Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The queer clothing of the two troops and their clumsy if not shabby blades made them look more like figurants who had just run off the set of a movie set in the ancient times.

For a moment, Li Yao even suspected that he had accidentally walked into the gathering of the fans of ancient Cultivators.

Such fellows were both in the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector. They were fond of the fashion and the unworldliness of the ancient Cultivators. They often bought the ancient clothes and magical equipment and decorated themselves before they had a party and took photos of each other. It was sort of a way to promote the traditional culture that their ancestors had left for them.

However, the flying broken arms, the flowing guts, the screams that were shocking the birds, and even the most brutal animals… All the gory scenes told Li Yao that it was certainly not a game but a life-and-death battle between two groups of ‘ancient people’!

Judging from the position of the two parties, it was obvious that the ’emperor’s army’, which was under the banner of ‘Appeasing Ambassador of the Fifth Prefecture of the Southland of Sorcerers’ had travelled inside the mountains for a long time and just established their camps after finding the open place with a water source.

As it turned out, they were ambushed by the forest barbarians who were short, slim, and wearing fancy clothes.

The barbarians seemed to have been lurking in the branches and mud in the first place and marched into the heart of the emperor’s army easily.

Therefore, the battle was already the cruelest state the moment it began.

Why—why is everything like this?

Li Yao could not figure out the reason at all.

Judging from the armor, blades, and flags of the two parties, the civilization was still at a very underdeveloped phase. It was the living examples of the history books and Ou Yezi’s dreams.

How was it possible?

It had to be noted that the civilization of mankind had already been pushed to a splendid peak in the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago.

With the help of three volumes of the Book of Revelation, the modern Cultivation civilization built by the Supreme Emperor himself almost reached a mature phase immediately after it was founded.

Although the Supreme Emperor and Mad Armageddon killed each other in the Armageddon Rebellion, which resulted in the collapse of the Star Ocean Imperium, the seeds of the modern Cultivation civilization had been sprayed to all three thousand Sectors.

The heritage of the Star Ocean Imperium was everywhere to be seen in the broken worlds.

In the most chaotic, dark era after the Star Ocean Imperium’s collapse, the people on all the planets still remembered the glory of the Imperium and were still able to excavate the legacies. They had never really had to build everything from scratch.

Therefore, the brand-new civilizations founded on the broken pieces of the Imperium returned to modernity after only a few thousand years.

For the worlds such as the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector, there were metropolises, public education, computation, and communication tools such as crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, and a basic understanding about the universe.

The Flying Star Sector and the Heaven’s Origin Sector were not special cases.

In the ‘brainwashing tutorial’ of the Imperium of True Human Beings, dozens of independent civilizations of mankind had been recorded, such as the Curly Dragon civilization, the Medicine Fork civilization, and the Martial Meritocrats civilization, which had all become modernized in a few thousand years.

Their eventual destruction was not caused by their primitiveness or ignorance but boiled down to the untreatable disease in the ‘postmodern’ era.

In the Sectors reigned by the demons, such as the ‘Blood Demon Sector’, the original appearance of the planet seemed to have been kept, but it was simply because demons chose a different approach of development.

The civilizations of demons, based on biochemistry, also boasted biochemical brains, skeleton warships, biochemical beasts, networks founded on brainwaves, and other rather modern techniques and devices.

The most ‘primitive’ planet that Li Yao had ever come across was probably ‘Iron Plateau’.

However, Iron Plateau was a special case because it had suffered a violent apocalyptic strike that nearly terminated the civilization.

Even so, the qi-trainers on Iron Plateau still developed all kinds of magical equipment based on True Qi. Then, with the True Qi magical equipment, they created a unique ‘True Qi civilization’ which considered the True Qi containers as the sources of power. They also had True Qi trains, True Qi airships, large factories, big cities, and other modern magical equipment and facilities.

Li Yao had never thought that he would run into an ‘ancient civilization’ in its full sense, which seemed to still be in a feudal society.

“This doesn’t make any sense. Even leaving the great development of the Star Ocean Imperium, the civilizations of the demons already evolved to a remarkable level at the end of the ‘Great Dark Era’ in which the universe was reigned by the demons. Why is everything like this?” Li Yao mumbled to himself. Then, he suddenly realized something.

The world had been covered inside the dark nebula for tens of thousands of years. It had not been recorded on the star map of the Star Ocean Imperium left in the Star Prier’s House.

Chances were that neither the Demon Beast Dynasties nor the Star Ocean Imperium were aware of its existence. Naturally, its modernization had never been accelerated.

It was a lone planet that had developed on its own for tens of thousands of years inside the ‘black box’. The changes in the outside and the great events in the universe had nothing to do with it at all.

Was this mysterious world a ‘paradise’ in the universe?

However, the ‘paradise’ here was apparently not peaceful and enjoyable but filled with blood and slaughters.

Li Yao felt that his teeth were aching.

He had made all the necessary preparations. He was braced for the possibility of meeting the most advanced civilization and ready to exploit the essence of the target civilization before he reached out to the local authorities.

But it never occurred to him that… the target civilization would be so ‘underdeveloped’!

What do I do now?

I’m here to visit and possibly ally with the world here as a representative of the Star Glory Federation, but it’s still ancient times here!

The good news is that, since such a well-trained army is carrying the flag saying ‘Appeasing Ambassador of the Fifth Prefecture of the Southland of Sorcerers’, there must be a court here.

With Ou Yezi’s abundant memories, and now that he had advanced into the Nascent Soul Stage, he had a basic understanding about the customs in the world of ancient Cultivators now.

The so-called ‘Appeasing Ambassador’ was a commonly-seen official title in different worlds of ancient Cultivators.

Generally speaking, the central dynasties at the plateaus would establish ‘Appeasing Bureaus’ at the frontiers and the primitive lands. Such agencies were responsible for intimidating the foreign races and suppressing any rebellions.

It’s not too bad. There’s at least a central government here. I know who I should turn to.

If it were a civilization of bloody battles, which was a ‘jungle society’ where everybody disagreed with each other and feasted on each other’s blood, Li Yao would not even know whom he should negotiate with.

The bad news is that, since there’s a court, there must be a king or an emperor sitting in the court!

Should I go to the emperor and tell him, ‘Your Majesty, did you know that the world we are living in is in fact a large place, there are hundreds of other worlds beyond your territory, and I happen to be an alien from one of the worlds…’?

Li Yao sighed and suddenly felt that the alliance would be tricky.

He had never been particularly fond of the ancient Cultivators after swallowing Ou Yezi’s memories and gaining a basic understanding about the ancient Cultivators.

It was because the ancient Cultivators were more like the Immortal Cultivators, who regarded the ordinary people as ants, in terms of their belief.

Of course, the ancient Cultivators were not necessarily unpardonable fiends.

In fact, there were too many merciful masters who subdued the bullies and helped the weak, and patriots who sacrificed themselves for their country and people, among the ancient Cultivators.

However, even the most loyal and moral ancient Cultivators might find it difficult to embrace the ideology of equality in modern society by placing themselves on par with the ordinary people or even being checked and balanced by them.

It had nothing to do with their attitude. Perhaps it was just their ‘historic limitations’.

Su Changfa, as an Immortal Cultivator, was not wrong about one thing. It was inappropriate to judge the ancient people with modern morals.

As it happened, it was a bunch of ‘ancient people’ that Li Yao had come across!

There’s nothing I can do now. I might as well make more observations.

Although the civilization here was still in the ‘ancient’ phase, and everything looked rather underdeveloped at first glance, Li Yao did not dare underestimate them or return to space to establish the ‘space gate’ and summon the fleets from the federation recklessly.

He knew clearly that there had been a crazy era in the world of ancient Cultivators when the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators and the Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators were as numerous as the dogs on the street!

Because of the abundant spiritual in this world, even the lizards here were magnitudes larger than those in the Heaven’s Origin Sector. Nobody could tell how formidable the Cultivators here were!

If he underestimated the capabilities of the world and summoned the space fleets of the federation rashly to demonstrate his power, only to discover that the civilization sent out fifty Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators in a row…

Then Li Yao’s negligence would certainly be unpardonable.

Before summoning the main troops of the federation, there are a few critical questions that I must figure out first.

Firstly, is the civilization that is suspected to be a world of ancient Cultivators the real dominator of the planet, or is it simply the puppet on the surface controlled by another civilization below the ground or in outer space that is a hundred times more developed?

Secondly, how exactly was the world hidden in the ‘black box’, and what happened hundreds of thousands of years ago?

Thirdly, how many Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators and Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators are out there in the world? If there are indeed a lot of them, how much damage can they cause to a civilization of modern Cultivators when they are on a rampage?

Fourthly, and most critically, what was the signal sent to the outside world a hundred years ago about? Was it sent by the ancient Cultivators here? What was their purpose?

Li Yao did not know how terrifying a Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivator could be.

On Li Yao’s path of training, the one with the highest Cultivation should be the ‘supreme space pirate’ Yan Xinjian, who hid in his residence in the underground fortress on Spider Den in the Flying Star Sector to break into the Divinity Transformation Stage.

Li Yao had spent quite a few years in the supreme space pirate’s residence absorbing Yan Xinjian’s heritage.

It had been the most beneficial seclusion in his life of training. Not only did he successfully march into the superlative height of the Core Formation Stage, the training also laid a solid foundation for him to break into the Nascent Soul Stage when he was only in his thirties.

To some extent, he had received Yan Xinjian’s tutelage and could almost be called Yan Xinjian’s ‘true disciple’.

Yan Xinjian died because of mental derangement when he only touched the threshold of the Divinity Transformation Stage.

Inferring the average capabilities of the Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators with Yan Xinjian’s Cultivation, Li Yao pondered for a long time but still felt that… only one Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivator would be able to cause world-blighting damage if he snuck into the Star Glory Federation!