Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Holding her mother’s hand, Yan Jinzhi led her to the observatory at the top of ‘Vision 24’, an enormous starship of immigrants, through a lift.

In this place, Xu Yulan was finally able to breathe her first mouthful of fresh air after a hundred years.

Although the air elements of Boneyard were different from the standard air, and it was much damper with the intense stench of rust, Xu Yulan still could not help but breath deeply until her lungs hurt and her head was dizzy.

After living on a starship for a long time, breathing the synthesized standard air, a lot of people would have similar conditions when they met fresh air that was filled with all kinds of impurities. The phenomenon was sometimes known as ‘oxygen intoxication’.

“Look, Mom!”

Pointing at the splendid landscape down below, Yan Jinzhi jumped about excitedly.

Xu Yulan’s optical nerves that had been frozen for a hundred years were not adapted to the strong natural light yet. She narrowed her eyes and covered her eyebrows with her hands to block the light. Looking into the distance, she discovered that most of the immigrant starships from ‘Vision 7’ to ‘Vision 33’ were scattered in a hilly area not far away from an ocean.

The bright blue earth was full of faults. There were mountains thousands of meters tall and valleys that were equally deep. Compared to them, the ‘hilly area’ that they were in could almost be called the wide expanse of a plateau.

The surging tides raised by the crimson ocean far away were the most intense ones that she had ever seen. The waves reached the altitude of hundreds of meters easily and danced crazily like countless furious dragons. Despite the multiple layers of seawalls, they were still marching beyond the shoreline for dozens of kilometers and nearby drowned the hill they were on.

However, right above such a magnificent and temperamental ocean, countless bizarre-shaped artificial objects, which looked like weird boats jumbled by too many sails, were still cruising amid the huge waves, chasing the clouds and lightning and declaring mankind’s determination to challenge nature.

Xu Yulan’s eyes continued moving forward to above the horizon, where the contour of an enormous planet was revealed in the gray sky.

The contour was glittering, like a transparent ring of jade.

At first, Xu Yulan thought that it was an annular eclipse.

But if it were an annular eclipse, the rays around the object would not have been so bright.

Also, very soon, the ring of light shivered lightly. Countless tiny threads of light split out and rotated in the same direction.

Those light threads seemed to be pulling the force deep inside the ocean amazingly. As the light threads changed erratically, the giant waves began surging even more frequently and violently.

Xu Yulan even saw a giant wave that was at least thousands of meters tall rolling up from the depths of the ocean mixed with fire and smoke. It was almost breaking through the atmosphere and flying all the way into space.

Such a splendid view dumbfounded Xu Yulan and made her lost for words for a long time.

“Mother, don’t be scared. This is part of the modification of Boneyard!”

A moment earlier, she had grabbed her daughter’s hands and tried to keep her daughter behind her to protect her daughter. But at this moment, her daughter was holding her arms and warming her cold fingers with her hot palms.

Her daughter said with a smile, “Everything is good on Boneyard, except that one of satellites is too close to it and has a very strange trajectory. The tidal force between the satellite and Boneyard makes the ocean here particularly violent and causes shocking waves that scourge an area of hundreds of square kilometers. A long way in the future, the satellite will even fall and hit the surface of Boneyard heavily.

“It’s because of the two reasons that the Star Glory Federation never developed Boneyard on a large scale in the past hundred years.

“But since this place is our new home now, it naturally requires great modification. The first things to be taken care of will be the tidal force and the collapse of the satellite. Then, we will flatten the mountains and valleys. To realize the purposes, the federation has decided to adjust the trajectory of the satellite and slightly push the ‘moon’ away.”

Xu Yulan widened her eyes and blurted out, “Pushing the ‘moon’ away?”

“Yes. The Star Glory Federation has never made such a grand attempt before, either. They did not have relevant technological reserve,” Yan Jinzhi said. “However, with the technology from the Black Wind Fleet, Kunlun, and Firefly, and with the technology from the federation itself, chances are that it will succeed!

“Of course, we are still in the phase of testing the technology and collecting data and far away from the point of really pushing the moon away. Do you see the weird boats floating in the middle of the tides, which seem to have sails all over their bodies? They are the probe starships to collect the data of the tides and make preparations for the next phase, pushing!

“Five years, ten years, twenty years… I think by the time I grow to your age, Mom, we will certainly have pushed the moon away, tamed the ocean, flattened the mountains to fill the valleys, and developed Boneyard into a real paradise, won’t we?”

Her daughter’s solemn expression reminded Xu Yulan of something deep inside her heart.

She seemed to recall the time when she first took her family to the then desolate Green Valley Fortress, full of hope and ambition.

Those were the golden years of her life when she was happiest and most energetic.

Xu Yulan overlooked ‘Firefly’, which her daughter had mentioned, and brooded on the thought that her daughter seemed to have truly grown up after the long journey.

Under Yan Jinzhi’s guidance, Xu Yulan looked at the mountains around that rose into the sky. She saw countless towers standing at the summits spurting out hazy mist incessantly, constructing a white barrier near the landing point of the starships.

Her daughter told her that it was an array to modify the atmosphere and cleanse the air.

Boneyard had been a nest of demons tens of thousands of years ago after all. There were too many impurities in the air, and it was unsuitable for ordinary people to breathe for a long time because it would cause chronic illnesses. In the eyes of the ancient people, this was a truly murky land.

Thankfully, the federation had gained abundant experience in planet modification during the hundred years of colonization. At the very least, the technology was mature enough to build up a reservation, cleanse the air in the small area, and even generate a ‘microclimate’ that was always favorable in a certain range.

The colonization technology of the Imperium of True Human Beings was even more advanced than the federation’s. The ‘Vision’ starships that Xu Yulan and the other immigrants boarded were themselves self-sustainable towns and factories. At the very least, in the first few years of construction, it was unnecessary for them to leave the starships to establish vulnerable settlements.

Right now, all the ‘Vision’ starships had extended hundreds of fixation limbs, which made them look like spiders, into the ravines among the hills in order to stabilize themselves.

Based on that, the solid shells of the immigrant starships were dismantled one piece after another, revealing the complicated, eye-catching factories and facilities. Some of them were unfolded right next to the immigrant starships, and some were dragged further away.

Defense rune arrays, air cleaning towers, water plants, metal collection, and purification factories… Every immigrant starship was transforming into a small town that had all the necessary infrastructure at a visible speed.

Although Xu Yulan had always thought that she had seen a lot of things, she had never appreciated the picture of so many starships transforming into towns at the same time. The resolution to change the world and alter nature stunned her and even made her feel somewhat moved!

Suddenly, Xu Yulan moved her eyes away from the dazzling scenes of construction to an enormous fold that surrounded the hills like a dam.

The circular fold was like a city wall built by the giants. It sealed the hills inside and stopped their further expansion and development.

So, it was necessary to destroy the fold!

On the steep slope of the circular fold that was almost vertical, different areas had been marked. A lot of eight-footed magical equipment that looked like enormous spiders were moving on it quickly and drilled deep holes on the slope with their tentacles.

Xu Yulan knew that such magical equipment was commonly known as a mountain crab. It was a piece of engineering magical equipment designed to detonate abandoned buildings and steep mountains. The eight soft limbs could fix themselves in all kinds of harsh environments and maintain a high speed. The drills at the ends of the tentacles could also dig out holes precisely to send crystal bombs to the most vulnerable parts.

Xu Yulan was good at operating the ‘mountain crab’, too. That was why she could tell how excellent the pioneer driving the red mountain crab was.

He was moving and digging explosion holes in the crags five times faster than other people. When other people had just dug a dozen explosion holes, he had already embedded a hundred crystal bombs into the mountain on the front. The mountain crab that weighed more than seventy tons was almost an extension of his limbs. His movements were both fluent and enjoyable.

The distance was too far away for Xu Yulan to tell how the explosion holes were dug, but judging from the smooth, skillful movements, there could not possibly be anything wrong.

As she expected, after a boom, not too much smoke was raised when a large cluster of rocks collapsed without a sound without affecting the mountain crabs that were operating nearby.

“This is a true expert!”

Detonation was an art. Blowing up the target with the minimal crystals, the minimal range of affection, and the minimal difficulty of subsequent cleaning required sophisticated knowledge.

Xu Yulan vaguely saw that the red mountain crab crawled out of the smoke. The ‘shell’ on the back was opened, and a guy in a red vest showed up, waving his hands and accepting the cheers of the workers with a smile.

She secretly complimented him but somehow felt that her hands were itching. Perhaps because of the heated scene of construction, she suddenly gained the idea of having a competition with the guy.

“Daughter…” Xu Yulan rubbed her fists. “The guy who operated the red mountain crab was quite impressive. Do you know who he is?”

Yan Jinzhi’s face suddenly turned extremely weird. She thought for a long time but still found it hard to explain. “Well, mom. Please don’t be surprised, but that is actually the new ‘Black Wind King’. His name is Li Yao!”