Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

After she learned how to control the two contradictory strengths inside her body, Long Yangjun wandered all the way to the Imperium on the escape capsule of the primeval age. Her primary target was exactly the capital in the Empyreal Terminus Sector.

It was because the capital boasted the largest library of the entire Imperium and was a half vacuum where the four Kurfürst families were in conflict. It would be easier for her to take action here.

At first, Long Yangjun did not intend to sneak into the royal palace.

It was because she was new to the place and did not know much about the customs of the Imperium of True Human Beings or the details of the major forces. Besides, the important cities on the surface of the capital were full of surveillance cameras. It was very possible that she would be locked onto when her traces were exposed.

The royal palace was a sensitive place. She certainly needed to be fully prepared before any action was taken.

Therefore, Long Yangjun entered the underground world of the capital through the bottomless, gigantic chasms, planning to collect the basic intelligence about the Imperium of True Human Beings indirectly and to establish a few bases where she could temporarily hide as her shelters.

She chose the underground world partly because the place was chaotic, murky, and mostly devoid of the annoying surveillance of crystal cameras.

But more importantly, it was because the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, and the other eleven clans in the alliance had all left tremendous relics below the surface of the planet in the primeval age hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Empyreal Terminus Sector was a pivot of space jumps for the three thousand Sectors thanks to the brimming wormholes in the area, which made it a critical location that Pangu and Nuwa fought over relentlessly.

Long Yangjun’s previous self was only a common soldier in the primeval war. Naturally, she was not aware of the accurate coordinates of the relics. But because of her knowledge from the primeval age, as long as she entered the underground world and approached the relics, she would be able to mysteriously sense them.

If a primeval relic was truly located, it would be much easier for her to excavate.

With that in mind, Long Yangjun camouflaged herself and went deep into the underground world, getting a taste of the life of the hominoids of the Imperium of True Human Beings.

Leaving aside the glittering, splendid cities of Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet, even the hominoid worlds below the ground were not the same but had clear boundaries. Every several thousand meters deeper would be like crossing a barrier between two worlds that had entirely different characteristics.

The districts one hundred meters below the ground that were numbered 0 to 9 were the important military strongholds of the old days. They were controlled by the powerful sects of Immortal Cultivators today. Besides a tiny proportion of low-level Cultivators, the residents of the places were mostly “senior hominoids” who were vassals to the Immortal Cultivators.

Those “senior vassals” were more like the Immortal Cultivators’ toys, pets, tools, and pawns than their “vassals”. What they pursued in their entire life was to win the affection of the Immortal Cultivators by satisfying the Immortal Cultivators’ peculiar demands.

In short, they were like what cats and dogs were to humans.

In the hominoid worlds, those “senior hominoids” often took part in the most gorgeous and eye-catching professions, say, the superstars in show business.

When they dressed up and danced on the 3D light beams, there were truly countless “lower hominoids” who regarded them as sacred, inviolable goddesses or handsome, charming princes.

Little did the lower hominoids know that their goddesses were nothing but playful cats and dogs in the eyes of the Immortal Cultivators, and the seemingly good-looking and valiant princes, after exiting the stage, had to kneel before the feet of the old and ugly female Immortal Cultivators and lick their toes.

In the meantime, no matter how hard those “senior hominoids” sold themselves, they could only attract the low-level Immortal Cultivators no higher than the Building Foundation Stage.

The high-level Cultivators wouldn’t be enticed by the mortals at all. If they had any desire, countless low-level Immortal Cultivators would naturally throw themselves over.

Although it sounded rather contemptible, the “senior hominoids” living in the one-digit districts had ostensibly secure and dignified lives. At first look, the districts were not significantly different from the cities of Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet. After all, the Immortal Cultivators were here for fun. If the environment here were a mess, how could the Immortal Cultivators enjoy themselves?

Long Yangjun spent some time here with great interest. According to her, she even “adjusted” her body into a male and had a subtle relationship with a popular female star, which almost pissed off a few sects of Immortal Cultivators, before she left for the districts numbered 10 to 99.

The two-digit districts, ranging from minus a hundred meters to minus five hundred meters, were the second class of the underground hominoids.

Those places were the communities of the brainworkers among hominoids.

Finance, education, the Spiritual Nexus, design, fundamental political affairs… The professions also seemed rather decent, and they attracted most of the high-end talents among the hominoids.

However, since the real creative and explorational works were monopolized by the admin-type, creation-type, and research-type Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet, and only the fundamental brainwork that required abundant repetitive computations was dissected into different steps and distributed to the underground hominoids, their seemingly decent work was nothing more than massive, monotonous inputs, calculations, and outputs. They were called brainworkers, but they were no different from the farmers tilling the land under the scorching sun.

No, their pain was even greater than the farmers in the ancient times. At the very least, the farmers of the Ancient Sages Sector that Long Yangjun met could work when the sun rose and rest after the sunset. However, the modern “brainfarmers” had to work for at least fourteen hours every day. If they were given temporary tasks that had high workloads, it was not unusual for them to work twenty hours a day.

Such a high intensity of brainwork was certainly too much for their brains. However, the Immortal Cultivators had produced all kinds of “tonics” and “energy pills” for them. After they took the medications, their brain cells would be on fire, and they could work for three consecutive days without closing their eyes. As for the consequences, they were not severe at all, except that those hominoids would lose their longevity, have abnormally huge heads, or even die abruptly once in a while.

But despite all the unfavorable outcomes, the “brainfarmers” did not dare to slack at all, and they even made it a habit to work sixteen hours a day. Even if their Immortal Cultivator bosses did not demand them to do so, they would still volunteer to stay and overwork.

On one hand, it was because the living environment, as well as the medical and educational resources in the two-digit districts, were slightly better than the areas down below after all, and the daily cost to live in such districts and enjoy the more or less complete infrastructure and public services were astronomical. They could only make ends meet by exploiting their lives all the time.

On the other hand, their Immortal Cultivator bosses had set “deadlines” for the “brainfarmers”. There was a due date for every major assignment. If they could not accomplish the tasks in time or too many errors were detected after they submitted their work, they would be executed immediately!

Resources and deadlines were carrots and sticks. When the measures were taken at the same time, those “brainfarmers” had been domesticated into things like livestock.

The three-digit areas from the 100th district to the 999th district, ranging from minus five hundred meters to minus three thousand meters, were teeming with component factories where assembly lines had been applied on a large scale. Most of the civil magical equipment and relatively fundamental military magical equipment were produced in those underground factories.

It was particularly so when it came to the magical equipment that was dumped from the central worlds of the Imperium to the peripheral worlds.

After all, for the lowly, civil magical equipment, the quality did not matter, and everything would be fine as long as the cost was cheap and the productivity was high.

To achieve the maximal profits, the workers sitting before the assembly lines in the magical equipment factories had received the most professional training and the harshest exploitation. They had almost been squeezed into bizarre-shaped components and embedded into the assembly lines precisely.

It was said that the most excellent assembly line workers could weld fifty thousand coils to different chips every day. Not only was their efficiency higher than the spiritual puppets, but their cost was also only one third of the spiritual puppets.

It was exactly because of the potentials that human beings could unleash that most of the jobs regarding the production of low-level magical equipment were still occupied by humans instead of being completely taken over by spiritual puppets. It was some sort of defense for mankind’s dignity according to the Immortal Cultivators.

Naturally, the assembly line workers wouldn’t feel very great to weld fifty thousand coils every day, but their working environments and intensity were still much better than the residents of the four-digit districts below them ranging between minus ten thousand meters and twenty thousand meters in every aspect.

The 1000th district to the 9999th district were the areas for energy exploitation and resource recycling. Hominoids at the bottom level resided in such areas. Some of them fought magma in the geothermal factories that were scorching and suffocating, some excavated minerals at the risks of collapses and explosions, and some looked forward to the garbage falling from the sky every day. The pieces of garbage from the upper worlds were all treasures in their eyes and could be put back to use again after dismantling, cleaning, and maintenance. The places equaled to gigantic magical equipment graveyards.

The living environment here was extremely harsh, and the intensity of labor was higher than anywhere else. The average longevity was the lowest, and the death rate caused by accidents was the highest. It was an out-and-out living hell.

Naturally, even hell had different levels. The only reason why the average longevity of the four-digit districts was the “lowest” was that those districts were still within the statistics of the authorities, and both the geothermal factories and the mines of rare metals were within the control of the Immortal Cultivators.

The five-digit districts further down, namely the “forgotten corners” such as the 10,084th district, were mostly responsible for providing synthetic food for the entire enormous underground world. They were essentially the real farmers and never counted in statistics at all!

“Every mortal suffers.”

Long Yangjun sighed gloomily and forced a benevolent look on her face. “After seeing the misery below the capital of the Imperium, I finally realized that you were not lying at all. The hominoids of the Imperium of True Human Beings are truly living in anguishes and agony!”