Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Right then, Long Yangjun’s angry roars echoed inside the communication channel.

All along, Long Yangjun had always had two faces in Li Yao’s mind.

When she showed up as ‘Eunuch Wang Xi’, she was cunning and sophisticated. When she presented herself as ‘Long Yangjun’, she was always casual and not bound by any restraints.

But Li Yao had barely heard her shouting so angrily and desperately when she was wearing either of the faces, not even when the two of them had both run out of trump cards on the bridge of the Nuwa warship.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

An intense life wave appeared on Li Yao’s light beam and rose like a steep mountain. It was much more intense than when the dozens of giant crabs were woken up.

“Put on the Colossus!”

Without any hesitation, Li Yao activated the highest level with the Soul Igniting Law and summoned the Tartarean Skeleton from his Cosmos Ring. He then shouted aloud in the communication to remind the fellow Cultivators to bring out their best!

Hardly had he sat cross-legged in the spiritual residence of the Tartarean Skeleton when a deafening explosion echoed from the deepest part of the pathway up ahead.

It turned out to be the Yin Yang, Long Yangjun’s Colossus, which had crashed through a solid wall and flown out quickly.

On the Colossus, a hideous green-haired monster was grabbing hanging on!

Fragments of the mustard-seed combat suit and the crystal suit could still be found on the monster, but its body was expanding at a visible speed. The damp skin was covered by a layer of bright green mucus. The flesh and blood were torn apart, and vague dragon scales were growing out of the wounds!

Traces of ‘Sha Yue’, the missing Exo, could still be seen on the uneven face. But with the cracking explosions on his skull, his face was stretched longer and longer, with bone spurs protruding out of the sharp ends. His face became more and more nonchalant, too. The panic and pain that belonged to human beings were fading away quickly, replaced by thoughtfulness that was beyond the description of any words.

“Sha Yue! Sha Yue!” the captain of the Exo group shouted in the communication channel.

Hearing the familiar name, the monster slightly raised his head that was more than half a meter long. A hint of confusion flashed on his deformed face, but it soon vanished into nothingness.

In exactly the same time when he raised his head, it could clearly be seen that the eye sockets of the creature were almost squeezed into nothingness by the crazily proliferating bones. The broken bones pierced the skin and spurted out abundant dark-green mucus. The mucus hardened the moment it met the air and turned into a hard, black shell that covered the upper half part of the skull, including where the eye sockets were previously.

The monster lost its eyes and the last hint of its old human skin.

Long Yangjun’s Colossus, Yin Yang, was a high-speed scouting one. It was the smallest Colossus of all the Colossi of the twelve experts of the Ancient Sages Sector, but it was still almost ten meters tall.

However, while the monster that mutated from ‘Sha Yue’ was only about five meters tall when it crashed out of the pathway together with Long Yangjun, it had grown to almost ten meters tall in the blink of an eye, even bigger than the Yin Yang.

The creature was covered in dark green scales, and sharp green hair grew out of the gaps of the scales. Its head, on the other hand, was narrow, long, and streamlined, like an octopus or a weird lobster. It was almost the legendary sea monster!

Li Yao, Meng Chixin, Wu Suiyun, Yan Liren, and other Colossus users all locked onto the green-haired monster with their most powerful telepathic thoughts. However, considering that Long Yangjun was still too close to the monster, they found it tricky to attack immediately.

“No!” Sensing their overwhelming killing intent, Long Yangjun shouted at the communication channel. “Capture it alive so that we can figure out the whole process of how a human mutates into a member of the Pangu Clan! It is of paramount importance!”

The Yin Yang released a strong light that burned the green hair on the enemy’s body so hard that it was curling. Taking advantage of the opportunity, it stabbed two enormous flying swords, one black and the other white, into the abdomen of the monster and out of its back. Like a pair of giant scissors, they clinched the entire spine of the monster!

Long Yangjun truly played all her trump cards other than the special abilities of a Nuwa warrior. Her spiritual energy burnt so furiously that the flames reached almost a thousand meters ahead and behind her. While sparks and electric arcs were spurting out of the joints of the limbs of the Colossus, she kept her body straight and pressed the opponent to the ground.

The two flying swords stabbed to the ground deeply and fixated the green-haired monster on the spot. It waved its limbs and squeaked crazily but was unable to move anymore.

“Mission accomplished!” Long Yangjun exclaimed in excitement in the communication channel.

Indeed, exploring the secrets of the primeval war and figuring out the relations among the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, and human beings were perhaps more important to her than to other people.

But right then, every scale on the green-haired monster became erect.

Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!

Before Long Yangjun and Li Yao realized what was going on, thousands of electric arcs had already flooded out of its innumerous scales, transforming the monster into a ball of lightning. A volcano of thunder seemed to have erupted right below Long Yangjun’s feet, and the lightning pierced the Yin Yang!

“Damn it!” Li Yao did not anticipate that the ‘newborn’ member of the Pangu Clan would be as difficult to deal with as the ‘original good’ that Li Yao had encountered on Kunlun a hundred years ago. Having no time to follow Long Yangjun’s request to capture it alive, the Tartarean Skeleton darted over like an arrow, and the saber of black fire slashed out and hit the exceptionally long head of the green-haired monster in the most unstoppable way.

The head felt like a withered tree after the saber reached the target. It was chopped in half and burnt into ashes instantly.

It seemed that transforming itself into a ball of lightning and unleashing electric arcs that were enough to pierce the Colossus were also the last attack of the green-haired monster at the cost of its own life. After the attack, whether the enemy was killed or not, it would definitely be drained and dead.

What a terrifying mutation.

In only a few minutes, a human being no taller than two meters transformed into a member of the Pangu Clan almost ten meters tall who was capable of fighting a Colossus!

Even his mind was altered, too. Not only were all the feelings and emotions of a human removed, he was also endowed with a brand-new target, which made him launch a suicidal attack without any hesitation.

Li Yao swallowed hard. The descriptions of Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun based on their personal experience were already soul-stirring enough, but what he saw with his own eyes was ten times more staggering.

It was hard to imagine what the genetic mutation drugs contained inside the ‘giant crab’ were made of and how they granted a human being such terrible strength from almost nothing.

The law of conservation of matter and energy was always prevalent. They could be transformed among different forms at best. It was certainly impossible to make anything out of nothing. If a tiny dose of drugs could turn a human into a member of the Pangu Clan, it implied that the ability to change into a member of the Pangu Clan had always been hidden deep inside the body of every human.

What exactly was the relationship between mankind and the Pangu Clan?

Were they simply ‘servants’ and ‘lords’ as Li Yao had seen on Kunlun a hundred years ago?

“Cough, cough! Cough, cough, cough, cough!”

Long Yangjun’s violent coughs echoed inside the communication channel.

Before they entered the Land of Eternal Night, Li Yao had performed full examinations on all the Colossi, ensuring that every piece of plate armor on the Colossi had been renewed.

However, after the scourge of the ultra-intense electric arcs just now, the Yin Yang looked as if it had weathered a cosmic storm for three days and three nights. It was indeed mottled, blackened, and riddled with holes.

On the health monitoring system, Long Yangjun’s biophysical indexes had plummeted to the worst state. Her heartbeat, breath, blood flow, and brainwaves were all close to the status of a patient in shock.

Hearing her cough, Li Yao was greatly relieved. Switching to a point-to-point private channel, he said, “I didn’t know that even you could make such a lousy mistake. I thought we agreed before we entered the Pangu laboratory that whenever anything went wrong, we would throw a couple of tons of bullets and explosives on it first. Yet, you intended to ‘capture it alive’? That was a mutated member of the Pangu Clan!”

Long Yangjun was silent for a moment. Instead of mocking Li Yao back as she usually would have, she simply sulked and asked, “He’s dead?”

“Well…” Controlling the Tartarean Skeleton to touch the human-shaped ashes on the ground with his foot, Li Yao replied, “If the Pangu Clan does not have a technique to come back to life from ash, he should be dead. However, he was not exactly killed by us but died of exhaustion.

“It can’t be helped. The monster’s original body was ‘Sha Yue’, a member of our exploration team. Expanding a human no taller than two meters to a monster almost ten meters tall and unleashing electric arcs that were powerful enough to seriously wreck a Colossus, it must’ve exploited all the potential in every cell of ‘Sha Yue’. Even if we controlled it and tried our best to save it, I’m afraid that it would still have been obliterated.”

Long Yangjun sighed, rather unusually, and said, “What a shame. I hoped to capture it alive to figure out some secrets of the primeval era from it so that I could find… my identity and my destiny.”

Li Yao frowned. “Is it so important? Is it worth risking your life for?”

“Of course.” Long Yangjun smiled bitterly. “If I don’t figure out my past, my identity, and my destiny, what am I living for exactly?”

Li Yao was lost for words for a moment.

Somehow, the blue planet popped up inside his head again, the mysterious Earth that was still hidden in the hazy mists.

Fine. He could more or less understand why Long Yangjun did that.

“Fellow Cultivator Wang, are you alright?” Meng Chixin, Wu Suiyun, and the rest of them hurried to come close. “Your condition is quite bad, and your spiritual waves are in disorder, too. We strongly advise that you do not participate further in the exploration operation. You should go back to the Nuwa warship to treat your wounds!”

Long Yangjun was silent. Li Yao could almost see her clenching her fist and smashing it down hard.