Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 612
"You want to swindle me out of the Divine Stone of Kunlun? In your dreams!"
Ba Yanzhi burst into laughter. His shaking arm became as tough as iron again. He clenched the handle of the saber so hard that the skin on his palm broke. His blood vaporized into red steam and circled around the incomplete body of the saber, extending its aura to almost a hundred meters long before he slashed at the leader of the Ultimate One Sect!
The leader of the Ultimate One Sect kept his hands behind his back and did not dodge at all. The mystic rays that were flowing among his scales congregated into a raging dragon above his head that opened its bloody mouth and swallowed the bloody aura of blade that Ba Yanzhi triggered, leaving absolutely nothing.
"Capture him alive. We must elicit the whereabouts of the Divine Stone of Kunlun from him," the leader of the Ultimate One Sect said casually.
However, a deafening explosion echoed below everyone's feet. A gargantuan floating mountain, which had hidden in the ground deeply earlier, was now rising into the sky again and soon surpassed everyone's head!
Li Yao observed carefully, only to discover that there was a bull-headed, muscular man more than ten meters tall below the floating mountain.
The bull-headed muscular man pushed up a floating mountain that must have weighed thousands of tons by force with his magnificent arms and even soared into the sky!
The crazy action drained the energy of every mitochondria inside his every cells. Every inch of his skin was exploding, as if fireworks of blood were blossoming on his body.
The floating mountain turned into an unstoppable warship, and he turned into the spurting exhaust flames of the warship!
"Zhang Niuer!"
Ba Yanzhi was shocked, his tears flowing out.
Hiu!
The bull-headed muscular man broke apart all of a sudden, turning into a cluster of bloody fire. The immense impetus pushed the floating mountain into a shooting star that darted toward the Ultimate One Demons brutally.
Before his body crumbled, Zhang Niuer finally recovered his speech, which had been confined for a hundred years. He roared in a voice that could split the sky and the earth, "Big brother, go now!"
The floating mountain rocketed at a high speed, triggering flames that looked like red lotuses. The flames dyed the black and white world red and eventually burnt the cold, cruel illusionary world into ashes.
In nothingness, Li Yao sensed that many telepathic thoughts were flashing fast. Ba Yanzhi had come to the end of his life. It was his last memory piece.
The new illusionary world was… the underground temple in the Mausoleum of Chaos!
However, it seemed to be a time when the Mausoleum of Chaos had just been built. At least, the statue of the member of the Pangu Clan at the center of the temple was not there, and the scale of the temple was not as impressive as the present day.
The place was indeed an enormous war base. Countless demon soldiers were busy at work inside the temple. Out of his expectations, Li Yao saw a lot of Cultivators on the spot, too.
Perhaps, under the pressure of the Ultimate One Demons, the mortal enemies in the past had been left with no choice except to collaborate with each other now.
Ba Yanzhi was no longer as sharp and magnificent as he had been in the previous illusionary worlds.
He was already very old. His beard and hair, which used to protrude out, were now dangling down from his forehead and chin like weeds that had dried up.
His body was no longer brawny and turned into a mere skeleton, with wrinkled skin attached to it in multiple layers, which made him both ugly and look sleazy. His left arm and left leg had completely vanished. However, the wounds had not recovered but were enveloped in purple venomous fog, indicating that he had been suffering from the pain of corrosion.
But his back was still as straight as a spear, just like a hundred years ago!
Ba Yanzhi was sitting cross-legged on a complicated, enormous array, surrounded by colorful, octagonal spiritual stripes. He was holding a vintage wooden bowl that was filled with a deep, green liquid.
There was nothing to heat the bowl, but the bowl seemed to be boiling, with bubbles popping up nonstop.
"Great General, you can't take it!"
One of the weasel-like demon soldiers was trying to talk him out of it.
"Green General, you have been experimented on with different formulas of the Divine Water of Kunlun countless times in the past hundred years. Your body is deformed and in an utter mess. We cannot determine how many impurities are inside your blood even when all of us analyze it together!
"The latest Divine Water of Kunlun was produced by mixing the raw Divine Water of Kunlun with almost a hundred types of poison. It is a by-product in a perilous accident!
"We have experimented on the 'Thunder Mammoths' that weighed dozens of tons with the liquid, with more failures than successes. Some of the Thunder Mammoths were indeed modified into more terrifying beasts, but the majority of them were killed on the spot!
"Great General, you cannot take such a ferocious medicine randomly! Should there be anything wrong, your body will be destroyed, and your cause will be no more!
"Great General, please think about it carefully!"
"I've made up my mind," Ba Yanzhi replied calmly and resolutely. "We've finally got rid of the pursuit of the Ultimate One Demons after so much trouble and fled to this place. We are so close to the real 'Kunlun'. I cannot allow our endeavor to be sabotaged because of my insufficient strength.
"Strength. I need more strength!
"Only after we find 'Kunlun' can we expect to compete with the Ultimate One Demons, to avenge our families, and to… take back the entire universe!"
Ba Yanzhi raised his head and drank all the simmering green liquid.
The spiritual stripes that were dancing around him suddenly accelerated. The runes all shone and shot into his body rapidly.
After each rune that entered his body, Ba Yanzhi's eyes would become slightly larger. His dried body was being filled up again. His bones were expanding inch by inch, tearing apart his skin, healing it, tearing it apart again, and healing it again!
"Hoooooooooo!"
Inhuman roars echoed from Ba Yanzhi's expanding chest. The entire process of evolution that took billions of years seemed to be played backwards on his body fast.
At first, his canine teeth protruded out, and golden hair grew all over his body. He turned into an enormous ape more than ten meters tall.
His body continued expanding, with dense bone spurs extending out of his skull and his spine, shining coldly like the sharpest sabers. Then, his hair disappeared, his skin was replaced by thick hide, his hands turned into spiky claws, his head was twisted, and his bloody mouth was enlarged with dense tusks protruding.
Eventually, two huge bones pierced out of his shoulder blades and continuously grew. Two layers of bright green membranes grew out of the bones, turning them into two massive wings.
Feathers, wings, claws, tails, antlers… After displaying the features of almost a hundred different ferocious beasts, he was even showing the fins and the characteristics of certain shellfish.
Li Yao clearly sensed that Ba Yanzhi was going further and further down the path of 'atavism'.
Maybe at the beginning, he had still been able to tame his genes and only reveal the features of apes, smilodons, or tyrannosaurs. But very soon, the force went out of his control as he assumed the appearance of the sarcosuchus, iron turtles, and nautilus.
Ba Yanzhi was returning to the beginning point of evolution and the original form of all life.
In the end, he turned into a cluster of a thick, translucent liquid that looked like glue, with materials shining in the middle like stars.
Maybe, this was the real appearance of 'Chaos' in the legends.
For some reason, Li Yao recalled the chaotic-blood demon on the Skeleton Island whose genes completely collapsed because of the strengthening drugs overdose.
Perhaps he was not killed, either; he was simply back to the original point of evolution.
The demons and Cultivators nearby were all greatly shocked, but there was nothing they could do about the translucent fluid.
A moment later, the cluster of fluid wriggled slowly and condensed into the shape of a human being one more time. Arms, feet, and facial organs gradually appeared, too. Ba Yanzhi resumed his appearance from his peak years. He was even more perfect than that time, with the dominating aura resembling that of the Ultimate One Demons flowing around him before.
"Great General, you've made it!"
All the demons were overjoyed.
"Yes. I've made it!"
Ba Yanzhi's eyelids suddenly twitched, and he seemed to be collapsing into fluid again. However, he stopped the trend hard with his unbelievable tenacity.
He observed his hands that were full of strength carefully, and he grinned.
"Let's go and find 'Kunlun'!"
Chapter 923: Original Point of Evolution! |
The scene was slowly frozen in the echo of 'Kunlun'.
Then, it was the last illusionary world.
Li Yao's soul appeared in the secret chamber more than twenty thousand meters below the ground that could block radiation and spiritual waves, and he was staring at the thick fluid inside the crystal pool in midair.
The fluid seemed to be a quiet ocean that boasted its own self-awareness. Now and then, a tiny spindrift would be raised, and thousands of telepathic thoughts would spurt out.
The telepathic thoughts formed bright gold, dotted lines in midair. When the lines connected, brilliants stars were formed. The number of stars grew larger and larger, expanding into one galaxy after another.
It was a star map, one that was meant to guide the latecomers to find Kunlun.
BOOM!
As billions of stars flooded into Li Yao's brain as if a dam had collapsed, the explosive force immediately blew him out of the memory pieces of Ba Yanzhi and pushed him back to the depths of the White Silver Death Desert.
He was illuminated by various colors, as if he were crouching inside an enormous egg made of glass.
While Li Yao was in the deep meditative state, intense streams of heat were emitted from his body without him knowing. The high temperature melted the sand and generated such a weird 'eggshell'.
"Ugh—"
Cold sweat was popping up of his forehead nonstop, and he was shaking. The gory scenes of war were still flashing in front of his eyes, with the echoes of shouts and yells.
He did not calm down again until he breathed steadily for a whole minute.
He had never had such experience after he forming the ultimate core!
Clutching the Hidden Star Box that looked like a crystal brain, Li Yao felt stunned.
Although he had guessed that demons and human beings might have shared the same origin, he had never thought that the truth would be so cruel and unpredictable!
There are no distinctions between humans and demons, deities and devils. There are only winners and losers!
The hideous laughter of the leader of the Ultimate One Sect was still echoing right beside his ears. He could not help but bite his lips hard until his hot blood was flowing out.
So, this is the truth.
Li Yao rubbed his face hard and quickly sorted through everything that happened forty thousand years ago.
First of all, Ba Yanzhi was indeed 'Chaos' and the creator of the demon race, but his 'creation' was quite coincidental.
Ba Yanzhi used to be merely the manager of the Infinite Planet for the Ultimate One Sect. The Infinite Planet was just a remote, barren, and underdeveloped planet in the territory of the Ultimate One Sect.
Judging from Ba Yanzhi's demeanor, he could not have been very popular in the Ultimate One Sect. Apparently, nobody liked him, and it was sort of a banishment to assign him to the Infinite Planet.
However, as it turned out, Ba Yanzhi discovered a relic of the Pangu Clan on the Infinite Planet, where there was a black spring and a mysterious stone that were left by the Pangu Clan.
Li Yao did not know what was on Ba Yanzhi's mind at that time. Whatever his purpose was in the beginning, he had kept the stone to himself.
Later, it was the time of war. The water of the black spring boasted the marvelous effect of curing the incurable, despite the side effect of growing horns, tails, and dense hair. Left with no other choice, Ba Yanzhi was forced to promote it on the Infinite Planet and created the first batch of 'demons'.
Li Yao did not know how he should comment on Ba Yanzhi's action, but he put himself in Ba Yanzhi's shoes. If one of his family members was heavily wounded, and it was the only way to treat them, he was afraid that he would have resorted to the medication, too.
Human beings. What are human beings? If a thing has the soul of a human being but a completely different shell, are they human beings, too?
The question had once raised heated debates in the history of the Star Glory Federation, when the rights of the 'spectral Cultivators' were being acknowledged.
The spectral Cultivators were a whole new life form that was the combination of the soul of human beings and artificial bodies. The artificial body was not necessarily the shape of a human being. Back when Li Yao was in the Star Glory Federation, he had a good friend named 'Wei Qingqing'. After she turned into a spectral Cultivator, she had always been fond of flying everywhere in the appearance of a 'green bird'.
In the ancient times, when the 'spectral Cultivators' were mentioned, one's first impression would often be the haunting, hateful poltergeists.
But things were different in the Star Glory Federation. During the unceasing war against the demon race, many soldiers of the federal army had been killed on the battlefield. As the drugs and magical equipment such as 'Soul Manifesting Powder' and 'Soul Concentration Gear' were applied, more and more soldiers were saved in the form of their souls.
For the soldiers who had 'sacrificed' for their country, it was naturally inappropriate to regard their souls as 'hateful poltergeists'.
In the history of federation, after decades of debates, the advocates of souls had won the argument in the end.
From then on, the law dictated that all objects with the soul of a human being, regardless of what they looked like, would be considered human beings. Legally speaking, they would all be treated as 'natural people' equally.
After a hundred years of development, citizens of the federation had become very used to the spectral Cultivators. Prejudice or distress could be rarely seen. Ding Yin, Wei Qingqing, Professor Mo Xuan, and many other Cultivators who had turned into spectral Cultivators after they died were able to contribute to the civilization of mankind in their new bodies!
But what if their bodies were not artificial bodies made of crystals and metals but bizarre-looking biochemical shells whose cells had been modified on a large scale?
Could the souls who resided in such bodies be called human beings?
The problem was too tricky for Li Yao to answer at that moment.
However, whether they were human beings or not, in the eyes of the ancient Cultivators who were short of soldiers because of the prolonged war, the mutants who had drank the 'Divine Water of Kunlun' were clearly the best slaves and soldiers.
For the keenest Cultivators, such as those of the Ultimate One Sect, they even realized the difficulty of training in the Era of Doom and simply turned themselves into demons, too!
Maybe, the Ultimate One Demons were the ancestors of the saint-blood demons and the silver-blood demons later, and the majority of the ordinary people, or rather, the ants in their words, ended up being the bronze-blood demons and the black-blood demons?
The scheme of the Ultimate One Sect succeeded. In the Era of Doom, when the spiritual energy was running dry, demons were indeed a new species that were more adaptive to the harshness of the universe than the Cultivators were. Swept by the flag of the bloody demon, the world of Cultivators fell apart and was entirely wiped out in the end.
In the heaven-splitting final battle, Ba Yanzhi's demon army and the Empyrean Terminus Sect, the last survivors of the world of Cultivators, both suffered heavy casualties, and the Ultimate One Demons stole the fruit of victory without the least effort!
However, the Ultimate One Demons did not see one thing coming.
Not only did Ba Yanzhi get away, he had also discovered the secrets of the 'Divine Stone of Kunlun'.
"Kunlun. What is Kunlun exactly?" Li Yao mumbled to himself.
In the legends, Kunlun and Penglai were two divine mountains in the primeval era where the ancient sages lived.
However, in the deepest part of his cells, from the memory of his ancestors of the primeval era, Li Yao had seen a few enormous starships whose names were 'Kunlun' and 'Penglai'.
If Kunlun is the name of a starship left by the Pangu Clan, everything will make sense.
In the primeval era, the Pangu Clan had a base on the Infinite Planet. They left a few gifts in the place, including the 'Divine Water of Kunlun' and the 'Divine Stone of Kunlun', which contained the coordinates of a 'Kunlun Warship'.
Maybe, they left the 'Divine Water of Kunlun' in the hope that, when the creatures on the Infinite Planet grew certain wisdom, they would drink the water of the black spring and accelerate their evolution so that they could find the 'Kunlun Warship' and the legacies of the Pangu Clan.
Whatever the purpose of the black spring was, Ba Yanzhi, who had lost everything, could only take his chances. Leading a batch of remnants, he followed the star map inside the Divine Stone of Kunlun and finally reached a place that was very close to the 'Kunlun Warship', which was here, the Blood Demon Sector!
However, after he made his way here, Ba Yanzhi's body was already extremely weak. It was impossible for him to lead a new adventure.
At the last moment of his life, he drank a type of brand-new, highly-modified 'Divine Water of Kunlun'. More 'primeval cells' inside his body were triggered, allowing him to advance into the highest level. But problems had been left, too!
