Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

In a warehouse that had been swallowed by the flood, there was an empty space around five meters in diameter in the center. In the middle of the space was a deep blue ball that was floating and emitting electric arcs.

It was a water-driving ball. With the mechanism of ionization, it could create and maintain a waterproof space for half an hour.

Bai Kaixin’s upper half body was naked. His face was as pale as paper. With the help of the anti-gravity rune arrays, he floated three inches from the ground, with a translucent flying sword that looked like a fishbone atop his heart.

Coldly shining thorns were all around the flying sword. Just one look at them was enough to make one’s heart beat fast.

Li Yao manipulated dozens of metal threads that were thinner than his hair with his telepathic thoughts and extended them into the hollow grip of the flying sword. After groping carefully for a while, he completely destroyed the traps inside the flying sword after a click sound.

The spurting blood came to a sudden stop.

Li Yao took a long breath in relief. He wiped off the sweat on his forehead and said to Bai Xinghe and Lei Dalu, ”The traps have been destroyed. The sword will not absorb blood from Advisor Bai’s body any longer. However, I’m not a doctor. The flying sword is really too close to the heart. It’s impossible to remove it here. Let’s see what we can do after we get to the Star Prier’s House.”

Bai Kaixin was lackluster, and his lips seemed to be dyed with chalk. He stared at Bai Xinghe and did not move his eyes away even when Li Yao was destroying the traps.

Bai Xinghe was in a trance. His face grew old at a visible speed, as if the sword was not stabbed in his son’s chest but his own.

Shivering, Bai Kaixin extended one of his fingers.

Li Yao and Lei Dalu both turned to Bai Xinghe. They both knew what Bai Kaixin meant. He meant to ask Bai Xinghe a question, one that he had guessed the answer to but would like to hear it from Bai Xinghe’s mouth anyway.

Bai Xinghe was silent for a long time. He opened his mouth slowly, his voice so coarse that it seemed to come not from his throat but from his broken heart. ”Although your mother was not killed by me, I was to blame for her death! If I didn’t force her to stay on Spider Den, she wouldn’t have been killed. She wouldn’t have!

”It was me who got her killed. It was me!”

Bai Xinghe collapsed to the ground in grief, mumbling. Faced with his heavily wounded son, he lost his demeanor as the Pirate Potentate completely.

Bai Kaixin finally learned the answer. There were tears in his eyes, but the sorrow that had occupied his face for decades faded away all of a sudden as if it had been blown away by a spring breeze.

For the first time, Li Yao discovered that Bai Kaixin was quite a handsome man when he was not wearing a bitter expression.

He shook his hands slightly and allowed his father’s rough hands to hold them, before he closed his eyes with a smile in relief.

”The flying sword had been broken. We must head back to the Star Prier’s House. The Immortal Cultivators are coming close to the area we are in. They will find us shortly!”

Bai Xinghe treated Bai Kaixin’s wounds simply. Then, he asked Li Yao to fix the lower bottom half of the flying sword, while he chopped off the part of the flying sword that was out of Bai Kaixin’s body. The only thing left on Bai Kaixin’s chest was a slight bulge.

Then, he put a special waterproof suit on Bai Kaixin. Then he carried him and deactivated the water-driving ball. The four of them swam toward the Star Prier’s House.

From the surveillance cameras, they could tell that the main troops of the Immortal Cultivators were surrounding them.

The experts above the Core Formation Stage were not something that the underwater beasts could deal with. They would only be slightly harassed by the beasts, but nothing more.

”Hurry up!”

Bai Xinghe was in the lead. They made their way in the flood that was devoid of any light and returned to the Star Prier’s House.

After half an hour’s journey, they gradually drew close to the Star Prier’s House.

However, there was no road forward.

The entire pathway had collapsed due to an intense explosion. Debris and rocks had completely blocked it.

”Well—” Li Yao frowned. When they went down, the pathway had been perfectly fine. He did not expect it to have been destroyed so quickly.

”Is there another way?” Lei Dalu asked.

”Yes!” Bai Xinghe replied.

He glanced at the picture on the mini crystal processor, only to smile bitterly and added, ”There are two other ways that we can take, but they are both occupied by the Immortal Cultivators now!”

”Then we can only dig through the pathway!”

Lei Dalu stuck his hands to the debris and rocks before he bellowed and exerted his strength. An enormous rock in front of him was immediately crushed into powder.

However, more rocks slowly fell down and took up most of the space that he had just emptied.

”Let me have a try!”

With Li Yao’s telepathic thoughts and his surging spiritual energy, the Feathered Dragon Saber dispersed again and reformed into a giant black drill.

The drill of mystic rays on Sparkle was a piece of powerful magical equipment from the Star Ocean Imperium. Li Yao had killed Skeleton Dragon with the drill of mystic rays and had been particularly fond of the magical equipment ever since then.

Because of his insistence, when the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was being modified, a small drill of mystic rays had been created and embedded with the Feathered Dragon Saber.

Sha! Sha! Sha! Sha!

The drill made of the Feathered Dragon Saber revolved rapidly, surrounded by brilliance electric arcs and mystic rays that were illuminated the dark water of the river. Soon, a large space was drilled out.

However, the pathway was extremely long, and the tectonic structure above was very unstable. Despite the marvelous tool in Li Yao’s hand, he had to work carefully and push forward at a very low speed.

While he drilled forward, Lei Dalu stabilized the pathway behind him. Bai Xinghe watched them in silence while holding Bai Kaixin.

When another twenty meters was drilled through inside the pathway, half of the empty space had a collapse again. Bai Xinghe suddenly said, ”You guys take your time to drill forward here. I’m going to investigate the Immortal Cultivators’ progress.”

Li Yao and Lei Dalu were both dazed for a moment. They both realized what Bai Xinghe was going to do.

Bai Kaixin’s eyes shone in the dark water. In response, Bai Xinghe smiled and pressed somewhere behind his son’s neck, making his son close his eyes as he fell into a deep sleep.

Shua!

Bai Xinghe took off the Dragon King Battlesuit and stored the crystal suit into one of his Cosmos Rings before he threw the Cosmos Ring to Li Yao. In the meantime, he put on the ’Blood River Battlesuit’ that he had worn during the second confrontation with Li Yao!

”Li Yao, consider the Dragon King Battlesuit a gift of mine. It would be a shame if the crystal suit fell into the hands of the Immortal Cultivators,” Bai Xinghe said casually. He patted the Blood River Battlesuit on his body and declared, ”The crystal suit on my body is enough.”

”Boss Bai!”

Li Yao’s heart was filled with a mixture of emotions. He did not know what to say.

Bai Xinghe put his son down carefully and touched his forehead for the last time. He waved his hands and vanished into the darkness.

From then on, Li Yao could only talk to Bai Xinghe through the communication channel.

”The latest map of the underground fortress, including the parts that Yan Xinjian changed and the location of his secret training room, has been sent into your crystal processor,” Bai Xinghe said. ”It is a little gift that I offer you. You are a worthy opponent, Li Yao.”

Li Yao gnashed his teeth. ”Are you really going, Boss Bai?”

”Is there a second option?” Bai Xinghe asked casually. ”I’ll give you half an hour. You must break through the pathway within half an hour and get my son out of the place. Otherwise, I won’t let you go even if I die and become a ghost!”

Li Yao was silent.

Bai Xinghe smiled bitterly and said gloomily, ”I’ve been lying to you about something. If I don’t tell you the truth now, I think I will not die in peace. Just consider it a story if you find it too hard to believe.

”Do you remember how I came to Spider Den?”

Li Yao was dazed. ”Is it all false?”

”Everything in the beginning is true,” Bai Xinghe mumbled. ”We encountered a space storm, ended up in an unknown space zone, were saved by somebody else, and got caught in desperation later. My parents planned to kill our lifesavers so that we could keep ourselves alive… That part is true.

”But then I lied!

”At that time, I was already seven, and I already knew a lot of stuff.

”When my father said, ’Out of two, one will live’ and ’If I don’t kill him, he will kill me’, although I didn’t know what he meant, I did sense the soaring killing intent from his tone and his facial expression.

”It was something that I’d never sensed from my father before.

”I was so scared that I cried. I held my father’s legs and asked what he was going to do exactly and whether or not he was planning to do something bad.

”I said to my father—’Father, you are a Cultivator; Cultivators don’t do bad things!’

”Maybe my father was moved by these words. He was dazed for a long time and suddenly held my mother, both of them crying. He cried and screamed, ’I don’t deserve to be a Cultivator!’

”The two of them cried for a long time and gradually calmed down. They agreed that, if they did such things to their lifesavers, who had offered them such great help, they could barely be called humans any longer, much less Cultivators.

”Therefore, they decided that they would try to repair the communication magical equipment with all the remaining resources on the starship one last time. If it didn’t work out, they would see what they could do the next day.

”However…

”That night, while they were working hard to repair the communication magical equipment, our lifesavers assaulted us!”

Li Yao couldn’t help but cry out, ”Say what?”

Bai Xinghe’s voice was as cold as that of a ghost, as he said, ”Our most trusted lifesavers ambushed us. Everyone on board, including my parents, was killed by them. I only got away from the disaster because my parents put me into an escape capsule in advance and launched it. Then, I was fished up by the space pirates.

”Hehe. My father was right. Out of two, one will live. If I don’t kill him, he will kill me. I was the one who got them killed. I killed my own parents!

”If—if I hadn’t stopped him, maybe it would have been us that made it to the end, and I wouldn’t have fallen into Spider Den and ended up being an inhuman, lawless space pirate!”

”Why did you lie to me in the beginning?” Li Yao asked solemnly. ”What could you get by telling such a lie?”

”Because,” Bai Xinghe said gravely, ”I meant to make you believe in me at that time, and you certainly wouldn’t have believed the truth!”

Li Yao found it curious. ”Why?”

”Because—”

Bai Xinghe’s voice sounded like he had gone mad. ”Do you know who our ’lifesaver’ was?

”Haha. Hahahaha. The one who rescued us first but also pulled the trigger first, slew everyone on board, and looted all the resources on our starship in the desperate situation was the former leader of the Feathered Snakes Brotherhood, the CEO of the Grand Illusionary Group, the crownless king of the Flying Star Sector, and the unquestionable leader of the Cultivators—Xiao Xuance!”