"Excellent!"
Coloured Glaze exclaimed in joy, only to grimace in pain because of the bruises on her body. She then winked at Han Te. "Did you hear that? Even Sister Yun believes that we can become Cultivators!"
"Sister Yun …"
Han Te ate the synthesized food that Zuo Jingyun had brought over. His face was so dirty that he looked like a cat with a dirty face. He smiled in embarrassment. "I didn't know that you would be such an easy-going person. We thought that you were a tough guy when we saw you on the 'earthly dragon' earlier!
"Speaking of which, you are the first real Cultivator that we've ever met other than my masteress. There are too many things that we want to know about the Cultivators and Starlight. Can you tell us more about them?"
"Of course."
Coloured Glaze blushed and said, "We only know a thing or two about the Cultivators. What can we do to become real Cultivators, and what can we change the world into? Can you tell us, Sister Yun?"
Zuo Jingyun coughed softly and hesitated. With a bitter smile, she said, "In fact, I don't know much more about the Cultivators than you do. Sometimes, I even doubt myself whether or not someone like me is qualified to be called a real Cultivator. Am I a fake? What's the point of all the perseverance of 'Starlight'? "
"Well …"
Coloured Glaze and Han Te looked at each other in bewilderment. Then, they looked at Li Yao in confusion. "How did that happen?"
"Boring theories are not interesting at all. How about this? I'll tell you my story."
Zuo Jingyun rolled up a hair on Coloured Glaze's head with her cold, hard metal fingers subconsciously. "Do you want to hear it?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
Coloured Glaze and Han Te nodded at the same time.
"You can say that I joined 'Starlight' the moment I was born. I was not born under the fierce and vicious sunlight in the Land of Sins like you but inside the rumbling 'earthly dragons' below the ground."
Caught in the distant memories, Zuo Jingyun mumbled, "My hometown was a very, very long 'earthly dragon'. My mother was a maintainer of the earthly dragon, and my father was a warrior and explorer.
"For as long as I can remember, the sound of drills shattering rocks has been echoing in my ears all day long. There were bumps and quakes below my feet. As far as my eyes could see, the whole world was a narrow, long channel. Outside of the channel was a dark rock stratum with the occasional starry, colorful minerals.
"Did you know? For a long time, I even thought that the whole world was a hard and suffocating rock, and human beings lived by digging holes in the rock like metal worms. I could not imagine mountains, rivers, blue skies, or white clouds, much less the infinite sea of stars that was billions of times vaster than the sky.
"My whole world was such a narrow, long channel, with all kinds of complicated, dazzling gears and dials, sizzling tubes, and synthetic food that tasted like wax.
"The adults were busy with work all day long. All kinds of bizarre faults would happen to the earthly dragon every second, and we would always run into rocks or even metals that were too hard ahead of us. Everybody roared in the roaring steam and knocked the wrenches and drills hard. The children like us followed them and learned how to maintain and ride the earthly dragon from the very beginning. We also learned the differences between thousands of minerals and the resources of the past.
"At that time, all of us only did two things.
"Firstly, we drilled below the ground and searched for the mines and the underground city ruins left by the Martial Meritocrats Civilization a thousand years ago. We excavated the pathetic fuel, food, and other resources from them to maintain the functioning of the earthly dragon and our internal organs.
"Secondly, we avoided the penetrators sent by 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky'. If we could not avoid them, we would have fierce battles with them below the ground.
"The penetrators sent by the Immortal Cultivators did not need to be loaded with a lot of civil carriages. They only needed to carry the most basic warriors. Therefore, they were much more agile and faster than us. However, they were searching on a large scale after all, and we only needed to lurk and hide quietly. Also, our ancestors had lived below the ground for hundreds of years and became the natives of this place. We were as familiar with the complicated terrain as our own fingerprints. Therefore, we were able to fight on par with each other, and we often slipped away through the gaps.
"Of course, at that time, I did not know anything about 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky', nor did I understand the difference between 'Cultivators' and 'Immortal Cultivators'. I thought that the brutal and swift small penetrators were our natural enemies and that they attacked us by the same logic as an eagle hunting a rabbit.
"Every 'earthly dragon' was a mobile village. Occasionally, a lot of 'earthly dragons' would gather together to exchange assets and intelligence and perform large-scale maintenance and upgrade. That was our grandest festival. It was like people from all the villages nearby had come to the fair. The children would even dress up the earthly dragons of their 'villages' with all kinds of colors and compare whose earthly dragon was more awesome and beautiful.
"However, in my childhood, such festivals were rare. The Immortal Cultivators besieged us more and more frequently, and their dragnet was more and more thorough. Many 'earthly dragons' were discovered by them. They detonated their crystal bombs and blew apart billions of tons of rocks, blocking the mines and tunnels alive. Our 'earthly dragons' suffered quite a few attacks, too. One third of the carriages and almost half of the soldiers were lost.
"It was in such a miserable war that I gradually learned everything from my parents. I learned the glorious history of the 'Cultivators' and 'Starlight', and I also learned how evil 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky' and the 'Immortal Cultivators' were.
"At that time, I scoffed at a lot of what my parents said. I did not think that the Cultivators and Starlight were 'glorious' at all.
"My parents told me that the Cultivators were the pride and hope of the civilization of mankind, and that Starlight would certainly deal a heavy blow to the Immortal Cultivators after hundreds of years of resistance below the ground.
"At that time, I was younger than you are right now, but I vaguely felt that my parents were bragging. Since there was a blue sky, white clouds, and a boundless sea of stars outside, and countless sinners in the Land of Sins who were suffering in pain and torment were waiting for us to save, we were suppressed and beaten below the ground like turtles, living a homeless, panicked life all day long. What kind of 'pride' was such a Cultivator? What kind of 'brilliance' did they have? What kind of 'hope' could they bring?
"Also, we had been taking the beating passively all the time, and the situation was getting more and more severe. Many of my friends had only seen them once in the gathering. Later, I was told that their 'earthly dragons' were discovered by the Immortal Cultivators and crushed into garbage together with them. Then, what kind of 'heavy blow' did we deal to the Immortal Cultivators exactly? Did we merely consume some of the enemy's drills and fuel?
"All in all, I was in the rebellious phase at that time. I did not think that there was anything great about being a Cultivator. I even felt that I was unlucky enough to have been born in the 'earthly dragons' of 'Starlight' and had to live such a lackluster and desperate life. I thought about escaping from the underground world, from Starlight, and from the bullsh * t Cultivators, to live another unburdened, unrestrained, and entirely different life under the brilliant sunlight.
"Such a day finally came.
"Because we were seriously short of hands, we had to risk recruiting helpers on the surface of the planet. It was the first time that I touched the real sunlight, breathed the real fresh air, and saw the large, fluffy gray clouds. I could roar and roar blatantly, and my voice could fly all the way to the horizon.
"To this day, I can't forget the day when the first ray of sunlight pierced through my pupils and blinded me for ten minutes.
"We found some tough bandits, or slaves, in one of the Bloody Worlds. They used to be a very powerful gang in the local area, but they were annihilated by almost ten other gangs because they were too powerful. The few survivors left were all reduced to slaves.
"We annihilated the gangs and rescued all the slaves. After interrogation and identification, we brought some of the people who could be modified to the underground world.
"Then …"
Zuo Jingyun's voice became hoarse and messy. Pain flashed on her face quickly, and she could not help but rub the wound where her left shoulder was connected to the metal arm.
"What happened after that?"
Coloured Glaze and Han Te were fascinated and could not help but ask.
Frowning, Zuo Jingyun said quickly and briefly, "Later, one of the slaves betrayed us and summoned a large batch of Immortal Cultivators, who completely destroyed the 'earthly dragon' that I grew up in. My parents were both killed in the battle, and I lost my left arm. I struggled to escape to the ruins of an underground city and luckily survived the disaster."
"Ah!"
Coloured Glaze bulged her eyes and lowered her head in embarrassment. Thinking for a moment, she grabbed Zuo Jingyun's right hand, which was still warm. "I'm sorry, Sister Yun."
It was not until this moment that Li Yao and A Boxing Champion realized why Zuo Jingyun hated the tough bandits and thugs in the Land of Sins so much. They were even more impressed by the one-armed female warrior now.
Zuo Jingyun smiled and touched Coloured Glaze's head with her artificial arm. "It was a long, long time ago. I … have almost forgotten it. What does it have to do with you?
"From that moment on, I stopped thinking about the golden sunlight, the blue sky, the white clouds, and the free wind. All I could think about was revenge.
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