Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“So, Zhou Xiuyun is fake?”

Tang Ka mumbled, “You’re saying that she’s not a refugee from the Imperium but a native of the Covenant Alliance just like us, or even… a ‘Lurker’ who can simulate feelings vividly?”

“I don’t know the real identity of this Zhou Xiuyun. What I’m interested in is the little girl named Tiantian who’s supposed to be her daughter.”

Li Yao’s voice was even colder. His every word seemed to be covered in thick ice, but no matter how thick the ice was, the hotness behind it could not be sealed. Sparks were darting out of Li Yao’s soul. “Assuming that Zhou Xiuyun is really a Lurker of the Covenant Alliance, what about Tiantian? Why is she so close to Zhou Xiuyun and really regards Zhou Xiuyun as her mother? Such a little kid can’t lie, can she?

“I’ve come up with several possibilities.

“Firstly, ‘Zhou Xiuyun’ is real. I mean, there is really an unfortunate woman with this name who came to the frontline from the inland of the Imperium with the hope for a new life, only to be captured by the Covenant Alliance during an attack.

“Because this woman’s identity is very suitable, her memories and her feelings, including her love for her daughter, were ‘extracted’ as a ‘template’ and applied to some of the Lurkers, so that those Lurkers could imitate Zhou Xiuyun so vividly that even her own daughter can’t tell the difference.

“In other words, the ‘Zhou Xiuyun’ we saw was fake, but her daughter Tiantian was real!”

“Well…”

Tang Ka was even more shocked.

This evil and unbelievable possibility was far beyond his imagination.

“The second possibility is that this Tiantian is truly the daughter of a Lurker named ‘Zhou Xiuyun’, and she was born to be ‘props’ for her mother to win other people’s trust. After all, a middle-aged woman could be suspicious, but who would question an ignorant toddler?

“Furthermore, didn’t you say that the Purgers were groomed since they were very little? That’s why you’re known as ‘Children of Holy Light’. It’s very possible that this Tiantian was destined to become a Lurker in the future when she was still a fetus, isn’t it?”

Tang Ka took a deep breath and didn’t know what to say.

“The third possibility.”

Li Yao paused and was silent for a long time, as if he had to calm himself down before he could talk about this cold possibility. “Tiantian is the real Zhou Xiuyun’s daughter, but there was no time for the Lurkers to imitate her mother so vividly that she couldn’t tell the difference. Therefore, through medications or brain surgeries, they changed Tiantian’s cognition system and made Tiantian think that the Lurker was her mother!

“Okay, these are the only three possibilities I can think of. Tang Ka, which of the three possibilities do you think is most likely, and which one is evilest?”

“I… Grandpa Yao…”

Tang Ka gritted his teeth but still shed tears in silence. He mumbled, “How can it happen? How can they do that? How can the world be like this?”

“I’ve asked myself the same questions again and again, but I couldn’t find an answer.”

Li Yao sneered, “However, I found out later that it was unnecessary to seek answers to those questions. What I only need to do is to change this world and make the scumbags who created those miseries pay!”

“Grandpa Yao…”

Tang Ka was surprised at the surging tides that Li Yao raised in his head. They were a hundred times more powerful than what he used to know.

Tang Ka finally believed what Li Yao said casually before about how he only carried out 1% of his power and how he could raze the camp to the ground with a sneeze!

What was this guy exactly? The king of extraterrestrial devils?

However, if the gods did atrocious things such as manipulating the feelings of a three-year-old, would those on the gods’ opposite side be really evil?

“I thought that the Imperium of True Human Beings was the evilest country in the universe because all the kind-hearted people in that bloody country of Immortal Cultivators were being destroyed mercilessly.”

Li Yao said solemnly, “But after I’ve seen the Covenant Alliance in person, it finally occurs to me that not just kind-hearted or evil people, but humanity itself is being destroyed. Everybody is manipulated and treated as a tool or a weapon. This is probably the evilest thing one can imagine!

“Human beings can be killed, but the feelings and self-will of human beings shouldn’t be trodden upon. That is my boundary and why I’m so furious today!”

“Well…”

Taking a deep breath, Tang Ka asked, “What are you going to do, Grandpa Yao? My monitor and I will definitely be on your side.”

“Even if it means resisting your gods?”

Li Yao finally smiled.

“Well…”

Tang Ka was speechless for a moment. He thought for a long time and said, “Who knows what the gods really are and what their will is?”

“Ha, you’ve finally woken up. That’s right. My purpose is exactly to figure out what the ‘gods’ and the ‘Ultimate Benevolence Masters’ who created the Covenant Alliance and all these tragedies are. That they are made of the last drops of blood of the gods from the primeval war is utter bulls*it!”

Nobody knew the history of the Covenant Alliance more clearly than Li Yao did. With Wuying Qi 3.0’s memories, he knew perfectly that the Covenant Alliance was created by none other than Wuying Qi himself at the beginning.

However, Wuying Qi did nothing more than activating the crystal processor system in the man-manufacturing factory that he accidentally found and inputing a few “backdoors” and secret instructions into this system.

Wuying Qi’s original purpose was to get a batch of subordinates that were absolutely loyal to him. He never thought to create the Covenant Alliance.

So, it was impossible for Wuying Qi to create five super warriors that were particularly strong and name them “Ultimate Benevolence Masters”.

However, there were too many uncertainties in the war and conflicts later, and some of the manufactured men somehow awakened their absolute loyalty to the Pangu Clan and controlled the crystal processor system of the man-manufacturing factory.

According to Wuying Qi 3.0, that crystal processor system was broken and deeply flawed in the first place. Nobody could tell what happened when this system was running.

Li Yao also remembered that Wuying Qi 3.0 said that the super crystal processor system in the man-manufacturing factory was known as “Fuxi”.

Li Yao asked Long Yangjun later if she knew this super system named Fuxi.

Long Yangjun nodded and told Li Yao that the Fuxi system was once the greatest invention of the primeval civilizations and was the cornerstone for the Pangu alliance.

It was a unified super system that combined the computation systems of the thirteen carbon-based species.

Any carbon-based civilization would boast a set of advanced tools for calculation when it was developed to the point that it could leave its mother planet.

Because their power and their architecture were different, those tools varied greatly in terms of name and appearance.

It was not hard to imagine what a complicated and difficult job it was to connect all those different computers so that they could work together in a compatible manner.

However, in order for the thirteen carbon-based species to completely assimilate and share each other’s history, memories, and feelings, this job had to be completed no matter how great its price was!

Long Yangjun told Li Yao that the whole Pangu alliance worked for that purpose for ten thousand years. Over the ten thousand years, countless sages were devoted to the glorious cause with their lives as fuel. Unimaginable difficulties and barriers were overcome. Eventually, all the information and computation ability in the Pangu universe were gathered into the super unified computation system named Fuxi!

It was exactly because of Fuxi that the thirteen carbon-based species whose living environment and whose customs were entirely different could live in peace and share their wisdom and courage with each other, thereby continuing their civilization for hundreds of thousands of years.

By Long Yangjun’s estimation, even the Pangu alliance’s exploration beyond the black wall couldn’t have been completed without the help of the Fuxi system.

However, good days didn’t last long. Li Yao roughly guessed what happened later based on information from various sources. After the Pangu civilization was horrified by the views behind the black wall and the unknown “Flood”, they ran back to their home and emasculated themselves by destroying tremendous technologies on space sailing and crystal processors. As a result, the crystal processors of the primeval age that mankind excavated today were not much more advanced than what mankind currently had. They were almost on the same level.

The first thing to be excised was, undoubtedly, the Fuxi system.