Forty millenniums of cul.., p.799
Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 799
Professor Mo Xuan, the Fire Ant King, and the four star spirits stared at each other in bewilderment, not having the slightest clue what the syllables meant.
Li Yao was the only exception. He shuddered as if he had been smashed by a hammer right in the face into a bottomless swamp. His lips were pale, and he was sweating hard, unable to say anything for a long time.
Professor Mo Xuan noticed his anomaly and hurried to ask, "Li Yao, have you got it?"
Li Yao swallowed hard and nodded rigidly. He stammered, "The—the syllables are a vernacular from the era of ancient Cultivators. It was only popular in a few remote Sectors. Since the few Sectors boasted abundant minerals, there were endless concepts in the vernacular that described metals and flames. Therefore, it was once regarded by the ancient refiners as the working language for a while. However, it gradually went extinct some forty-seven thousand years ago.
"I once learned the vernacular by chance and came to know a thing or two about it. I can basically understand the sentence!"
"Oh?"
Professor Mo Xuan and the Fire Ant King were both overjoyed. Having no time to ask what exactly Li Yao's 'chance' was, they hurried to inquire, "What's the meaning of the syllables? What was the angry warrior of the Pangu Clan saying in the end?"
Li Yao took a deep breath. The veins on his neck crept all the way to his cheeks, eyes, and forehead. His face was confused, bewildered, and a bit scary. Deep brilliance beamed out of his eyes as he said, one word after another, "Nuwa! Thou hast betrayed us! I swear to kill you! I swear to kill you!"
Chapter 1221: Primeval War! |
When Li Yao spoke that sentence, his soul seemed to be completely controlled by the soundwave, and even his countenance was as gloomy as the face of the warrior of the Pangu Clan.
The short sentence was like a bucket of freezing water that poured on Sparkle. Everybody's heart and head were cold.
There was no sound inside Sparkle, except for the magical equipment being maintained.
Staring at Li Yao, Professor Mo Xuan hesitated. "Are—are you sure?"
Before Li Yao replied, he waved his hands heavily. "Never mind. Based on everything we've seen, the basic meaning of the sentence must be quite accurate.
"There is too much information in the sentence. After all, the maintenance of the spiritual shield and the examination of power rune arrays will both take some time. I suggest we calm ourselves down for ten minutes and sort through the mess. We'll come back and discuss the issue in ten minutes. How does that sound?"
Li Yao and the Fire Ant King both agreed to the suggestion.
Having seen such a weird scene and heard a furious roar from millions of years ago, they indeed need some time to regain their composure.
Ten minutes later, the three of them gathered again. It was hard to tell anything from Professor Mo Xuan's appearance, but both Li Yao's and the Fire Ant King's faces were wet, which had been obviously soaked in icy water.
"It appears that we have indeed found a battlefield of the primeval era."
Professor Mo Xuan was the first to open his mouth.
"However, it was not a battlefield of the Pangu Clan and the alien species of the universe, but one of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan. That was a civil war of the Pangu civilization!"
Li Yao turned to the Fire Ant King. "The demon race considers themselves to be the descendants of Pangu and Nuwa. Your studies about the primeval era are more profound than ours. What do you think of the civil war within the Pangu civilization?"
Both the civilization of mankind and the civilization of demons considered themselves to be the heirs of Pangu and Nuwa. There was no doubt about that. Legends had it that Pangu founded the universe and Nuwa's feats included 'patching the paradise' and 'creating human beings'.
However, on the civilization of mankind's side, because of the thirty thousand years of the Great Dark Age, the inheritance of the ancient Cultivators forty thousand years ago was mostly disrupted and degraded into absurd folklores. The legends were not of much value for reference.
The demon race, on the other hand, to justify their legitimacy of ruling over the universe, described the Pangu Clan as the 'Twelve Ancient Demon Clans'. In the thirty thousand years, their historians and archeologists excavated, explored, and researched ancient texts, finally constructing a complete theory regarding the civilization's development.
Although ungrounded tales and exaggerations were still not entirely avoidable, they were much more reliable than the pure legends on human beings' side.
The Fire Ant King pondered for a moment and said, "The Legends of Ancient Demons, our popular history reader, states that, before the universe was born, when the stars and galaxies were still nonexistent, everything was highly compressed in a tiny point that is known as the Primordial Beginning. Metaphorically, it was also known as the Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning!
"The Primordial Beginning turned into three thousand rules in a big bang that is beyond our imagination. Together, the rules constructed an ever-expanding universe. In the original universe, order and turmoil competed with each other, and two opposite creatures were thus born, namely Pangu, who abided by the rules and built up the order, and Chaos, who despised the rules and destroyed the order!"
The Fire Ant King had founded the Blade of Chaos. The 'Chaos' here was in honor of 'Chaos' Ba Yanzhi. However, 'Chaos' had not been invented by Ba Yanzhi in the beginning but referred to a primeval species that was the Pangu Clan's sworn enemy millions of years ago.
In the concepts of both human beings and demons, the Pangu Clan was always considered to be righteous, and the Chaos Clan, evil. It was also the reason that the Ultimate One Demons, Ba Yanzhi's enemies in the old days, gave him the nickname 'Chaos'.
On the other hand, Ba Yanzhi's constantly-changing, unstable form after his cells collapsed was indeed similar to Chaos in the legends.
"The Pangu Clan and the Chaos Clan fought for nobody knew how many years. After all three thousand Sectors were destroyed, they were both drained. At that time, the Nuwa Clan, which was the last to join the Pangu civilization, was given the task of recovering the three thousand Sectors, which was also known as 'fixing the paradise'. In order to 'fix the paradise', they created the tiny creatures that were human beings and sprayed them to every corner of the three thousand Sectors with the force of the galaxy arms!
"However, 'human beings' were polluted by the Chaos Clan the moment they were born. Instead of taking orders from the Pangu Clan, they considered themselves the masters of the three thousand Sectors and even eventually rose up to resist the Pangu Clan!"
The Fire Ant King took a deep breath and said, "This is what is recorded on the 'Legends of the Ancient Demons'. Maybe, you thought that it was a rhetoric of demons to vilify human beings. But from what we've seen here, such a theory definitely has its origins even if it is vilification."
Deep in thought, Professor Mo Xuan said, "Leaving the absurd tales alone, I believe that this is a more reasonable explanation. First of all, the Pangu civilization was an ancient civilization living in millions of years ago, but it was not made of a single species but an alliance of multiple clans and civilizations.
"In the legends, there are the Pangu Clan, the Kuafu Clan, the Gonggong Clan, the Zhurong Clan, and so on, each of which boasted unique features. For example, the Zhurong Clan liked to live in scorching worlds where the temperature was hundreds of degrees high and established their civilization by absorbing magma and geothermal energy. The Gonggong Clan, in comparison, was clearly an aquatic clan whose favorite living environment was undersea.
"It is very hard to imagine that they were two forms of the same species. They were probably two species that originated from different planets.
"The Zhurong Clan's mother planet must've been a planet very close to a star. The planet was hot all year round, with abundant magma and geotherm resources. Volcanic eruptions were anything but unusual. Therefore, a species that was adept at the utilization of fire and heat was born, which was the Zhurong Clan.
"The Gonggong Clan, at their earliest state, must've lived on a planet whose surface was fully covered in water. That was why they developed technologies to exploit the ocean, make use of seawater, and retrieve energy from it.
"Although their living environments were vastly different, they were all carbon-based life forms made of flesh and blood. They had a head, a torso, and several limbs. From the perspective of the grandness of the universe, their civilizations were alike to each other. Then, after the two species got in contact with each other, it is possible that they formed an alliance!
"It was probably also the case for the rest of the species in the Pangu civilization. In the end, ten or so species joined the 'alliance of the Pangu civilization'. Collectively, they called themselves the 'Pangu Clan'!"
Li Yao and the Fire Ant King nodded quickly. Professor Mo Xuan's deduction was quite reasonable. There was nothing too extraordinary. It was probably the truth.
Li Yao admired 'Chaos' Ba Yanzhi very much, and somehow found the 'Chaos Clan' in the primeval era less detesting. Thus, he could not help but ask, "Then, what exactly is the 'Chaos Clan', the Pangu Clan's enemy?"
Professor Mo Xuan shook his head. "It is hard to tell due to the lack of files, but apparently, there is a theory that believes that the 'extraterrestrial devils' nowadays are the descendants of the Chaos Clan in the primeval era. If it is true, we can possibly infer the form of the Chaos Clan from the extraterrestrial devils!"
Li Yao thought for a moment and asked with great interest, "Are you suggesting that it is a civilization of pure energy?"
The extraterrestrial devils had no real entities and lived on a type of energy known as 'tenebrum'. They were versatile and unpredictable. In the history of mankind, they had always been one of the most dreadful enemies, sometimes even more dreadful than demons.
Other than the extraterrestrial devils, there were also other pure-energy lives in the universe. For example, the Blood Stripe Virus that Li Yao once swallowed was a pure energy-based life form.
More straightforwardly, Professor Mo Xuan and the four star spirits were sort of energy-based life forms, too. They could live without a shell, except that they would perish very soon because of the interference and radiation.
"Very likely!" Professor Mo Xuan nodded and said, "If that is the case, the so-called Pangu Clan was actually a great alliance of the carbon-based life forms, while the Chaos Clan was a coalition of the energy-based life forms. The two types of civilizations existed in vastly different ways, and the living environments that they required must've been different from each other, too. It would have been quite normal for a heated war to burst out between them.
"Leaving the ungrounded tale that the Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning founded the three thousand rules aside, it is almost certain that the Pangu civilization and the Chaos civilization had a great war millions of years ago. It was likely a competition of 'carbon-based life forms' versus 'energy-based life forms'. Both parties were hoping to modify the universe into an environment that were suitable for their survival and reproduction. However, the war did not seem to end well. Both parties suffered great casualties and were about to go extinct.
"The Pangu civilization was at a slim advantage. It spared the Nuwa Clan, one of the species in the alliance, to carry out the Paradise Patching Plan. They were asked to repair the three thousand Sectors that had been destroyed and modify them into what were suitable for the survival of carbon-based life forms.
"The Nuwa Clan must've participated in the primeval war, too, and wouldn't have too many forces left. Since it was impossible for them to complete such an enormous project alone, they created human beings, highly fertile creatures, to implement the task."
Then, the professor paused for a moment. Solemnly, he mumbled, "According to the Legends of the Ancient Demons, human beings were just 'tools' that the Pangu civilization created to fix the three thousand Sectors. Before, we always considered such a theory to be a shameless lie, but now, with the last words of the warrior of the Pangu Clan…
"Is it true that the Nuwa Clan, part of the Pangu civilization, and human beings, the brand-new species created by the Nuwa Clan, betrayed the Pangu civilization together?
"At the very least, the warrior of the Pangu Clan seems to believe so from his perspective!"
[ol][li data-annotation-id="9c2825d9-3f3c-48f5-80f9-58d5fb6e98e1"]The Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning or the Primeval Lord of Heaven (Chinese: 元始天尊; pinyin: Yuánshǐ Tīanzūn) is one of the highest deities of religious Daoism.[/ol]
Chapter 1222: Broken! |
Looking at the pictures sent back by the crystal cameras, which suggested that the remains of war were getting denser and denser ahead, the Fire Ant King observed with an awful expression, "In such a case, Senior Gui Suishou might be correct that the Pangu civilization is kind of hostile to us! It seems that the journey to Kunlun will prove to be dangerous."
"We have to go however dangerous it is," Li Yao said solemnly. "This place is too close to the Heaven's Origin Sector and the Blood Demon Sector. It's like a time bomb that is right next to our bed. The more dangerous this place is, the more necessary it is for us to find out the truth. Otherwise, we won't know how we are killed should it 'detonate' one day!
"Besides, the Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium of True Human Beings are now marching toward Kunlun. We cannot just sit by and watch them steal the relics of the Pangu civilization from Kunlun, can we?
"The corpse of the warrior of the Pangu Clan was exposed in the universe for too long and suffered the radiation from the pulsar for hundreds of thousands of years. That is why it was so feeble and collapsed at the first touch.
"But better-preserved bodies of the Pangu Clan might be found on Kunlun, as well as the marvelous weapons of the Pangu Clan. If we have access to such weapons, they will significantly improve our capability of resisting the Imperium. But if the Immortal Cultivators get them, we will be doomed!"
Professor Mo Xuan and the Fire Ant King nodded simultaneously.
"Exactly." Professor Mo Xuan's metal voice sounded more resolute than ever. "Whatever the soul-stirring war in the primeval war was, we know the result. We've dominated the three thousand Sectors for more than a hundred thousand years, during which time the Pangu Clan was nowhere to be seen!
"It suggests that we are the last victor and beneficiary of the war!
"Also, Senior Ba Yanzhi explored Kunlun forty thousand years ago. Not only did he return in one piece, he also managed to bring a dead body of the Pangu Clan back to the Blood Demon Sector for research!
"Fellow Cultivator Fire Ant was quite right before we left. Neither Pangu nor Nuwa are ungrounded deities or devils but creatures made of flesh and blood like human beings. We are all carbon-based lifeforms. What's there to be scared of?
"Let's continue marching toward Kunlun!"
Behind them were the expectations of the Star Glory Federation and their compatriots of all the three Sectors. No matter how difficult and dangerous the path ahead was, it was not going to stop them from exploring the new world!
Li Yao, Professor Mo Xuan, and the four star spirits worked together. Finally, in three hours, the spiritual shield and the power rune arrays were all repaired.
In the meantime, Sparkle had also dragged a lot of star dust from space and run a thorough analysis on it. A lot of super alloy elements, with the same constituents, were found in the dust.
Therefore, it was not hard to assume that most of the scraps used to belong to a certain monolithic object.
Three hours later, Sparkle continued moving forward.
This time, they slowed down a little bit and scanned the space nearby carefully for human-shaped debris.
But they never met a second vivid, well-preserved body. All the ran into were bizarrely-shaped broken limbs that were blood-freezing and devastating.
What left the deepest impression on Li Yao was a cylinder more than half a meter in diameter and almost three meters long.
Judging from the scanning, it did not seem to be metal but looked more like part of a body of flesh and blood.
At first, Li Yao thought that it was a torso whose limbs were cut off or that it might be just a limb that was relatively thicker.
It was not until they studied carefully for a long time and discovered spirals on it that looked like growth rings that they came to the realization that the object was a finger.
A finger more than three meters long and half a meter wide, which was even larger than Li Yao.
Everybody stayed in front of the finger for a long time. After enough data was collected, they pushed forward without any hesitation.
"The star dust in front is reducing. The pulse storm is stabilizing, too! That's odd. We are getting closer to the pulsar instead of moving farther away. Based on the astronomical parameters, this place should be where the pulsar storm is most intense, but why is it so quiet?"
"This is not a real storm. Then, where is the 'eye' from at all?"
"Immense spiritual waves and metal reactions are coming from the front. The mystic rays that we shot out feed a very enormous celestial body back!"
"All fifty-one features marked on the Star Map of Kunlun fit. We are arriving at our destination!"
The four star spirits reported the latest updates of the voyage.
The drill of mystic rays was revolving at the highest speed. The debris and the star dust on the primeval battlefield were all drilled into powder. Sparkle finally jumped out of the annoying ocean of meteoroids like a dragon!
The celestial body in front of Sparkle, however, rendered all seven of them dumbfounded and unable to calm down for a long time.
It was a bright-gold planet larger than the moon. The planet seemed to have just been hit by an asteroid not long ago, indicated by the super large scar that covered almost half of the planet's surface. A lot of materials had been ripped apart and thrown into the space, turning into the ocean of meteoroids that they had just seen.
