Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

This was the first time that Li Yao had put on an advanced crystal suit made in the Flying Star Sector.

His previous Rockman was just a piece of civil magical equipment aimed at ordinary people that boasted little combat ability despite his strengthening and modification. The Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures it employed and the computational ability it possessed were nothing special, either.

This Eight Arm, on the other hand, was a luxury from Heavenly Saints City. The moment he put on it, he felt that a warm spring was soaking his skin. There was not the slightest hinderance or rigidness. The crystal suit seemed to have become his second skin.

Countless streams of information flooded into his brain. His nerves were completely docked to the wires of the crystal suit.

This is awesome. The advantages of a battle suit and a maintenance suit have been combined into one crystal suit. Not only does it carry sixteen groups of cutter models, there are also seven kinds of spray guns that can spew spiritual energy of various attributes. Together with the crystal microscopes that can enlarge the picture by 120 thousand times and the micro craver made of hard crystals, I can carve a hundred rune arrays in a square inch!

This Eight Arm is indeed an extraordinary maintenance suit. Except for the lack of a refining furnace, almost all the tools required for a maintenance task can be found on it!

It’s equal to a walking refining workshop!

The structure design of the crystal suit, the magical equipment it carried, as well as a lot of other information, poured down. Li Yao was fascinated as he read them. His lips curled up in excitement.

However, when he performed the most basic movements inside the training room wearing the Eight Arm Suit, he found that it was extremely odd.

The Eight Arm Suit did not inform him of everything that it had sensed. Instead, the mainframe crystal processor of the suit filtered the enormous and complicated information by itself and calculated dozens of plans according to the actual situation.

All he had to do was to pick the best plan from the list offered.

For example, when he was going to sprint forward, if he was wearing the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, he would have to extend his spiritual thread into every power rune array and control the direction of every spurt, sometimes requiring an angle at the accuracy of two decimal points.

However, now that he was wearing Eight Arm, all he needed to do was to think of ’move forward’ and pick one of the ninety-seven patterns of moving forward. The activated level of the power rune arrays and the micro adjustments of the spurts would all be handled by the crystal processor.

In such a case, the operations of the crystal suit would be much more convenient. It would be more agile during combat, too. However, the independency of the Exo was greatly diminished.

Li Yao did not like the feeling. He thought that the crystal suit was taking over duties that it shouldn’t.

Li Yao preferred to supervise every rune array and every component on the crystal suit in person. The crystal suit was just a platform of magical equipment and, above all, a tool. He had to be responsible for every detail of the combat personally.

In such a case, there would be much more information that he needed to deal with, but it was much freer, too. He could fight at his will without being bound by anything.

The ideology of the crystal suits of the Flying Star Sector has been on a different path from that of the Heaven’s Origin Sector since the very beginning. People here attach much more importance to the performance of the crystal processor. When the crystal processor has enough computational ability, it can promptly assess the information, devise tactic plans, and optimize the movements of the Exo!

As a result, combat becomes easy and straightforward. Everybody will know what they are doing without any trouble. Even ordinary people can wear crystal suits with ease. Together with the ’skill cards’ which store the skills of the real experts, the crystal suit will have both common strategies and ultimate ones. Its potential damage can be quite impressive, too!

This must be because of the special environment of the Flying Star Sector.

War debris is everywhere in the Flying Star Sector. There are countless different kinds of advanced magical equipment and crystal processors. Therefore, the Cultivators of this Sector were bestowed with crystal processors possessing amazing computational ability from the very beginning. It’s not unusual that they focus their attention on crystal processors!

However, in such a mode, there is barely any room for an Exo to perform at will. They would be like puppets hiding in crystal suits without any creativity. All they need to do is to select different tactics in the proper order and release the skills when the timing is appropriate.

It’s indeed convenient. However, the strategies optimized by the crystal processor must have certain patterns. If the opponent sees through the patterns, it will be a disaster!

All roads lead to the heavens. Li Yao wouldn’t say that the ideology of the Flying Star Sector was wrong, but he was not particularly fond of it, either.

As a man growing up in a magical equipment graveyard, Li Yao valued versatility more than anything during combat. Even the same skill would be adjusted according to the conditions of different environments and enemies.

Before he came here, Li Yao had hardly used fixed moves.

The ’Thunderous Tornado Saber Art’ of his own invention was just a state of mind. As to exactly how the saber should be slashed out at a particular moment, it would be dependent on the actual situation.

Therefore, Li Yao, who was manipulated by ’Eight Arm’ in this place, was always going against the crystal suit’s choices and tried to walk in the way he thought was the best.

In Lei Dalu’s eyes, Li Yao was stumbling unnaturally in the new crystal suit.

Lei Dalu didn’t see anything wrong about it. On the contrary, he thought that it was quite normal.

The Eight Arm Suit was an advanced model even in Heavenly Saints City. It was only logical that Li Yao failed to grasp it in such a short amount of time.

Lei Dalu smiled. ”Ah Yao, I also bought you three skill cards. They’ve been inserted into the crystal processor. Have a try!”

Li Yao nodded. He glanced at the bottom-left corner of the light beam and was dazed for a moment. ”One gold card and two silver cards?”

Skill cards were classified into regular, silver, gold, and platinum.

Regular cards stored the skills and telepathic thoughts of the Refinement Stage Cultivators and allowed the user to carry out the moves of the Refinement Stage.

Silver cards were made of Building Foundation Stage Cultivators and entailed the abilities of the Building Foundation Stage.

Gold cards were refined by Core Formation Stage Cultivators and contained their moves, which could be quite destructive when they were carried out!

As for the platinum cards, they were the ultimate devices produced by the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators. When they were inserted into a crystal suit, the Exo would be able to wield the skills of the Nascent Soul Stage!

Of course, to wield a certain skill card, one’s own capability must not be too low. The gap between the Exo and the producer of the skill card could not be too wide.

Ordinary people could only use regular cards; Refinement Stage Cultivators could use silver cards; Building Foundation Stage Cultivators could bring out the damage of the gold cards; only the Core Formation Stage Cultivators were capable enough of utilizing platinum cards at will.

But now, Lei Dalu had prepared three skill cards, one gold and the other two silver!

If the Eight Arm Suit was a reward for Li Yao’s contribution to fixing the spiritual shield generator and helping Gold Horn run away from the Dim Flame Belt, the three skill cards would be too big a favor for him to return.

Li Yao selected a move named ’Morning Glow Saber Art’ from a silver card and activated it.

The Eight Arm Suit immediately sped up. Hundreds of rune arrays glittered suddenly. Circles of brightness crowded around his right arm in spirals and formed a dazzling saber in front of his fingertip. Then, it rushed out and hit a metal target in front of the room brutally, leaving a deep crack on it.

Li Yao secretly frowned, not very satisfied about the result.

It was for the same reason. As a seasoned Exo who had abundant experience in fighting, he had his own styles and principles and detested the notion of being commanded by a crystal suit. Therefore, when the crystal suit was activated, his body resisted the enforced movements subconsciously, making the movements not as perfect as they were supposed to be.

Li Yao did not see eye to eye with skill cards, either.

In his opinion, to bring out the maximum damage of a skill, one must really comprehend the inspiration and mysteries of the skill, analyze its spiritual energy circulation and triggering models, and reconstruct them in the most suitable way for oneself.

Only by learning a skill in such a way could one really grasp it!

Otherwise, one would only be mimicking the experts. Their movements might be alike, but the true essence of the skills had been lost.

It seems that the fighting pattern of the Flying Star Sector’s crystal suits is not agreeable with me.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m a refiner myself anyway. I can always modify the crystal suit and redistribute the computation ability of the crystal processor. The filtering procedure can be canceled, too. That way, it will be the same as the crystal suits of the Heaven’s Origin Sector.

As for skill cards, I can use them to sense the profoundness of the top experts during my daily training. But in real combat, I think it’s still best to rely on myself, Li Yao thought.

In the communication channel came Lei Dalu’s voice that seemed to indicate he was having a toothache. ”Ah Yao, it seems that you are not gifted at wearing a crystal suit. According to my calculation just now, the sync rate between you and the crystal suit is only 37%. It is… quite low actually.”

Sync rate was a very important measurement when it came to Cultivators and crystal suits in the Flying Star Sector.

Since the crystal suits of this Sector all boasted very high independent combat ability, the most determinative factor about the professionalism of an Exo was usually the coordination and cooperation between them and their crystal suits.

A high sync rate suggested that the body of the Exo had melded with the crystal suit and their head had integrated into the crystal processor. Naturally, they could bring out the full potential of the crystal suit.

Li Yao’s beliefs were the complete opposite to those of the Flying Star Sector’s Cultivators. He was like an unreasonable tyrant who insisted on controlling every detail of the crystal suit. The crystal processor was having conflicts with him all the time. It would be a miracle if his sync rate was high!

A sync rate of 37% could not even be counted as third-rate in the Flying Star Sector. Most of the experts of the Sector had sync rates higher than 60%. Those of the top experts were sometimes even higher than 90%!

Lei Dalu smiled. ”Fortunately, your dream is to become a master of refining. Maintenance suits are different from battle suits and do not have a high demand on the sync rate. Do not let it bother you too much.”

Li Yao was, of course, not in the least bothered by it. He had his own beliefs and wouldn’t care even if his sync rate was 0.1%. He smiled and said earnestly, ”Thank you very much, captain!”

Lei Dalu took out a smaller metal box, which had been carved with sophisticated spiritual stripes on its four facets. Then he continued, ”Uncle Xiong told me that it was not the modification and maintenance of large-scale magical equipment that you are best at, but personal magical equipment? You’ve even repaired a lot of the young ones’ magical equipment of the Tiger Killer Camp.

”That brat Zhao Guo even went to challenge Liao Meng of the assault team the other day. When their sabers collided, Liao Meng’s weapon was dented by the heavy blow while Zhao Meng’s was fine!

”Liao Meng’s battle saber was made of Heavenly Stream Steel and Black Gold Rock and had just been polished by a refiner. It was the sharpest of all and he cherished it more than his life. No one had anticipated such an outcome. The fury on his face!

”Even Uncle Xiong was quite surprised when he came and checked it. It seems that everybody still underestimated you when they thought they overestimated you!

”Uncle Xiong said that he was best at the maintenance and modification of starships and that he had little to teach you about personal magical equipment, especially crystal suits. There was not much he could do except to offer you this. Try to put this to good use.”

”This is—”

Four giant, blood-freezing words engraved on the metal box made Li Yao’s pupils shrink suddenly. ”World of Crystal Suits!”