Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Three days later, the Magical Equipment Exposition was still on fire. Although it was late at night, hundreds of thousands of tourists were still having a great time inside the park. The visual and sound effects cast the center of the Grand Desolate Plateau into a colorful paradise.

Inside the meeting center, the sixth Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage began.

Starting from five years ago, the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage became a regular meeting that was held once every year. However busy they were, all experts in the Nascent Soul Stage would try to put their work down and gather for the meeting. They would communicate with each other on their new knowledge in training in the past year, the progress of their projects, and the latest development of the research fields, while they looked for cooperation and trade opportunities.

Although the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage was just a spontaneous, unofficial meeting, it boasted unparalleled significance for the future of the three Sectors.

Many vital projects actually originated from the collisions of inspiration in the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage.

It was safe to say that the New Federation, a galaxy behemoth that was destined to swallow the stars one day, began its first step of growth during the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage.

This was the first time that Ding Lingdang had participated in the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage.

When she walked into the meeting hall holding Li Yao’s hand, she was particularly excited as she bulged her eyes and looked around.

The decorations of the meeting hall, however, slightly shocked her.

The Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage had kept the shabby if not messy decorations exactly as the first time it was held.

Such an environment could give all the participants a sense of urgency.

Over the past five years, all the participants of the meeting had been training with their all. Every one of them had three to five super projects in their hands. They were so busy at their work that they often had no chance to meet each other except at the meeting.

Some of the participants had become good friends after the five years of development even if they did not know each other in the beginning. They were greeting each other warmly as they saw one another.

This Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage was particularly different from the previous years.

The first phase of the exploration on Kunlun had finished. The technology, techniques, and training systems of the three Sectors had been preliminarily integrated. The digestion and absorption of the knowledge from the Imperium of True Human Beings and the Pangu civilization had also hit a bottleneck.

The Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Flying Star Sector, and the Blood Demon Sector were about to embark on a whole new journey!

It was not Speaker Jiang Hailiu who hosted this Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage but Li Yao’s old friend, Professor Mo Xuan.

After he turned into a special life form star spirit and swallowed the computational ability of the star child, Professor Mo Xuan’s expertise in the arts of refining had soared exponentially.

Also, after the Battle of Kunlun, he had swallowed the mainframe crystal processor on Flourishing Sun, the war base of the Immortal Cultivators. He had developed a new understanding of the Immortal Cultivators’ system of refining.

Based on that, Professor Mo Xuan had become one of the leading persons in the exploration of Kunlun. On the other hand, with the support of the Glorious Sunlight Group, he was also actively increasing the capability of the Refining Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution by communicating with the elite universities in the Flying Star Sector and the Blood Demon Sector and hiring many professors and scholars from the two Sectors to teach in the Refining Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution.

Today, the Refining Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution had already distinguished itself with a comprehensive capability very close to that of the Refining Department of Deep Sea University, which ranked top in the federation. In many cutting-edge subjects and interdisciplinary research topics, it had even surpassed the old enemy. The two parties were now on par with each other, each having their own advantages.

As for Professor Mo Xuan himself, he had been elected the president of the Refiners’ Association of the Federation. He was doubtlessly one of the best refiners in the federation!

Since the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage and the Magical Equipment Exposition were held together, it was only natural that he had been asked to host the meeting.

“In the past five years, we have made significant breakthroughs in every field regarding magical equipment and techniques. Many super projects that concern the next hundred years have yielded promising results!”

On the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage, Professor Mo Xuan got directly to the main topic. “Our main research products are focused on five fields!

“First of all, the bulk raising of the ‘super warriors’! With the spiritual energy generated incessantly on Kunlun by transforming the radiation from the pulsar, we have implemented the Three-Five Plan, allowing many training prodigies to improve their level at the speed of light! Fellow Cultivator Ding Lingdang, who is sitting with us right now, is the greatest success of the plan so far!

“Secondly, the super-long human hibernation and unfreezing. We have received the help of Fellow Cultivator Gui Suishou, the oldest individual in the three Sectors. We have also retrieved much valuable technology from the debris of the Pangu civilization’s escape capsules. Substantial breakthroughs have been made!

“Right now, we have realized long-term hibernation, with a success rate close to 100% and an energy cost meeting the actual demand. A Cultivator’s body and level will not be affected at all even if they hibernate for five hundred years!

“Thirdly, the starship technologies, especially the cross-world starships that can perform dozens of space jumps in a row!

“The starship specialists from the Flying Star Sector are to credit for the remarkable achievement.

“They have completely parsed the Imperium of True Human Beings’ war base while also studying the starship debris left by the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan on the surface of Kunlun. In only five years, the technology of our starships has been boosted by at least five hundred years!

“Fourthly, the space navigation that is directly related to the starship technology. As is well known, we discovered a primeval navigation map left by the Pangu Clan in the escape center on Kunlun, which included most of the information regarding the space zones around us!

“The decryption, restoration, and deduction on the star map has not been stopped for one second in the past five years. Right now, we have basically grasped the basic situation of the thousands of space zones near the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Blood Demon Sector, and Flying Star Sector!

“Lastly, the techniques and the technologies about the Colossi!

“It’s true that we haven’t entirely cracked the mysteries of the Colossi yet, nor are we able to develop brand-new Colossi on our own. We can only do the simple assemble and modification work. After five years, we have only assembled five Colossi!

“This number is too low. However awesome a Colossus is, it cannot decide the victory of a war!

“However, the techniques, technologies, spells, and runes retrieved from the broken parts and units of the Colossi can generally be applied to all kinds of aggressive magical equipment, especially crystal suits!

“After applying the runes and techniques related to the Colossi on a large scale, and together with the ‘superstring magical equipment’ from the Imperium of True Human Beings, our crystal suits are taller, faster, and stronger than five years ago. Their survival abilities and their operational duration in a battle have both witnessed revolutionary improvements!”

With Professor Mo Xuan’s opening remarks, information streams as vast as an ocean flooded out on the colorful light beams around the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators, displaying the breakthroughs in the tens of thousands of subcategories in great detail!

“It is not an exaggeration to say that, after five years of integration and the great development on Kunlun, the comprehensive capabilities of the three Sectors are at least three times higher than five years ago!”

Professor Mo Xuan extended three fingers to stress the conclusion.

All the participants were quite calm. They were all more or less numb to the shocking breakthroughs in the past five years now.

They all knew that Professor Mo Xuan was not bluffing and that the increase of three times was merely a conservative estimate.

“However…” Professor Mo Xuan changed the topic and said solemnly, “I believe that we all know clearly what has facilitated such ‘explosive development’!

“In the past five years, we have been focused on the fields with the least technological difficulties and the most relics and heritages. They are the fields that are easiest to crack.

“Let’s say that we are faced with an exam paper about the civilization development. Right now, the simplest multiple-choice questions and the fill-in-the-blanks at the front have been completed, but those questions only make up ten percent of the total score. Even if we answer all of correctly, it is still not guaranteed that we will not ‘fail’!

“The remaining ninety percent of the questions will definitely not be as easy. We are destined to be faced with tough and bloody battles in the next ten years. We will have to settle the obstacles patiently one after another. It is unlikely that our development will be as smooth and fast as the previous five years!

“I believe that everybody knows what matters most if we do not want to fail the exam.

“That’s right. It’s our size!

“Right now, we have only three Sectors. The population, resources, relics, and training systems are too few, weak, and incomplete after all. How can you dedicate a grandiose performance inside a small nut?

“Explore new Sectors, find new resources, arts, techniques, and relics, bring the compatriots there to our side, and trigger the most dazzling sparks of wisdom in the collision of different Sectors!

“Three Sectors is far from enough to compete with the Imperium of True Human Beings or the Alliance of the Holy Covenant in any regard!

“However, if we can discover seven to ten new Sectors in the next hundred years and join hands with them, we will certainly grow into a force at the edge of the cosmos that nobody can underestimate. We will have enough weight to seek a strategic balance between the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance!

“Time and tide wait for no one! Nobody knows how long the journeys in the universe will take. Even if Sectors occupied by human beings are indeed discovered, it will still take tremendous time to convince them to work with us instead of joining our enemies. Therefore, we must start our preparations right now and hopefully send out the first batch of space explorers in the next year!

“The Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage this year will be themed around ‘March into the Universe’. We will mainly discuss the topic from three perspectives.

“Firstly, the technological perspective. If we are marching into the universe, how and where are we going, and how are we going to find new allies?

“Secondly, the integrational perspective. If new Sectors that have civilizations of human beings are truly discovered, how are we going to embrace them into our system? After all, judging from the examples of the Curly Dragon civilization, the Medicine Fork civilization, and the Martial Meritocrats civilization, they may be unwilling to abandon their independence and join hands with us!

“Thirdly, the personnel perspective. Who exactly is going to be deployed for such important missions? Naturally, the ‘space explorers’ cannot be too weak, but if the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators are sent away, too many things may be affected when they are not around. We have to determine the people for the job after careful consideration!”