Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

After departing with Long Yangjun, Li Yao wasted no time returning to the Gold Crystal Pyramid.

He might’ve been suspicious about the Sunspot Plan and worried over its side effects before the coronation ceremony yesterday, but after the Covenant Alliance invaded the Imperium again and he got a better understanding of Ultimate Benevolence in the Third Research Institute, he was determined to wake up the sunspots that had hibernated for a thousand years!

In order to defeat the Covenant Alliance, he had to find the most critical Ultimate Benevolence Master.

In order to find the Ultimate Benevolence Master, he had to project his consciousness to the Covenant Alliance through the Sunspot Plan.

In order to project his consciousness to the Covenant Alliance, he had to completely control the Gold Crystal Pyramid and make the first step from the Divinity Transformation Stage to the Divinity Branching Stage!

In the deepest part of the Gold Crystal Pyramid…

This was a mysterious area that nobody had ever visited except for Wuying Qi and Li Yao.

It was also the pivot of the Gold Crystal Pyramid and the best training place for the Divinity Branching Stage according to the information left by Wuying Qi 3.0.

Only after he controlled the pivot could he have 100% control over the Gold Crystal Pyramid and activate more techniques of the Gold Crystal Pyramid without infuriating the sun.

In the past half a year, Li Yao had been hesitating. He was both worried that Wuying Qi 3.0 had left some traps in it and that he couldn’t pass the test of turning into a vicious dragon from a dragon-slayer. So, he had never gone into the place.

But he didn’t have a choice now.

Passing through a long and dark pathway, Li Yao separated himself from the mortal world, leaving a long series of spiritual puppets behind him. They were all the clones of Xiaoming and Wenwen, who kept Li Yao in touch with the outside world and offered him protection through the puppets.

If anything happened to Li Yao during his training, they would be able to help him as soon as possible.

Walking for ten minutes in the darkness, Li Yao found a dark gate that was embedded with countless black beetles. After hundreds of thousands of years, the beetles had been dried and looked like withered eyes.

The withered eyes stared at Li Yao as if they were scanning Li Yao’s soul prudently.

“Hum!”

Very soon, the gate softly trembled and retracted into the rocks nearby in six pieces.

Leading Xiaoming’s and Wenwen’s clones, Li Yao stepped into the pivot at the bottom level of the Gold Crystal Pyramid.

This place was enshrouded by the deepest darkness. Li Yao couldn’t see anything despite his eyesight of the Divinity Transformation Stage, until flickering flames were automatically ignited when something in the corners detected his breaths and brainwaves.

Those orange flames flowed on the ground like fluids, allowing Li Yao to vaguely see everything around him. Countless black beetles the size of thumbs were entangled into the most bizarre beasts from one’s worst nightmares.

Of course, the beetles were long dead, but there were still complicated runes on their broken shells, identical to those carved on the outer wall of the Gold Crystal Pyramid.

Those black beetles were exactly the Houyi Clan, the builder of the Gold Crystal Pyramid and one of the thirteen strongest carbon-based intelligent lives in the primeval age.

Li Yao was here hoping to be enlightened by the Houyi Clan so that the runes on their shells could be imprinted on his soul, making him the real master of the Gold Crystal Pyramid.

Also, according to Wuying Qi 3.0, the Divinity Branching Stage differed from the Divinity Transformation Stage in that one had to split his soul into dozens of parts and transform himself from an individual to a collection of countless individuals in the Divinity Branching Stage.

As individuals, it was hard for human beings to understand the feeling of “one is many”. Even though their strength and wisdom increased significantly, they could still barely get the trick of this new stage.

At this moment, if they learned a lesson from a collective civilization, it was possible that they would be enlightened with a brand-new significance of their lives.

Pitifully, most of the carbon-based intelligent lives were individuals. Few swarms of bees, bugs, or ants could develop a civilization.

In the Pangu alliance, only the Houyi Clan and the Gonggong Clan had the distinctive characteristics of a collective civilization.

The Houyi Clan was made of beetles that could absorb solar energy, whereas the Gonggong Clan was a life-form similar to jellyfish and could share all the information in the waters that they lived in.

Because of the features of the collective civilizations, they left few heritages and relics behind.

The reason was simple. When a member of the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan reached a high level, their body would be greatly fortified, and it could last hundreds of thousands of years after they died.

The experts of the Houyi Clan, in comparison, were made from billions of beetles, which would disperse after the experts died. It was impossible that they used to be an advanced life form that boasted great wisdom.

As for the members of the Gonggong Clan, their bodies would be dissolved in the waters into the fundamental elements to nurture other creatures. They did not have any legacies at all.

So, modern human beings could barely be enlightened by the collective civilizations or understand the mysterious and unbelievable Divinity Branching Stage!

Li Yao was quite lucky. As an artifact of the Houyi Clan, the Gold Crystal Pyramid had the remains of countless members of the Houyi Clan who used to defend it.

Those remains were basically intact and hadn’t collapsed into the tiniest beetles yet, allowing Li Yao to see the connection of different runes on the shells and the ways that the Houyi Clan unleashed spiritual energy.

Although the beetles had been dead for hundreds of thousands of years and could not provide any living matter for Li Yao, Li Yao was sure that he could identify the genetic parts in his body that the Houyi Clan left in the primeval age and unlock the genetic information that had been sealed for hundreds of thousands of years as long as he could read the runes on the remains of the Houyi Clan!

Li Yao spent a whole hour memorizing the runes on the shells of the remains and the connection among them.

Xiaoming and Wenwen helped him with his training with dozens of super crystal processors.

Then, Li Yao sat cross-legged at the center of the secret chamber and retrieved tremendous high-purity crystals and marrow crystals from his Cosmos Rings. For his training, he had almost used up all his stock.

Li Yao remembered how he snuck deep into the cells and activated the primeval memories in the Blood Demon Sector a hundred years previously.

It would be the same this time, except that he would go further this time. Perhaps he could find the memories of the Houyi Clan from a million years back when human beings weren’t born yet.

“Dad, are you sure you’re going to do this?”

Xiaoming and Wenwen sounded rather anxious in the dark chamber. “We have no doubt that you can activate the genes and find the primeval memories, but you must be careful. If your soul goes too deep, it’s possible that you will consider the memories reality and can’t come back!”

“Rest assured. I know that very well.”

Li Yao smiled and took a long breath. Ruling out all the irrelevant thoughts in this head, he slightly expanded his vitality field and attracted all the crystals and the marrow crystals to float around him.

The runes that he remembered and Wuying Qi 3.0’s legacy ran and collided deep in his soul like two rivers, raising huge tides that shattered the reality as well as the crystals.

The crystals and marrow crystals were crumbled into smithereens without a sound, and the purest spiritual energy in them flooded into Li Yao’s body in colorful streaks of light as fuel, boosting his soul to search his every gene strand for the genes from the Houyi Clan.

In a trance, Li Yao’s soul entered the microscopic world. He could not feel the room around him anymore. His body turned into a great universe, and his every cell was a planet on which countless tombstones were standing. On a closer look, every tombstone was a heap of books, and each book was a gift from the primeval ancestors.

In the amazing journey into the microscopic world, time and space lost their significance. Li Yao did not know for how long he searched the billions of books on the billions of tombstones on the billions of planets, but suddenly, he sensed that some of the books had subtle reactions to the runes of the Houyi Clan that he remembered a moment ago.

Boom!

Those books, those tombstones, and those planets suddenly exploded. Countless black beetles swarmed out and enshrouded the whole universe as well as Li Yao’s soul.

For some reason, Li Yao was neither surprised nor frightened. Instead, he felt warm as if he were returning to his mother’s womb.

Li Yao’s memories as a human being quickly faded away, replaced by feelings that were much more ancient. He completely turned into an egg of the Houyi Clan and was deeply buried in the burning soil together with millions of more eggs.