Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Jialing's face revealed an unspeakably complicated expression, muttering: “There is a reason, but... Why does every time I listen to Brother Yao, it makes sense, but turning to Sister Long, it makes sense, even occasionally think about the Black Star Emperor Wu Yingqi, also seems to make sense? You're all right. I'm totally confused! ”

“So you're too young to have more experience! ”

Li Yao said, “Not to mention, many times it's just paper talk, exaggeration, all kinds of strange logic can be packaged to no bloom, but the key still depends on how to do it and how to practice it.

“I admit that the situation in the center of the star sea is now a mess, and Shinji Avenue looks very unsettled, but it is precisely because of the mess, the Black Star Emperor, the four election emperors and the Allies checked and checked each other that it is convenient for us to touch the fish and rise in turmoil!

“Five hundred years back, the real human empire is relatively solid, and the age of iron slabs is nothing but hopelessness!

“So give Brother Yao some confidence, give Brother Hu Zhen Avenue some confidence, trust me, this kind of fish stealing chicken while the fire robbery is all my specialty! ”

Li Jialing hesitated for a long time, or nodded slightly. “I will keep Brother Yao's words in mind. In any case, I will never be a coward or a coward! ”

At this point, they suddenly heard an intermittent but extremely rhythmic tone coming from deep inside the town, as if someone were singing a weird song.

After listening to each other with a slight glimmer, they discovered that the young and lively voice was the children they had just seen and climbed onto the main control crystal brain to play with.

Kids have never breathed so much fresh air, and "Drunk Oxygen” is more intense than grown-ups, laughing, clapping hands and singing ancient children's songs —— maybe 10,000 years ago, in the days of the Star Sea Empire, when children were born, now all ancestors, have sung exactly the same children's songs in a moment of joy?

Li Yao closed his eyes and listened for a moment. "That's very nice, isn't it? ”

“Yes.”

Li Jialing said softly, "When I was a child, I used every second to practice and fight. I never sang anything. ”

"One day you'll have offspring too," said Li Yao. "A very cute little meaty fellow. Do you want them to live in a world without light and songs? ”

Li Jialing was silent for a long time and gradually tightened his fist: “Brother Yao, let's go deeper underground and see what the wildlings in the 'dark death zone' look like. ”

After checking some of the materials taken underground and finally confirming the intricate gap map, Li Yao and Li Jialing crossed a long tunnel and opened the rusty shelter gate to the wild under the attention of several heavily armed underground pedestrians.

As soon as they leave the ancient sanctuary, the outside temperature suddenly rises by dozens of degrees, and the air becomes increasingly dull and cloudy, making them feel like they are in invisible lava, melted at any moment, solidifying into parts of a thousand figure, colorful rock formations.

Outside the shelter, there are countless tunnels leading up, down, left, left, west, north, south - Li Yao rubbed the rock walls of these tunnels with his hands and found traces of smooth entry, man-made polishing, unlike naturally generated, and spiral roads one lap at a time, knowing that all the tunnels were struck a long time ago, perhaps 10,000 years ago, with large earth-drilling vehicles and excavators.

Li Jialing told Li Yao that when the Demonic Beast Dynasty and the Star Sea Empire collapsed, countless demons and practitioners fled to the ground. At first, they naturally carried a large treasure dedicated to the ground, and the earthquake and excavator were the top priority.

At that time, no one wanted to be trapped in a shelter alone, and the exiles had ambitious plans to open up countless tunnels with earth-drilling vehicles and excavators, connecting all shelters together and even rebuilding a vast "underground empire”.

Perhaps at first they were partially successful, with hundreds and thousands of shelters collectively forming vast forces capable of maximizing the exchange of goods and information to sustain civilization on the ground.

But the scenery is not long. Soon, the “Underground Empire” established by the demonic tribe and the "Underground Empire” established by the cultivators discovered each other, and immediately launched a bloody storm, endless underground war - the cultivators of the time have just emerged from the "30,000 years of great darkness”. There is still a bitter hatred against the demonic tribe, and the demonic tribe is immersed in the pain of the extinction of the dead country. There is no possibility of compromise or reconciliation.

The magnitude of that war is certainly a hundred times more brutal than the "starlight organization" at the bottom of the wretched land of Wuyin. Deep beneath the earth, which lacks all the resources such as sunshine and drinking water, the war is doomed to no victor.

The tunnels of the demons and the tunnels of the people were entangled and collapsed together; the earthquakes of both sides drilled through the heads of the enemies, and the tracks crushed the bones of the enemies; and the supermassive system of digging in with hundreds of gear plates, which could have created a bright future, crushed the enemies and shattered their civilization.

Today, 10,000 years later, the civilization of the past is nearly extinguished by ashes, leaving behind only these twisted tunnels and abandoned shelters, as well as the remains of decaying ashes at the end of the tunnel and in the corners of the shelter, silently talking about the brutality of war and the cruelty of hatred.

Li Jialing told Li Yao that with 10,000 years of earthquakes and lava eruptions, the vast majority of tunnels were broken and distorted, turning into a dead end.

There are also abandoned shelters at the end of tunnels that have nothing but remains and ashes - everything of marginal value has long been removed.

Only a handful of tunnels lead to deep underground caves, mostly man-made, oversized bases intended to house exiled civilizations, which now become habitats for wildlings and monsters.

Longyang Jun spent a long time here, exploring the tunnels and natural fractures near District 10084, and carefully drew a 3D map to import Li Jialing's portable crystal brain, coupled with a positioning chip that can lock her coordinates in real time, but is not afraid to go the wrong way.

The tunnels, which were supposed to communicate “underground roads” between shelters, were naturally not too small and had a diameter of at least three or five metres or more, sufficient to accommodate a wearing crystal coat and a heavily armed fighter travelling through them, and were not bored to walk.

Li Yao and Li Jialing are all people with divinity. Although there is no light at all, the air is boring and hot, and they are still in good luck.

Even if tunnels are torn apart by earthquakes and only narrow, curved gaps remain, they can barely alter the structure of bones and muscles and squeeze them hard - since wildlings can pass through these gaps, they cannot be too narrow and distorted.

Soon after that, the lights in the 10084 district disappeared into the dark, as if they had entered a rocky abyss that no one had stepped into since the floods. The absence of half a sound around them was an absolute silence of death. Instead, the peristalsis of human organs and the running sound of blood became extraordinarily clear, and every breath became deafening.

This is the dark death zone where wildlings often move.

The two released psychic energy, carefully perceived in each rock gap, and discovered a number of creatures that could only be discovered tens of thousands of metres deep.

There's a creature that grows like a fungus blanket, like a moss, and even a small umbrella that grows in the hottest places in the rock crevices, and it's rare that when they grow an umbrella that opens, the umbrella actually emits orange yellow light, like a tiny lantern.

Li Jialing told Li Yao that this creature, which resembles a fungus carpet and moss, known as "flame flower” by the underground people, dates back to the flood times hundreds of thousands of years ago, and is most likely an experimental life conditioned by Pangu or Female Civilization - because naturally formed organisms rarely possess such strange properties.

“Flame Flowers" feed on the thermal energy of the ground, and even masses come together to form bacterial carpets that can creep forward, like cattle and sheep hunting the steps of lava.

Their body structure is naturally not strong enough to be undamaged in the magma, but as long as the magma cools and solidifies slightly, it becomes their fattest “meadow”, and the masses of "flame flowers" will wrap up the slightly cooled lava and trickle down and suck the heat out of it.

The “flame flowers” themselves are located at the bottom of the subsurface ecosystem, which is the food of countless insects and reptiles, supporting the entire complex food chain building; and they absorb a great deal of thermal energy and dramatically reduce the temperature of the subsurface, leaving wildlings barely able to survive; and more importantly, after absorbing enough thermal energy, the "flame flowers" can emit a great deal of visible light, which is an indispensable condition for myriad subsurface plants to react similarly to "photosynthesis", and only these amazing reactions like "photosynthesis” can devour carbon dioxide and transform it into essential oxygen.

No matter how wildlings evolve, they can't evolve into anaerobic life without oxygen at all, in other words, without “flame flowers," the entire subsurface ecosystem is going to collapse.

It is said that there are also some of the most advanced scholars in the real human empire who want to understand the wonders of "flame flowers” - simple structures, ancient forms of primitive fungi, as if they were transitional forms between life and non-life, and modulated by flood civilizations such as Pangu and Lady Wan, which contain thousands of wonders that humans at this moment cannot fully grasp.