Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao kicked the teenager away and dodged the incoming venom himself.

The venom hit the ground with screeching noises, leaving deep, shocking holes on the solid rocks.

The Emperor Sand Scorpion in so much pain that it was bashing its tail and writhing on the ground, and yet it failed to remove the hollow shank from back.

The venom gland was like its heart, and the venom was the essence of its life. After three minutes of spraying, it gradually slowed down. The Emperor Sand Scorpion collapsed helplessly and died.

Li Yao jumped forward and removed the shank, half of which had been stained with the venom. It was a good material for refining and shouldn’t be wasted.

The teenager sat on the ground and breathed heavily for three minutes, before he finally returned to himself from the shock of near death.

He was looking at Li Yao with appreciation and admiration, if not with a bit confusion, because he did not understand how Li Yao put down the big guy with just half of a bone blade.

Li Yao scratched his nose while he thought of more than ten possible plans to elicit information from the stranger. He then jumped off the back of the Emperor Sand Scorpion.

While he was in midair, he was suddenly greatly alarmed. After an earsplitting explosion, another Emperor Sand Scorpion that was in scarlet and smaller in size dashed out from the sand below him!

Li Yao’s pupils constricted violently.

Damn. A pair of Emperor Sand Scorpions, one male and the other female, were in the company of each other!

Emperor Sand Scorpions were solitary demon beasts. They would never go hunting together unless it was their mating season.

It was quite unfortunate of him to have run into two Emperor Sand Scorpions!

Female Emperor Sand Scorpions were smaller, but they were faster, and their venom was deadlier!

Are you kidding me?

Did I use up all my luck during the battle in space? Why do such things keep happening to me?

Seeing that the Emperor Sand Scorpion was wielding its coldly blinking pincers at him, and there being no time to change his direction at this moment, Li Yao could do nothing except to roar and accelerate toward the enemy, waving whatever was left of his bone blade!

…

”Uncle, hang in there. You can’t die!”

In a trance, Li Yao felt that he was a small boat on a raging ocean, one whose shell was broken and whose cabin was half filled with water.

The events of the previous few hours had become confused memories. From the intermittent pictures, he recalled that, soaked in blood, he had kicked apart half of the Emperor Sand Scorpion’s pincer with brute force and gritted his teeth to take one of its venomous stings while he took the opportunity to pierce the broken pincer into the gap of its shell, thus finishing the pest.

He couldn’t remember what happened later very clearly. He seemed to have been dragged into a cave by the teenager named Wu Mayan from the Furious Bears Tribe.

Wu Mayan had collected a lot of plants, rubbed their sap, and smeared it on his wounds. He had also brought out copious amounts of a fragrant drug and poured it into his mouth.

But his wounds were still burning like fire. They were red and swollen, as if a deadly chilopod had crawled on his body.

Li Yao felt amused. When he had faced off with Fengyu Zhong, a Core Formation Stage Cultivator, everything had remained under his control.

Yet, he had been humiliated by two little bugs.

I’ve been poisoned.

The venomous sting at the tail of the Emperor Sand Scorpion can cause nerve damage. If I were a common Cultivator, it might have taken half a month before I could get out of bed.

Even for me, it will take me an entire day to fully mend all the neural network if I dedicate all my spiritual energy to the job.

But the most important thing is that I survived!

Whatever is coming for me, just bring it on! I’m already the most unfortunate person in the world. I don’t believe that I can be any unluckier! Li Yao thought to himself in discontent, anger flowing on his face.

Wu Mayan saw it and exclaimed in wild joy, ”Uncle, you’re awake? How wonderful! You must hang in there! I set off distress firework. Somebody is going to rescue us in a moment!

”My foster father is Xiong Wuji, the leader of the Furious Bears Tribe and the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau! My mother is the greatest doctor of the Furious Bears Tribe! She’ll definitely cure you when we’re back in Furious Bears City!”

Li Yao was utterly dumbfounded.

Le—leader of the Furious Bears Tribe, the best warrior of the six tribes on Iron Plateau?

You’ve got to me kidding me!

The title sounds rather impressive. The man must be unbelievably strong, at least much stronger than that Yan Chihuo!

Furious Bears City? Is it the enormous town of qi-trainers where beams of smoke have been popping up all day long?

Li Yao felt his head going dizzy, and he almost passed out.

He had planned to stop by the villages at the periphery of the desert first and see the qi-trainers’ reactions to him.

He was not ready to deal with an opponent that was known to be ’the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau’ when he had only just gotten started!

The best warrior! The man must be higher than the 80th level of the Refinement Stage, if not the 100th level. If he were to notice anything wrong about him, he could easily kill him with just a sneeze!

But since the poison from the scorpion had not been cleared yet, he had barely any physical strength right now, and he couldn’t even run away at the moment.

Li Yao cursed Wu Mayan with the most profane language in his mind. Why did you come out late at night to hunt demon beasts alone instead of staying in Furious Bears City like a nice kid would?

But it could not be helped right now. He could only force himself to enter the deep sleep state and try to fix his damaged nerves as quickly as possible by summoning the primordial force inside his cells.

Later, he was awakened several times.

The first time, he was woken up by a series of rumbling noises that seemed to indicate that ten thousand iron beasts were gathering on the desert for a concert.

Then, Wu Mayan danced with great joy and shouted, ”Father Xiong! Father Xiong! We are here!”

Li Yao sensed that a man with daunting aura crammed into the cave.

The cave was rather spacious, but this particular ’Father Xiong’ was like a giant whose head could reach the sky. He gave Li Yao tremendous pressure even when he was still ten meters away.

Li Yao panicked. He was not ready to confront the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau yet. Therefore, he simply forced himself to enter the deep sleep state again and continued healing his wounds in order to avoid talking to ’Father Xiong’!

The second time, he was woken up by bumping.

At that moment, they were moving through the desert, accompanied by the morning star.

What Li Yao was placed on was a big crawling True Qi machine with six feet that looked like a spider but billions of times larger. The six long legs were all crafted with steel, packed with coldly shining rivets on them.

The torso of the machine was two round expansive cabins that could accommodate dozens of people at the same time. On the two sides of the torso were more than twenty turrets that were all heavy True Qi cannons more than half a meter in diameter.

Twenty brawny man, whose muscles were glimmering because of sweat, were standing on the two sides of the cabin. In front of each of them, a hollow iron tube riddled with holes was placed.

The iron tubes were surrounded by two dents in the shape of hands where they could put their hands.

The engine compartment was the destination of all the iron tubes.

The brawny men were like crew members who were rowing a boat. Listening to the drumming of a leader in the front, they echoed ”Hee—Hah” in a fixed pattern.

While they shouted, the spiritual gas inside their body surged out through their hands and into the hollow iron tubes!

It appeared that the brawny men were all above the 10th level of the Refinement Stage!

The spiritual gas that the twenty qi-trainers unleashed was transmitted to the engine compartment in the rear through the hollow iron tubes. It was then redistributed, enhanced, and sent to the six long legs of the machine to drive the steel spider forward at a speed that was no lower than that of the True Qi tanks.

Occasionally, the spider would jump up high and cover a distance of almost a hundred meters, passing the rough valleys and hills easily by spurting the air out below it.

Such True Qi machines were totally different from the modern magical equipment that was based on crystals and crystal processors. They were crude and primitive, but they brought an air of resolution and stubbornness with them.

Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the Great Dark Age, when the relics of the ancient Cultivators had just been excavated, such True Qi war beasts were the first to be manufactured. The humans at that time had fought against the demon beasts with them as well as the blades accelerated by spiritual gas, so that humanity could rise again!

Li Yao had thought that he could only see True Qi machines in a museum. He had never expected that he would be lucky enough to lie in one.

For a fan of magical equipment, it could almost be called a nice surprise.

However, despite the high speed of the steel spider, it was not installed with any suspension or deceleration facilities, and its structure could not have been any simpler. Every bump and quake had been precisely fed back to Li Yao’s bottom, which was almost shattered into pieces.

The qi-trainers on the steel spider, on the other hand, were like seasoned sailors who had witnessed too many storms. Intense as the bumps might have been, they remained absolutely still, as if they were dozens of rivets that had been stabbed into the ground.

While Li Yao felt that his world was swirling, he vaguely overheard a quarrel at the front of the cabin.

One of the voices was sharp and high-pitched; it seemed to belong to Wu Mayan, who was declaring, ”I did not run away secretly! I was out on a hunting trip! I have surpassed the 11th level of the Refinement Stage! I’m not a child, nor one of the pussies from space! I need to prove to everyone that I am an out-and-out warrior of Iron Plateau! I want to join the battle against the apocalypse! I want to fight the apocalypse side by side with Father Xiong!”

The other voice was deep, hoarse, and sounded like a bellowing bear. ”You claim that you are not a child, and yet you made other people seriously wounded for you!”

Wu Mayan was totally rendered speechless. He was silent for a long time, before he asked, somewhat guiltily, ”Father Xiong, is this uncle alright? He was quite awesome! Although he was merely in the 13th or 14th level of the Refinement Stage, he put down two Emperor Sand Scorpions barehanded with nothing but a few bones!”

’Father Xiong’ replied, ”He suffered heavy wounds and was poisoned by the venom of the scorpions. If it were a regular person, they would’ve died long ago! But he is strong. Really strong. His body is slowly recovering right now! You can tell from the countless old scars on his body that he is not someone to die easily!”

Li Yao was secretly relieved. Judging from the man’s tone, he had not found any issues with him yet and was not hostile at all, at least for now.

He entered the deep sleep state again and devoted himself to the recovery of his body.

When he woke up for the third time, they had arrived at the entrance of a splendid city.

The entire city was surrounded by walls dozens of meters high. They were made up of green rocks and extended to the middle of the dense fog, making it impossible to tell how long they were. Li Yao roughly estimated that each side of the walls could be dozens of kilometers long.

Illuminated by the morning sunlight, the city wall was emitting a metallic glow. There was a giant defense rune array every ten meters or so. Countless cracks of different layers had been left on the defense arrays, clear signs that the defense rune arrays had been broken, mended, rebroken, and re-mended many times. Gory battles must have taken place over and over at the city walls.

When they drew closer, Li Yao discovered lots of askew calligraphy among the cracks, which seemed to have been carved with swords and sabers. All of the words were more than one meter in diameter and apparently written by different hands. Some of them were deeper, and some were mottled and unclear because of the erosion of wind and rain, suggesting that they might have existed for hundreds of years.

Li Yao glanced at them and remembered two lines of proud declarations quickly.

The first line was ’Reach the 100th level of the Refinement Stage if you are a man! Damn the Building Foundation! Damn the Core Formation! Damn the Nascent Soul!’

The second line looked rather ancient. It had been corroded into two shallow traces by the passage of time.

’If we cannot defend human civilization, at the very least, we can defend our savageness!’