Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Then let’s do it!”

Li Yao made the decision. “Before the reformists completely occupy the capital planet, we will escape to a spaceport that is still controlled by the troops of the Kurfürsten. Then, we will escape to space and search for Boss Bai’s fleet at the edge of the cosmos!

“The surging tides at the center of the cosmos will inevitably affect the Star Glory Federation at the edge of the cosmos. Boss Bai still has family in the federation. So, I believe that he will not stand by. This is probably our last hope!”

“Yes!”

Their eyes glowing, the two children nodded heavily.

“However, before that—”

Li Yao leaped from the rock. Cracking sounds exploded from the bones all over his body, and his spiritual energy raised bumps on his muscles as if countless tiny crystal bombs were bursting out inside his body. Licking his sharp teeth, he smiled brutally. “Let’s go back to the Great Iron Plants and finish the unfinished war!”

Li Xiaoming jumped high. “War! War!”

Li Wenwen looked at the intimidating father and son but showed no intention of stopping them.

“Three experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage?”

Narrowing his eyes, Li Yao was brimming with confidence. “Hehe. I would like to find out how strong I am right now, and if I can slay three experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage like they are three pigs!”

…

Inside a training room deep inside the underground shelter, Li Yao was floating in silence, only wearing a pair of thin short pants with his upper half body naked, to ensure that his every pore had been expanded to the maximum.

Bright green gas was spreading in the training room. It was a very special inert gas, mixed with the tremendous volatilized Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, and had the effect of mollification and prevention of random thoughts. It was a necessary aid for every Cultivator to break into a new level in the age of the Star Ocean Imperium.

It hadn’t been very long since Li Yao advanced into the Divinity Transformation Stage. To enter the “Divinity Branching Stage” so soon was impossible.

However, in the battle against Blackstar the Great, he launched the “Ultra-Galactic Cannon” by almost shattering his soul, which was then repaired by the two “information lives” in amazing ways. It did lead to drastic changes in the form of his soul.

The strength from Earth that was hidden in the deepest part of his soul was flowing out incessantly and covered his soul, making the soul that was heavily wounded and riddled with holes previously immeasurably strong!

Of “Nascent Soul Stage”, “Divinity Transformation Stage”, and “Divinity Branching Stage”, those who had reached the Nascent Soul Stage had already reached the limits of body sturdiness and boasted absolute strength. Even if they broke into the Divinity Transformation Stage, their body hardness, absolute speed, and absolute strength would not improve much. What they were short of was just the utilization or control over their strength.

The experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage, on the other hand, had reached the ultimate of the soul besides the strongest body. Even if they broke into the “Divinity Branching Stage”, the hardness of their souls would not improve much. They would only be able to split their souls into multiple branches.

When it came to the collision of soul power, Li Yao was confident to defeat any enemy in the entire universe right now. Even if Blackstar the Great were to show up again, he would not be intimidated at all, and he was absolutely, definitely, undoubtedly sure that—he could flee at ease!

“Are you ready, Dad?”

Outside of the training room, the two children controlled a weird, cone-shaped device and aimed the sharp tip at the center of Li Yao’s forehead where the conarium and the spiritual root were located.

The cone-shaped magical equipment was originally a medical device used to examine and repair the brains, but the two little guys had completely dismantled it, bypassed the permissions, and improved the power of the device. After being supplied with dozens of high-purity marrow crystals as energy sources, the device was able to blow out very powerful brainwaves for brain training and to further build up the soul.

The soul recovery over the past half month had all been conducted when Li Yao was in the coma.

He must complete comprehensive training when he was wide awake in order to completely understand and control his brand-new soul.

“I am ready. Bring it on!”

Li Yao made a gesture at the window and took a deep breath, staring at the sharp cone before him.

He only saw a tiny light spot on the tip of the cone, which expanded in one billionth of a second like a supernova outbreak, and his whole world was enshrouded in dazzling white.

BOOM!

There was no telling whether his brain exploded or the whole universe apart from his brain did. His soul was blown apart and infinitely expanded like a cosmic beast with infinite tentacles spanning billions of lightyears.

His body was completely gone, and even his soul was completely obliterated. In his trance, Li Yao traced back to the source of all lives and even the essentiality of the universe—information.

The carbon-based lives, the silicon-based lives, or the energy-based lives only differed in the carriers and transmission methods of information, but getting to the bottom of it, weren’t they all “information lives”?

Weren’t the gene strands, which were of paramount importance for human beings, an amalgamation of infinite information?

Li Yao considered in silence and analyzed all the information about himself while optimizing and reorganizing the previously disordered and overly redundant information.

The ways the heart beat, the secretion of adrenaline, the structure of the internal organs, the models of the soul boosts… The optimal solutions under the current computational ability were achieved after hundreds of careful calculations.

A comprehensive analysis and optimization from the body to the soul was exactly “one Heavenly Cycle”. It was the essence of training.

In the meantime, Xiaoming and Wenwen were also transmitting their metadata and the information that they collected from the Spiritual Nexus into Li Yao’s soul for his reference.

The customs, local specialties, and force distribution of the major worlds of the Imperium, the designs and the tactic databases of the battle puppets, the strategic locations that protected the important space jump points, the starships and space fortress deployed in those places, as well as the… ventilation tubes on the starships and the space fortresses.

All the information was displayed in front of Li Yao. It was odd that he seemed able to “read” and “study” the information simultaneously, as if he had also activated multiple “threads” that could handle information independently.

At this moment, Li Yao suddenly understood what Li Wenwen said. Li Yao felt that he had turned into a “tree of information” too, right now. His physical body was hiding deep below the capital planet, but the tentacles of his mind were spreading out in the vast universe infinitely like branches and roots.

In the age of the ancient Cultivators, some of the Cultivators once hoped to turn into the sky and the earth in their illusions. Naturally, it was impossible.

However, if a person could completely melt one’s soul into the ubiquitous information network, they would be turning into the universe to some degree, wouldn’t they?

Wandering in the ocean of the information, Li Yao swam to the depths of it without him knowing. Then he suddenly felt an unreasonable dread.

If he continued his training, as time went by, if he really broke into the Divinity Branching Stage and mastered the technique of “splitting and controlling multiple threads” or even capable of transforming his physical body and his soul into pure information, would he still be a human being?

But very soon, he was relieved.

If a farmer from tens of thousands of years ago, who started working at sunrise and went to bed at sunset in a monotonous life that barely had any change of information, were somehow teleported to a modern society in a time travel, when he saw the world of information boom, where everybody had a crystal processor on their wrist, a pair of holographic glasses before their eyes, and even a nerval interface installed through special operations on their back, knowing that the modern people received more information than he did in his entire life—would the ancient farmer think that the modern people were his own kind?

The evolution of mankind was a history of information explosion after all.

The “new human beings” who span three thousand Sectors and the even vaster universe and who swore to be masters of stars would certainly be different from the “old human beings” who stayed on a tiny planet and hadn’t got rid of the nature of primates.

That was the future, the irrefutable, inevitable, and irresistible future!

Li Yao woke up from the brief panic.

The information about himself and the world was combined in an almost perfect way, blossoming and surfacing in the ocean of information like a shining diamond flower.

He had finished an unprecedented training. By means of absolute control of information, he had touched the limits of the Divinity Transformation Stage.

The mental devil, on the other hand, slowly floated from the “flower” and stared at him, frowning, like his inseparable shadow.

“Have you made up your mind to help the two little guys?” the mental devil asked, full of worries.

“Yes. They are my children. Although I never thought to have any children before, I realized that… it didn’t feel too bad after they showed up out of nowhere.”

Looking at the mental devil, Li Yao said peacefully, “I cannot turn a blind eye to them and simply allow them to destroy other people and themselves. I cannot allow other people to control and destroy them, either!”

“But they may be far more dangerous than you expected.”

The mental devil said, “Maybe you can’t help or control them at all, and they are destined to destroy all the civilizations in the past in a certain way one day.”

Li Yao said, “Why are you always deliberately speaking contrary to me?”

The mental devil said, “Because that is my responsibility and what I was born for. I am just another voice of your heart. In fact, I don’t exist at all. There has always been only yourself the whole time. You are full of concerns and even… fear for the two lovely but also mysterious and dangerous children, except that you are unwilling to face it and want someone else to say it out for you, don’t you?”

Li Yao: “…”

The mental devil: “The two children may have been speaking the truth. They may actually boast abundant feelings and understand the significance of survival and death. They love their father and the whole civilization of mankind, and they intend to help human beings from the bottom of their hearts.

“However, are you sure that what they described as ‘survival’, ‘death’, ‘feelings’, ‘love’, and ‘help’ was the same as what you talked about, and that you were not having a dialogue with the deaf?

“One person’s honey may be somebody else’s poison. Even if you do love and help each other from the bottom of your hearts, it doesn’t mean that destruction will never come!”