by <unknown>
Faced with the girl's clear eyes and her matter-of-fact arguments, Li Yao almost felt ashamed of himself. After a long bewilderment, he finally shook his head and said softly, "No, I am not the Grand Guardian of Nepenthe. I am a… Cultivator!"
"A Cultivator?"
Bing Bing blinked her eyes for a long time and asked, "What is that?"
Li Yao could come up with two hundred definitions of Cultivator any minute, but he suddenly felt his mouth was too dry for him to say a word under the girl's eyes that were as clear as water. Thinking for a long time, he struggled to say, "Bing Bing, listen to me. I don't know if it has ever occurred to you, but the world is not supposed to be like this, and your life is not supposed to be like this.
"This world is not supposed to be dark and violent as when it is reigned by the Immortal Cultivators, and it is absolutely not supposed to be a cold, emotionless one where everybody loses the abilities to sing and smile!
"The world can and should be something else. It should be a place where the strong protect the weak, the weak support the strong, and everybody works together to resist all the problems that occur during the development of the civilization. They will tramp on all the obstacles and leave our most brilliant mark in the dark and cold universe while releasing as much heat and light as possible!
"In such a world, a girl like you should not be wearing a gray cape hiding in the suffocating, dull cave breeding the rock worms with your best if you do not want to be starved, never having a chance to see the real sun or the billions of shining stars!
"No, it shouldn't be like this!
"You should be living carefreely and happily under the blue sky and the white clouds, or at least in the settlements with an appropriate temperature as well as clean air, water, and food. You will receive the best education to dig out the infinite potentials of yourself and the future. In the future, you may choose to be a doctor, a teacher, a soldier, an engineer, or any profession you like freely. If you like the Flowery Bugs best, you can become an entomologist and study the Flowery Bugs for your entire life! If you want to sing, you will sing; if you want to dance, you will dance. You can squander your youth however you want to. Your parents are the same. They will not be sobbing in the middle of the night even if they are not brainwashed!"
Bing Bing listened in astonishment, full of confusion and fear. She mumbled, "How is it possible? How can there be such a world? Isn't it a dream?"
"Yes, it is exactly a dream, one that probably will not be realized until a long, long time later!"
Li Yao pointed at himself and said, "Cultivators, on the other hand, are the people who swear to make such a dream a reality!"
Bing Bing did not entirely understand it. Observing Li Yao's face, she asked timidly, "So, Brother Li Yao is a good guy too? Are the Cultivators better than Nepenthe?"
"Totally!"
Li Yao said firmly, "A hundred times better!"
"Then why…"
Bing Bing lowered her head and said gloomily, "If the Cultivators you describe are so nice, Brother Yao, why didn't any Cultivators come to our aid in the past hundreds of years?"
Li Yao was rendered speechless for a moment. Blushing, he sighed and had to admit it frankly. "Right, your criticism is very right, Bing Bing. Cultivators have been too lame and lousy in the past thousand years, to the point that our dream is considered to be a lie and a joke because it is too distant and beautiful.
"So, it's perfectly normal that so many believers of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence have emerged below the ground!
"As a Cultivator who has come late and has done absolutely nothing for you, I'm in no place to criticize the people who believe in the Path of Ultimate Benevolence or even to lambaste the organizers of Nepenthe and the spies of the Covenant Alliance who have snuck to the underground worlds. At the very least, they have been doing things to help the people and resisting the Immortal Cultivators in the years when there were no Cultivators.
"I-I-I just want to tell you that, for the people living in the deepest part of the planet, if you did not want to die without a sound in the oppression of the Immortal Cultivators, you could only join Nepenthe and worship the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. You didn't have a choice.
"But right now, you have a third option, a better one. The Cultivators are back to the center of the cosmos to correct the mistakes we made a thousand years ago!
"So, trust me. Whatever happens, do not give up on the things you cherish, do not abandon the memories of catching Flower Bugs and playing the ocarina, and do not forget how to laugh and how to cry, because one day, you will see the real sun, and you will dance and sing under the blue sky! I, and all the other Cultivators just like me, will fight for the day to come!"
Li Yao's excitement obviously intimidated the little girl.
Bing Bing was stunned for a long time. She then observed Li Yao carefully for a while. She was more or less relieved and grinned again. "Brother Yao, although what you said is rather weird, you don't strike me as a liar."
"Of course, I'm not a liar!" said Li Yao.
"But why? Why are you fighting for the people that you do not know?"
Bing Bing looked at Li Yao in confusion. "You are very strange, as strange as the Nepenthe believers when they just came to the underground worlds. The Nepenthe believers said that we were all the lambs of the gods. We were brothers and sisters created by the gods together, so we had to help each other. Are you helping us for the same reason?"
Li Yao shook his head. "I don't believe in 'lambs of the gods'. As for why I'm helping you…"
He suddenly saw a silver object on the girl's waist, which was in the shape of a cone and looked like a conch. He thought of something and asked, "Is that 'ocarina'? Can you play a tune for me?"
"This is Big Bing Bing's ocarina. She offered it to me and said that she did not need it anymore."
Bing Bing's face dimmed. Although she did not know what Li Yao meant, she still took down the ocarina and started playing it.
Although they were thousands of meters below the ground, the sound still reminded Li Yao of the boundless universe.
Li Yao listened in silence in the next three minutes.
After the tune was finished, Bing Bing wiped her lips rather in embarrassment and said, "I hope it's not too bad. Big Bing Bing would've played it much better!"
"Not at all. It's very pleasant. It's been a long time since I last heard such a piece of wonderful music."
Taking a long breath, Li Yao smiled. "Then, you may think that I'm fighting for you for such a wonderful melody!"
"Huh?" Bing Bing's eyes widened.
"You may be too young to understand this, but you can remember it deeply now. Human beings cannot live without the sun just as much as they cannot live without songs."
Looking at the girl in the eyes, Li Yao said, "I hope that I can hear people singing whichever planet in the universe I visit. Perhaps that's the reason for my fighting!
"As for your parents, rest assured, nothing will happen to them until I fall down. Trust me!"
Li Yao's solemn face was like a sharp sword stabbing into Bing Bing's chest. The girl jumped like a shocked deer.
"Thank… thank you, Brother Yao. You are a good guy, as good as the Serenity Seraph!"
Bing Bing bowed at Li Yao deeply and left, half in panic and half in confusion.
Li Yao, however, failed to calm himself down for a long time. Watching the girl's back disappearing from the door, he suddenly thought of something and shouted, "Wait!"
Bing Bing suddenly turned around and looked at Li Yao shyly.
"Wait, wait, wait!"
Li Yao's eyes were more and more scorching. He waved his hands at the girl and said, "Come here. Something very weird has just occurred to me. Bing Bing, you said that your partners had all memorized the Serenity Arts, and you were the only one who could not grasp it. So, you are in fact… the most impious believer of Nepenthe among your peers, aren't you?"
Blushing, Bing Bing replied
embarrassedly, "P… Probably?"
"Then, does everybody else know? I mean other people of the town and the Nepenthe believers from up above," Li Yao asked.
"They do."
Bing Bing said, "In the state of telepathy, the countenance and the behavior will be very usual. You can easily tell who is pious and who is not. Everybody knows that I'm very… special."
"Then, it is quite peculiar."
Li Yao said, "Since so many pious believers are out there, why is the most impious person selected to bring food for me? Does the Serenity Seraph not know the matter?"
"She does too!"
Bing Bing said, "The Serenity Seraph knows that I cannot memorize the Serenity Arts. But she is very nice and likes me very much. She told me that I shouldn't force myself if I could not understand the Serenity Arts, and that it was the most important thing to be myself. Right, just like Brother Li Yao, she asked me not to give up the fun of catching the Flower Bugs and playing the ocarina."
"What?"
Li Yao was greatly surprised. "She knows all that? So, it was her idea to send you to bring food for me?"
"Yes!"
Bing Bing nodded her head hard. "The Serenity Seraph specifically asked me to deliver food to the honorable guests. She also said that you may ask me strange questions and say things that do not make sense. She asked me not to be scared, claiming that you were in fact a good guy although you might jump up and down like a gorilla on fire when you grew excited, so all I needed to do was to answer your questions dutifully."
"I—"
Lost for words, Li Yao waved his hands and said, "Got it. Thank you for taking care of me, Bing Bing. You can go back and take a rest!"
"Okay!"
Bing Bing turned around and left again. When she was about to exit the stone column, she suddenly turned back and said, "Brother Li Yao, the Serenity Seraph was right. You are really a good guy!"
Looking at the girl disappearing into the mist, Li Yao contemplated about Long Yangjun's intention and suddenly smiled.
"Long Yangjun, what are you up to exactly?"
Li Yao mumbled to himself, "At first, you raised a conundrum that seemed to carry no answers, casting me into desperation in the competition of beliefs. But then, you arranged for such a seemingly nonchalant but actually cute and impious believer of Nepenthe to ignite my fighting will.
"Are you raising a question for me, or are you… interrogating yourself? Do you want me to submit to your beliefs, or do you want me to completely crush them?
"Is it possible that deep down in your heart, you also know that the Path of Ultimate Benevolence will not work out, and you still have slim expectations for the path of the Cultivators?
"Caught in confusion, dilemmas, and contradictions, you cannot find an answer, but you are too proud to ask for my help directly. So, you hope that I can find an answer for you in such a way? What an odd guy!
"If that is the case, then as your wish. I will give you an answer—the answer of the Cultivators!"
Chapter 2372: Clean the Cultivators' Gold Brand! |
A day later, Li Yao, Long Yangjun, and Li Jialing, leading the brawny soldiers that had been carefully selected, climbed through the zigzagging cracks and the unknown, abandoned wells, ascending for several thousand meters on the giant excavators that were similar to the earthly dragon. Finally, they approached the altitude where the "Great Iron Plants" was at.
On their way, they passed countless desolate or dying towns.
The five thousand meters below the ground was generally a boundary. The views and the purposes of the towns up and down were entirely different.
The towns established above the five-thousand-meter line were mainly to accommodate the excessive population on the ground and to expand the living space of humans. The towns below the five-thousand-meter line, on the other hand, were almost all created because of the discovery of a certain resource.
Both the rare mother lodes and the residences from tens of thousands of years ago were enough to attract the Immortal Cultivators who came like locusts. They brought tremendous hominoid slaves to the place. Those hominoid slaves often attracted even more people to work together. It was often the case that a lively, thriving town would rise spontaneously in a very short time.
However, the good days did not last. Once the mother lodes ran dry or the treasures in the relics were all collected, it would mean the doomsday of the towns.
The Immortal Cultivators who had enjoyed enough would simply stand up and leave, but they usually would not bring the hominoid slaves who had worked hard for them, as well as the persons of the service industry who gathered for the hominoid slaves.
The fate of those people was all entwined with the mother lodes and the relics. They were barely capable of anything except for mining and working as mice in the explorations of relics. After the resources were exhausted, their outcome after they were abandoned by the Immortal Cultivators was certainly more than miserable.
Apart from the stronger ones who could risk passing the narrow, deep cracks and tunnels to try their luck in other underground towns, most of the people were destined to wait for their death in the desolation and darkness, ending even more pitifully than the residents of the 10,084th district.
Li Yao had seen too many of such towns on his way here.
The residents of a lot of towns had been entirely annihilated, leaving the fluorescent bones that were emitting gloomy light. There was also the rusted, collapsed mining magical equipment that had also lost the vigor, like the tombs of iron and skeletons.
But what was even more miserable were the towns where the residents had not entirely died but were still struggling in desperation.
On the faces that looked like walking skeletons, their eyes were full of hunger and thirst. The brilliance that they were beaming out made even Li Yao unable to look back at them.
Naturally, Nepenthe developed well in the desolate towns. Wherever they reached, as long as it was not really a place where everybody was dead, some Nepenthe believers would come to meet them, offering them clean, drinkable water and taking away the roasted meat from the 10,084th district, which was then distributed to the local residents after being pulverized and mixed into the porridge in case the residents choked on the meat.
Judging from the residents' gratitude when they gobbled the food, Li Yao estimated that they would never betray Nepenthe even if their heads were cut off. The religion certainly had the support of the people.
According to Long Yangjun, Nepenthe was not the only religion flourishing in the underground worlds. In fact, a myriad of peculiar thoughts and organizations had been developing rapidly in the remote towns in every Sector of the Imperium. Some people worshipped Nepenthe, some trusted the Covenant Alliance, some believed in the Chiyou Cult, and some even directly put their faith in the extraterrestrial devils. There was a weird approach to training named "devil dance" that was popular among them.
All in all, as long as they could temporarily forget their pain, with their wounded, broken body paralyzed for a moment, and they were given a slim chance of defeating the Immortal Cultivators, those "humble hominoids" were willing to believe in anything from the gods to the devils.
"Let me put it this way—"
Long Yangjun summarized, "The people here believe in everything except for the true path of immortality and the highest authorities."
Li Yao thought of something. He meant to ask Long Yangjun what about the ideas of the Cultivators.
But on second thought, he realized that Starlight had been active at the edge of the Imperium for hundreds of years, reborn after destruction dozens of times. The more it developed, the greater it became. Was it not because of the Immortal Cultivators' cruel oppression too?
Yes. The picture where he announced the return of the Cultivators in "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" had been spread to the entire Imperium via the Spiritual Nexus. Chances were that a lot of hominoids of the Imperium had been awakened and were training themselv
es and preparing for resistance with "Cultivator" as their goal.
Perhaps there were also such people who had been moved, shocked, and convinced by the ideas of the Cultivators deep inside the capital planet?
He should be more confident in the ideas of the Cultivators and stop underestimating himself. Even the Chiyou Cult and the extraterrestrial devils had their followers. Were the ideas of the Cultivators really devoid of any attraction?
There must be people who trusted the Cultivators, who looked forward to the Cultivators, and who were willing to become Cultivators whatever it might take!
In any case, the trip to the underground worlds was a great eye-opener for Li Yao, which made him realize how decayed and corrupted the foundation of the Imperium was. The Immortal Cultivators' reign over the place had actually lost effect. People would rather believe in the emotionless Path of Ultimate Benevolence or follow the extraterrestrial devils than trusting the Immortal Cultivators above their heads. How ironic and pathetic was that?
No matter how the Immortal Cultivators brainwash the people of the bottom level and promote the ideas that the "true human beings" are supreme and the "hominoids" must contribute their everything, their reign is about to fall apart!
Li Yao thought to himself, The people of the Imperium have abandoned the true path of immortality with their real actions. In the next second, it will be the Cultivators' turn to show our sincerity and win as many people as possible over from the ideas and organizations such as the Covenant Alliance, the Chiyou Cult, and the extraterrestrial devils!
Such a purpose could only be accomplished through wisdom but not by force. Even if he was not heavily wounded but at his peak state with the best gears, it would be impossible for him to simply kill the heads of the Covenant Alliance, the Chiyou Cult, and the extraterrestrial devils one after another. After all, they had the wide support of the people because they had done a lot of good things diligently or provided comfort for the people at least.
If Li Yao were to act recklessly, he would completely ruin the appeal of "Cultivators".
I have to find a way to erect the brand of the Cultivators. Right now, the bottom-level people at the center of the cosmos have had enough of the Immortal Cultivators. They are simply turning to the cults because they do not have a way out! The path of the Cultivators is a business that can be dated back to ten thousand years ago after all. The invisible assets it has are prodigious. As long as we can set up the brand again, there is no reason why we can't win the competitions against the Covenant Alliance or the Chiyou Cult!
