Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

Raising her brow, Pauline wasn’t clear why Lucas treated this last classified project so much more seriously than all the others; after all, the possibilities that Project Revolution’s steam engines and Project Dyson’s solar collection arrays opened up were enough to make her dizzy just thinking about them.

Knowing that, it begged the question, if Lucas didn’t even want to discuss this final project inside this highly-secured facility, just what kind of world-shattering implications did it have?

Still, understanding that all her questions would be answered in a few hours, Pauline simply nodded and set the matter aside for the moment, changing the subject to something a bit closer to them, "So, what is this stalled project you are working on here?"

Composing himself again, Lucas relaxed his shoulders a bit and smiled wryly, motioning for the Great Elder to follow him.

A few minutes later, the pair arrived at a large workshop that appeared to currently be unoccupied.

Reaching into his Space Bag and fumbling around for a bit, Lucas eventually found a set of keys and proceeded to unlock the doors, opening them as he announced, "Great Elder, welcome to Project Thor."

Once the Spirit Lamps had been turned on, Pauline was greeted by a rather simple sight. Similar to the workshop for the steam engines, this one had a large, open central area with a few side rooms packed with neatly arranged work benches, organized tools, and a variety of materials, most of them different kinds of metals.

The major differences here, compared to Project Revolution’s workshop, were the central piece of equipment, a long metallic pipe mounted on a sturdy frame with numerous cables attached, and the open wall that led to what looked like an archery range.

(Illustration in Chapter Comments)

Pauline was a master archer, so she was quite familiar with this kind of sight, and unlike in the previous two classified projects Lucas had shown her, she was even familiar with the object that was lying silently in the middle of the room.

"Isn’t this a Roaring Tiger Launcher?" Pauline asked.

"En, I’ve heard that’s what they call them in the Zilon Kingdom," Lucas nodded before following up, "but I prefer the names ’gun’ or ’cannon’."

When Lucas mentioned the idea of firearms to his Master, he was surprised to discover that similar weapons already existed on the Blue Sky Continent; however, after thinking about it for a bit, it should have been obvious to him that that was the case.

War and combat were a constant of life on Servist. If anything, war was even more widespread and common in this world than the other universe as the existence of cultivation almost seemed to encourage the idea of conflict.

People fought for resources, people fought for land, people fought for glory, people fought for pride, people fought for domination, that was all the same in both universes, but here, on the Blue Sky Continent, people also fought to improve themselves.

Cultivation enhanced the Body, Spirit, and Soul, allowing a person to grow stronger and to live longer, but once a person gains incredible strength and longevity, what do you suppose they would first think of using those gifts for?

What if continuing to increase your personal power and lifespan required you to constantly temper your strength and acquire rare and precious resources?

What if there was a limit to the available resources necessary to reach the pinnacle of human existence?

What if certain pieces of land offered better conditions to strengthen oneself?

What if... what if... what if indeed...

The answer to all these questions and many others like them was simple, really.

Conflict, battle, war.

Humans were perfectly capable of sitting down, talking, negotiating, and reaching mutually beneficial solutions to their problems, they just chose not to most of the time for one reason or another, chief amongst them being scarcity of resources and lack of trust.

Now, organized society wasn’t quite that barbaric, but honestly, it wasn’t that different either.

Guns and firearms were just another branch of weapons technology, one that allowed weaker individuals to kill stronger ones, so of course, in a world filled with conflict and with a sufficient technological level, someone was bound to invent thermal weapons.

According to Celestina, over a hundred years ago, a group of alchemists from the Zilon Kingdom had accidentally created a kind of powder that when ignited burned very quickly and violently.

On its own, this powder wasn’t much to look at, but when enough of it was gathered together and stuffed into a confined vessel, like a furnace, and then ignited...

That wasn’t the first time an alchemy experiment had led to an explosion, far from it, but it was apparently the first time the alchemists involved didn’t see this explosion as only a failure and waste of materials.

Impressed with the power of this explosion, which had injured several people, the alchemists in question brought their explosive powder to the kingdom’s blacksmiths to see if they could make use of it as a weapon somehow.

A lot of tinkering and experiments later, the first firearms on the Blue Sky Continent were born.

In the other universe, the birth of black powder and firearms heralded the end of the age of cold weapons like swords, spears, and axes.

The reason for this was simple, guns made it much, much easier for people to kill other people.

It took years of hard work for someone to become competent with a sword, spear, or bow, but even a 10-year-old child could become fairly proficient with a musket with a few months’ worth of training.

What’s more, that child could kill a fully armed and armoured soldier that had trained all their life for war from 50 metres away.

That last point, however, is where things diverged greatly on Servist from the other universe.

Yes, guns were easy to use, relatively cheap and easy to make, and could allow untrained peasants to kill ordinary soldiers in large numbers; however, that only applied to ordinary soldiers.

Once again, the existence of World Qi and Cultivators changed everything.

100 peasants armed with primitive firearms could still defeat 100 well-trained Body Tempering or Vein Opening soldiers armed with simple spears and shields, but the same couldn’t be said about Core Formation and Sea Establishment Practitioners.

Such masters, even wearing heavy armour, could cross the 50 to 100 metres distance at which the earliest muskets were effective in less than 5 seconds, far quicker than any poorly trained commoner could reload their weapon, and once that happened, the superior strength of these Practitioners would easily tear apart any kind of firing line that hadn’t already broken in panic and fled.

On top of that, unlike in the other universe, materials like Meteor Steel or Third Order Wild Beast leather that could resist the impact of simple bullets existed from before firearms appeared.

As for trying to use a black powder weapon to kill a Spirit Realm Cultivator...

It wasn’t impossible, but it was very, very difficult.

For instance, if a High-Rank Initiate-Realm Cultivator was struck dead centre by a fist-sized iron ball launched from a cannon, they would either have a nice hole punched through their chest or simply be blown apart by the impact.

They may be Cultivators, but they’re still made of flesh and blood, so if you hit them hard enough, even an ordinary rock would be able to kill them

The problem, however, was hitting them in the first place.