to maintain the high computational ability. “Another world of human beings—what is that?”

“Since you truly know nothing, perhaps I can start from the beginning.”

Pondering for a long time, Boss Bai said, “Perhaps you do not know this, but before the Big Bai Pirate Gang rose at the peripheral worlds of the Imperium, we had once jumped to the Martial Meritocrats Sector, which was our first stop on our journey to distinguish ourselves.

“However, we did not go to the Land of Sins where you were at like Li Yao did later, because we were large in number and too eye-catching. It was impossible for us to snuck to the main planet of the Martial Meritocrats Sector under the nose of Wuying Lan and Li Lingfeng.

“We were just wandering at the peripherical space zones of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, hoping to gather some intelligence and assets and see if we could ambush a few carriers of the Imperium.

“We turned out to be quite lucky. Soon after we roamed at the edge of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, we happened upon a remnant of what appeared to be a starship because of a coincidental outbreak of space storm.”

The Fist King said, “What do you mean by ‘a remnant of what appeared to be a starship’? Even Boss Bai couldn’t tell what exactly the remnant belonged to with your keen eyes?”

Boss Bai smiled and said, “If it were from a starship of the Cultivation civilizations, however bizarre the starship might’ve looked, all the starships shared similar structures and mechanisms. I would’ve recognized it even if it had been burnt into ashes.

“However, the remnant probably drifted, or was teleported, from a certain place on the other side of the grand universe beyond the three thousand Sectors. It was so seriously damaged during the journey that it was not only twisted but also extremely fragile, as if it would turn into powder the moment you touched it.

“Even if it were some kind of starship, it was nothing like anything we’d been familiar with in terms of structure and mechanism. So, it was not until a long time later that I finally speculated based on the incomplete tomography that it was probably a starship from an alien human civilization.”