Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Before Li Yao opened his eyes, he noticed something different.

Previously, there had been countless tiny cracks on his cells. They were the marks of a hundred years of crazy training and fighting, and a necessary price for a weak ordinary person to enter the Divinity Transformation Stage after only a hundred years.

His body had been on the edge of collapse. It really collapsed after the first battle with Blackstar the Great, but Xiaoming and Wenwen reconstructed his body for him and activated new abilities so that he was able to live on.

However, his newly-recovered body was riddled with holes again in the second battle against Wuying Qi. Many injuries were left. Although they would not affect him for now, they might become problems in the future.

However, at this moment, Li Yao felt that all the cracks in his cells and his genes were restored, and the billions of cells that made up his body were glittering like pearls. He could even interpret the meaning of the cells' brilliance!

It was an indescribable feeling, like a blind person seeing light or a deaf person hearing magnificent music.. Someone had removed the thick and heavy membrane around his soul, making him feel the real world.

He could hear the sounds of his internal organs as well as the breath of the workers in the Gold Crystal Pyramid hundreds of meters away.

He could see the surging ocean in his brain as well as the tiny changes in the rocks thousands of meters away.

The pheromones in his body quickly communicated with the pheromones of all the creatures nearby. His vitality field melted in the magnetic field of the planet and disappeared, allowing him to wield much greater power than previously.

"Dad! Dad! What happened to you?"

Xiaoming and Wenwen sounded anxious, if not panicked. "Are you awake, Dad? Why can't we sense your vitality field? Your… Your vitality field is even weaker than that of an ordinary person! Have you lost your cultivation?"

Li Yao smiled and opened his eyes.

He saw that dozens of spiritual puppets were in a flurry before him, not knowing what to do.

They were all Xiaoming and Wenwen's clones.

Li Yao had been resistant to Xiaoming and Wenwen's living form. He always considered himself a man who was open to novel concepts, but it was still rather creepy to be called "Dad" by hundreds of machines.

But now, Li Yao saw it and understood it.

Both the machines and the fortresses that were larger in size were just Xiaoming and Wenwen's cells.

The connections among the intelligent machines and the high-speed interaction of information were the real Xiaoming and Wenwen. That was another direction of evolution.

Xiaoming and Wenwen's life form was actually very similar to the collective civilizations like the Houyi Clan.

Was it some sort of atavism?

Li Yao gently scanned Xiaoming and Wenwen and immediately saw countless information interaction channels that entangled every spiritual puppet like transparent threads and extended far away.

"I'm fine."

Li Yao shook his head and smiled. "You two, on the other hand, seem to have a problem in your information interaction network. All those lines are messed up."

Li Yao snapped his finger and transmitted to the kids the information interaction model through which the master brain of the Houyi Clan communicated with its members.

As if an invisible power were playing a string, the threads that connected Xiaoming and Wenwen's bodies shook at a high frequency.

"Ah!"

All the spiritual puppets' eyes glowed. Xiaoming and Wenwen were so excited that their bodies were sparking. They weren't back to themselves until a long time later.

"This is… This is a new information interaction algorithm!"

Xiaoming was surprised. "With this algorithm, our computation ability will be improved by at least 15%. We can establish arrays of crystal processors of larger scales, and we will be more resistant to interferences!"

"Dad, are you really okay?"

Wenwen, on the other hand, was more concerned about Li Yao's status. "You were quite scary in the past few days. Also, where did you find such an advanced algorithm, and how did you transmit it to us? We did not sense the slightest wave in your vitality field! Wait, you don't have any vitality field. You now look like a plain and ordinary person!"

"Ordinary? That's nothing bad!"

Li Yao stretched his arms out comfortably, only to discover that powder that looked like glitters were falling from his skin. His new skin was as smooth as that of a baby but contained magnificent power, except that the power was perfectly melted with nature and could not be detected by regular experts.

"I just had a big dream of a time from millions of years ago, where I acquired the algorithm from the Houyi Clan. It's more suitable for you than it is to human beings for now."

Looking at the two ecstatic kids who seemed to have just got some new toys, Li Yao smiled and asked, "Right. How long did I meditate? Why are there so many troops gathered on the ground? Did anything happen?"

"How do you know that troops are gathered on the ground?"

Xiaoming and Wenwen looked at each other. They were even more surprised. Wenwen said, "You've meditated for seven days and seven nights, Dad. Do you really not know… what you did?"

"Seven days and seven nights!"

Li Yao actually felt that it was quite short. Compared to his millions, billions, and even trillions of years of journey in the river of life, seven days and seven nights could barely be called a moment.

He felt that he had been away for a long time, and he did not know what he had done. "Haven't I been in this place? What could I have done?"

"I don't think we can explain it. Dad, you better take a look at yourself!"

Xiaoming and Wenwen projected dozens of light beams with spiritual puppets and played the anomalies around the Gold Crystal Pyramid in the past few days.

In the first picture was a full view of the Gold Crystal Pyramid, which suddenly burst out an ivory light when it had been a golden light previously. The light illuminated every rune on the shell of the Gold Crystal Pyramid and made it almost transparent.

The workers and guards in the Gold Crystal Pyramid ran about at a loss, wondering why the Gold Crystal Pyramid was shifted to this weird mode. But they did not know how to shift it back or turn it off, and they could only watch flames of light sprang from the tip of the Gold Crystal Pyramid.

In the second picture, it was the sky above the Gold Crystal Pyramid where clouds were gathering. Li Yao had never seen so many clouds in his entire life. It seemed that the clouds of a whole planet had been gathered here.

The third picture was when the flames of light from the Gold Crystal Pyramid melted with the clouds.

The clouds revolved like a vortex, slowly spreading the flames of light to thousands of meters away. Eventually, they were reshaped into an enormous butterfly!

"Butterfly?" Li Yao murmured.

Centered at the Gold Crystal Pyramid, the butterfly made of thousands of colorful clouds grew larger and larger and covered five hundred square kilometers on the first day. Countless people saw the magnificent view in person or indirectly through videos.

"You did that right, Dad?"

Xiaoming asked, "It can't be a coincidence, right?"

"Huh…"

Li Yao scratched his head. "Probably. I blame myself for being too strong."

"Other than the unusual phenomena in the sky, more weird things happened within the coverage of the enormous butterfly."

Wenwen said, "Many people reported to authorities that they saw butterflies. Not the enormous butterfly in the sky made of clouds, but a swarm of small, colorful, and beautiful butterflies."

"It's the spring season."

Li Yao said, "What's weird about seeing butterflies?"

"It's nothing weird to see little butterflies."

Wenwen said, "But it's very weird if you see butterflies dancing in the darkness even in the formation of gene strands when you close your eyes on your bed."

"The authorities speculated that it was a massive collective hysteria. They thought that the people hypnotized themselves after seeing the butterfly cloud in the sky."

Xiaoming said, "But after the most awesome Meditation Healers examined them, no problems were discovered, and the pattern of the flying butterflies that they were asked to draw was the same. Those people did not know each other. Some of them were ordinary people, and some were Immortal Cultivators. It was impossible for them to conspire. So, it was unlikely that they had the same illusion."