Gao Kangda still remembered the panic and anxiety in the mines at that time.
Devastating rumors were spreading everywhere, which claimed that they were about to be sent to the frontline as cannon fodder now that they were useless, or that they would be given some ragged starships that could not even perform space jumps but only sail in regular voyages before they were kicked out.
In the boundless universe where the resources were scarce, it would be a dead end for them in starships that could not perform space jumps and find a habitable planet with an atmosphere and an ecological cycle.
With the ragged starships that were only capable of regular voyages, it might not be possible to fly out of a galaxy even after decades if it cruised at a speed at 0.5% the speed of light.
It was obvious that the management were replacing the living human miners with cold, lifeless spiritual puppets!
The management went to a lot of effort to suppress the ‘rumors’ and soothe anxious miners, but the final solution was essentially the same as the ‘rumors’.
The sect that Gang Kangda and his fellow miners belonged to decided to give them a batch of small ‘complimentary’ mining starships that were terribly outdated as well as resources that were only enough for their survival of the next couple of years, as compensation for their lifelong devotion. They were asked to embark on a journey to more dangerous, chaotic space zones that were filled with more radiation, storms, and unexpected factors for prospecting and mining, but they would have no technical support or logistical supplies.
All their future revenue would belong to themselves, but there would be no liability between the sect and them anymore.
Nobody could accept such a result.
The miners, as well as their family, had been living on the enormous mining starships for generations.
The enormous mining starships that could easily be dozens of kilometers long were not only their workplaces but also the homes to the grandfathers of their grandfathers.
They were born in the middle of the rumbling noises as rocks were shattered. They grew up next to the scorching power furnaces and in the gloomy cooling chambers. They found their dates in the filtering rooms where dust flew all the time and had their offspring in the cabins that were narrow and cold like iron coffins. But when they hugged each other hard and held their hands, even the iron coffins were the warmest homes!
Yet, the management were about to banish them and their family from their own homes into a small mining starship that could barely be called a can. They would be sent into the dark, cold universe, where they would slowly die at the speed of a snail. They had no choice but to launch their resistance with the brawny muscles and iron bones that they had earned after hundreds of years of crazy training and natural selection!
The day when the manufacture ship with the most advanced assembly lines for fully-automatic mining puppets slowly sailed into the Unsettled Space Zone, almost ten million miners and their families who were distributed throughout forty-two enormous mining starships in the various mining areas of the Unsettled Space Zone could not withstand it any longer. They launched an unprecedented uprising that was later known as the Unsettled Riot.
The uprising came with a gory price.
For hundreds of years, in order to increase their work efficiency as much as possible to compete with machines, the miners had been practicing all kinds of techniques crazily and almost turned their fleshly bodies into iron machines.
They also had the assistance of the weapon-like magical equipment such as power pickaxes, drills of mystic rays, and mining crystal suits. Since the tools could smash the hardest rocks, they definitely had a chance to blow on a hole through armor.
They had the absolute numerical advantage, and their morale was higher than ever when they were all determined to sacrifice themselves.
But they were not well-trained soldiers. Faced with the Immortal Cultivators who were fully armed and had been practicing killing skills since the moment they were born, the miners collapsed wave after wave like wheat fields that were being reaped.
Eventually, they succeeded in destroying the manufacturing starship of puppets and killing almost all the management of Immortal Cultivators in the mining areas.
But the siege of the regular army came in no time. Of the forty-two enormous mining starships, only three were lucky enough to escape. The other enormous starships all ended up as the most brilliant fireballs. Including Gao Kangda’s blood brother, millions of miners and their families shed their blood in space, dying without a burial!
At that time, everybody was intimidated by the overwhelming combat ability demonstrated by the regular army. The three mining starships initiated space jumps in a panic. Gao Kangda had no idea where the other two starships ended up. They were perhaps completely ripped apart by the cosmic storms in the four-dimensional space, or perhaps they were blown somewhere unknown at the edge of the cosmos by the wind. Regardless, his own starship performed nine space jumps in a row and finally escaped from the siege at the risk of tearing apart the main framework of the starship.
Following that, Gao Kangda and the surviving miners drifted for a long time in the sea of stars, living a nomadic life. They were about to degenerate into space bandits who had given up all moral boundaries for survival when they ran into Starlight. They then lived several years in peace.
However, Starlight was having a hard time itself in those years.
After he became the captain of Great Mountain, to better command the big starship that was among the best in Starlight, Gao Kangda spent quite a lot of time reading and figured out many things that he did not understand in his ignorance before. Then, as if he were reborn, his Cultivation soared, and he reached the Core Formation Stage after only twenty years, even though he had only broken into the Refinement Stage after the great uprising. The new height allowed him to understand lots of things.
He naturally knew that there had been an unpredictable and awesome Starlight a long, long time ago.
But he also knew that the ‘real’ Starlight had been destroyed almost as long ago, and the Starlight that he had joined was nothing but an organization that a bunch of mobsters established under the banner of the predecessors. It was not even the first duplicate; dozens of Starlights before them had already been annihilated by the Imperium!
The members of the Starlight they had right now were of complicated origins. Some were the miners who had been forced into desperation due to the rise of automatic mining puppets. Some were farmers who had lost their land because of the harsh environment after the planet was highly developed. Some were even the Immortal Cultivators who had failed their familial competitions and had run away because they were wanted by their families. They were completely unorganized mobsters.
Everybody had different backgrounds, beliefs, and desires. Many people even could not say what they wanted exactly. They were merely huddling together to warm each other up, and they were essentially no different from old outlaws who dominated a forest and lived their unconventional life.
No specific guidelines, no common beliefs, and no bases that they could rely on. They had been active solely based on the idea that they had to do something big. It was actually a surprise for Gao Kangda himself that the Starlight of the new generation had existed for decades without collapsing.
However, every dream would come to an end someday.
In the years back, the Imperium had focused all its attention on the great war against the Covenant Alliance, unable to spare any troops to eliminate the annoying lice that they were.
But as the Imperium secured a winning streak on the warfront and entered the phase to consolidate the war benefits, the noose that was tied around the neck of Starlight grew tighter and tighter. Their areas of activity narrowed, and their days became tougher.
Just like cockroaches and rats had natural instincts about their doom, the resistance warriors of Starlight like Gao Kangda had a vague feeling that they could not escape from the cataclysm anymore!
But they were caught in a dilemma and could not come up with any countermeasures.
It was impossible for them to defeat the enemy. Most of the starships of Starlight were modified half-armed carriers, mining starships, or comprehensive refinement starships, like Gao Kangda’s Great Mountain. No matter how many starships they had and how intimidating they might seem, they were nothing more than a well-prepared appetizer for the elite fleets of the Imperium.
Surrender was not an option. They had all committed great crimes. Many of the ‘former Immortal Cultivators’ were thorns in the flesh for their families or sects. Their outcome would be even more miserable than death if they were caught by their old nemeses.
After thinking for a long time, they all agreed that there was only one last choice, which was to do something really big and die a gratifying death.
Therefore, when the underground branch of Starlight deep inside the Land of Sins, or the Martial Meritocrats Sector that Starlight originated from, figured out a way to reach out to them and proposed the plan to attack Manjusaka in coalition, they were both surprised and delighted. Taking a long breath, they finally felt that they were relieved.
None of them were scared of death, but living in the darkness of space in worry and fear and hiding from the enemy all the time without any hope was too much suffering for anyone!
Instead of living like a thief all the time, they might as well challenge the Immortal Cultivators with everything that they had. Even if they were killed in the end, the name of ‘Starlight’ would at least resound throughout the universe!
As the captain of Great Mountain, Gao Kangda had his voice among the decision makers of Starlight. He agreed to fight the Immortal Cultivators in the most valiant way, too. After all, the worst outcome to be expected was only death, and he should have died twenty years ago in the Unsettled Riot. Even to this day, he could not forget the feeling when he knocked a power pickaxe into the skull of an Immortal Cultivator, and the guy’s blood and brains splashed over his face. That was what an uprising should be like. The twenty years of his escape since then had been too humiliating to be recalled. He dreamed of his brothers and sisters who had been killed miserably every night. They all stared at him with their white eyes!
“Let’s do this,” Gao Kangda mumbled to himself. “Don’t be anxious, everyone. I’ll join you tomorrow. But before I do, I am going to fight a satisfying and glorious battle to avenge everyone from the Unsettled Space Zone, and I will show the Immortal Cultivators the strength of the Cultivators!
“Tomorrow, tomorrow…”
Looking at the shivering stars far away, Gao Kangda was once more mired in the violent flames that had swept across the entire Unsettled Space Zone.
Not far away from his Great Mountain, dozens of starships that were equally bizarre, ragged, and rusty were lurking and waiting for the arrival of the next day uneasily.