Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Huangpu Shiyi’s face was pale. Li Yao’s laughter seemed to be punching him right his chest, and he felt that he was having a heart attack. Moaning for a moment, he asked, ”How did you plant the bomb on the back of the enemy’s crystal suit?”

Li Yao answered delightedly, ”Did you forget? I threw the crystal bombs on the platform at the enemy in the beginning. Then I snuck below the platform and ran to the front.

”It appeared that I was in too much of a hurry to find a way out. But in fact, I’d dashed to the back of the enemy when the other bombs exploded.

”The small training room was filled with smoke and dust at that time. His vision was limited.

”Was it really difficult for me to pin such a small crystal bomb to the back of his crystal suit with my hands that can reach subsonic speed casually?

”Huh. Huangpu Shiyi, why does your face look so awful? Somebody seemed to have slapped you in the face! What, were you ambushed and wounded by the Cultivators?

”You’d better not die! There are many other things that I’m hoping to learn from you!”

Huangpu Shiyi took quite a few long breaths to recover his face color. Then he gnashed his teeth and said, ”I—I am fine. I was merely feeling dizzy due to the previous explosion.”

”That’s good. That’s good. After all, I wouldn’t have successfully devised and created Crystal Suit Killer without your tutelage. If some Cultivators are indeed blown to pieces, you should be credited for our accomplishment. Greatly credited!” said Li Yao solemnly.

Huangpu Shiyi felt like vomiting blood. He held his chest and said, difficultly, ”As—as long as you are sincere about becoming my disciple, everything—everything is alright.”

Li Yao grinned. ”Let’s talk about that later. Since the Cultivators considered me a traitor and want me killed so much, then as their wish, I will embark on the path to immortality and become an Immortal Cultivator!”

Huangpu Shiyi had been looking forward to Li Yao’s renouncement for a long time, but he was not expecting to hear it in such an awkward situation. Pausing for a moment, he replied, ”Take a good rest now. When you recover, we might need you for the maintenance work of the starship.”

”Is that so?”

Brilliance blinked in Li Yao’s eyes, as he nodded quickly. ”That’s not a problem. Repairing a starship—is my thing!”

…

Leaving the med bay Li Yao was in, Huangpu Shiyi and Su Jiuzhen went to another med bay that was larger in size on the second floor of the starship.

Compared to the cleanness and tranquility of Li Yao’s room, this med bay was truly a living hell.

The entire med bay reeked of burnt flesh and blood, which could not be entirely driven away no matter how much the ventilation system worked. The screams of countless Immortal Cultivators consolidated into gloomy clouds that enshrouded them.

Many broken, burnt bodies, whose arms or legs were gone, were in fact still alive because of the tough vitality of the Immortal Cultivators. They were floating inside the medication drugs as if they were chopped meat. Faint breaths could be heard occasionally. It was truly a blood-freezing scene.

Resolute and iron-willed as Su Jiuzhen and Huangpu Shiyi were, they couldn’t help but sigh when they saw such tragedies.

”Master Su. This is horrible. Too horrible!” Black Stone and White Dew exclaimed in grief and anger.

They were the captain and deputy captain of the assault team on the starship. The Exos killed in the explosion were mostly their subordinates.

The two of them had not been in the zone of the explosion and therefore had not been affected by it. But they were still more than infuriated seeing that their loyal subordinates whom they had carefully trained for a long time were now disabled or even dropped dead!

White Dew, the dark, long-necked, woman, shouted shrilly, ”I’ll just leave everybody else alone. The three brothers of the Duan family were triplets whose minds were connected. They had been trained in Black Spider Tower since they were young!

”Although they were merely in the beginning level of the Building Foundation Stage, they had taken care of a lot of high-level Building Foundation Stage Cultivators with the assassination skills that they were adept at and the seamless cooperation that was based on their bloodline bond.

”Moreover, they were all showing signs of advancement lately. If they could have advanced into the middle level of the Building Foundation Stage; they could even have been assigned to deal with Cultivators in the beginning level of the Core Formation Stage after a few years of training!

”Such triples are indeed rarely-seen! If they had been killed in a real battlefield, so be it. But now, they’ve been killed absurdly! More than ten years of effort has been wasted. All wasted!”

”Oh?”

Su Jiuzhen replied peacefully, ”Are you insinuating that it was wrong of me to have arranged the test?”

White Dew quivered and immediately stopped. Her body was shaking like a sieve, and she dared not say another word.

Su Jiuzhen scoffed and said, ”The Duan triplets were indeed useful and hard to come by. But are they really more precious than Li Yao?

”You’ve all seen that Li Yao is cruel and cunning without any moral standard. He does not care about the righteous path of Cultivation that other Cultivators deem most important, and he simply asks what benefits he can get from joining us.

”Besides, there was not the slightest hesitation when he assaulted Huangpu Xiaoya. Attacking a woman seemed as natural as breathing air for him!

”A guy of no restrictions with profound skills in refining who has crafted such an excellent piece of magical equipment like ’Crystal Suit Killer’!

”He was born to be an Immortal Cultivator, one that only appears once in a hundred years! He is the Immortal Cultivator of Immortal Cultivators!

”Let’s me give you a few reminders.

”I don’t care if some of you are discontented today and go looking for trouble with him.

”However, you’d better bear in mind that, for a guy like Li Yao, with his expertise and his personality, his position in our organization will definitely shoot up quickly.

”He is definitely not the most lenient man in the world. In fact, he was petty enough to set up a bomb hoping to blow up his enemy and his enemy’s companions just because the guy slashed him!

”If you are determined to piss off such a merciless man, just follow your heart! I will not stand in your way if you want to kill yourself!”

His words rendered everybody speechless. A cold wind seemed to be sweeping inside the med bay. Even the moaning and screaming injured Immortal Cultivators lowered their voices subconsciously.

”Li Yao…”

Everybody was reciting the upsetting name. They shivered as if they were tied up by a viper.

…

Half a day later, Li Yao was fully recovered. He was immediately asked to fix the starship.

According to Huangpu Shiyi, the starship had been seriously damaged by Furious Bears Union in the battle yesterday. A lot of refiners had been killed, too.

Li Yao didn’t ask any further. He did what he was asked to dutifully without any complaints.

Now that he had gained the trust of Huangpu Shiyi, he was granted with part of the permissions to the crystal processor of the starship, which allowed him to browse and download its structural designs.

After analyzing the structural designs carefully, he discovered that the starship was actually an ’Ox-level’ middle-sized carrier. This model of carrier was simple-structured and sturdy and often used for transportation of tremendous goods. It was one of the most commonly-seen business starships of the Flying Star Sector.

Although it had been upgraded with some firearms, they were all regular modifications. Most Cultivation sects often upgraded their starships in similar ways. There was nothing special about this particular starship.

It was exactly as he had speculated.

Li Yao estimated that, as an underground organization, the Temple of Immortals must’ve considered intelligence collection as one of its top priorities. If so, the majority of their starships were very likely to be such carriers, which wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, unlike armed starships.

It was even possible that this carrier had once been registered to a Cultivation sect before. It would be under the Cultivation’s name. Even if it were stopped at certain checkpoints in the sea of stars and searched on the Spiritual Nexus, nobody would be able to find anything wrong about it.

Such a starship had entered the Skyhill Domain in broad daylight because it was completely legal.

If it were a warship that had been armed to teeth, everybody would have noticed it coming distances away.

’Stormy Sword’, the manual of robbery for space pirates written by Fengyu Zhong, was stored inside Li Yao’s brain. It had detailed descriptions on how to sabotage various kinds of starships.

’Ox-level’ carriers, as one of the most popular business starships, were of course taken special care of by Fengyu Zhong.

There were more than a hundred methods recorded in ’Stormy Sword’ that could dismantle the ’ox’ into several parts like a butcher.

Other than the structural design of the starship, Li Yao had also received part of the simplified information about the space zone they were in and the cruising status of the next few days.

The information was necessary.

Refiners had to foresee what was coming in the future in order to perform the necessary strengthening procedures.

For example, if the starship was passing through a stone belt of the fire class, the refiners would have to cover the shell of the starship with patches of anti-heat rune arrays.

If they were going through a stone belt of the ice class, the refiners would have to do it the other way around.

Before Huangpu Shiyi and Su Jiuzhen set off, they had thought that it would be a simple task to capture two refiners.

Therefore, they had picked a middle-sized carrier and did not bring too many battle-type Immortal Cultivators along.

As for refiners, since there was already a super expert named Huangpu Shiyi, it would be highly redundant to bring too many of them!

As it turned out, quite a few refiners were involved in the gory explosion. Unlike the battle-type Immortal Cultivators who summoned spiritual shields in time, they were mostly killed on the spot. Those who had survived had suffered heavy wounds.

Therefore, Li Yao became the most proficient refiner aboard, other than Huangpu Shiyi. Besides, everybody knew that he was partly in charge of the maintenance of the Great Horn Exo Society’s starship and therefore must have a lot of experience.

At this critical moment, who else was more fit for the job other than him?

Two days passed. Rumor had it that they would be meeting Fengyu Zhong’s fleet soon.

As time went by, Li Yao’s plan gradually took shape.

However, a new situation disrupted his scheme again.

Inside the med bay, Huangpu Xiaoya was locked by a barrier and couldn’t move at all. She could only glare at Li Yao with her eyes from which lightning was bursting out.

Black Stone and White Dew were standing behind her. They were emotionless, but their eyes were somewhat weird.

Huangpu Shiyi was standing nearby, smiling. He lifted Huangpu Xiaoya’s hands with a metal manacle and fixed them up. Then he said to Li Yao, ”Come and help me chop off this pair of hands!”