Chapter 2038 – Our Final Pride
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Starting from when the first batch of people settled on New Ming Planet, it had only experienced a history of several hundred years. In the perpetual river of history through which humanity had evolved, this tiny spark of time wasn’t worth mentioning at all.
In these last several hundred years, the population of New Ming Planet had developed from billions to tens of billions of people. However, across the vast and broad New Ming Planet, there was an incalculable amount of wild land that had yet to be developed. Humanity had only been able to occupy the tiniest corner of this planet, and around 100,000 cities had been established, both large and small.
The name of New Ming Planet had come from Xiao Moxian’s longing towards Lin Ming.
Everyone on New Ming Planet knew of Lin Ming and Xiao Moxian’s charming and love-filled story. The showdown at the Monster Emperor’s grand longevity banquet was a part they took relish in talking about.
For those humans that suffered in the present, the tale of Lin Ming suppressing the Good Fortune Saint Son, rescuing Xiao Moxian and freeing her from the shackles of the demon and monster races and then starting their romance, no matter how many times these people listened to this story they never became bored of it.
To the people of New Ming Planet who were undergoing so many hardships, this was the fairytale they loved the most.
For the vast majority of new settlers who first came to New Ming Planet, the reason they chose to leave their homelands and follow Xiao Moxian there to develop this wild land was all because of their respect and love towards her as well as their worship and admiration of Lin Ming.
And after New Ming Planet was established, Xiao Moxian also joined together with her subjects. When the cities were being built all around, she ate and lived with them, living in perfect harmony.
In the largest city of New Ming Planet, there was a holy mountain. Atop this holy mountain towered a memorial palace dedicated to Lin Ming. This memorial palace had the statues of Lin Ming, Xiao Moxian, and several others.
Every year, a massive number of believers would come and worship at this memorial palace.
Several months ago the saints had discovered New Ming Planet. Without any effort at all, they had taken this planet into their pocket. The tens of billions of people living there simply weren’t able to pose any threat to the saint armies.
After the saints seized New Ming Planet, the first action they took was to forcefully change the planet’s name.
This planet was renamed to Saint Advent Planet.
But, this name was resisted by every citizen of New Ming Planet. Then the Good Fortune Saint Son passed down an order.
It was this order that created a living hell for the inhabitants of New Ming Planet.
In the past, when the saints annexed a planet they would recklessly plunder it while killing off all the human masters. The common people would be left over as simple laborers.
The saint pioneers mostly came to these planets to capture any bit of leftover wealth that they could.
But this time, after the Good Fortune Saint Son seized New Ming Planet, he didn’t do this at all. Rather, it should be said that he disdained to do so.
The order that he passed down was – to seize all granaries of New Ming Planet and then completely block off all 100,000 cities, not allowing anyone to take even a single step out.
The residents of New Ming Planet were mostly common people at the Xiantian realm or below. It was impossible for them to ward off all hunger; they needed to eat.
After the granaries were looted, the people were only able to obtain food from farmlands outside the cities or from beasts in the wild.
But because the Good Fortune Saint Son had sealed off all the cities, no one was able to leave.
Every person of New Ming Planet could only rely on the little bits of remaining grain in their households to pass the days.
And the Good Fortune Saint Son didn’t plan on releasing the blockade on all the cities. His intentions were clear: he wanted to starve every person on New Ming Planet to death.
Imagine. If a pack of red-eyed and starving people was to be locked up in a small city, what would happen?
Hunger, death, despair, all these things would trigger the savage and bestial nature of humans. In a situation where food was deprived, many people would devolve into rabid beasts, fighting and killing for scraps of food. Finally, even cannibalism would occur.
To the Good Fortune Saint Son, this was an extremely interesting experiment.
This was the punishment that the Good Fortune Saint Son had passed down on these lowly commoners. Since they had the will to resist, he wanted to see just how long their will would be able to persist while they suffered beneath the torment of hunger.
And, there was another, more important point. The Good Fortune Saint Son had used this method in order to force out Xiao Moxian.
He was well aware that Xiao Moxian had long since left New Ming Planet, but in doing so she also would have left behind an informer. All new developments that occurred on New Ming Planet would be reported back to Xiao Moxian.
If so, he wanted to see whether or not Xiao Moxian would turn her back on her subjects.
In the eyes of the Good Fortune Saint Son, if Xiao Moxian ran back here because a mere several dozen billion commoners were on the verge of death, then that would be mind-bogglingly stupid.
But he was also aware that in this world there were indeed certain people who were this stupid.
Even if Xiao Moxian was crueler than he expected, watching these commoners starve to death wasn’t a big deal to him. To the Good Fortune Saint Son this was no loss at all, no different from the death of several dozen billion ants.
The Good Fortune Saint Son had already reduced the encirclement to several large nebulas. If Xiao Moxian couldn’t remain calm and wanted to break through his blockade to rescue New Ming Planet, then he would be the first to find out.
On New Ming Planet, the famine had continued for a long time. The one responsible for managing New Ming Planet was a direct subordinate of the Good Fortune Saint Son – Empyrean Evernight.
Evernight was renowned as a cruel and merciless individual who loved blood and slaughter. Torturing people like this was a job perfectly suited to him.
And in fact, when he received these orders he was extremely excited to follow them.
To slowly tear the falsely noble façade of some self-righteous and hypocritical race, slowly restoring their primal and beastly nature, was what Empyrean Evernight loved the most.
In his eyes, New Ming Planet had no history or background behind it at all, nor did they have any sense of unity. It had only been several hundred years since humans had come to develop this world, so how much unity could they have?
But the truth was that the way matters developed didn’t go according to Empyrean Evernight’s wishes.
As the famine continued, what made Empyrean Evernight unhappy was that the murder and robbery he originally expected to occur, didn’t.
These commoners, even if they were hungry to their limits, even if they were sealed off in cities, even if there were people who starved to death or died of illness, still continued to silently endure it.
They endured the hunger, endured the lack of supplies and plagues that ravaged the cities. They lived their days like walking corpses.
In order to preserve strength, many of these people sat in meditation all day.
As for Houtian realm martial artists, they even grasped this time to cultivate. They wanted to desperately bet everything in these dire times and break into the Xiantian realm. As long as they broke into the Xiantian realm they would be able to rely on breathing heaven and earth origin energy to supplement themselves, only requiring the smallest amount of food…
Occasionally, patrols of saint soldiers would bluster around and when they saw human martial artists that they didn’t like, they would casually drag them away and beat them senseless. But the people of New Ming Planet continued to endure.
No one robbed others, no one cannibalized others, and there weren’t even many suicides.
It seemed as if there was some invisible order restraining the suffering of the people, giving them a strange tenacity that pushed them forwards to stubbornly live on…
They seemed to be living numb lives, lives with hearts filled with despair.
But, Empyrean Evernight knew that it was impossible for those that were truly numb and filled with despair to endure all of this.
He discovered that while many people were starving, they actually still climbed up the holy mountain to pay their respects to the sculptures of Xiao Moxian and Lin Ming at the memorial palace.
This provoked the ire of Empyrean Evernight.
He could easily destroy New Ming Planet. But what he wanted was not to kill these people, but to break them and conquer them!
The saints wished to rule the 33 Heavens. This wasn’t completely exterminating all other races, but enslaving them and conquering them!
Beams of light shot down. The memorial palace was destroyed.
All that remained were the statues of Lin Ming and Xiao Moxian in front of the memorial palace. They stood there cold and alone. This was a deliberate action done by Empyrean Evernight.
Empyrean Evernight issued a new command. He had the saints open their vast warehouses of food supplies above the holy mountain.
Large chunks of meat were cooked and giant pots of rice were steamed.
As long as these suffering humans were willing to walk to this ruined memorial palace and spit upon the statues of Lin Ming and Xiao Moxian, then they would receive a pot of cooked meat and 10 jins of fragrant rice.
Many people rushed to the square on top the holy mountain. The scent of rice and meat caused them to waver where they stood. This was a physiological desire, one that they couldn’t resist.
However, as they learned what they had to do in order to obtain this food, their hearts turned cold.
Many children drooled but were pulled back by the adults. Even though these children were nothing but skin and bones, even though the adults were shaking with hunger, no one moved forwards.
This square that could hold 100,000 people was utterly silent. No one walked in front of the statues and no one went to obtain the life-saving food.
There were elders with faces engraved by winds and frost, women in tattered rags, emaciated children…
With numb faces, they stood there like rock sculptures, forming an eternal picture. It was as if they would stand there forever, until the end of their lives came.
If one could see through their eyes, they would find that even beneath the heavy suppression, even in this dark and gloomy world, there was always a faint ray of light that shined before them, illuminating the way forwards.
They adamantly believed that their leader would return, that their troops would come back!
These people came from New Ming Planet. They were the subjects of the most legendary hero in human history! They had their pride. They could be killed, crushed beneath the heel of others beneath the yoke of absolute strength. But, they would not grovel, they would not be defeated, they would not be conquered!
They would not eat this tainted food set before them. This was the final pride of a race on the verge of extinction!
Empyrean Evernight was finally enraged. The orders he received were to torture these people so that Xiao Moxian would reveal her whereabouts in her panic.
Now, he has lost his patience.
Since he couldn’t conquer these people he would simply erase them from existence.
He issued a new order. Every day 10 million people would be slaughtered, continuing until every person on New Ming Planet had been killed!
And after issuing this order, the response he saw was the same indifference and numbness. He didn’t even see much fear in the eyes of these doomed commoners.
“You all really have such strength of will. Since you want to die then I’ll start with you. Is Ji Xian’er’s informant nearby? Take a good look at what is occurring!”
Empyrean Evernight waved his hand, ordering his subordinates to begin the slaughter. He disdained to kill these commoners himself. Just what sort of noble status did he have? Personally killing these people would have been a gift to them.
However, the moment he waved his hand he felt a strange aura arrive. An inexplicable feeling instantly covered his entire body. Without time to distinguish what this feeling was, he suddenly felt a chill on his back. Helplessly, he looked downwards to see a bloodstained spear protruding from his chest.
The blood above it was so red it blinded the eyes…