Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Yuan Manqiu’s teeth started to ache from gritting. There were many redundancy and loopholes in Li Yao’s deduction. Various modern algorithms would hardly stump her, but [A Theory of Blue Flame] from forty millenniums ago?

What was that!?

What in the bloody hell was that!?

Yuan Manqiu forced a cough and suddenly patted on Li Yao’s shoulder heavily with wide-opened eyes.

This pat seemed to have dispelled all of Li Yao’s ideas.

“The deduction process is nothing. The most important thing right now is your future development rather than the crafting furnace!”

“Your potential is completely beyond my imagination, so I have decided to turn you into a top tier refiner in one year. The training is going to be very difficult, very painful, and even brutal, are you confident?”

Li Yao turned excited and courageous from Yuan Manqiu’s raving as he loudly replied with his head high and chest out: “Yes, I am confident! The more brutal, the better!”

Having been stirred like this, Li Yao forgot all the problems he had been pondering over a moment ago.

Yuan Manqiu nodded with satisfaction and said, “Very good! First, we have to decide which direction you want to proceed in!”

Refining contained and covered everything; it was a comprehensive subject which was extensive and profound.

There was a wide range of magical equipment, ranging from civilian to military, the smallest of which could be the size of a mustard seed, while the largest could be even bigger than an entire city.

Obviously, refining military equipment like the Burning Sky Battleaxe and civilian equipment like the Super-Fast Crystal Train didn’t have the same approach.

Even among the military equipment, the Burning Sky Battleaxe and the Thunderfire Boltgun were one thing, and huge crystal battle cruisers were another; they had a completely different type of refining concept.

So, the refiners were also divided into many branches. No matter how monstrous of a genius one was, it would still be impossible for him to cover everything.

Li Yao had long carefully pondered over the future. He resolutely and decisively said, “I hope to master the refining techniques of individual magical equipment and become a weapon expert. If possible, a crystal suit master refiner.”

The crystal suit was the king of modern magical equipment; it was a magical equipment among magical equipment. A refiner who could develop and refine a crystal suit was also a terrifying figure among all refiners.

In the world of cultivation, there was a special term for crystal suit master refiners!

Armadominus!

All cultivators, before they leave to mingle in the cultivation world, are repeatedly warned by their elders that they could provoke anyone they want, but they could never provoke an Armadominus!

The battle strength of an Armadominus was not that high, but the forces backing him were absolutely powerful. Countless powerful experts, in order to receive a customized crystal suit, would be more than willing to work for an Armadominus.

Even the lowest level Armadominus, as long as he made as much as a cough, could gather over a hundred Refinement Stage cultivators in a moment.

Even more so, a senior Armadominus who could specifically craft high-rank crystal suits was acquainted with world heroes. Which powerful sect have they not visited? Which Nascent Soul Stage old devil have they not chatted with? Contacts, forces, friendships—one could not even imagine how many extraordinary cultivators they were acquainted with!

“Do you want to become an Armadominus?”

It was not that easy to become an Armadominus.

Among a hundred refiners, at most seven or eight could become a registered refiner.

And among those hundred registered refiners, even three to five Armodomini were not certain.

Yuan Manqiu’s pair of eyes turned crimson as she said through gritted teeth:

“Very good. Originally, our Grand Desolate War Institution’s Refining Department mainly focused on small-scale, battle-type magical equipment. If you want to learn refining crystal battle cruisers, then I’m afraid I would not be able to teach you many things, but if it is a specialty in weapons…”

“In this year, let’s go for broke!”

From that day onwards, Li Yao participated in a new training that was so rigorous that one could even say it was more brutal than Spartan training, so brutal that it could only be called insane.

Yuan Manqiu’s teaching style was very peculiar.

She had disassembled all the high-level courses and fused them with the modification of the 1st Gen Tai’e crafting furnace so that Li Yao would propose a new modifying plan in accordance with what he had learned recently every day.

All the modification plans were done by Li Yao and Li Yao alone; she did intervene at all. At most, she would give remarks after the completion of a plan.

And even if the modification plan looked “completely perfect”, Yuan Manqiu, rather than letting Li Yao perform the modification, would instill him with more knowledge that was even more profound and more abstruse than the previous.

In this way, after Li Yao had learned a new course, whenever he turned around and looked back, he would always feel that the modification plan he had devised a few days back was seriously lacking; he would find many places where he could perfect the plan even more.

“A crafting furnace is the foundation of a refiner. A brilliant refiner has to be well aware of even the slightest bit of change in any of the performance parameters of his furnace. Only then can he craft the perfect magical equipment.”

“The modification of the 1st Gen Tai’e furnace is a special test for you. Don’t be impatient! When you have learned everything and utilize all that you’ve learned to modify it, then you will see what kind of monster you have actually modified in the end!”

At the beginning, Li Yao was still scratching his ears and cheeks in anxiousness and could not wait to finish the modification of the 1st Gen Tai’e furnace and start refining as soon as possible.

However, as he kept on learning high-level courses like [Glyph and Array Laws], [Theory of Augur], [High-Level Spiritual Energy Entanglement], and [Deduction of Algorithms], he gradually calmed down.

Because he discovered that with every day that passed in reality, during which he would painstakingly study in the Heavenly Refining Tower for several days, one or two powerful weapons would be added to his “armory” and the modification of the 1st Gen Tai’e furnace would be even more imaginative and perverse.

Meanwhile, Yuan Manqiu, without missing a beat, would entice in his ears—”Next week when you have finished learning so and so course, you can increase the overall performance of crafting performance by 1%, which will allow you to refine even more powerful magical equipment in the future!”

And when the “next week” arrived, Li Yao would instead discover that he had finished learning a couple of new courses and was proficient in several new algorithms, making it completely possible for him to devise even more maddening modification plan which could increase the overall performance of the crafting furnace by 3%!

Just like this, day by day, time passed. He had already devised a couple hundred sets of modification plans for the 1st Gen Tai’e furnace, each of which was more excessive and fiercer than the one before.

Under the latest modification plans he had devised, one would not even be able to recognize even a shadow of the 1st Gen Tai’e furnace—it would have completely changed into an incomparably deformed steel monster!

Another one and a half month had gone by.

Gradually, a small ripple started surging in the calm heart of Li Yao.

He discovered that he had unconsciously walked into a bottleneck.

With the help of the Heavenly Refining Tower, he had several times more learning time than any ordinary student. In addition to that, he could enter the super perceptive state at the drop of a hat; even in his day-to-day life, any messy problem, under the super perceptive state, could be solved like a hot knife cutting through butter.

In a period of two months, he had finished walking the road which any ordinary student could not necessarily finish even in two or three years.

But the problem was that the credits he had obtained were truly too little.

According to the teaching philosophy of the Grand Desolate War Institution, the specialized courses of a respective department were by no means the main channels for acquiring credits.

The Refining Department was only left with one associate professor, Yuan Manqiu, and she only could be proficient in so many domains of refining, thus the specialized courses she could set up were limited.

Not to mention the fact that refining was extensive and profound, and it became more and more difficult to move forward. Many high-level courses contained telepathic thoughts which were as vast as the sea, thus it was impossible to completely master a high-level course in one and a half day like the basic theory courses.

Over these two months, Li Yao had acquired 3,400 credits in one deep breath. His nickname had already changed to “Sleeping Devil” from “God of Sleeping”.

In the opinion of the onlookers, he was an out-and-out training madman.

But the goal of 40,000 credits was still very, very far away.

If you want to become rich, you have to take the risky road!

If he wanted to take down 40,000 credits, the conventional means were far from enough.

Currently, there were three paths laid in front of Li Yao.

Either he could log into the Wasteland Battle Network and receive some task, fight in the arena, or take the specialized courses of other departments!

However, after careful consideration, he discovered that all three roads seemed to have terrible flaws.

Take the mission for example

In the institute, there were very few tasks for a refiner. Even if some department, in order to take care of him, specially issued some maintenance task, its difficulty would also be very low, so he could at most receive a few credits, which was simply a waste of time.

Li Yao could also not say they were being stingy, as the tasks were like repairing boiler-like equipment, so how could they even give him over a hundred credits in one deep breath?

Whereas, a true highly rewarding task was like going into the depths of the Wasteland and hunting demon beasts.

And if he wanted to receive these kinds of missions, he would need to have a minimum of 10,000 credits or even higher.

The more dangerous the mission was, the higher the stipulated amount of credits were.

After all, the institute had to consider the safety of its students. If a low-ranked student rushed into the depths of wasteland, there was a high chance that most would die.

A shrimp like Li Yao, who did not even have 5,000 credits, could only receive some beginner level hunting missions in the vicinity of Wild Waves City.

He had once given it a try, during which he had to spend an entire three hours under the sun to desperately catch a Shovel-Tooth Rabbit which had been biting people.

In the end, he had plucked off its front teeth, as it was the favorite pet of a little girl—you could imagine how many credits could it be exchanged for!

“If it is going to be like this!”

“You are completely forcing me!”

“I can only go and—”

“Fight! In! The! Arena!”

Having firmed his mind, Li Yao took a trip to the arena.

But when he found the 7th-8th level Refinement Stage super macho robust students coming and going on the arena ring with a momentum that could move the mountains and shake the earth, touching his nose, he dejectedly withdrew.

What a joke!

He was a gentleman and was only a 3rd level Refinement Stage cultivator who majored in refining. Fighting was only a hobby. Even if he took 3,000-5,000 pounds of stimulants, he would still not be able to withstand the wanton bombings of those hunks!

He was only left with choosing the road of specialized courses.

Li Yao thought rather happily. Even Ding Lingdang had said that he had a talent for fighting, so wouldn’t taking a couple Combat Department’s courses be the same as playing?

But after carefully researching, he discovered that he had to actually pay more than double the credits to take the specialized courses of other departments!

For example, if a Combat Department student wanted to register for the course [Rolling Thunder Nine Transformations], he only needed to pay 90 credits, and once he had finished learning, he would earn 360 credits.

However, if Li Yao, a student of the Refining Department, wanted to register for the very same course, he would have to pay 180 credits!

And this was not even a popular course.

If it was a very popular course, the students of the Combat Department would all rush to the higher authorities, asking for the students from the other departments to have to pay a higher number of credits to learn and to receive fewer credits when they passed.

Furthermore, Li Yao had heard that many professors of the Combat Department had a cruel and heartless temperament; they could all kill without spilling blood and fail them without even batting an eye. Each and every one of them had a title like “Fail Master”, “Fail King”, “Fail Reverend”, “Fail Emperor”, and “Fail God!”

It was very normal for 70% of the students to fail a specialized course of the Combat Department.

“These days, one really can’t do anything!”

Over the past few days, Li Yao had not slept soundly, thus his eyes were bloodshot. As he walked in the campus, everyone and everything looked like credits to him.

At this moment—

“Come to my house tonight, I have a ‘good thing’ for you to see!”

A glittering message dancingly appeared in the center of his holographic screen.

In the sender’s image box of the message, Ding Lingdang, with arms akimbo, revealing half of her wheat colored belly, smiled very arrogantly.