Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“I understand your feelings very well.”

After a brief hesitation, Li Yao still said, “For example, the things about Earth are surging inside my head right now. I can’t control it at all.”

“Ah, Earth. You are finally speaking about it out loud?”

Long Yangjun snapped her fingers and combed her long hair before she said with a smile, “My mouth is almost dry now, and I’m not here to just share my secrets with you. I’m quite interested in your secrets too! Is Earth the place that frequently appears in your dreams and lets you know the language of the wizardly civilization?

“Is Earth related to the wizardly civilization? Does it have anything to do with the Flood and the world we are living in? Are you prepared to speak the whole truth?”

“Listen, Long Yangjun—”

Considering for a long time, Li Yao took a deep breath and said solemnly, “You have honestly told me so many things about the primeval age. I appreciate your trust. Just like what I said before, I sincerely regard you as a friend, and I hope I can be your best friend whom you can completely trust without any reserve.

“Since we are friends, I do not want to hide anything from you. Besides, the situation today does not allow me to keep the secrets any longer. I’m fully aware that I am far from enough to find Earth and fulfill the… mission in my dreams on my own. I need the support of all my family and friends. Of course, I will also support everyone to accomplish your missions and your dreams!

“By ‘everyone’, I’m not just referring to you, but also to Boss Bai and the rest of them.

“It is obvious that Boss Bai and the Fist King have tremendous information that is of critical importance and an influential force. Whether to continue our journey in the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance in the next step or to find our origins and destinies in the long run, we can’t achieve it without the help of Boss Bai and the rest of them.

“I’m hoping that all of us can completely drop the camouflages and disguises so that we can share wisdom, courage, and combat abilities with each other candidly. We can build a team, a gold combination that is super luxury, utterly invincible, and will beat the s*it out of the Flood. We will be a tiny ‘partnership of pyromaniacs’!

“So, I’m thinking to tell all the information pieces I know to Boss Bai and the Fist King tomorrow, and then to ask them to share all the information pieces they know. Of course, I want you to share what you said just now too. We will assemble the intelligence, find the truth, settle the war between the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance, confirm the primeval past you said just now, explore the extraterrestrial lands, search for the traces of the Flood, and even unravel the ultimate puzzle on Earth together. Are you willing to join such a team, Long Yangjun?”

Li Yao bulged his eyes and looked at Long Yangjun sincerely, with a fire glowing out.

Long Yangjun frowned almost spontaneously. “Once I confess all the primeval incidents, it will equal to a public admittance of my identity. Those mottle memory pieces couldn’t have been inferred by anyone other than the people who once lived through them.”

“Exactly. You, me, Boss Bai, the Fist King, and even Xiaoming and Wenwen—we all have our own unique secrets, and we do not know if we are ‘human beings’ in the narrow sense. Out of respect for everyone, I have never exposed anyone’s identity to other people. Please trust me on that.”

Li Yao stepped forward; his scorching fire burning Long Yangjun’s wary coldness. Clenching his fists, he said, “But right now, I hope that everybody can be sunnier and more open, instead of clinging on to the ridiculous secret identities, because only through unity and honesty can we resolve our problems, and no secrets are safe forever!

“Look, Long Yangjun, at your last moment in the Star Glory Federation, you seized an escape capsule of the Nuwa warship by force and left after activating a certain unknown teleportation technique. Too many experts of the federation watched your departure. A lot of them, including Ding Lingdang, Jin Xinyue, and people of the national security system, came to ask me about you. That was a lot of pressure, but I didn’t tell them much. However, those experts and specialists were no fools. Even if I didn’t say anything, they must’ve deduced many things from the traces.

“It’s impossible that the federation will forever be out of contact with the Imperium. Once the federation intervened in the war between the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance in a certain way, the intelligence about you will certainly be sent over. How are you going to hide by then? Will you have even more intense conflicts with the federation, the Imperium, and the Covenant Alliance who have grasped incomplete intelligence?

“On many occasions, conflicts boil down to misunderstandings, and misunderstandings come from mistrust and secret-keeping. If you do not say who you are, the specialists of the federation will be obliged to make the worst guesses. Will that be nice?”

Long Yangjun sniffed and bit her lips, her eyes filled with the childishness of Pangu and Nuwa. “Do you think that I’m scared of having conflicts with the federation?”

“Yes, I know that you are not. I don’t doubt that you are scared of nothing. But is it fun? Is it really fun?”

Li Yao opened his hands. “Keeping your own little secrets forever, wandering off the society, staying away from your own kind, not trusting anyone, and never being really devoted to anything—is it really fun and gratifying to live such a life until death?”

“Human beings are not my own kind!”

Long Yangjun gnashed her teeth and said in a low voice, “You seem to have forgotten it again. I’m an alien.”

“No, you can be a human being, a real human being, as long as you want to!”

Li Yao said in a hurry, “Genetically speaking, human beings are not significantly different from the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan. As for the soul, who knows what it actually is? Also, as you said just now, even the original Pangu or Nuwa Clan used to be made of regular individuals who were made of flesh and blood and capable of loving and hating!

“Also, didn’t we run into the poisons in the Pangu laboratory below the Nuwa warship in the Ancient Sages Sector, which could transform human beings into the Pangu Clan? The bodies of Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun, the Divinity Transformation Stage experts of the Ancient Sages Sector, were changed into those of the Pangu Clan, weren’t they?

“So, human beings are fundamentally the same as the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan. They are just the different appearances of the same carbon-based intelligent life. As long as you want, you will be an out-and-out human being. I believe that even if some of the people find you unacceptable, dreadful, or even detestable temporarily, most people will accept you, trust you, and support you given time. At least I can!”

Long Yangjun scorned, “Childish.”

“Childish… It’s indeed somewhat childish, but you are thinking exactly the same somewhere deep inside your heart, aren’t you?”

Li Yao continued staring at Long Yangjun. “You are unwilling to live in loneliness forever as an ‘alien’. You crave to meet your own kind, communicate with your own kind, and speak out all your secrets. That’s the reason why you talked so much to me just now.

“In the boundless sea of stars, nobody is a lone island. Everybody yearns for communication, sharing, and living together with their own kind. I am not an exception, and neither are you.

“If you are as proud and indifferent as you claim to be, you shouldn’t have told anybody anything. No, no, no, you shouldn’t have shown it to me in the very beginning! We could’ve minded our own business and explore our respective secrets and origins. Wouldn’t that have been great and safe?”

Long Yangjun’s pupils constricted violently, as if her most sensitive concern had been brought up. There was even killing intent as she was embarrassed and infuriated by Li Yao.

“Make no mistake. I’m glad that you regarded me as a friend and were willing to talk to me, which also gave me an opportunity to chat with a friend and relax myself, sharing secrets with each other.”

Li Yao did not respond to Long Yangjun’s killing intent at all. With his hands open, he said aloud, “Trust me. Publicizing the so-called secrets won’t be a big deal. In many cases, you are just scaring yourself.

“Just now, you said that the Pangu civilization sealed themselves because of extreme fear, and they probably had never even seen the real appearance of the Flood. But aren’t you the same? Out of the fear for the unknown and the mistrust for other people, you have completely sealed yourself and only show up in public under the false masks such as ‘Lead Eunuch Wang Xi’, ‘Dongfang Mingyue’, or ‘Serenity Seraph’. Only when you are with me, a monster who is almost as peculiar as yourself, can you slightly let loose of yourself and allow the real Long Yangjun to surface and catch her breath. Is such a life not tiresome and boring? Is it really fun?

“Now, I have already made up my mind to change myself and everything. Are you willing to follow me?

“Just follow up, Long Yangjun! Even Xiaoming and Wenwen, the creatures who were born not long ago and who are much weirder than you, are bold enough to admit their identities after the meticulous calculations. Are you not even as courageous as Xiaoming and Wenwen? You daren’t face your real self when you are intrepid enough to fight Blackstar the Great for three hundred rounds?”

His questions that were like a torrent that had just broken the dam obviously collapsed Long Yangjun’s confidence. Her eyes were rolling, and her breath was in disorder.

“You do not need to answer me right now. Just tell me the answer tomorrow.”

Li Yao went on, “I’m going to find Boss Bai and the Fist King now and ask them to share the most secret intelligence openly too. Then, we will build up the super invincible gold team—the ‘partnership of pyromaniacs’! Of course, I’ll be the first one to talk, about Earth, about the dreams, and about myself!

“‘Vulture Li Yao’ couldn’t have walked to this day without my trustworthy friends! I believe that my friends won’t disappoint me this time. And you, you won’t disappoint me, either!

“You must come to the meeting where we will establish the ‘partnership of pyromaniacs’ and honor our friendship tomorrow. You can speak last if you want. I’ll be waiting for you!”

Li Yao ran faster and faster and disappeared before Long Yangjun could say no.

Long Yangjun was left stunned below the artificial moon for a long time. Kicking a pebble below her feet, she murmured, “… What an idiot!”