Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“At that time, I had already forgotten everything. Everything I’m telling you right now was only gradually recalled when I was old and dying and returned to the primeval relics. But at that time, I was just an ignorant child.

The gravekeeper’s voice came over. “A child is born to be fearless. Without guidance and lessons, no weirdness or fear can stop him from taking risks. I don’t realize how bloody and terrifying this frozen battlefield is at all. I only feel that the ferocious beasts, giants, and war machines are all very interesting toys.

“I travelled in the quiet City of Silver and played in the frozen, bloody battlegrounds. I pursued the time bubbles that were popping up out of nowhere and captured the gaps in time that were gradually cracking. Finally, I found some items that were in line with my ‘time curvature’. Food, nutrition drugs, magical equipment that were small shuttles, and so on. As long as I gritted my teeth and burnt my soul, I would be able to drag them out of the twisted grey mist and into my time curvature.

Pictures were flashing in front of Li Yao’s eyes again.

The bright gold child was like him in the old days—the little scavenger born in the magical equipment graveyard who was constantly collecting the resources needed for survival between the bloody battlefield and the time gap.

The bright gold child was absorbing the nutrition drugs and strengthening drugs that were pulled out of the grey mist. He was refining the precious energy while he was dancing and waving his hands. Occasionally, he took super-compressed nutrition drugs that were not suitable for him and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures that were hard to digest. He would also roll among mountains of corpses and seas of blood while holding his stomach. However, his natural immunity and endurance allowed him to persist time and time again, turning him into a wild child who was born and raised by nature. When he retrieved a lot of magical equipment from the grey mist-chainswords, vibration sabers, crystal processors, crystal suits, and even the debris of starships—they became his best toys again.

The bright gold young man often dismantled all the magical equipment into broken components with his telepathic thoughts and studied their structure carefully. Then, he put them together smoothly. He was already an expert in magical equipment refining at such a young age. After he discovered the navigation system of a starship, he was even more fascinated by the splendid map of the sea of stars. He often sat in the middle of the grey battlefield, triggering the splendid sea of stars from the navigation system, staring at the glittering sailing routes and the denseness of the colorful wormholes in silence, deep in thought. “I almost forgot everything,my memories when I was still in the embryo state, the strength of the human civilization billions of years ago, the destruction of almost a hundred civilizations, and the civil war of the Pangu civilization. I forgot everything. The gravekeeper said casually, “But I vaguely remember that I promised someone that I would go to the outside world in her place and see if there was a more brilliant civilization in the depths of the brilliant stars, and what she was trying her best to protect.

“The promise was like a sharp lightning that triggered certain pieces of memory buried deep inside my gene strands. In the blink of an eye, endless information flooded into my brain, allowing me to master part of the skills of starship maintenance and piloting without a teacher.

“I repaired a small shuttle and modified it into a mode that only one person could steer. Then, guided by some unknown force, I left the primeval relics and rode in the vast sea of stars of the Pangu Universe.

In front of Li Yao’s eyes, the City of Silver was collapsing and dispersing like dancing butterflies, only to be replaced by the boundless sea of stars, the brilliant stars, and the unpredictable, deadly wormholes.

But a streak of vague goldness passed through everything and brought the boy who had awakened 10% of the ancient bloodline to the center of the sea of stars.

“I overestimated my own ability. Or rather, I am not a natural product but a weirdo born in a laboratory. My body is quite deformed in every regard.

The gravekeeper spoke calmly, but Li Yao could hear a faint sorrow in his calmness. “I was stimulated by all kinds of messy experiments and awakened too much wisdom in advance that I shouldn’t have. But my body is far from being able to keep up with the intensity of the wisdom.

“For example, it is true that I repaired and modified a single-person shuttle with my natural talent, but I forgot to improve the hardness of the protective devices when I was modifying the shuttle subconsciously. The single-person shuttle was prepared for the real black-wall makers who had awakened 100% of their ancient bloodlines. The people who were as strong as gods and devils were even able to shuttle among the raging tides of the four-dimensional space freely without any protection. They controlled their every cell and every telepathic thought precisely, chasing after the clouds and striking the lightning. It was not hard to imagine that such people did not care about the ‘protection devices’ at all and could pass through the wormholes easily.

“But I can’t.

“I’ve only awakened 10% of the primeval bloodline. My body and soul are too young, and I haven’t fully recovered from the damage caused by the prolonged hibernation and the freezing of time. I can’t bear the pressure of the wormholes and the tearing of the four-dimensional storm at all.

“When I realized that I had made a terrible mistake, it was already too late. I was sucked into the turbulence of the four-dimensional space and lost my direction. After a series of soul-stirring, life-threatening compressions, tearing, spinning, crushing, and consolidation, I was tossed out of another unknown wormhole and ended up at the edge of the sea of stars.

“This is my greatest misfortune, but it is also my greatest luck.

“Unfortunately, due to the continuous heavy wounds, my abilities have been further suppressed. The golden aura around me has vanished without a trace. Most of the time, I am no different than the most ordinary human child.

“Fortunately, when the starship debris and I drifted to a chaotic asteroid mine, I met my foster parents, two very kind human beings.

“That was… the end of the ‘Great Dark Age of Thirty Thousand Years’ ten thousand years ago.

“Ah!” Li Yao exclaimed.

He knew that, from this moment on, the legend of the Supreme Emperor would truly blossom into the first dazzling ray of light on a pitch-black stage.

“It was a slave mine under the control of the demon race. At the end of the Demon Beast Dynasty, the deprivation and racial oppression were even more severe. The working conditions and living environments of the slave mines were extremely harsh. Human beings were like dry leaves that could be blown away easily.

The gravekeeper continued, “My foster parents were ordinary miners in the slave mines. However, my foster father was particularly good at steering the outdated mining ships and chasing after the rare minerals that were the most radioactive in the meteoroid storms. Therefore, he was granted special permission by the mine owner to go to places far away from the main mining area to pick up the scraps. That was where he found me. “At that time, he and my foster mother’s only child had just died due to malnutrition. My foster mother was heartbroken, and my foster father was sighing in sorrow. When he discovered that I was still breathing and my heart was beating in the debris, he was overjoyed and considered me to be a child bestowed upon him by the heavens.

“He made up his mind without any hesitation. He hid me among the humming components of the mining ship and brought me back to live as my brother who died too young.

“Although the environment in the slave mines is harsh, as long as the fixed amount of mining is completed, the owners and supervisors will not care about the life and death of a small child. Everyone will live and die on their own. Occasionally, a few miners will know my true identity, but they are all very kind-hearted people. They regard my arrival as a gift from the heavens to all the miners. They also help my foster parents and raise me together.

“Just like that, I grew up among the… dirty, rude, passionate, and kind miners and became one of them.

“Although I gradually awakened all kinds of unbelievable abilities while I was growing up, and I vaguely sensed the difference between me and the people around me, I still failed to recall who I was because of the time freeze and the wormhole storm. Or rather, I was defining myself with new experiences, family, and companions.

“One thing that you may find hard to understand ten thousand years later is that the so-called ‘slave miners’ are not just human beings but also many demons. In the depths of the dark and cruel asteroid belt, ‘race’ is simply meaningless. They are even weapons that the rulers use to drive a wedge between them and the rulers.

“It’s perfectly normal. The slave owners and rulers are so cruel to human beings that they regard the intelligent creatures as dust and ants. Do you think that they will treat demons of a lower level kindly and humanely?

“No. At the end of the Demon Beast Dynasty, the so-called Demon Empire fell apart a long time ago. All the governors and generals of the demon race declared themselves to be kings and killed each other. The losers in such a civil war are even more miserable than the slaves of human beings. After all, in the eyes of the leadership of the demon race, human beings are the most obedient creatures. They will never resist, and they pose no threat.

“The demon captives who were defeated were often deprived of all their abilities. Some of their organs were even removed and shackled before they were sent to slave mines to be tortured together with the human miners.

“There is no reproductive isolation between most human beings and demons. In such a situation where we are in the same boat, even though we hated each other’s guts in the past, it did not take long before the hatred was gone. The children of human beings and demons were born, too, who boasted even weirder and more unbelievable techniques than me.

Therefore, I was less eye-catching when I mingled with the ‘half-demons’.