Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Ten thousand golden flames of war leapt up from the deepest part of his brain and exploded into thousands of supernovas in midair, illuminating Li Yao’s entire sea of consciousness in a clear and splendid light.

Illuminated by the infinite brilliance, the voice—the body formed by billions of black tentacles of the Primeval Civilization—appeared so ugly, feeble, and hilarious.

It was stunned by Li Yao’s soul power.

It was shivering, as if it could not believe that its son billions of years later, a humble tester, dared to defy its will.

It wriggled and rolled its hideous eyes that were full of venom, as if it were considering new schemes.

“Even if you are truly unafraid of death...”

The voice said, “You should think about your wife, your civilization. Do you want all your family, friends, and home to be buried together with your recklessness?”

His words only made Li Yao hesitate for half a second.

Half a second later, Li Yao’s fighting will blossomed into an unstoppable brilliance again. It turned into an invincible saber and slashed at the black tentacles.

“Don’t try to scare me with my wife. I know what kind of person Ding Lingdang is better than you do. If she were standing next to me and faced with the same choice, she would certainly be more determined and resolute than me. Maybe she wouldn’t even hesitate to make her first choice!”

Li Yao condensed the flames of billions of telepathic thoughts into one finger and pointed at the voice, while he said brutally, “She is a more innocent and straightforward person than me. She will not be trapped by your fancy words or your cunningness. She will fight you to the end without any hesitation!

“If I abandon my principles, my belief that I’ve been training for hundreds of years, and my bottom line as a human being because of her, it will not only be my incompetence but also the greatest insult to her!

“I believe, I believe deeply, that she will approve of my choice right now and fight side by side with me until the last breath!

“No. Maybe right now, in another test field, she has seen through your scheme and declared war on you, hasn’t she? If so, as a man, how could I desert and leave her to face such a sordid and sordid you?

“You...”

The twitching of his voice grew more and more frantic and powerless. “Are you so confident in her?”

“Of course!”

Li Yao burst into laughter. “How can a couple crawl into the same bed if they don’t even trust each other?”

“...”

The voice was rendered speechless.

“Besides, I’m not just confident in Ding Lingdang. I’m also confident in Long Yangjun, Boss Bai, Li Jialing, and even the ‘Punching King’, ‘Small Ming’, and ‘Wen Wen’. I’m confident in my thousands of compatriots!

Li Yao’s voice was louder and louder, and the fire of his will was more and more dazzling, too. “In the past, although it was full of gloom, although we suffered setbacks, although we groped and crashed into each other countless times in the dark labyrinth, in the end, all my family, friends, and compatriots showed their brightest hearts, their most brilliant fighting will, and their greatest strength, which saved me, themselves, our common home, and us, the new civilization of mankind in the Pangu Universe, and the boundless brilliance of hope. This time, it is the same!

“As for the mental devil and Lu Qingchen, hehe, although they are evil, they are definitely not humble or stupid. I believe that they will not be willing to be your puppets and subordinates and give up all their pride and free will. They will certainly counterattack in their own way and show you the strength of the new human beings!

“You—you don’t even stand a one in a billion chance!

He roared, or rather, screamed, “You are like moths to a flame. You are asking for your own doom!

“I’ve said the same sentence countless times over the past hundred years. But every time I said it, it was exactly the same as the first time. My blood was boiling and surging. Even if the odds were only one billionth, it was definitely not ‘zero’!”

Li Yao took a deep breath. All the flames of war that were dancing crazily in the sky condensed into a golden blade. The love for his wife, the loyalty to his friends, the love for his home, the loyalty to the civilization of mankind, the yearning for the unknown universe, the hope for the endless future... Everything was condensed in the golden blade and turned into billions of rolling sharp edges.

“Who says that a moth darting into a flame is seeking its own doom? As long as there are enough moths, even the most furious flame can be extinguished.”

Li Yao said resolutely, one word after another, “Then, billions of burning moths fell into the dark forest without caring about their own lives. No matter how vast the dark forest was, no matter how cold and terrifying it was, a brilliant new world would have been created, wouldn’t it?

“I firmly believe that.

“Therefore, cut the crap and let’s fight!”

The golden blade slashed at the ‘sound’.

At this moment, there were no distracting thoughts in Li Yao’s mind. He had forgotten the fear that the civilization of mankind was about to be destroyed. Even the outcome of the attack was not important.

There was only one thought in his mind.

Human beings could be destroyed, but they could not be defeated.

BAM!

Li Yao had thought that, after the attack, he would either be counterattacked by the unparalleled strength of the voice and be completely suppressed, or he would end up like ‘All-Exterminating Sect’ and ‘Dragon Lotus Seed’, whose genes collapsed and turned into foam.

Some of them were uttering earsplitting screams, as if they had been crushed by him and vanished into thin air like the weird forces that had crawled into his brain and tried to possess him.

But out of his expectation, he heard a sound that sounded like a broken crystal. Countless bright gold cracks appeared in his vision. The black universe was falling apart, and the ugly body of the ‘voice’ was gone, replaced by...

“What—what the hell is this?”

Li Yao was dumbfounded. The golden blade was floating in midair, staring at the weird picture in his field of vision. He felt that he had punched nothing but air with all his strength.

He seemed to have boarded a crystal warship of the Primeval Clan again, surrounded by countless translucent, bright gold shadows of men and women, young and old. Although their faces were full of gentleness and wisdom, and there was not the slightest hint of hostility, they did not look like living people at all but more like regretful ghosts.

“Congratulations, tester ‘Li Yao’.

The ‘ghost’ in the lead, who looked like a kind, middle-aged woman, floated to the center of Li Yao’s vision and smiled. “After billions of years of waiting, we’ve finally found the most suitable heir. You’ve passed the test successfully and represented your civilization. You are qualified to receive all the ‘legacies’ of the Primeval Civilization and bring you a new life.

“What—what?”

Li Yao stammered. He thought quickly and realized what was going on. He exclaimed, “Everything that happened just now... was a lie just to test my personality? Everything that the voice said was a lie, the defense line of the sun was a lie, and so was the degenerate Primeval Clan that turned into cockroaches and maggots in order to survive?”

“No. The voices are real. The defense line of the sun is real, too, including the ‘Corrupted Origin Sector’, which is as sordid as a cockroach and as sordid as a maggot.

The middle-aged female ghost was still smiling, but there was intense regret, regret, and shame in her smile. “However, don’t tell me that you don’t think that the dirty mud can’t grow bright stamens, the dark night sky can’t produce shining stars, and the descendants of the criminals must be equally sordid and evil. They don’t know how to reflect on what their ancestors did, do they? In particular, the idiotic crimes of our ancestors did not bring us any good. Instead, they pushed us deeper and deeper into the swamp of destruction. Under such circumstances, will we really go our own way and repeat the decadence and disgrace of our ancestors?

“What do you mean?”

Li Yao was baffled. “I don’t understand!”

“It’s simple. The three ‘no other options’ that have been bothering and angering you do exist, and they are indeed the true history of the Primeval Civilization. But when we drafted the procedure, or rather, when we left the ‘last will’, it had been thirty thousand years since countless stars were destroyed in the ‘Solar Defense Line Plan’.

The middle-aged female ghost—she might be the captain of the starship of the Primeval Race—said, “The Primeval Civilization is not monolithic, and it does not have the unified will of the Flood Tide. The Primeval Race, which is scattered in the various sub-universes, can have their own social norms and ethics. The Primeval Race thirty thousand years ago and the Primeval Race thirty thousand years later have completely different opinions when they look at a problem. Even on my starship, everyone has their own ideas and ideologies to save the civilization.

“You mean...”

Li Yao thought for a moment and said, “The ‘aristocrats, magnates, and elites’ who carried out the ‘Solar Defense Line Plan’, sacrificed most of their compatriots, and destroyed the natural paradises in the center of the sea of stars, and struggled to survive in the most sordid ways are in fact your ancestors from thirty thousand years ago. It has been thirty thousand years since you left your... will, and you don’t agree with your ancestors?”

“How could they agree?”

The female captain smiled bitterly. “Let’s put ‘justice’ and ‘evil’ aside. The ‘Solar Defense Line Plan’ is no different from the ‘Advancement Plan’ when we fled from Earth. It is a death sentence that will be extended to thirty thousand years.

“Thirty thousand years. For thirty thousand years, we’ve been drifting in the sea of stars, suffering the erosion of lack of resources and claustrophobia. We’ve been living in anxiety every day.

“In front of us is the darkness that is getting more and more desolate. Sometimes, we can’t even find a space zone with thin spiritual gas after sailing for hundreds of years. Behind us are the legions of the Flood Tide who are chasing after us and trying to crucify us on the pillar of shame of the universe. We are also burdened by the sins of our ancestors and the original sin that we were born with. It seems that every one of us was born with the miserable deaths of our compatriots thirty thousand years ago.

“In such an environment, living an ignoble life is not luck at all but endless torment. We don’t know how to put an end to it. We are even complaining about why our ancestors did what they did in the first place. As you said, fighting against the tides in the center of the universe will be a great relief for us, won’t it?