"Me?"
Li Yao felt weirder and weirder. He mumbled, "Then, which one of us will be '100% Li Yao'?"
"About that … Don't be hasty. You'll know the answer in three days."
Red Pole Star smiled and invited him again, "How about it? Do you want to attend the meeting with me, Mr. Niu?"
"Forget it."
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao shook his head and said, "I have a headache. I'd like to take a rest."
"That's right. Ask Mr. Li Yao to take a rest. I'm more than enough to deal with the passionate readers!"
Daniel Zhang said eagerly, rubbing his fists.
Now that they both said so, Red Pole Star did not insist. He walked Li Yao and Daniel Zhang out of the pathway in person and asked Lady Gray Mist and Sparda to escort them to the conference hall and their residence respectively.
For a nameless, desolate island in the middle of the ocean, the conditions of the underground living room were not bad. Li Yao locked the door and threw himself onto the bed that was as soft as a sponge. He was in a trance as he moved up and down between the springs and the goose down.
For some reason, he was somewhat uneasy.
In fact, the meeting with Red Pole Star today went quite well. He received tremendous precious information and gained a basic understanding about the mysteries of the Prison of Reincarnation and even the grand universe. Also, although Red Pole Star's plan was simple, there was still a chance that it would work out if there was no other choice.
By logic, he shouldn't have been so uneasy.
However …
"If the novel 'Forty Thousand Years of Cultivation' is real, when did 'Cultivator Li Yao' in the book ever run into a smooth plan?"
Li Yao mumbled to himself, "Every time, the more successful a plan seems to be, the more shocking twists and turns it into the most terrible behind-the-scenes boss. The difficulty of the mission will soar by ten times. Huh. According to such a pattern, is it possible that the Red Pole Star is the mastermind behind everything this time? Well, he did look a little like him. Although this guy claimed to be the owner of the biggest soul fragment of Li Yao, it was obvious that he was not a proper Li Yao, judging from his evil appearance!
"Also, I seem to have forgotten some things in a daze.
"It's as if … as if I had done something not too long ago. Something very … terrifying, bloody, and terrifying. What was it? Was it the battle with the hunters? No, it should be a hundred times crueler than that. How could I forget?"
"Da da da da da."
Li Yao heard the sound of marbles falling from the ceiling again.
He immediately jumped up from his bed. His eyes bulged, and his nostrils flared. Cold sweat was popping up on his forehead.
This was underground. Above his head, there should be tens of millions of tons of rocks and concrete. Where would the glass marbles come from?
"Is there really a sound, or am I having a nervous breakdown?"
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao walked to the bathroom and filled a basin with cold water. He buried his head in it, trying to forget everything that could not be explained.
However, it took him a full three minutes to cool down his brain. When he raised his head, he was shocked by what he saw in the mirror.
What appeared in the mirror was not his face, not even his head.
It was a silver ball.
A silver-white ball grew out of his neck, replacing his face and head.
Weird brilliance was reflected on the surface of the ball, which was reflected by the mirror countless times. It did not have any facial organs, but it interweaved into a weird and mocking expression, as if another version of him was lurking in the mirror and laughing at him deeply.
Li Yao took two steps back. He almost slipped and fell to the ground.
Blinking his eyes, he looked at himself in the mirror and even extended his shivering hands to touch his face. The silver ball was immediately gone, and he regained his original appearance.
However, the blurred appearance caused him to fall into an even deeper level of bewilderment. He felt dizzy and dazed, and he was truly unable to figure out exactly what was going on.
Hasty ringtones suddenly came from the room outside.
Li Yao was shocked. After calming down, he realized that the mobile phone that Red Pole Star had given them was ringing.
This mobile phone could only be used within the Ark Island. Rather than calling it a mobile phone, it was more like a powerful, stable, and high-grade visual walkie-talkie with strong anti-interference capabilities. It could be used unimpeded even in the underground of the island. However, only a few people knew this number. Red Pole Star, Lady Gray Fog, Sparda, and of course, Daniel Zhang. Who would call him at this time?
Li Yao picked up the phone and saw that it was Daniel Zhang.
After the call was connected, deafening music and laughter came from the speakers. Zhang Da Niu's shiny face appeared on the screen. He was so excited that he looked like he had epilepsy.
From the gap between his face and the edge of the screen, it looked like the private room of a village karaoke hall, decorated in gold and jade.
There seemed to be some men and women with white arms and legs. Some were wailing, and some were laughing. It did not look like a reader meeting at all.
Daniel Zhang must have drunk a lot. He kept burping, and his eyes were a little red.
"Too enthusiastic. Oh, the readers are too enthusiastic!"
He said incoherently. "Li Yao, Mr. Niu can't hold it anymore. Why don't you join us? We'll discuss the future development of '40,000 Years of Cultivation' and the serious topic of how to revitalize the science fiction industry of our country!"
Li Yao frowned and hung up the phone without saying a word.
"What's going on?"
He said to himself, "What the hell is Red Pole Star doing?"
It was destined that he would not get an answer to this question today.
Li Yao felt that his head was getting more and more painful. When he lay down, his whole head was buzzing.
He resisted the weird noises for a long time. It was not until he fell asleep that he realized what the buzzing noises were exactly.
They were the screams of countless wronged souls struggling and roaring in the furious flames. Or rather, they were the horns of vengeance.
Li Yao had a dream. In the dream, he appeared on a particularly clear and real Earth. Perhaps it was the original Earth that Red Pole Star mentioned and the place where billions of reincarnations began.
It was not a paradise with a blue sky and white clouds. Instead, it was more like a purgatory that had been roasted by fire and was filled with smoke and radiation. He was surrounded by countless ragged, bizarre-looking people who congregated into a surging tide and moved in a certain direction together.
He did not understand the significance of the scene, but he vaguely sensed that he was infuriated as a member of the tide. It was the kind of fury that was filled with desperation after being betrayed and abandoned.
He rolled forward together with his ugly and angry compatriots around him. They extended their hunched hands toward the horizon and roared like animals. Countless gray, wriggling, ugly people joined them like an infuriated tide that was sweeping everything.
However, they failed to capture the traitor and the outcast. Just as they were baring their fangs and brandishing their claws and roaring, dozens of gray pillars of smoke appeared on the horizon. Inside the pillars of smoke were dazzling flames. The flames were wrapped in streaks of silver light. They were like immortals who had transcended the mortal world. With a wave of their sleeves, they tore through the clouds and pierced through the sky without even looking at them, disappearing without a trace.
The only thing left for them was a desolate land that was filled with radiation and a sky that was riddled with holes.
The sun on the horizon was blocked by the radiation dust caused by the thermonuclear war. The sunlight was refracted by the dust and turned into colorful mist that looked like waste water. Li Yao's dream turned into an abstract painting. The earthlings in the painting were like pitiful and hilarious ghosts. After realizing that they could never catch up with the betrayers and the outcasts, everybody seemed to have lost all their strength and sat down on the wasteland at a loss. Some were sobbing in low voices, some were cursing loudly, but more people were simply staring at the sun in a daze. They were looking at the origin of life, the sun that was incomparably generous and treated all creatures equally!
The sun soon gave them an answer.
Or rather, it delivered the final verdict to them.
Covered by the radiation dust, they could not see the whole process of the meteorite crashing into the sun, but they could clearly sense that the brightness of the sun had instantly increased to the maximum and was expanding, expanding, and expanding at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The oceans evaporated, the forests burned, and the earth cracked. All the creatures that were born because of the sun in billions of years were enveloped in flames and high temperatures that were absolutely unbearable for other creatures. They personally participated in the intense reactions of the sun and were completely carbonized, shattered, and annihilated in one second.
Including all the earthlings who were stranded on the wasteland.
However, Li Yao's dream did not end when billions of earthlings were burned and turned into ashes.
As his body was annihilated, he entered an even stranger and more absent-minded state, as if he had turned into … a drop of seawater in the vast ocean, a bit of hydrogen that made up the sun, or a … cell on a certain super life form that could not be described with words.
All his kind were in the same situation as him. Without the restraint of their ugly bodies, they could get to know each other better. With the help of plasma and electromagnetic waves, they could condense into a more delicate and beautiful structure.
It was hard to say whether he liked or disliked it. Although he was still not quite used to his brand-new living state, no matter what state he was in, it was much better than being betrayed and abandoned on the wasteland. It was ten thousand times better, wasn't it?
Life would eventually find a path that belonged to itself.
Fortunately, they had already found it.
…
Li Yao was woken up by the deafening buzzing at this moment.
There was no telling whether it was because the dream was too weird and terrifying, or because the buzzing was too ear-piercing, but his heartbeat was racing to the limit. He held the headboard and retched for a while, but he was still sweating. His spine was cold, and he could not summon any strength at all.
However, the incessant beeping was telling him one thing, something that was absolutely impossible.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
