Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Chapter 504: Spider’s Thorn

”Li Yao, you are a monster!”

”I knew that you were better than what you’d been showing us, but I never thought that you would be that good! Even the true heir of the Mo family was sliced apart by you!”

In the middle of the light beam, Lei Dalu was as messy and insouciant as the old days. He laughed carefreely. ”We were cruising through a very dangerous stone belt a few days ago and couldn’t receive any signal from the Spiritual Nexus. Everybody was shocked when we watched the video this morning!

”We didn’t bring the young boys of the Tiger Killer Camp for this mission. They are locked in a secret training camp in the Thousand Sails Space Zone for concentrated special training! However, seeing that you were so awesome, I still asked the manager of the camp to play the video for them. They all went crazy! Here, just watch their reactions!”

The picture blinked and turned into a montage. A pack of vigorous young man, who had zits all over their faces, were yelling toward the camera inside a somewhat outdated training room.

”Brother Li Yao, you are so incredible!”

”Brother Yao, you are the greatest idol of everyone in the Tiger Killer Camp!”

”Li Yao, from the Li family. That’s so cool! Allow me to be your lackey!”

Zhao Nuo, captain of the Tiger Killer Camp, was also dancing and talking excitedly. ”Top 16 is not good enough. Now that Mo Tianshui has been defeated, Huangpu Xiaoya will be the next in line. Brother Yao, hurry up and crush her with your passionate charisma and nimble hands! We’re all backing you!”

”Yes, we’re backing you! You are the legend of the Great Horn Exo Society!” bellowed a hot-blooded young man.

Li Yao was calm when thousands of spectators cheered for him inside the match field, and his face remained unchanged when countless people admired him and called him a genius on the Spiritual Nexus.

But he couldn’t help but smile when he watched and listened to the desperately shouting young people who had fought side by side with him against the True Fusion and the space swirl.

”These guys!”

Li Yao chuckled after he watched the video. Then he said, ”Captain, please tell the boys of the Tiger Killer Camp that, when everything is done after the Skyhill Sword Seminar, I will give every one of them a piece of melee magical equipment refined by myself! I can’t be their ’Brother Yao’ without offering them anything in return.”

Lei Dalu whistled and replied, clicking his tongue, ”You are truly a lavish one. As the new expert on sabers in the circle of refiners, countless saber wielders are hoping to purchase your masterpieces at whatever cost. How wasteful it will be to build weapons for those boys who don’t know the first thing about fighting! Why don’t you refine a weapon for me if you insist?”

Refiners enjoyed a high social position in the world of Cultivators because the ultimate magical equipment they created could significantly improve the combat ability of the battle-type Cultivators.

Li Yao’s saber-refining skills might still be too shabby for Core Formation Stage Cultivators. But for Cultivators at the Refinement Stage and the Building Foundation Stage, he was definitely somebody worth pleasing and making friends with.

In the world of Cultivators, Building Foundation Stage Cultivators and Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators were much fewer after all, while Refinement and Building Foundation Stage Cultivators were the mainstream, who made up more than 99% of all Cultivators.

Considering the formidableness of the sabers Li Yao crafted, he could be a guest of whatever sect or family wherever he went in the Flying Star Sector.

Li Yao smiled and said, ”My techniques are not good enough for Core Formation Stage Cultivators yet. So, I will build weapons for the Tiger Killer Camp first. Wait until I train myself in the three main crystal suit centers for a year and a half. By that time, I will certainly refine new magical equipment for every one of you, including Captain!”

Lei Dalu had mixed feelings. ”Li Yao, you are truly the bringer of fortune for the Great Horn Exo Society. Did you know that the searches for the Great Horn Exo Society increased by hundreds of times on the Spiritual Nexus the day you mentioned your relationship with the Great Horn Exo Society? We even made it into the weekly ’Trending Topics’! Right now, we are a well-acknowledged group in the circle of Exos. Many sects and star fortresses have expressed their interest in cooperating with us. A lot of strong guys are also handing in their applications, hoping to join us!

”Over the past ten years, I have been trying to make the Great Horn Exo Society larger and stronger so that we can rescue more victims of the space pirates.

”But you also knew how we brawny yet brainless barbarians used to run the Great Horn Exo Society. Without the hard work of Bai Kaixin, I’m afraid we would’ve starved a long time ago!

”This time, thanks to you, we are literally known by everyone in the world. The day of our rising is coming near!”

Lei Dalu plucked his beard and laughed very in satisfaction.

Pondering for a moment, Li Yao said, ”Captain, I’ve read some news on the Spiritual Nexus and heard word on the street. It is said the Fengyu Zhong has issued tremendous bounties. Undercurrents are surging on Spider Den! Did you know—”

”No worries.”

Lei Dalu grinned, somewhat scarily. ”It is not simple as it appears to be. This particular mission that Great Horn Exo Society is carrying out was not selected randomly, either. If Fengyu Zhong doesn’t come, then it’s fine. But if he does, hehehehe…”

Li Yao quickly thought everything through. He remembered that the Great Horn Exo Society had received a lot of donations the moment it arrived in the Thousand Sails Space Zone and that Gold Horn had been given priority when it was sent to a dock for modification and upgrades. He immediately understood what was going on.

It appeared that the Cultivators of the Flying Star Sector were not as inert as he had imagined.

Fengyu Zhong was a brutal bandit who countless organizations couldn’t wait to kill. However, his traces had been a secret over the past ten years. Except for Spider Den, the base for all the space pirates, nobody knew where he would show up.

The experts wouldn’t know where to chop off his head even if they were summoned together.

But this time, it was a great opportunity to hunt him down while he was hunting somebody else.

Maybe, when Fengyu Zhong marched toward the Great Horn Exo Society ruthlessly, he would find out in bewilderment that he had fallen into a deadly trap!

Lei Dalu said, ”The bottom line is, keep it up in your match. Everything is smooth in the Great Horn Exo Society.

”It is you who should be more carefully. Fengyu Zhong declared quite angrily that he wanted each and every member of the Great Horn Exo Society dead.

”You were just a regular member of Great Horn, and you are barely affiliated to it now. Also, you are in the Thousand Sails Space Zone, the camp for all Exos. Therefore, I wasn’t worried about you before.

”But right now, you’ve risen to fame suddenly and highlighted your relationship with Great Horn in front of so many reporters. I’m afraid that even a dog on Spider Den knows your name now.

”On Spider Den, except for common space pirates, there is also a mysterious organization named ’Black Spider Tower’, which is in charge of intelligence, espionage, infiltration and assassination.

”The department in charge of assassinations is known as ’Spider’s Thorn’. It is a blood-freezing name for all Cultivators!

”In their most violent days, these assassins even dared to sneak into the headquarters of a sect and assassinate the key persons such as elders!

”Even if you are confident in your own capability, I suggest you hire a few bodyguards. With your identity as a master of saber-refining, I’m sure that, if the saber experts who are willing to be your bodyguards line up in Thousand Sails Space Zone, the last of them will end up in Heavenly Saints City!”

Li Yao felt warm. Although he had other plans, he nodded his head quickly. ”Alright. Safety always comes first. I will hire a few body guards.”

While they were talking, the light beam suddenly turned fuzzy, with waves and flakes surging out, before it went completely blank.

Three seconds later, the communication was cut off.

The Great Horn Exo Society’s current mission had brought them to more than ten space zones away. The communication between them and Li Yao had been established via the dense spiritual towers throughout space.

However, the spiritual towers floating in the sea of stars were prone to the scourge of meteoroids, cosmic dust, space storms, and spiritual tides due to the lack of protection from an atmosphere. The Spiritual Nexus they constituted could be very unstable.

It was especially so when a starship was cruising past some stone belts or world fragments. An intermittent Spiritual Nexus was nothing new.

Li Yao turned off the connection and planned to retry in several minutes.

Right then, somebody knocked on his door softly.

From the monitor, Li Yao could see that it was a greasily-haired, middle-aged, fat man in a delicate robe standing on his doorstep.

He was wearing a sunny smile. His small eyes were narrowed together, which gave him an inexplicable charisma that seemed to be able to stop other people from turning down his request.

The biggest feature of this guy’s appearance was that it had no features. Despite Li Yao’s amazing computational ability, Li Yao found himself forgetting what the man looked like when he moved his eyes away after gazing at him for three seconds.

Li Yao thought of something. He quickly sorted his room for half a minute, before he cleaned his clothes and opened the door.

”Master Li Yao, greetings. My name is Fei Ming. I’m from the Silver Heart School,” said the fat middle-aged man courteously.

Li Yao blocked the door and said coldly, ”Your men already came yesterday. The three crystal suit centers have all provided contracts. I need to spend a few days weighing up my options.”

Seven-colored brilliance was blinking in Fei Ming’s eyes, as he lowered his voice, as if a mosquito was flapping its wings. ”The offer yesterday was for the public. Does Master Li Yao not want to hear what extra benefits we can provide you with? Why don’t we go inside and have a proper talk?”

Li Yao blinked, his pupils somewhat rigid. He mumbled to himself, ”Extra benefits? I suppose we can talk about that.”

After the two of them sat down, Fei Ming brought out an octagonal metal box from his pocket in the gentlest way. He then pushed the box to Li Yao, as he said in a mild voice as if feathers were kissing the ground, ”Master Li Yao, since your hands are so fast and you are so good at micro-carving, you must be very interested in delicate magical equipment. This metal box is our present for you. Consider it a sign of friendship from the Silver Heart School.”

”Delicate magical equipment?”

Brilliance of fascination beamed out of Li Yao’s eyes. He touched a crimson rune on the top of the box. After a clicking sound, the box unfolded into a weird Eight Trigram that was engraved with black-and-white helical spiritual stripes.

A small gyro rose up slowly from the center of the Eight Trigram and span silently in midair.

The edge of the gyro was carved with the most beautiful spiritual stripes, whose mystical brightness was flashing in Li Yao’s eyes.

Li Yao seemed to have fallen asleep. His eyes were absolutely still, and his breath turned slow and stable.

Fei Ming bent forward, his voice so low that it almost couldn’t be heard. ”Master Li Yao, we have many other kinds of classic magical equipment, some that are so precise, it is simply impossible to dismantle them after they are assembled. For hundreds of years, none have ever cracked them successfully.

”However, this hotel is quite noisy. Why don’t we move our conversation to a less disturbed place where we can enjoy and analyze them more slowly? What do you think?”

”…Of course.” Li Yao swallowed. He stood up, holding the gyro carefully in his hands.