Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Surrounded by the life-like Grand Illusionary Land, Li Yao felt that he was truly seated in the middle of a splendid hall watching eight college students debating with each other. Although their understanding about many theories was immature, the bold imagination that solely belonged to young men still surprised Li Yao and taught him many new perspectives of thinking.

Flying Star University, Heavenly Saint Institute?

The academic level of the two colleges left a deep impression on Li Yao.

If he was able to enter one of the top two colleges, his future training would definitely benefit a lot.

Of course, with his current position in the high level of the Building Foundation Stage, he wouldn’t be joining them as a student.

Li Yao believed that his capability was more than enough to earn him a place as a teacher in either of the two colleges.

However, teachers usually had tedious teaching tasks and might not be able to get in touch with the latest Cultivation philosophies. It would take many years for a teacher to climb up one step after another; Li Yao didn’t have the time to dawdle along.

I need to think carefully about what I should do next, Li Yao thought to himself.

Over the following seven days, Li Yao spent all his time in the World of Crystal Suits with barely any rest or sleep and skimmed through all of the top five thousand trending questions and their answers.

Due to the restriction of the Spiritual Nexus, the questions could not go very deep into the details. But for Li Yao, they were enough to give him a general picture of the Flying Star Sector’s theories of refining.

Those theories melded with classical refining theories and theories of the Heaven’s Origin Sector. Mysterious reactions were triggered. Many problems that had been bugging Li Yao for a long time were now easily resolved with the new mindset.

Now that he had grasped enough fundamental theories, Li Yao was ready to modify his crystal suits.

Right now, he had three crystal suits: Rockman, Eight Arm, and Mystic Skeleton.

Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was the most amazing of all, but it had been added with too much of the Skeleton Dragon’s body tissue and the scraps of the ancient magical equipment. It was not a good idea to wear it in broad daylight.

Rockman was convenient to maneuver, but it was too shabby. Also, as a piece of civil magical equipment, its combat ability was too low.

The problem with the Eight Arm Suit was that its crystal processor always meddled in and was incompatible with Li Yao’s combat style.

Therefore, Li Yao prepared to rent a professional workshop for crystal suit modification the moment he arrived in Thousand Sail Space Zone and perform a full upgrade on Eight Arm. It was meant partly to improve its combat ability, and partly to drop its preset fighting patters.

This was the first time that he had ever modified an advanced crystal suit of the Flying Star Sector. To avoid unnecessary risks, he decided to have a simulation in the World of Crystal Suits first.

Since he was classified as a ’Specialist’ after the assessment, the system had credited 10,000 crystal coins to him when he entered The World of Crystal Suits. He had spent all of that decorating his independent space into a maintenance workshop as well as purchasing a virtual Eight Arm Suit.

Just as he was about to dismantle the virtual Eight Arm, he received a private message. Somebody was inviting him to answer a question.

Li Yao was dazed for a moment. Although he had been classified as a ’Specialist’, he had never answered any questions before. Nobody should even know of his existence. Why would anyone invite him to answer a question?

He opened the question and realize the reason.

The question was as followed: ’Why were the ancient Cultivators forty thousand years ago fond of stepping on their flying swords and riding them? Is it not against the principles of aerodynamics? Compared to modern flying swords, what are the shortcomings of the ancient flying swords?’

As it turned out, it was a question that involved classical refining theories.

In the Flying Star Sector, there were not many experts who focused on classical refining theories, and there were ever fewer who revealed their identities in the World of Crystal Suits.

Li Yao’s profile showed that he was an expert in classical refining theories approved by the system.

Li Yao assumed that the guy who proposed the question had searched and sent invitations to all the users who were marked as experts in classical refining theories.

Pondering for a moment, Li Yao thought that it wouldn’t be decent if he lurked and looted the generosities of the Flying Star Sector for seven days without returning anything. He should contribute his ideas and discuss them with his fellows.

Therefore, he opened the question and started reading.

There were already almost a hundred answers below the description of the question. The few answers at the top were all thorough and concrete with a lot of pictures. Their arguments were quite valid, too. Many fellow Cultivators were commenting on these answers in heated discussions. The ambience was quite good.

Li Yao scanned through the answers. Then he frowned, as he thought that some of the answers were too biased.

Thinking for a moment, Li Yao started writing his own answer.

”Thanks for the invitation.

”I am just a fan of classical refining theories, but I have to say that I don’t agree with the answer that ranks at the top for the time being.

”When we Cultivators are challenged with a question, we should always make sure that the question is itself a legitimate question before we answer it. For example, this question is apparently a troll. Not all ancient Cultivators ’ride’ their flying swords. There were many ways of manipulating a flying sword for ancient Cultivators. Three of them were most common.

”What’s more, the ancient flying swords, of course, have disadvantages compared with modern flying swords. However, they have their own advantages, too. I even believe that modern Cultivators are too condescending to dig out the full potential of the traditional magical equipment yet, of which ancient flying swords are a good example. We’ve been underestimating the wisdom of our predecessors.

”Let’s talk about ways to manipulate a flying sword first. Stepping on a flying sword and riding on it is just one of them. Except that, the ancient Cultivators could also embed themselves into their sword. That way, a dazzling sword would be all there was. The best sword Cultivators could even keep themselves and their swords in one place while killing someone thousands of kilometers away with their telepathic thoughts and their sword aura. Their swords were faster than any modern flying sword could ever be.

”Below are a few simple illustrations of the three ways of manipulating a flying sword that I just talked about.

”Let’s focus on riding a flying sword for a moment. It seems a little bit silly and completely against the principles of aerodynamics. Its speed is nothing impressive, either.

”However, there are three great benefits to it.

”Firstly, the agility of the Cultivator is tremendously increased. They would be able to perform small-scale dodging movements within a tiny area. Hovering in the middle of furious winds is no longer a problem.

”Secondly, the Cultivator has a keener sense of the spiritual waves in the air when their skin is exposed. It is easier for them to detect traces of their enemy, too.

”Thirdly, the Cultivator can summon their magical equipment conveniently when they are engaged with enemies!

”We are all clear that a difference of 0.1 seconds is enough to determine the life and death between two top experts. With the three advantages, it is not completely unacceptable that the absolute speed of the flying sword is relatively low.

”The techniques employed by the ancient flying swords have actually passed on to this day and evolved into three different kinds of magical equipment.

”Firstly, the shuttles, which replace the flying swords as vehicles.

”Secondly, bullets and one-off mini flying swords, which apparently originated from the ejection of the ancient flying swords.

”Thirdly, handy swords and sabers such as chainsword, which were inspired by the melee techniques and the aura-trigger techniques of the ancient flying swords, too.

”Cultivators today have gone deeper and deeper on the fractionization of magical equipment. The three aspects have been divided and developed respectively. Significant improvements have been made to shuttles, bullets, and melee blades. Complete and thorough industry chains have been established, too.

”But we should never forget that the three industry chains could never have been built without the adequate development of our Cultivation civilization and the logistic, researching, and manufacturing facilities that it entails.

”Contemporary Cultivators can easily buy suitable shuttles, flying swords, guns, and bullets in a magical equipment store. The items can be maintained without any trouble when they are broken. The loss is insignificant even if we just throw them away.

”However, in ancient times, when a Cultivator was walking in wilderness, they had no access to any supplies, nor did they have a place where they can repair their magical equipment.

”If they were driving a shuttle with chainswords and guns in hand, their firepower would definitely have been much higher. But what if they were broken?

”Therefore, the ancient Cultivators could only meld all the useful techniques into one flying sword and try to simplify them to the point that the sword looked crude and shabby. But as long as the flying swords were solid, sturdy, and convenient, it would suffice for an ancient Cultivator who was on a tedious journey in wilderness.

”We modern Cultivators are quite lucky. We have a stable society, open-minded Cultivation sects, fellow Cultivators who share the same beliefs, professional magical equipment manufacturers, and a ubiquitous Spiritual Nexus. Therefore, our flying swords, as well as other magical equipment, can evolve, evolve, and evolve.

”Ancient Cultivators had none of this. Most of the time, they were like the lone sailors on a surging ocean. In order to meet their demand for survival, their flying swords were destined to be more primitive.

”Even so, there are still quite a lot of extraordinary designs in ancient flying swords that call for our attention.

”For example, ’Demon Biter’, a sword refined by the Blood Wolf Sect, adopted an interesting three-edged design. I’ve hardly ever seen a similar design in the modern flying swords. This is a simple illustration of ’Demon Biter’. Take a look at it if you are interested…”

Li Yao’s telepathic thoughts raced like galloping stallions. He found it hard to stop when he started writing, and it was not until more than half an hour later, when he had written hundreds of thousands of words describing more than ten ancient flying swords and drawn more than thirty ancient rune arrays, that he finished the task and felt gratified.

He took a long breath in satisfaction and submitted the answer. Then, he put it to the back of his mind and entered his personal space to modify the Eight Arm Suit.

…

”Cao Le, Cao Le! Get up already! Your face has been smacked! Aya, this answer is indeed reasonable and persuasive. You’ve been berated and burnt! Hahahaha. I feel sorry for your cheeks!”

Inside a dormitory of the Flying Sword Department of Flying Star University, one of the two best colleges of the Flying Star Sector, a fat boy was grimacing at his roommate on the bed.

Cao Le yawned and took off the head-worn special crystal processor. He blinked his bloodshot eyes and replied, not very happily, ”Fatty Sun, don’t make a fuss. I’m watching a game. Long Feihu has secured a 97th victory. How awesome!”

Cao Le was a model student of Flying Star Sector and considered himself to be an expert in flying swords. Since Long Feihu, champion of the Heavenly Sword Arena, had always used a super-large flying sword as his weapon, he had been a crazy fan of his and wouldn’t miss any of his matches.

”You are still in the mood for a live stream?” The fatty winked. ”You call yourself a flying sword expert, yet the answer you published on the Nexus yesterday, the one drawing a comparison between ancient flying swords and modern ones, has been beaten to a pulp! Man, I’ve never seen a more humiliating failure!”

”What?!”

Cao Le’s eyes were wide open. The redness inside his eyes was all gone. He jumped up like a flying sword just unsheathed.