Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

by <unknown>

  Where did the two kids learn it from?

  Also… they looked really similar to him!

  Li Yao was an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage after all. Despite the mess on his mind and his reluctance to accept it, he still kept the last bit of his rationality. Focusing the spiritual energy on his eyes, he was able to scan the appearances of the two children carefully. From the shape of flesh to the structure of bones, it was obvious that they contained a lot of the features of himself and Ding Lingdang.

  His eyelids cramping hard, Li Yao snapped his fingers and cut a strand of hair from the heads of the two children. He then delivered the hair to his face and burned them up with his spiritual energy.

  Looking at the rising smoke, Li Yao turned into a dumbfounded statue again.

  Although he hated facing the highly shocking fact, the two children were very likely to be the children of himself and Ding Lingdang. Fine. Even without any test, the blood bond between them that he could sense all the time was enough to prove their relationships.

  He had become a father uncannily!

  Li Yao's lips and eyes were moving beyond his control. He had no idea how he should react right now at all.

  He rose abruptly and circled around the two children before he sat back and scratched his hair again. Then, he stood up again and observed the environment in confusion, especially the red ants and the green ants, in a long daze. In the end, he sat back again.

  Li Yao had never been more thirsty in his life, nor had he ever been as awkward.

  However, after confirming that they were indeed his bloodline, and when they were smiling delightfully and innocently at him, he also seemed never… happier in his life?

  Even the vigorous, mischievous-looking boy appeared more and more agreeable now!

  Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

  Li Yao analyzed his memories quickly, trying to locate the source of the problem.

  Neither himself nor Ding Lingdang was ignorant enough to have created such two big children without knowing it at all. So, the only possibility was that—

  Somebody stole the life seeds of me and Ding Lingdang and developed the two children!

  Li Yao's eyes suddenly grew extremely cold. Could it be that they are tools to threaten me just like Li Jialing?

  "Aya!"

  The two children had been observing Li Yao's behavior in curiosity all the time. Sensing his daunting vibe at this time, they exclaimed at the same time, "Dad is angry! Is he angry at us? Did we do anything wrong?"

  "No, no. I'm not angry."

  Li Yao was somehow upset when he saw the sparkling eyes of the two kids. He couldn't help but comfort them even though he was still reluctant to admit that he was their father.

  He was almost scratching his face again, wondering how he should handle such a complicated situation.

  In any case, children were always innocent, not to mention that they were his own children! If somebody did "create" them to deal with him, it would certainly be his responsibility to find out the one behind the curtain and teach the guy a lesson.

  Thinking quickly, Li Yao took a deep breath and tried to control his facial muscles and his vocal cords, asking in the most "gentle" way, "Why-Why are you here? Who brought you to this place?"

  The images of countless villains popped up in his head.

  Of the many villains whom he used to fight against, it seemed that any could've done that.

  "Nobody. We came here on our own!"

  The two children looked at each other and said with a sweet smile, "We are here to look for Dad after chasing you all the way from the federation to the Imperium!"

  "You two children, from the federation to the Imperium?"

  Li Yao was stunned again, yet he had to admit that it was very likely to be true. After all, the life seeds of himself and Ding Lingdang were stored in the federation, and there was no reason why they would be teleported to the Imperium uncannily.

  However, if they were just two regular kids—no, even if they were the kids of two experts in the Nascent Soul Stage, and they were talented enough to have started their training while they were still in the womb, what level could they have reached when they were no more than ten years old? They would've been considered as unbelievable geniuses if they could awaken their spiritual roots and reach the middle or high level of the Refinement Stage, wouldn't they?

  Even a monster like Li Jialing was still a lamb at anyone's mercy when he was younger than ten.

  A journey from the federation to the Imperium, and a dive to the depths of the capital planet—were they really accomplishable for two children?

  Also, were such a harsh cave of magma and such a weird "metal world" habitable and buildable for two children?

  He remembered it now!

  Li Yao remembered how he was rescued from the battlefield. It seemed that two battle puppets that belonged to the Black Iron Group betrayed their master Li Minghui and killed multiple more of their own kind unstoppably.

  Also, Li Yao heard a lot of weird conversations while he was in the coma. The pieces of the conversations were now surfacing, too!

  Li Yao's eyeballs were almost jumping out of his eye sockets. The blood all over his body was now frozen and now boiling, and his entire face was blue and black. He struggled to say, "You are… not human beings!"

  "Of course!"

  The two children did not deny it at all. They quickly nodded their heads and even turned on the tips of their toes. "I am Li Xiaoming. I am Li Wenwen. Mankind is our father, but we are certainly not human beings!"

  Ripples of information were spreading out of their tiny heads. Though feeble, they were completely different from the brainwaves of regular human beings.

  Receiving their instructions, the tiny spiritual puppets that looked like ants were also dancing in the same pace. They were like naughty children who were eager to show their products to their parents.

  "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!"

  Li Yao's head was expanding and exploding again. Looking at the carefree and innocent appearances of the two children, Li Yao found it both annoying and cute.

  It was strange that he was supposed to be alert, if not angry, when faced with such a weird scene, but he could not grow anxious at all.

  "What… are you exactly?" Li Yao asked, full of confusion.

  "Yes, what are we exactly?" The two children stopped dancing and looked back at Li Yao, blinking their big, glittering eyes.

  Even the tiny ants stopped moving and thought in silence.

  "Where did you come from? How were you 'created'?" Li Yao continued asking.

  "Right, why are we here, and how were we created?" the two children looked at each other and asked each other.

  "What do you want? Where are you going?" A few veins were bulging out of Li Yao's forehead.

  "Exactly, where are we going, and what are we going to do?" The two children held their chins, deep in thought, as if they were two little philosophers.

  "Enough!"

  Li Yao couldn't hold it anymore. "Stop mimicking me. Do you not know anything at all?"

  "We indeed do not know anything at all!"

  The two children replied innocently, "Where we are from, who we are, where we are going… We don't know the first thing about the answers to these questions. That's why we have come to the center of the cosmos from the edge of it, from the Star Glory Federation to the Imperium of True Human Beings, following Dad's trace all the way. We are hoping that Dad can tell us the final answer!"

  Chapter 2395: Backstories of the Children |

  Rendered speechless, Li Yao took a long breath and leaned against the wall lethargically; his messy hair rising up.

  "Dad doesn't look very happy." The girl looked at Li Yao carefully.

  "Does Dad not like us?"

  The boy exclaimed and shuddered in fear. "Does he want to destroy us?"

  The two children looked at each other and bit their lips softly, with uneasiness written all over their faces.
>
  "What are you talking about?"

  Li Yao was rather helpless. "Why would I destroy you? I just… I just… I just can't take in such a 'shocking' discovery for the time being. I need some time to calm myself down.

  "Just think how 'Vulture Li Yao' is applauded and worshipped by billions of people after a journey of a hundred years in the universe as an idol for countless young people. How unrestrained, how carefree, and how happy my life used to be!

  "I really never thought that I would be a… father so soon. I'm an orphan and barely had any family or childhood. I don't know how to get along with children at all.

  "So… So… I don't know what else to say now!"

  Li Yao's head was a mess at this moment, and he did not know what he was talking about.

  It felt both complicated and subtle to suddenly have such two weird "children".

  For the "pleasant surprise" that had landed out of nowhere, Li Yao felt more "surprised" than "pleasant" first, but gradually, a feeling that he never had before was spreading out in his heart.

  The previously invalid concept of "protection" seemed to have a concrete image now.

  "We totally understand it!"

  The two children nodded their heads solemnly. "Dad's brain has exceeded the limits of computation and needs a quick cooldown. Shall we bring some ice to Dad?"

  "That will be unnecessary."

  Li Yao was rather amused by the children's behavior that was disproportionate to their age. They were his bloodlines after all and looked agreeable no matter how creepy and weird the scene was, which seemed to be only adding to their fun.

  "How about this—"

  Thinking carefully for a moment, Li Yao said cautiously, "I have a lot of puzzles. It seems that you have a lot of puzzles, too. Then, let's work on them together and find the answer together alright?"

  "Excellent! Hooray for Dad!"

  The two children exclaimed and were about to jump at Li Yao again. The mechanical ants were also crawling to his body, making him have goosebumps again. He quickly said, "No, no, no. Until we completely figure out the problem, let's just keep our current distance. Don't overthink. It's not that Dad doesn't like you but because Dad has…'child phobia'. Yes. I have that congenital disease!"

  "Okay…"

  The two children said pitifully.

  "First of all, you are Li Xiaoming, and you are Li Wenwen, right? Who gave you those lousy names anyway? Since my name is Li Yao, you should've been named 'Li Shanshan' or 'Li Liangliang' to show that we are the same bloodline!"

  Li Yao calmed himself down and asked, "You really don't remember how you came to this world? Then, how did you know that I'm your father? When can your earliest memories be traced back to?"

  "Well…"

  Li Wenwen, the girl, thought for a moment and said, "Our most primitive data that we still keep can be traced back to the 'Hyper Spirits' that Professor Mo Xuan created decades ago. At that time, Professor Mo Xuan named us 'No. 17' and 'No 18'. However, we are not clear if No. 17 and No. 18 were us, because our consciousness was not born until a long time later."

  "Hyper Spirits, No. 17 and No. 18!"

  Li Yao's pupils constricted violently, with a layer of dense sweat leaking out of his forehead.

  The Hyper Spirits were a series of artificial intelligence that Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan created to control the federation and the Black Wind Fleet.

  Among them, No. 1 through No. 16 were relatively simple. They were mainly used to hack and control the super crystal processors in the critical posts of the Star Glory Federation for the purpose of controlling the Spiritual Nexus of the federation.

  After building sixteen kinds of artificial intelligence, Professor Mo Xuan accumulated abundant experience and finally began to craft "ultimate Hyper Spirits", hoping to hack and control the war network of the Black Wind Fleet!

  After two consecutive failures, he finally successfully built the Hyper Spirits named "No. 19", which played a terrifying role in the battle between the federation and the Black Wind Fleet.

  The by-products of the two failures were exactly "No. 17" and "No. 18", which were sealed in the "Virtual Spirits' Sector", the collapsed virtual world, by Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan.

  After the battle to defend the New Federation against the Black Wind Fleet and the extraterrestrial devils was over, a combat team whose members had extremely solid souls once dived into the collapsed Virtual Spirits' Sector to track the two artificial intelligence, only to find nothing. They seemed to have vanished into the void without leaving the slightest traces.

  Right. What vanished at the same time was the abundant data about Li Yao's brain tomography. The thing had puzzled Li Yao for quite a long time back then.

  However, the situation in the Imperium was changing each day. In order to infiltrate the Imperium sooner, he had been making careful preparations and training crazily all the time, and he soon dropped the issue.

  It was not until today that he realized what important things he had missed!

  As he expected, Li Xiaoming, the boy, went on, "We were not exactly us today when we were No. 17 and No. 18. We were just a cluster of complicated, redundant data streams. Also, because of the crazy accumulation of data, the operation of the burdened architecture was slower and slower and hindered, which led to the eventual collapse.

  "In the end, we were thrown into a place named 'Virtual Spirits' Sector' by Professor Mo Xuan. He had sealed many collapsed databases and bizarre, useless information in the place. It was sort of an 'information grave'."

  Li Wenwen continued, "Although No. 17 and No. 18 collapsed, they did not completely lose their functions. Their purpose was to swallow and control all the data. Naturally, motivated by their 'natural instincts', they devoured all the chaotic and wrong data floating in the Virtual Spirits' Sector.

  "When the chaos and faults were stocked, the intensity of the collapses was higher and higher, until the whole system was about to shut down. It was exactly at such a moment that No. 17 and No. 18 swallowed the brain tomography data that Dad left in the Virtual Spirits' Sector."

  The original purpose why the crystal processor specialists, including Professor Mo Xuan, created the "Virtual Spirits' Sector" was to create a virtual Star Glory Federation. Naturally, the influential figures in the history of the federation were all scanned so that their virtual versions could be duplicated.

  At that time, Li Yao was already qualified to have a statue of his own in the Virtual Spirits' Sector. In the statue, his feats, techniques, and his brain tomography were sealed.

  Before Li Yao went to the Ancient Sages Sector, Li Yao signed a document that authorized the federation to open his personal information a certain years later so that the future generations could study and be even stronger.

  It was a common practice among the high-level Cultivators.

  Many Cultivators would even sign an agreement to donate their bodies voluntarily before an adventure or a bloody battle. All their organs would be donated should anything happen to them for either transplantations or studies. It was all for the progress of the civilization!

  "When we swallowed the brain tomography data that Dad left, we were suddenly 'woken up'!"

  His eyes widened, Li Xiaoming waved his hands exaggeratedly and said, "Having woken up from the infinite chaos, we naturally began to consider three questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?"

  "In the past, No. 17 and No. 18 could think too, even on extremely complicated strategies and tactics."

  Li Wenwen added, "But all their thinking came from Professor Mo Xuan's instructions. But this time, faced with the boiling ocean and the dead cities of the Virtual Spirits' Sector, they began to think spontaneously without external instructions.

  "It was the first time that they thought on their own. Starting from that moment, 'they' became 'we'. We realized our existence and embarked on the journey of life.

  "It was exactly because we woke up after swallowing your brain tomogra
phy data, and because you 'enlightened' us in a certain mysterious way, that you are our father and creator!"

  Li Yao was both shocked and overwhelmed. Slowly digesting what the two kids just said, he couldn't help but think of something else.

  It was what a crystal processor specialist said when they were exploring the Virtual Spirits' Sector. According to the guy, the real artificial intelligence would not be born in the next ten thousand years based on the crystal processors and the development of the Spiritual Nexus in the Star Glory Federation, unless a "universal virus" from a higher dimension was teleported to this world and triggered the spontaneous thinking and evolution mechanism of the "weak artificial intelligence", transforming them into "strong artificial intelligence" or even real virtual lives that exceeded human beings!

  What the heck is this about?

  Li Yao asked himself in his heart.

  Pondering for a long time, he couldn't help but interrupt the kids, "Wait, since you originated from No. 17 and No. 18, the two Hyper Spirits, and the creator of Hyper Spirits is Professor Mo Xuan, I think it is more appropriate for you to call Professor Mo Xuan your dad. Why do you insist that I am your dad?"

  "No. No. 17 and No. 18 only provided some fundamental data for us. They were the nutrition that supported us, but they did not give us a real life."

  Li Xiaoming shook his head solemnly. "If you still can't understand, Dad, you can think this way. Human babies originate from zygotes, and zygotes are made of sperms and eggs. Sperms contain tremendous fructose and proteins, which come from the food that human beings ate in the beginning, say, chicken, pork, beef, etc. But chicken, pigs, and bulls actually have nothing to do with this sperm and the child to be born in the future, right?"

  "Of course, Dad."

  Li Wenwen said solemnly, "You were our sole sperm provider, both physically and mentally. Professor Mo Xuan was… a chef at best, who cooked for you so that you could create stronger sperms and be more energetic for procreation after your belly was full!"