Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

"I don't know whether or not Li Yao can wait that long, but I do know that time and space are the same in the sea of the multiverse. They can be twisted, folded, and penetrated.

Wei Qingqing said, "As a carbon-based intelligent life, no matter how much we evolve, the lifespan of human beings has a limit. At most, it can be a few hundred years, or even a thousand years. However, I have heard that many of the heroic spirits locked in the 'reincarnation prison' have existed for tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years. It is absolutely impossible if it does not involve a certain law of time compression, time distortion, or time freezing.

"On the other hand, different life forms have different feelings about the scale of time. It is impossible for a bacterium to have the same feelings as humans about the passage of time. Similarly, if Li Yao really enters the reincarnation prison and becomes something completely different, perhaps a thousand years of vicissitudes for you and me will be nothing but a short moment for him.

"There is another possibility. If Li Yao's soul is fully 'digitalized' and 'virtualized', and the truth of the Reincarnation Prison turns out to be a virtual world independent of the three-dimensional universe, the flow of time must have other mysteries.

"All in all, I believe that, as long as Li Yao's heroic spirit is not extinguished, and you can persist in fighting until the moment when you break into the reincarnation prison, you will have a chance to meet him again."

"It's like this…"

Ding Lingdang couldn't help but nod her head as she recalled the tens of thousands of years of solidification caused by the "time curvature change" in the depths of the primordial ruins.

"However, I think that, even if Li Yao's soul still exists, he must've erased most of his life information. It's impossible for him to remember anything that happened in the 40,000 years of Cultivation in the Pangu Universe. He might not even know who he is.

Wei Qingqing said, "If you really want to find him, you have to find a way to send a message to the Reincarnation Prison first to awaken his memories, his will, and his self. I believe that as long as he can remember who he is, he will definitely turn the Reincarnation Prison upside down. You don't need to worry at all."

"Send a message to the reincarnation prison?"

Ding Lingdang thought for a moment. "Wouldn't that be walking right into a trap? Everything Li Yao did was to destroy the information!"

"Times have changed. Of course, I'm not talking about sending a message to the reincarnation prison in the depths of the flood right now. Our current technology is far from enough to do that.

Wei Qingqing said, "Right now, the final battle between the Flood Tide and the Resistance Alliance has not broken out yet. We are still hiding in the darkness. Of course, we cannot leak any information to the outside world.

"However, if we look at the future hundreds or even thousands of years from now, if we find dozens or even hundreds of completely different civilizations near the Pangu Universe one day and reach out to the Alliance of Resistance, and the two quasi-god civilizations start a total war, there will be no need for us to hide ourselves anymore. On the contrary, if we can reach out to the Reincarnation Prison in the depths of the flood and wake up all the heroes there, a 'Betrayal Frenzy' that is hundreds of times more intense than the 'Vulture Plan' might be the key to victory.

"Look, just as I said earlier, our seemingly remote, desolate, and insignificant civilization is not necessarily unable to determine the future of the multiverse sea. A small dike can be destroyed by an ant's nest. Who says we can't become the ants that destroy the flood tide?

"Of course, I'm not in a hurry, but I might as well think about it carefully first. If I really need to send messages to the 'reincarnation prison' one day to wake up a heroic spirit such as Li Yao, what kind of technology should I use and how should I do it?"

Wei Qingqing's words made Ding Lingdang lost in thought for a long, long time.

She remembered that Li Yao had told her about the Earth in her dream.

The Earth in his dream seemed to be inhabited by six billion ordinary people who did not even have the strength to truss a chicken. They were all ignorant creatures who did not know the wonders of spiritual energy, the vastness of the universe, and the true brilliance of life.

In other words, they were never really alive. Li Yao was just one of them.

However, what if the 'earthlings' discovered that they were not as ordinary as they thought but heroic spirits who had been sealed in countless failed wars against the tides over billions of years?

If he could wake up the six billion heroic spirits and remind them of their freedom, glory, and destiny, they would all be as strong as Li Yao.

Maybe, it was the key to destroying the flood tide.

"I understand."

Ding Lingdang's eyes, which had been confused for three days, turned firm again. She took a long breath and put on a confident smile again. She clenched her fists and said sincerely, "Thank you, Sister Qingqing. I think I know what to do next!"

"There's no need to thank me. Think more, think more. Don't believe anything anyone says—including what I just said."

Wei Qingqing said, "Let me repeat myself. I don't know whether or not the matter about the messenger starship and the war horn is true. I don't know whether or not the Resistance Alliance is just a disguise made up by the flood tide to attract the resistors into a trap. I don't know whether or not I have become a tool of evil and whether or not I will lead our civilization into endless darkness… I don't know anything about any of this.

"All I know is that the storm that sweeps the sea of stars is here, and we have nowhere to run except to march forward, right?

"Yes."

Ding Lingdang's eyes pierced through the transparent cabin window and into the depths of the storm-like stars. She said resolutely, one word after another, "We have nowhere to run to, and we never thought of running away at all. Whether our enemy is the Flood Tide or the Resistance Alliance, whether it is a quasi-god civilization or a true god-level civilization, or an existence that is even higher than a god-level civilization and cannot be described in words, we will fight until the end. We will either die a hero's death, step on the corpses of our enemies, and climb to the peak of evolution and the peak above it!

"Over the past billions of years, our ancestors have made a hundred percent miracle with only one percent of hope. In the billions of years to come, we will go on like this until the heaven and the earth destroy us or we slaughter through the entire world!

…

Three years had passed since Wei Qingqing returned to the federation.

Over the past three years, the federation, the imperium, and the Sanctuary Alliance, as well as the 'primeval autonomous space zone', had changed hundreds of times more violently and rapidly than in the previous three years.

Of all the changes, the most important one for the future of the Pangu Universe was undoubtedly the decision of the 'Joint Development Committee of the Heavenly Palace' to activate the 'Messenger Plan' and march out of the Pangu Universe.

It was not an impulsive move, but as Ding Lingdang and Wei Qingqing had said, there was no other choice.

Firstly, whether Wei Qingqing was speaking the truth or she herself had been hypnotized by the enemy, at least according to the analysis of the magical equipment experts, the debris of the 'Messenger starship' had strong traces of industrial production.

In other words, the messenger starship was not a one-of-a-kind, handmade thing. It was possible that thousands of starships had been built and distributed to the entire cosmos.

Under such circumstances, it would be hilarious if they continued being cowards. Even if the human civilization of the Pangu Universe did not explore the outside world, other carrier starships might find other survivors, or new carrier starships might jump into the Pangu Universe and eventually figure out the coordinates of the Pangu Universe. The pursuers of the Flood Tide might also find the Pangu Universe through the carrier starships.

The ostrich buried its head in the sand. Other than gaining a temporary, illusionary sense of security, it was of no use.

Secondly, if Wei Qingqing was really hypnotized by a hostile civilization, her purpose was to lure the prey into her trap so that the hunting process would be easier. Even if the prey was not fooled, the hunter would still come in person in the near future.

With the scale of the Pangu Universe, it was unlikely that it could develop into a civilization that could compete with a civilization at the level of a Quasi God within several thousand years. Then, what was the difference between being fooled and not being fooled?

Thirdly, it was true that the coalition of the rebels was not a 'kind civilization'. Maybe they were planning to use the survivors as cannon fodder, but cannon fodder had to be trained to a certain extent, too. Some of them would be granted with high-precision weapons, and some of them would have the opportunity to survive the brutal battlefield. Building their own legends with blood and courage was better than waiting to be killed.

In short, it was necessary for a civilization to communicate with the outside world in order to develop. War was the most advanced form of communication. The human civilization of the Pangu Universe had to fight the war between two quasi-god civilizations.

Of course, neither the federation, the imperium, nor the Sanctuary Alliance, nor the wise leaders among the survivors of the primeval era, would be foolish enough to follow the Alliance of the Resistance's rules.

Li Yao's experience in the 'ultimate test' of the Heaven's Origin Sector told everybody that the acquisition of any kind of strength had an equal price. A gift that fell from the sky and was too advanced was often a sign of the doom of a civilization.

Those who had learned their lesson did not activate the self-recovery and replication functions of the debris of the carrier. Instead, they analyzed the debris, retrieved the technology, and applied it to their starships and teleportation arrays.

The Pangu Civilization boasted advanced technology in space navigation and space jump—advanced enough to cross the black wall.

The technology of the Bifrost Bridge, the super teleportation array that Gu Wuxin had retrieved from the captives of the Flood Tide Legion, had been grasped by the human experts over the past three years, too.

Together with the 'anti-space folding technology' contained in the debris of the messenger starship that Wei Qingqing brought, although it was still beyond the understanding of the human civilization, it was not entirely impossible to improve the exploration starship of the Pangu Civilization with the technology of 'knowing what it is but not knowing why it is so'.