Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Perhaps because Zuo Jingyun was particularly fond of Han Te and Liu Li, or perhaps because the Fist King specified it, ‘Starlight’ prepared an independent room for the two of them, which was a dark cave on the wall of the mine.

Although the cave was dark and narrow, with broken rocks occasionally falling from above, the environment was still much better than the company of other bandits and thugs, where the stench of sweat and blood was disgusting.

After the bloody battles in Liberty City, Han Te and Liu Li had grown a lot in only a few days. They did not have the naivety they had when they just left the Village of Peace.

At this moment, they were not panicked or confused at all; they simply bulged their black, glittering eyes while observing the starry light outside, which belonged to the pale-skinned members of Starlight, who were busy attending to their ‘earthly dragons’.

Li Yao observed the two of them from the back in silence, capturing every subtle change of feelings on their faces. He noticed a lot of mixed feelings within himself again.

Once upon a time, he had thought that he was the unluckiest man in the world, and his rise against all the unfavorable circumstances in the past was a soul-stirring legend. He did not think that he could find a second being in the entire universe who had as abundant and unique experience as him.

However, compared to Han Te and Liu Li, his ‘harsh life’ in the magical equipment graveyard in the past could almost be called peaceful.

The sea of stars was too vast and boundless. Everybody living among the stars had their own bizarre, soul-stirring stories. If the two little fellows were lucky enough to escape from the Land of Sins, who could say that they would not have more exciting adventures in the future and accomplish greater achievements than Vulture Li Yao?

Seeing the two of them jumping from confused to exclaiming to excitement, Li Yao secretly made up his mind. Even if he could not save everybody in the Land of Sins, he would at least try his best to bring a whole different future to Han Te and Liu Li!

“After everything we’ve been through, do you have no surprise or fear at all?” Li Yao could not help but smile. “Your nerves are rather thick.”

“Huh?” Han Te and Liu Li turned back. The boy scratched his hair and looked at the girl. “What’s there to be surprised about and feared?”

“Everything,” Li Yao said. “For example, ‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie as an artificial intelligence, the truths of the Land of Sins and the City in the Sky, and the desperate counterattack that is about to be launched by ‘Starlight’. To be honest, at your age, I seemed to be occupied with love struggles with other people. Never in my dreams would I have imagined that someone at my age could be involved in such great events.”

“Love struggles?”

Brilliance that looked like colliding brooks emitted out of Liu Li’s eyes. She asked with both surprise and delight, “Grandpa, have you recovered your memories?”

Li Yao was immediately lost for words.

If his soul could cough, he would certainly cough for half a minute to cover his embarrassment.

“I was indeed a bit feared at the beginning, but on second thought, there was really nothing to be scared and worried about. We are the children of the Land of Sins after all, and we have seen too many such scenes!” Han Te held his head high, pretending that he was a knowledgeable person. “I do not know much about artificial intelligences, but the Fist King does not strike me as a bad person. He is at least no worse than other people.”

“Indeed.”

Sitting against the wall, Liu Li held her knees and crouched, saying thoughtfully, “I don’t know what ‘artificial intelligence’ actually is or how they are different from real human beings. But we have seen too many heinous guys in the Land of Sins. Some of them barraged crowds for no reason because they were not feeling very good. Some installed sawtooth wheels before the crystal tanks and charged into the crowd only because they were feeling good. Some even skinned people and asked the bleeding victims to dance before them until death.

“Those guys are terrible enough. But compared to the terrible people in Manjusaka, they are not worth mentioning at all.

“Whenever I think about what those dreadful people have been doing, I can’t help but tremble and feel like vomiting. But all of them are living human beings made of flesh and blood, like me and Han Te.

“Then, why should we be concerned about artificial intelligences? You are both some sort of special artificial intelligences, but it doesn’t matter as long as both of you are good guys!”

While speaking, the little girl puffed her cheeks and gave Li Yao such a brilliant smile that he was almost caught in a trance.

Looking at Li Yao, Han Te said carefully, “What Starlight is going to do must be very dangerous, but I am not scared at all. If anything, I feel that I’m lucky.

“I feel lucky that I found Grandpa Yao deep inside the ruins and a vaster and more splendid world from there. I learned that the life in the Village of Peace in the Desolate World was not the only life. There’s also Starlight and the earthly dragons, as well as heroes such as Zuo Jingyun and Wei Longtao.

“Perhaps I am overestimating myself, but I want to become a hero like them. I really do!”

“It is dangerous to be a hero,” Li Yao observed.

Han Te scratched his nose and chuckled. “Then… I must blame you, ‘Grandpa Yao’. Who told you to show us such a spectacular world? After everything in the past month, how can we return to our life in the Village of Peace in a Desolate World?”

“Yes. It is exactly like what Uncle Wei Longtao said,” Liu Li added. “If one has always lived in the darkness, has never seen any light, and does not even believe in the existence of light from the bottom of their heart, living such an ignorant and sunless life doesn’t mean anything.

“However, as long as they see a ray of light or even a feeble spark, they will no longer be able to bear the suffocating darkness anymore, will they?

“Right now, we have seen not a spark but the most brilliant fireworks. Grandpa Yao, Master Fist King, Leader Xiahou, Zuo Jingyun, Wei Longtao… Since we are fighting side by side with so many heroes, we cannot return to the past anymore. We can only stride forward to where the most light is. Am I right, Han Te?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what we are going to do.” Han Te grinned carefreely. “Besides, there is still Grandpa Yao. With Grandpa Yao’s help, we will absolutely blow up Manjusaka!”

Li Yao could not help but smile when he saw the boy and the girl’s innocent and fearless smiles.

“It seems that I really must do my best now,” he mumbled. “Otherwise, I won’t deserve to be your ‘Grandpa Yao’ at all!”

The chains outside began to clatter, and the Fist King’s tall and lofty body appeared at the entrance.

The two little fellows greeted him. “Master Fist King!”

“I just went to meet Wei Longtao, the general commander here, and discussed some details with him.”

The Fist King bent his back, walked in, and sat next to Li Yao. He appeared to be talking to the two little fellows, but he was actually communicating with Li Yao.

“Everything Wei Longtao said corroborates the intelligence that I collected from the sanctuary of the Martial Meritocrats Civilization. There are not too many loopholes. It is very possible that the ‘temple’ of Cultivators does exist.”

“Is that so?” Li Yao was refreshed. “Right. You mentioned yesterday that you could share the journals and last words of the people of the Martial Meritocrats Sector in the sanctuary with us after we settled down, didn’t you?”

The Fist King paused for a moment. His crystal processor hummed for a while, and extremely thin threads of light soon darted out, outlining vivid, emotional faces in midair.

One of the faces, which looked hideous and panicked, was enlarged by the Fist King. An intermittent, shivering voice came over.

“Lord Chiyou, please tell your most pious believers why everything has ended like this. Everything we did, we did under your guidance! We obviously secured a triumph and conquered the two worlds. But why have so many dreadful Immortal Cultivators arrived from the sky?

“Is this your punishment for us? Did we misunderstand you? Were we really wrong?

“No. It is impossible. We were not wrong. We absolutely were not wrong! Please give your most loyal warriors some more enlightenment!”

The muscular man on the light beam recited Chiyou’s name with a twisted and weird expression, until the brilliance in his eyes was lost and his life was gone with the wind.

“They are the last words of a warrior of the Chiyou Cult.”

While transmitting tremendous data to Li Yao’s crystal processor, the Fist King explained, “The Chiyou Cult was a mainstream religion in the Sand Primitive Sector. The believers of the Chiyou Cult were the most elite warriors of their world. His last words proved that a brief war between the Martial Meritocrats Sector and the Sand Primitive Sector did take place a long, long time ago and ended with the Sand Primitive Sector’s victory.”

The avatar of the hideous warrior of the Chiyou Cult was gone, replaced by the big head of a twelve-year-old girl. She seemed severely malnourished, and her head took all the supplies of her body. Her slim neck could not hold the weight of her head anymore, making her only able to lie on the bed.

“Dad…” The little girl who had turned into dry bones hundreds of years ago was hugging a ragged toy dog as if she was holding her entire world. “Mom said that you went to the sky to fight the bad guys, and every brilliant star is the light of your battles. She also said that as long as I behaved, the light of the stars would eventually illuminate our land again.

“I have always been a good girl, but my mother went somewhere far, far away now, too, and I am left alone now. Dad, when will you come back? This place is dark. I’m so scared. It’s been a long time since I last saw the starlight, too. Dad…”

“‘Starlight’ is a word that appeared in the journals and last words of a lot of people,” the Fist King analyzed coldly. “At first, I thought that it was some sort of rhetorical device. But now that I think of it, it must be referring to ‘Starlight’ as an organization. At the very least, during the last years of the ‘Judgment War’, the massive resistance organization had already been born, and some of the resisters broke the blockage into the sea of stars.”