Ten thousand I am across the heavens

The Mechanical City is currently the largest spacecraft established by the Mountain and River Republic. Having largely completed their exploration of the land, they turned their attention to the skies. This world once possessed five realms and nine heavens. Although the seven heavens—red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet—have vanished into history, shattered and broken, only darkness and day remain. This is why the people of this world experience darkness and day; it is the alternation of these two realms, and the alternation of the sun and moon within them.

The model of the universe is different from the celestial model of Earth. It truly gives the impression of a flat earth and a round heaven. Therefore, exploring the laws governing this universe has become an indispensable part of understanding the world.

Ordinary spacecraft would find it difficult to reach the heavens, as the high altitude presents immense resistance, much like the Five Realms Barrier preventing ascent. Fortunately, unlike the Five Realms Barrier, this barrier only provides strong resistance, preventing ordinary spacecraft from ascending. It doesn't render any deadly attacks ineffective, as would result in a backlash if used.

In the exploration of the sky, sending only one or two people to search at a time was far too inefficient. Therefore, the exploration strategy was later changed.

That would be to directly construct a super space facility. Establish a floating continent, and then continuously raise its altitude, gradually elevating it to the level of day and night. While the sheer size increases the difficulty of overcoming resistance, it also makes its propulsion more powerful and its ability to overcome obstacles stronger. The only problem is that for an object of such immense size, overcoming this barrier takes much longer.

However, this also has its advantages. Once you successfully enter the area, it means you've gained a huge base there. The difficulty of any exploration will be greatly reduced. More importantly, it provides a much higher level of resilience in the event of danger.

The ultimate goal of the Mechanized City is to ascend to the heavens and pluck the sun and moon from this world. The sun and moon of this world are constructed from top-tier Gu worms. The sun of this world is a super-powerful attack created from the legendary Nine-Turn Fire Gu and Nine-Turn Light Gu, thus possessing the ability to illuminate the entire continent.

All of this is currently just legend. Only by actually reaching that location can we verify what the sun of this world truly is. And only with mechanisms designed like this can the floating continent approach the sun and clearly understand its appearance.

The Sky Tower is the highest point of this floating continent and is also the facility used to break through the barrier above the heavens.

Similarly, this facility also houses many of the most advanced scientific research equipment in the Republic of Mountains and Rivers, and has attracted a large number of talented individuals.

Tens of thousands of people lined up here, waiting for approval, hoping to exchange their lifespan for extraordinary wisdom. Amidst this vast sea of ​​people, Dao Tian, ​​armed with his conceptual killer move, awaited approval. Dao Tian never imagined he would reach this point. In these hundreds of thousands of years, this was probably the most glorious period of his life, the one he had stolen.

It's obvious that this researcher awaiting approval is also a person with a secret, and a big one at that. It's just that even Lenno hasn't discovered his secret.

However, if you see him in person and hear his name, you'll be able to make some connections. After all, the name Dao Tian already says a lot.

This seemingly ordinary young man actually possesses the consciousness of the Heavenly Thief Demon Lord, but he only inherited the thought process, not the immense power. This is because, in essence, the venerable one is already dead, not living in the present. However, each venerable has various methods to prolong their life, ensuring they don't remain confined to the past. The Giant Sun Immortal Lord used the simplest and most brutal method, turning himself into a zombie, surviving in this half-dead state until now. The Ghostly Demon Lord, on the other hand, has trapped himself at the gates of life and death. Although he has become a soul, his soul is too powerful to be erased; instead, it has grown stronger with the passage of time.

The Primordial Immortal Venerable merged himself into the Heavenly Court and into the Dao traces of every grotto-heaven. In the future, he will reshape a body for himself in the form of a Qi Gong Fruit and be reborn at the appropriate time.

The Starry Sky Immortal Venerable split his personality into three parts, gaining the strength of a Quasi-Immortal Venerable. He then sealed himself in the Immortal Tomb, somewhat similar to how, in the world of Shrouding the Heavens, the Great Emperors lowered their cultivation levels and sealed themselves into divine sources.

Each of the great venerable beings has their own methods for surviving in the long river of history. There's no reason why the Heavenly Thief Demon Lord should truly be dead. It's just that no one in history has ever discovered any trace of his existence. Even though many still firmly believe he survived in some way, no one has found a way to secure his survival, not even other venerable beings. They haven't discovered any resurrection plan left behind by the Heavenly Thief Demon Lord. It's only said that he left behind two powerful Nine-Turn Killing Moves, named "God Unaware" and "Ghost Unaware."

The true contingency plan that the Demon Lord of Thieves left for his resurrection remains unknown to everyone except himself. Only he knows the extent to which his thieving cultivation had progressed after becoming a Venerable.
The art of theft can be considered a completely new school of thought he created; no such school had ever existed before. No one had ever been able to directly steal the Gu worms from an enemy's body during combat. Although creating this school wasn't his original intention, when he was still weak, in order to survive and to fight against the evil will parasitizing him, he had no choice but to cultivate along this path against his will, eventually reaching the level of a Venerable.

Even though he was an upright man, he ultimately had to choose the path of theft to advance to the Venerable level. After his advancement, he developed this method to its pinnacle, and what he was doing now was traversing the river of time, stealing a segment of someone else's life. The person whose life was stolen was completely unaware of what had happened, living a virtual life in a world they imagined they should have lived. Until their soul completely decayed, they would never realize that their life had been stolen, that they lived like Truman in a fabricated world.

The Demon Lord of Thieves, who steals others' lives, can unknowingly use these stolen lives to live directly in the future. His method for prolonging his life is to continuously steal the lives of future people while he is still a Venerable One. For hundreds of thousands of years afterward, he lives in this world as different people—sometimes a hunter in the mountains, sometimes a farmer in the fields, sometimes a merchant in a small town, or a blacksmith at the village entrance.

On rare occasions, it might become a Gu Master, but even then, it's unlikely to achieve greatness. It's not that it can't, but rather that doing so would be counterproductive; destiny still watches over the world. Under the influence of destiny, the dead cannot be resurrected. Nor should there be a way to steal others' lives from the future and continuously live into the future.

Therefore, when he steals other people's lives, he chooses only the most marginalized figures in society—those who will never step onto the stage of history, those who will never be noticed by fate. Most of the time, even if he possesses the knowledge to change destiny, he will only reveal a tiny bit, slightly improving the trajectory of the stolen life. This allows him to live a little more comfortably, rather than relying on his terrifying level of almost complete mastery of all schools to fight his way through the cultivation world and become an immortal again, or even a top-tier eighth-level cultivator.

Knowing that the Destiny Gu would not allow a person to become a supreme being twice, he understood the principle of "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." The more successful he became by stealing the lives of future generations, the more dangerous it would be for him.

So for hundreds of thousands of years, he has only ever stolen the lives of ordinary people. He's lived so many years unnoticed, achieving little, but each life hasn't been particularly difficult. He can easily scrape together a little knowledge from his own mind. He can live a life of plenty, with no worries about food or drink, and a comfortable life with a wife, children, and a warm bed is quite attainable.

It was only in this life, before him, that he achieved some success, reaching heights he had never reached in any of his previous lives.

It wasn't that he had any enlightenment in this life, that he wanted to break through his limitations and become a Venerable One again in this lifetime. Nor was it that he wasn't afraid of the Fate Gu targeting him. It was simply that he had drifted along and ended up in this situation.

In a reasonable promotion system, talented people will gradually be promoted. The more reasonable the system, the easier it is for talented people to stand out in the competition and gradually move to higher positions.

The Demon Lord of Thieves initially worked as a hunter in a mountain village, hunting under the protection of surrounding families. He paid a monthly tax to ensure a stable life. Although it required the arduous task of hunting many wild animals, with most of the spoils going to the families and strongholds as taxes, for him, even with an ordinary human body, hunting a few animals was not difficult. Therefore, despite the heavy tax burden, his life wasn't too hard. However, he could understand the suffering of others in the village, oppressed by the nearby Gu Master families. They were only given a chance to survive when wild animals attacked, and in the event of an uncontrollable crisis, they were the first to be abandoned. Living in constant fear, their entire lives were like this, making them feel inferior. Without his kind of confidence, their lives would have little hope.

He thought he would live an ordinary life again. But he still experienced some unexpected events in his life. The first was that he heard that an organization called the Production and Construction Corps in the distance had inexplicably launched an uprising and wiped out several ordinary families.

While this is a relatively novel event, it's not uncommon throughout hundreds of thousands of years of history. No matter how grand or spectacular the uprising, it ultimately amounts to the story of the dragon slayer becoming the dragon himself. The cyclical nature of dynasties cannot be altered by one or two individuals. Passionate rebels will eventually become cold-blooded rulers. If their passion never cools, it means they won't last. It means they are not suited to this era.

Dao Tian didn't have a high opinion of this production and construction corps. He also didn't want them to come to his area and disrupt his peaceful life. But things didn't go as planned; the production and construction corps advanced like a whirlwind. Before long, they had completed the establishment of the Shanhe Republic and marched all the way to their remote mountain villages.

At the time, the Production and Construction Corps only sent one company of soldiers. Wearing powered armor and driving self-propelled artillery, they easily conquered the ruling family stronghold. When Dao Tian saw those mech soldiers, he was genuinely excited, because their art style was so similar to the world he had once lived in.

Unlike the other Venerables, he was the only extraterrestrial demon among the former nine Venerables, a transmigrator. However, his original world wasn't Earth, but a more technologically advanced mechanical civilization. On their planet, the most advanced weapon of war had become individual mechs. He was a noble mech pilot, and a top-tier one at that.

Even after arriving in this world, he did not forget his former abilities. After his rebirth, he created a powerful mecha for himself, making him quite unique among the many Venerables. Even after his death, the mecha he left behind remained extremely powerful, but so far, no one has successfully unearthed his legacy.

Back then, looking at those mecha warriors, he wondered if they had unearthed some legacy he had casually left behind in his youth. He just felt that the design philosophy of those mechas... the overall style was somewhat different from his own, appearing more concise. Even the armor looked somewhat rudimentary, the kind of style that came from modifying ornate individual mechas into mass-producible machines for easier manufacturing.

After these people finished wiping out the remaining forces in the stronghold, he was prepared to face the newcomer's rule, even the initial burst of activity from a new official. However, he was inexplicably hypnotized, his consciousness uploaded to a virtual world. The others were dazed and confused, unaware of what was happening, unable to distinguish between reality and virtuality, still believing they were in the real world. But his insight clearly allowed him to discern the difference. However, to avoid standing out and having his suspicions exposed, he pretended not to notice anything amiss. He wondered where the Mountain and River Republic got such abundant technological reserves, needing such a high-level, intelligent killing move even to deal with a small village. And it was precisely this dreamlike killing move that had truly led him down his current path.

[To be continued]

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