Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1228
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.
Chapter 1907: Who's Strong, and Who's Weak? |
Having the same trouble as Long Yangjun, Li Yao was quite empathic.
If the unpredictable 'Earth' was placed right before him, yet somebody stopped him from entering it for exploration, he certainly would have gone mad, too.
However, a thousand people were involved in Operation Archeology, and hundreds of times more people were outside providing back up. There were billions of civilians on the entire planet of the Ancient Sages Sector.
If a few giant crabs ran loose in their carelessness and created countless cruel, heartless members of the Pangu Clan, the consequences would certainly be dire.
Not only would the thousand explorers likely be killed, even the entire Ancient Sages Sector or the federation outside of the dark nebula could be swallowed!
They had to be responsible for everyone's life. It was not the time to be self-willed. Carrying a burden who was heavily wounded would be a great weakness for the team in any place.
Thinking about that, Li Yao said, "Rest assured. We are establishing a spiritual tower every hundred meters. A lot of crystal wires and cables are being laid, too. The communication with the base will not be cut off. You can see everything that is happening underground through our crystal cameras anytime."
Catching her breath for a moment, Long Yangjun realized that everyone was rather determined. She had no choice but to agree. "Alright. My wounds will probably be healed in twelve hours. Let's keep in touch. I'll come back again in half a day."
Lying on a floating, anti-gravity medical cabin, Long Yangjun was escorted back to the Nuwa warship up above by two medics.
On the Nuwa warship, the most advanced large medical rooms and laboratories had long been established in preparation for such scenarios.
But such a grave accident when the exploration had only just begun and the losses of an expert at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage and one in the Core Formation Stage still made everyone's heart heavy. They became even more cautious.
Li Yao and the rest of them also discussed if all the explorers below the Nascent Soul Stage who had physical bodies should quit, leaving only the Cultivators at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage, the spectral warriors, and the Grand Illusionary Soldiers to continue the exploration.
However, deep below the earth where the interference was severe due to the black mist, the spectral Cultivators and the Grand Illusionary Soldiers were highly affected, too. Even the spectral Cultivators could be blown apart by the ultra-strong radiation.
In order to investigate the entire Pangu laboratory and exterminate all the problems while they were in cradle, the warriors of flesh and blood were indispensable.
"Now that the seals have been opened, the most important thing is to figure out everything here as soon as possible. We cannot allow any of the giant crabs to cause trouble outside. We are all prepared to die here. There is no need to quit!"
All the members of the Exo squads declared similar sentiments.
After deciding the tactics in the next step, they turned around and began to study the body of Sha Yue, the explorer who had unfortunately died.
Although the enormous body had been burnt into coal and ash, the charred body more than ten meters long was still telling the horror of the 'genetic mutation drugs' in silence.
How unbelievable.
Li Yao was aware that when 'body fundamentalists' trained themselves to a high level, their bodies would show some features of the primeval creatures. Growing dragon scales, long hair, tusks, or sharp claws was not a problem for them at all.
For the demons, by bombarding the 'primeval cells' in their training techniques, they could achieve a similar effect. Sometimes, they could even transform someone no more than two meters tall into a magnificent being almost four meters tall that was covered in a shell and horns.
Even Li Yao himself could unleash the primeval force deep inside the cells if he wanted to and turn his left arm into the powerful 'Cell Obliteration Cannon'.
However, expanding from no more than two meters to ten meters and competing with a Colossus in the blink of an eye still far exceeded Li Yao's imagination.
There was also another puzzle. How did the change of body affect the brain and soul so that the human lost their memories and character, becoming cruel and emotionless?
If a certain method was developed to retain a human's self-awareness and emotions after they were transformed into members of the Pangu Clan, or to make it possible to transform between 'mankind' and 'Pangu Clan' freely, would they not immediately boast an invincible army in the sea of stars?
By then, even if the real members of the Pangu Clan showed up, there would be nothing to fear.
We would be as much giants as you are, except that we would be giants with love and feelings and could change our body size freely. There would be nothing to worry about.
While Li Yao was fantasizing, Long Yangjun's light cough echoed in the private communication channel. "Are you still studying the body? What have you found?"
"You have arrived at the medical room?" Li Yao asked.
"Yes. I am soaked in the high-energy nutrition liquid right now. You know that I hate other people monitoring my physical indexes most." Long Yangjun gnashed her teeth. "I said that you shouldn't come down with us. Look at what happened. Another accident!"
Li Yao chuckled and got back to the original topic. "We are now studying the body of 'Sha Yue', the deceased explorer. But his cells have been too seriously damaged. Every last bit of strength in them was drained, and even every gene strand has been minced apart brutally. There are no interesting discoveries yet."
Pausing for a moment, Li Yao confessed his ideas just now. "Do you think if we can modify the genetic mutation drugs by eliminating the side effect of suppressing emotions and self-awareness, so that human beings can be transformed into the 'Pangu' form freely and controllably, we will be given a powerful 'primeval troop' immediately?"
Li Yao had thought that even if Long Yangjun argued with him, she would only criticize the ridiculousness of his idea because such drugs could never exist.
But after a brief silence, Long Yangjun simply replied, "Are the Pangu clan really powerful?"
Li Yao was slightly dazed. "The newborn member of the Pangu Clan just now beat you heavily without armor or a weapon. Does that not count as powerful?"
Long Yangjun, however, disagreed. "First of all, 'Sha Yue' was himself at the middle level of the Core Formation Stage. Even in the era of great development in the Star Glory Federation today, he was still one of the rarest geniuses. Massive strength had accumulated inside his body.
"It was based on such strength that he expanded to more than ten meters tall.
"However, even a Cultivator at the middle level of the Core Formation Stage could only support such a gigantic body to perform one fatal attack before he was exhausted and killed.
"Let me ask you. Can a troop really be called 'powerful if the soldiers who are one-in-ten-thousand elites die after launching a critical strike even before the enemy's counterattack?"
"Well…"
"Also," Long Yangjun continued, "even the so-called 'critical strike' is actually not as tough as you imagine. If the electric arcs can only be released in close-distance combat, they will only be suitable for a narrow, dark environment like here. In a plateau, in the sky, or in space, such electric arcs will be utterly useless because we can already launch bombardments from a thousand kilometers away!
"Furthermore, you only noticed their combat ability but did not take into consideration how many resources they would consume. This is just my speculation, but judging from the hill-like body size, I guarantee that his appetite couldn't have been small.
"Even if a member of the Pangu Clan can release a combat ability ten times higher than a Cultivator's, it will consume a hundred times more food and crystals than a Cultivator will. Is a troop made of such warriors truly 'powerful'?
"One other thing, the adaptation to all territories.
"For the members of the Pangu Clan who can easily grow to twenty meters tall in all kinds of bizarre body shapes, it is perhaps not a big deal if they live in the vacuum of space under zero gravity or starships where gravity can be adjusted. But if they land on the planets of standard or higher gravity, their bodies will be very clumsy and burdensome for them.
"Yes. You may argue that the Pangu Clan can float and ignore the gravity with all kinds of amazing techniques. But any technique can only be sustained with the consumption of resources. Then, we are back to the issue before, which is that the Pangu Clan's resource utilization efficiency is not high at all. If they are engaged in activities on a high-gravity planet, they will have to waste a lot of resources on resisting the gravity.
"Unfortunately, the more resourceful a planet is, the denser and heavier it tends to be, and the greater gravity it will have. I know that the Star Glory Federation has discovered quite a few resource planets that are no larger than the home planet of the Heaven's Origin Sector but have gravity multiple times higher. Even humans no more than two meters tall can barely move on those planets, not to mention the gigantic members of the Pangu Clan!"
Li Yao blinked quickly. "What you said does make sense!"
"Of course it does. Perhaps the Pangu Clan was not as strong as we imagined. Or rather, despite their marvelous techniques and technology, they had a lot of fatal weaknesses, and they were not nearly as invincible as they appeared," Long Yangjun remarked. "That was probably why they built a tool that was more powerful than themselves after arduous effort to take over most of the heavy and painful jobs for them."
"A tool that was more powerful? You are not kidding, are you?"
"Why do you underestimate yourself? Is strength and advancement proportional to body size in your eyes?"
"Are they not?" Li Yao asked.
"That is practically a middle school students' way of thinking," Long Yangjun said. "No. Even a middle school student should know that on the path of evolution of the crystal processors, as their performance increases and their energy consumption lowers, the more advanced crystal processors have a smaller size, don't they?
"In terms of survival on battlefields and resource utilization, while maintaining the same 'performance' or even slightly reducing it, it will always be for the best to minimize the body size as much as possible."
Li Yao slightly frowned and asked, "Why do I feel… that you have recalled something of your past?"
Chapter 1908: The Strongest Evolved Being |
"Yes…" Long Yangjun did not deny it at all. "When the electric arcs unleashed by the green-haired monster coursed through me, I felt that a seal deep inside my soul was broken through. Countless bizarre, incomprehensible memory fragments have flooded out. My head is in a mess, with countless pictures, thoughts, and ideas hovering inside. It is true that I need a moment to calm myself down.
"Perhaps our opinions in the past were incorrect, or at least incomplete.
"The whole time, we have considered 'mankind' as tools of Pangu, which can be traced back to the three fundamental laws, or the Path of Ultimate Benevolence, which was discovered by you on Kunlun and interpreted by the Immortal Cultivators.
"Whether it is named 'three fundamental laws' or the Path of Ultimate Benevolence, it deprives human beings of their feelings and free will. That's why we thought that human beings were to the Pangu Clan what 'tools' are to 'masters'.
"However, the 'three fundamental laws' were written in the primeval language. Nobody can guarantee that the full meaning has been perfectly translated. More and more evidence has shown that the Pangu Clan did not just deprive human beings of their feelings and free will but also did exactly the same things to themselves. So—"
Li Yao craned his neck without him knowing. "So what?"
"Perhaps mankind and Pangu were not 'tools' and 'masters'," Long Yangjun said carefully. "Perhaps, just like the 'parent and child' civilization theory you mentioned, theirs is the relationship between an ignorant 'child' and his father who was highly rigorous, perverted, and paranoid."
"…What a great relief to hear that!"
"Let me think more. I have a feeling that I will remember a lot of new things very soon, things that are of paramount importance."
"That's easy," Li Yao said. "How about we prepare a few rune arrays of the thunder class up there and give you some electric shocks? Chances are that you will remember everything quickly."
"No, thank you. You can just continue your exploration. I'm beginning to feel that the environment down there is familiar, as if I were there a long, long time ago."
Long Yangjun was a clone of a Nuwa warrior from hundreds of thousands of years ago. Since her 'original body' had likely broken into the Pangu laboratory years ago, it was only reasonable that some of the memory pieces of the original body were kept in her head in a mysterious way.
The exploration team continued marching deeper into the Pangu laboratory. With the lessons that they had learned, they had a lot of high-pressure tanks of freezing foam delivered from above and would spurt into the darkness whenever they noticed anything wrong.
Li Yao and the other Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators stayed inside their Colossi without caring about the cost of their spiritual energy and spread out their telepathic thoughts as far away as possible.
On their way, they discovered another two 'crab factories', but all the giant crabs inside had been shattered and lost all signs of activity.
It was obvious that they were destroyed by the warriors of the Nuwa Clan before the laboratory was completely sealed.
The deeper they went, the more damaged and collapsed the structure was. Several floors had completely collapsed. The pathways, the laboratory, and the dead bodies were all squeezed together by the rocks. Their surface also looked like tinted glass because of the high temperature at the moment of explosion.
It seemed that the place was the 'main battlefield' of the war hundreds of thousands of years ago.
"I seem… to have attacked this place before."
While Li Yao was focusing his attention on scanning the rocks, he heard Long Yangjun speak not very confidently. "Scan the third pathway on your left. Is there a gate inside?"
