Chapter 559: Born in Iron Plateau, Die in Iron Plateau!
"The civilization of the Flying Star Sector was in its golden years before the apocalypse. Everything was thriving. No difficulties seemed to be stopping us from striding forward.
"However, the news of the apocalypse instantly dragged us from the golden years to the time of desperation.
"The new generation born in such a period had a different understanding of the world from their parents. They were almost born with the hostility against each other."
Li Yao was confused. "If such a catastrophe was coming, everybody should have been more united. Even if they did not look eye to eye, they could have simply avoided interacting with the dissidents. What was the hostility for?"
Sha Yulan explained, "It had been estimated that the apocalypse would occur some seventy years later. But with the development of the observation technology, the trajectory and speed of the apocalypse had been rectified multiple times, and it was determined precisely in the end that the apocalypse would arrive a hundred and one years later.
"A hundred years was enough for several generations to be born.
"Imagine you are a homer who was born in such an era. Your parents tell you, when you are still learning how to talk, that your civilization will suffer a destructive strike in several decades' time and that your only hope is to build an enormous shield to resist it.
"Your parents, your grandparents, and your brothers and sisters are all striving for the purpose. The whole significance of your life is to contribute to such a cause!
"If you are a Cultivator, you may go into space temporarily to construct the planetary defense system.
"If you are an ordinary person, you may be digging holes day and night in order to build underground shelters that can be hundreds of meters deep.
"Everybody is burning their life and soul.
"Countless Cultivators fall while they are building the planetary defense array. Some of them are even crushed to pieces by the rushing meteoroids.
"Equally many ordinary people also sacrifice themselves because of the cave collapses, poisonous gas, and the scourge of demon beasts.
"You've experience everything. When your father dies in the space, when your brother is torn apart by demon beasts, and when you dedicate everything to the construction of the shield, you are suddenly told that some other people are not willing to fight side by side with you; they are going to abandon you and their home and simply run away!
"They do not just run away; they will even take away a lot of resources with them!
"The resources could've been used to enlarge and widen your shield so that more people can be protected!
"But now, because of the cowardice of those people, the shield guarding the entire civilization is smaller, lighter, and thinner.
"What would you think of those people?"
Li Yao was deep in thought.
Sha Yulan continued her explanation. "It is the same for the spacers. The new generation of spacers were informed that their destiny was to create countless crystal warships and sail afar with their civilization.
"During the decades, countless people died on their posts, leaving many touching stories behind. Some refiners were drawing structural designs of starships day and night, only to collapse and never wake up again!
"Every spacer believed that, if they could produce one more starship, more lives would be saved, and their civilization could continue!
"If you were such a spacer, what would you think if you knew that some diehards have stolen a lot of resources to build a big and useless turtle shell because of their foolishness and stubbornness?
"Fewer resources mean fewer starships, and fewer starships mean that tens of thousands of people may not be able to survive!"
Li Yao was silent.
It was indeed an impasse.
"Furthermore, as the strategies of the two sides proceeded, their social forms underwent tremendous changes.
"The society of the homers regarded the underground shelters as the cores. Before the shelters were fully established, they had built countless enclosed cities on the ground simulating the underground environment. They were hoping that they could persist underground even if several meteors breached through the defense array.
"For decades, in order to better prepare the people for the apocalypse, they even manually created a lot of meteor showers with unbelievable technology as rehearsals.
"As for the spacers, to adapt to the lifestyle in space later when each starship would be a small society, all the people were sorted into different towns. The smaller towns had a population of several thousand, and the larger ones had tens of thousands.
"Each such town was going to be a starship society later. The residents of the same town would board on the same starship.
"The Cultivators from the six major sects also took the opportunity to enter every 'starship town' and establish their branches as the leadership of the starship.
"When a starship was successfully produced, one of the towns would be migrated into the starship as a whole.
"After years of preparation, everybody had been used to a society of such a small scale. The immigration was mostly smooth without much trouble.
"It was not hard to guess why the new generations born in the two vastly different social forms found each other alien and hated each other!"
Xiong Wuji was suddenly angry when he listened to this part of the story. He raised his voice and said, "Cut the irrelevant stuff. Tell him about 'Plan Prometheus'!"
Sha Yulan paused for a moment. For the first time, the tranquility on her face was gone. She said gravely, "Although the relationship between the two sides were bad, they were faced with a common threat after all. For the big picture, there were never any real conflicts, until the hundredth year, right before the arrival of the apocalypse.
"At that time, the homers had finally finished their planetary defense array. However, due to the lack of resources, it did not reach the stellar-level, however close it was.
"The spacers had also produced a lot of starships and space towns.
"Because of the restriction of technology, the space towns did not have the ability to sail across space zones, much less constellations.
"But they were distinguished for their large size and their self-circulating biological system. Therefore, a lot of ordinary people could live on them.
"Finally, the time to part had come!
"The two divisions of civilization would embark on different paths of survival shortly.
"If things went just like that, maybe hundreds of years later, the misunderstanding between the two parties could have been eliminated, and they could still have reunited as one.
"But just then, 'Plan Prometheus' was implemented.
"Many spacers were the management and leadership of the six major sects. They had the top confidential training techniques and facilities in their sects under their control.
"Many such assets were inherited from the Star Ocean Imperium. They could only be read or utilized, but not copied or duplicated.
"According to the agreement, the spacers would leave some of the techniques and training facilities before they set off.
"But no one realized that, as the new generations of the spacers had grown up and risen to power, some of them had become the organizers of the final immigration!
"281 spacers of the new generation reached a secret agreement and carried out 'Plan Prometheus'. They stole all the techniques and training facilities that should've been left for the homers!
"When theft was discovered, they had long run away on their starships!"
Li Yao was dumbfounded. "That's highly immoral."
Techniques and training facilities were the essentials for a Cultivation sect. If such assets were stolen, the Cultivation sect would lose all its knowledge!
No wonder there were only 'qi-trainers' on Iron Plateau. Their techniques had all been lost.
It also explained why the qi-trainers loathed the Cultivators so much.
Sha Yulan said grimly, "What is moral and what is immoral when we are talking about the life and death of billions of people and the continuity of a civilization?
"The new generation had no doubts about the spacers' theories and believed that staying on Iron Plateau was a dead end. The techniques and training facilities would only be buried together with the homers.
"If so, they might as well steal all the techniques and training facilities so that the spacers could be stronger and the likelihood of the survival of their civilization could be higher!
"Every technique was a spark of civilization. Everything they did was to pass on the sparks of the human civilization. That was all.
"It was a sordid, cruel, and yet a very realistic decision.
"The homers naturally burst into fury when they discovered everything. However, there was nothing they could do. They did have some starships, but they did not have enough crew members. As the apocalypse drew close, most Cultivators had to stay inside the planetary defense array to ensure that it functioned normally. Therefore, they could only stand by and watch the spacers run away.
"Finally, the apocalypse arrived!"
Li Yao held his breath. Although he knew that human beings of the Flying Star Sector had survived the catastrophe, he still felt that his heart pounding.
Sha Yulan continued to speak bitterly. "Out of everyone's expectation, the supposedly three waves of meteoroid showers gave birth to a fourth wave, which lunged at the main fleet of spacers.
"The main fleet of spacers, caught off guard, was almost entirely demolished.
"The remaining starships were swallowed by space storms and lost in the broken universe. They had to survive on their own in darkness. It was not until four thousand years later that the civilization gradually recovered.
"However, even to this day, the civilization hasn't returned to its former glory!
"The ending of the homers was not any better. Although the strongest wave of the apocalypse was split to strike the fleet of the spacers, its remaining power was still beyond the capacity of a defense array that had failed to reach the stellar-level. A lot of meteoroids broke through the defenses and hit the surface of Iron Plateau. The environment of Iron Plateau was completely reshaped. A disaster of hundreds of years was thus begun!
"During the calamity, all the Cultivators above the Refinement Stage, including the Building Foundation Stage Cultivators, the Core Formation Stage Cultivators, and a few Nascent Soul Stages, did their best to drive the defense array to resist the apocalypse lead by a Divinity Transformation Cultivator. In the end, they all perished when their souls were burnt out!"
Li Yao did not understand. "Wait. Didn't you say just now that all the three Divinity Transformation Cultivators were spacers?"
Sha Yulan sighed. "The Divinity Transformation Cultivator who was the first to be attacked in the 'God Slaying Initiative' chose to stay on Iron Plateau in the end. He said that he had not changed his mind, and he still believed that space was the only destiny. But it was the duty of a Cultivator to protect mankind. Since so many ordinary people were staying in their homeland, one of the three Divinity Transformation Cultivators should also stay and fulfill their responsibility.
"Born in Iron Plateau, die in Iron Plateau.
"It was what the female assassin had said a hundred years ago.
"When the apocalypse arrived, the Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivator recited the eight words and died a hero's death together with countless other Cultivators in the battlefield!"