by <unknown>
"Hehe. In such a way, whatever happens to them in the end, they will have made it huge. Everybody living on the capital planet and even in the entire Imperium will know their ideas. That's exactly what the Grand Guardian and all the Nepenthe believers are planning.
"However, the super brainwave magnifier requires astronomical energy and can only be supported by the largest geothermal factory of the Black Iron Group. Therefore, they have to occupy the 'Great Iron Plants' first."
"What?!"
Li Yao's pupils constricted violently. "Are you suggesting that they are trying to create a hundred times more Nepenthe believers overnight?"
"Yes. Let me repeat, it has nothing to do with me."
Long Yangjun frowned so hard that her eyebrows had joined her nose as she said, upset, "What can I do when they are planning something so huge?"
Li Yao narrowed his eyes. "You're worried that you will be affected by the incident, but you do not want to take care of it in person, so you are simply kicking it to me?"
"Please don't put it like that. As I told you at the beginning, I will certainly not keep anything away from you."
Long Yangjun's distress turned into a smile. "If I had not told you this great 'scheme', would I be any different from Xiao Xuance, Lu Zui, Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan, and all the other supervillains? Besides, I'm really curious about what you are going to do. Destroying the 'super brainwave magnifier' and even killing the Grand Guardian as well as the central leadership of Nepenthe is naturally very easy, but are you really going to do that? If you really destroy and kill them, then what?"
Li Yao considered in silence for half a minute before he said, "What about the Black Iron Group? Which level is Li Minghui at?"
"Ha. I knew that you would want to play a hero again. But not this time. Your body can't take it."
Long Yangjun said, "Having dominated the underground worlds for decades as the local tyrant of a hundred towns, Li Minghui is certainly not a random person. He is an Immortal Cultivator at the beginning level of the Nascent Soul Stage with talents in both fighting and administration. He has also recruited the most ferocious gangsters who are known as 'Black Iron Sect'. They are the Black Iron Group's muscles during the expansion and the competitions for territory.
"Recently, due to the changes in politics on the surface of the planet, the situation below the ground is rather tense. Li Minghui, who cherishes his life more than anything else, has introduced a 'fully-automatic defense system' at a great fortune, which is mostly made of five thousand most advanced battle puppets. It is estimated that they are three times stronger than Xiao Xuance's Grand Illusionary Soldiers during the riot in the Flying Star Sector!
"If you were still in the Divinity Transformation Stage and had an intact, well-supplied Colossus, those gangsters and battle puppets certainly wouldn't be a problem for you. But your body is now falling apart, your soul is lackluster, and your Colossus is a pile of garbage. By comprehensive evaluation, can you still carry out the strength of the Nascent Soul Stage?
"Let's say that you can really carry out the combat ability of the Nascent Soul Stage miraculously, but your chances of winning are close to zero when you are drowned in the ocean of five thousand puppets and countless desperadoes!"
Chapter 2368: The Grand Guardian |
"What about you?"
With expectation beaming out of his eyes, Li Yao bit his lips hard. "You can take down Li Minghui, can't you? Whatever you want me to do—"
Long Yangjun was amused. "I'm truly puzzled by your brain structure now. Why are you still ignorant of the situation? Both of us have been wounded badly, and we do not have a stable base to treat the wounds, maintain the crystal suits and the Colossi, and refill enough ammunition and fuel!
"In the meantime, the most terrible fiend in the Imperium of True Human Beings in the past thousand years are searching for us with his eyes wide open right above our heads. So much as he detects a slight trace, a handful of experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage, a dozen in the Nascent Soul Stage, and a hundred in the Core Formation Stage will be coming at us!
"We can barely keep ourselves safe right now. We are now rats on the street that everybody will stomp on, man!
"Under such circumstances, you are asking me to charge at five thousand battle puppets and at least an equal number of Immortal Cultivators and execute their leader entirely on my own? Have you overestimated my ability? Do you really think that I am a reincarnated god?
"Forgive me, but my previous self is a footman in the primeval war. Well, fine, not a footman, but a special soldier. But so what? I can be tired, I can bleed, I can be hurt, and I may die! Once my Colossus is blown up, I will have no place to repair it! The Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, the ammunition, and the fuel that I bring with me are limited and precious! If I really kill Li Minghui, only to attract Blackstar the Great's luxury hunting team, how are we going to resist them? With your tongue?
"Besides, even if I can take down Li Minghui despite all the obstacles, then what? Can you stop Nepenthe from carrying out the massive brainwashing plan with the super brainwave magnifier? Don't look at me. As the 'Serenity Seraph', I don't have any justification to prevent them from doing that!"
Li Yao opened his mouth, only to be lost for words.
"Do you see?"
Long Yangjun said with a bitter smile, "You've realized that the trouble this time is highly unusual, haven't you?"
"Where is the Grand Guardian?"
Li Yao gritted his teeth. "I would like to meet him."
"You can. The Grand Guardian is in a mine affiliated to the 'Black Iron Group'. We can go to find him together with these wildlings."
Long Yangjun opened her hands and said, "However, he is an overzealous believer of Nepenthe who is devoted to the abandonment of feelings and the embrace of eternal tranquility. I estimate that you will never talk him out of his plan unless you chop his head off."
"Why?"
Li Yao couldn't help but feel curious. "Has he completely given up his feelings and become a puppet of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence?"
"More or less."
Long Yangjun said, "The Grand Guardian was an ordinary miner in the Black Iron Group at the beginning who had two sons. His first son was a miner just like him, but his younger son had unusual gifts and an extraordinary computational ability. His younger son was the hope of his entire family.
"To raise his younger son, the Grand Guardian and his first son worked hard in the mines without any reserve. They were the most distinguished workers in the hundreds of mines affiliated to the Black Iron Group every year and even won dozens of competitions against the most advanced mining puppets. They were known by their coworkers as 'iron men'.
"However, when his first son just turned twenty, the two of them worked too hard for a bonus to notice the upcoming danger, and they did not have time to run away when the tunnel collapsed. Although the Grand Guardian survived the accident, his first son was smashed into pieces."
Hooked, Li Yao couldn't help but ask, "What happened later?"
"Because the Grand Guardian and his son were the most excellent workers in the Black Iron Group, in order to set an example for other miners, even someone as petty and brutal as Li Minghui had to offer consolations and gave the Grand Guardian an impressive compensation."
Long Yangjun said, "Later, the Grand Guardian's younger son went to an upper town with the compensation and got admitted into a legitimate school. After he graduated, he began to work in the offices of the Black Iron Group as a person who made a living using his brain and not with his hands like his father and his brother.
"Later, when the younger son was coping with the version iteration of the bugs of the automatic mining system, he worked too hard before the deadline and injected excessive 'brain exciters'. All of a sudden, his cerebral vessels exploded, and he died abruptly."
Li Yao was lost for words for a moment. Thinking for a moment, he asked again, "Well, what about his wife
? The Grand Guardian certainly has a wife, right?"
"He did at the beginning, but she passed away when the two sons were very young due to the failure of organs caused by a malignant tumor."
Long Yangjun said, "The Grand Guardian's wife used to work in a purification factory of the Black Iron Group, where a lethal gas would be gradually released during the refinement of a rare metal. If the protection measures were not in place, it was possible that a lot of diseases would be triggered. Many workers died exactly the same way as the Grand Guardian's wife.
"After his wife died, the Grand Guardian had considered his two sons everything in his life. He raised them up through all the trouble both as a father and as a mother. Little did he expect that they would end like this."
Li Yao couldn't hold it anymore. He slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "What a miserable man!"
"Is it strange?"
Long Yangjun said casually, "Haven't the textbooks of the Star Glory Federation been saying that the ordinary people are living in sufferings because of the Immortal Cultivators' tranny? The weightless summary in the books has countless bloody examples in reality! There are too many people in the underground worlds who share similar experiences with the Grand Guardian. Why else do you think the Path of Ultimate Benevolence would be so popular and that so many people would offer to abandon their feelings and desires?
"So, what are you going to say after you really meet the Grand Guardian? 'Brother, there is in fact still light in life. We should all just move on and forget the unhappy things of the past. Just boost your feelings and desires and relish the fun of life!', something like that?"
"I—"
Li Yao clenched his hands so hard that his finger bones were cracking. He gnashed his teeth and snapped, "I'll figure out what to do!"
"Then, I'll be watching you settle the problem."
Long Yangjun stared at Li Yao thoughtfully. "Or, I'll watch you admit your mistake and concede that 'Path of Ultimate Benevolence' is partly reasonable and is one of the justified paths just like the path of the Cultivators and the true path of immortality!"
…
When Li Yao and Long Yangjun left the enormous excavator, he felt that the darkness around him was even more profound, hideous, and pungent.
It was like a web made of black mists that could not be torn apart, consuming countless people.
It was also like the stomach of an overwhelming beast, and humans were just the bugs inside the stomach that would be corroded and digested in no time without leaving the slightest residue.
"Brother Yao—"
Seeing that the two of them were out, Li Jialing hurried to greet Li Yao. He then bowed at Long Yangjun dutifully. "Sister Long!"
"Good boy!"
Long Yangjun said with a smile, "Your Brother Yao seems to be caught in a conundrum. You'd better not disturb him in the next few days. Why don't you hang around with me more often? We can talk about the real path that you should follow!"
"Get away!"
Li Yao glared. "Who says that I am caught in a conundrum? I will certainly come up with a solution. So, just stay away from such an innocent young man like Li Jialing!"
While they were talking, deafening noises were suddenly echoing from the giant cave. Slightly dazed, Li Yao looked at Long Yangjun suspiciously.
"Brother Yao…"
Li Jialing looked at Long Yangjun, somewhat in fear, before he pointed at the depths of the cave and said in a low voice, "The Nepenthe believers handed over some magical equipment to the wildlings. There is no telling what they are up to!"
Li Yao frowned and glanced at Long Yangjun.
Long Yangjun sniffed and hinted at them to follow her.
The three of them went to the source of the sounds, only to discover that a dozen of Nepenthe believers were dismantling heavy boxes, which contained magical equipment, and distributing the devices to the Black Armors, the Night Wings, and the Red Rings, who were all eager to try.
Most of the magical equipment was in gray and brown, like enormous pebbles.
What was weird was that when part of the magical equipment was given to the wildlings, and the wildlings bit their own fingers and smeared their blood on it, the gears were all emanating a golden brilliance, and the shell in the texture of rocks fell apart, revealing the real body that was full of futuristic feelings. They turned out to be streamlined, uniquely-designed, and powerful-looking weapons.
The tests proved the power of the weapons.
After the weapons were unfolded through the complicated mechanical structure, they were attached to the arms of the wildlings like knuckles and blades. As the wildlings waved their arms, dazzling brilliance was dashing out and smashing the giant stalagmites hundreds of meters away in thunderous noises that echoed in the cave for a long time.
"Very powerful!"
Excitement beamed out of Li Yao's eyes. As a refiner, he was most sensitive about magical equipment. He could tell after the first look that not only was the magical equipment powerful, but it also had little recoil. In the meantime, it boasted certain auto-navigation and auto-attack techniques, which made it most suitable for ordinary soldiers and low-level trainers.
But wasn't it a waste to equip the unintelligent wildlings with such awesome magical equipment?
Li Yao looked at Long Yangjun suspiciously.
Long Yangjun smiled and explained, "After I left, the Nepenthe believers further excavated a lot of relics and battlegrounds from tens of thousands of years ago, and they did find a lot of ancient magical equipment.
"However, most of the magical equipment in the activation state had been too rusted to be used again.
"The magical equipment in the hibernation state was mostly intact, but they could only be activated and used after blood recognition.
"As an insider, you naturally know that blood recognition is just 'gene tests'. If the magical equipment was produced by the demon dynasties more than ten thousand years ago, only the genes of demons and their descendants could activate the weapons. If they were produced in the Star Ocean Imperium, it would be very likely that only the soldiers of the Star Ocean Imperium and their descendants could open them.
"In the worlds up above, the bloodlines have been through too many dilutions and mutations due to the intermarriages. Isn't it a shame that the magical equipment cannot be activated because the gene tests cannot be passed?
"The wildlings living below the ground, on the other hand, had few contacts with the outside world. Their bloodlines are pure, and they retain the genetic features from ten thousand years ago. Therefore, their blood can often activate the magical equipment that others can't."
Chapter 2369: Bing Bing's Questions |
Li Yao was greatly enlightened. He had been wondering if the underground wildlings were the best warriors because, despite their tough nature, they were unintelligent after all.
Now that Nepenthe was thriving, they did not appear to be in need of the help of a few wildlings. Why would they send a few people to gather wildlings at such a critical moment?
So, the purpose was to unlock the weapons that had hibernated for ten thousand years with the blood, or in other words, the pure genes, of the wildlings. That made much more sense!
As the powerful magical equipment unleashed a dazzling light, blowing countless stalagmites and stalactites into pieces, the whole cave was mired in a bright, aggressive mist.
The wildlings popped up in the darkness, staring at the marvelous weapon in shock and thirst. For the wildlings who had lost most of their sanity and only kept the instincts of killing, those marvelous weapons were obviously more attractive than anything else in the world!
What was weird was that, despite the eagerness in their hearts, neither the wildlings nor the Nepenthe believers showed much delight. They were as tranquil as the water in a well, like machines that had been inputted with the instructions to kill.
Li Yao couldn't tell which was more terrifying, the ferocious, hideous wildlings with abundant exp
ressions on their faces or the humans who were obedient but who were nothing but empty shells.
Countless thoughts were rolling in Li Yao's head. He couldn't help but recall "Fist King" Lei Zonglie, the machine expert that he encountered on the Land of Sins!
The Fist King was not a human being, but he could simulate the feelings and even the self-awareness of humans perfectly with the highly-developed databases and the optimal screening mechanisms. As a result, people tended to forget that he was not a human of flesh and blood but a machine of iron and steel.
The people before Li Yao's eyes, on the other hand, were undoubtedly human beings, but they were doing their best to abandon their flesh and souls to become cold machines.
Machines wanted to become men, and men wanted to become machines. What exactly marked the boundary between machines and men? Men were nothing more than machines made of countless cells. Were they any different from the machines made of metals? If there were really a civilization of machines, would the civilization of mankind be different from it?
"Brother Yao…"
Li Jialing couldn't help but approach Li Yao. Rubbing the goosebumps on his arm hard, he said in a low voice, "Those guys are so creepy. They are like the emotionless people of the Covenant Alliance. I would rather face the ferocious Immortal Cultivators than confront those cold, inhumane monsters!"
After spending a long time with Li Yao, while he never admitted it, Li Jialing considered him less and less an Immortal Cultivator, or at least not a pure Immortal Cultivator.
Li Yao was silent.
Before he had the heartfelt communication with Long Yangjun, he had nothing but 100% disgust and wariness toward the guys who were emotionless and as cold as machines.
But right now…
Li Yao sighed and said in a low voice, "How could there be the emotionless Covenant Alliance if there weren't the ferocious Immortal Cultivators?"
