Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Although many people had vaguely guessed the answer, their hearts still fell into the caves of ice when they heard it from Wuying Lan’s mouth and saw Wei Longtao standing below the enormous face of Wuying Lan in silence.

Then, the caves of ice were burnt into magma!

“Wei Longtao!”

Shuddering, Zuo Jingyun roared in fury, “You betrayed us! You betrayed Starlight!”

“This is not betrayal; it’s a sensible choice made by a smart person. Leading the members to a bright future is what a qualified leader of an organization should do, instead of darting into the fire like moths and asking to be killed!”

Wuying Lan said casually, “Commander Wei, it’s your turn now.”

“Don’t be excited, everyone. Listen to me. I absolutely don’t mean you any harm. On the very contrary, I am saving all of you, like I have done countless times before!”

Taking a deep breath, Wei Longtao held his head high and bulged his eyes, making them look like lightbulbs, while he stared at everybody including Zuo Jingyun.

He spoke in such a resolute and matter-of-fact way that it was filled with convincing and trust-incurring power, like all the exciting speeches he made in the past. It seemed that somebody would believe him even if he said that the sun in the high sky was square.

“Think about it. Why are we resisting the Imperium and fighting the Immortal Cultivators? For no reason at all! It is only because we were born here, our ancestors were stranded here, that we have naturally become the so-called Cultivators, the cockroaches, lice, and rats hiding here and there in fear in the underground world!

“Is such a life really worth it? Does such resistance really matter? Are the ideas and hopes that we persist in a real thing?

“Wake up, everyone. We are merely caught in an illusion of self-hypnotization and self-affection. We are haunted and possessed by the ghosts that should’ve perished a thousand years ago. We have completely lost our true selves!

“Our life is false. Our resistance is false. Our hope is false. Our heroes and our desperate counterattacks that we believed to be true are false. All of them!

“In the past, I was also mired in self-deception under the manipulation of the ghosts that had been dead for a thousand years. I thought that everything I did was truly of some significance, however little it was.

“Thankfully, I woke up in time and realized that the so-called ‘path of the Cultivators’ was an out-and-out lie; a fairytale that would never become reality. It would only bring incessant tragedies to the Land of Sins and to each and every one of us!

“Besides, we are no real Cultivators at all but a bunch of mobsters who are gathered by accident, driven by hatred, fury, and inertia!

“We are absolutely no match for ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, if we can even deal any damage to it at all! It will only be a futile suicide! Nobody is scared of death, but your death should be more valuable. So, I have to save everyone and help you completely realize the ridiculousness of the lies, so that you can break away from the miseries and embark on a new life!”

Wei Longtao roared so loudly and passionately that his face was already red.

Opening his brawny arms at everyone, he said in the most sincere way, “Come on. Stop lying to yourself. We are no real Cultivators at all. Besides, the real Cultivators were already thrashed by the Immortal Cultivators a thousand years ago! What’s there to struggle for when we are nothing more than ‘counterfeits’? Put down the hatred, leave the underground world, and embrace a brand-new life! I already have got the promise of Lord Wuying Lan. As long as we are willing to surrender unconditionally, we will certainly receive appropriate treatments. There will be a chance for us to recognize the real true path of immortality and the laws of the world so that we can be the supreme Immortal Cultivators.

“This is the only bright future that belongs to all of us!”

“General Commander, you… You—”

Zuo Jingyun covered her mouth in disbelief, and her tears ran out of her eyes beyond her control. She stepped back to almost five meters away, but she still couldn’t believe what she had heard and seen. Her body was like a sand tower in the wind that was shaking and might collapse at any moment.

The roars and explosions outside were drawing nearer and nearer. With sharp noises, a few aggressive penetrators of the Immortal Cultivators dug into the temple from all directions, carrying a large batch of raging Exos and spiritual puppets.

“The enemies are everywhere!”

“They are ten times more than us!”

“What do we do? What do we do?”

The resistance warriors were like rats that had fallen into a pot of hot oil. Overwhelmed, they were at a loss about what to do.

“Yes. Different from the disobedient, uneducable guys in the space, I think that you still have some potential to be reeducated.”

Wuying Lan chuckled. “Therefore, if you are willing to lay down your weapons and surrender, as the owner of ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, I promise you that I will not hurt you at all, and I’ll give you an opportunity to be an Immortal Cultivator.

“Don’t jump to any decision just yet. Come on. Let’s watch the ending of your ‘fellow Cultivators’ in space first. Haha. Hahahaha!”

In Wuying Lan’s laughter, the light beams around the enormous head displayed the battlefield in the vast sea of stars.

It could be clearly seen that hundreds of ragged, bizarre-looking half-armed starships jumped out of the space not far away from “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”. As they regrouped into the intimidating arc-shaped battle formation, they did look somewhat invincible and unstoppable.

It was a shame that they were faced with not a broken city that was on the brink of collapse because of the barrage of the “global sword network”, but an iron fortress with an intact defense system and abundant reserves of spiritual energy and ammunitions, which was also reinforced by half a main-force fleet of the Imperium in secret in the recent month. It had been armed to the teeth!

Hardly had the coalition fleet of Starlight jumped to the depths of the Martial Meritocrats Sector when a large area of space torpedoes was detonated near their landing point. The most violent radiations and high-energy particles were released, causing a highly unstable zone with a coverage of almost a million square kilometers.

The space torpedoes were not meant to kill or injure the coalition fleet of Starlight but to completely disrupt the space stability in the area, in case the rats of Starlight escaped immediately when they saw that something was not right with another desperate space jump. Should they jump out of the Martial Meritocrats Sector and even the Devilish Scorpion Nebula, it would be terribly difficult to catch all of them again. If they were captured or annihilated by other forces, it would not be Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan’s achievement.

Right now, to initiate a space jump in the highly unstable three-dimensional space was like to set sail in the middle of a tsunami. The difficulties and dangers were ten times higher. Almost nobody would do such a thing that was no different from suicide.

Almost from the moment the space torpedoes exploded, the demonic, bloody Flower of the Other Shore blossomed slowly. Silent, cold, and elegant starships of the Imperium glided out of the “petals” and assembled into an attack formation that looked like a sharp blade in dazzling movements.

Hundreds of thousands of crystal suits had also been woken up from the dark space in all directions, as they went at the coalition fleet of Starlight.

From the bloody Flower of the Other Shore and the Heavenly Rails, thousands of bloody pillars of light emerged without a sound and covered the distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers in between in the blink of an eye, piercing into the fleet of Starlight in bloody bubbles.

The massacre of the epic quest, Dying Light, had officially begun!

…

“We have been betrayed. ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ is not damaged at all. Its spiritual shield is absolutely intact!”

“Why are there so many main-force warships of the Imperium in this place? Shouldn’t they be mired in the battles against the Covenant Alliance in the frontline? This… This is a trap!”

“We have been deceived. Some traitors sold us out. This is a bait to attract and catch all of us! This is a scheme!”

“It’s hopeless now. Let’s run! Let’s run now!”

There was nothing but exclamations and screams in the communication channels of the leadership of the coalition fleet of Starlight, which was mixed with tsunami-like explosions now and then.

“Quiet now!”

Seeing that the enemy’s space fortress was absolutely undamaged, and a batch of main-force warships that far exceeded their expectation showed up, Gao Kangda felt that the world was swirling too. Everything in his eyes turned black and white.

But he was a seasoned general who survived the “Unsettled Chaos” after all, and he knew that they would be giving their lives away if they were to escape now. “Since this is a trap, our retreat must’ve been blocked by the enemy. Look at the space stability index on your mainframe crystal processor. This space is like a piece of paper that has been torn apart brutally. It is impossible to launch a space jump at all!

“We have no choice except to march forward relentlessly. Even if we are going to escape, we will have to break the enemy in front of us and get out of the chaotic space first before we initiate a space jump!

“Have you all forgotten our purpose? We are here to die in the first place! Come on. Show the Immortal Cultivators the courage of the Cultivators. Even if we are killed, we will die together with ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ and crash the goddamn lair of fiends into the surface of the planet!”

Faced with the glamorous warships of the Imperium that were moving at a high speed, “Great Mountain”, the armed mining starship that looked like an asteroid of garbage, burst out the most brilliant exhaust flames in the past hundreds of years as it charged at the enemy at “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”!

…

“Have you seen it? Your ‘fellow Cultivators’ in the space have jumped into our trap in their idiocy too. They are now being reaped, butchered, and destroyed ruthlessly.”

Wuying Lan said, “Those obstinate guys are destined to die. There is no chance for them at all. But you still have a choice to regret and abandon your dark past and embark on the journey to the light.

“Stop hesitating. Both my patience and mercy are very limited. Drop all your fantasies. Trust me, there are no miracles in this world!”