Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

A glimmer of hope surfaced in Li Yao’s dry eyes again. He took a deep breath and planned to talk, only to cough loudly, feeling that thousands of arrows were piercing through his heart!

Next to them, more Secret Sword Agents were coming over. A lot of them had even put on their crystal suits, prepared to fight!

Lu Zui’s thunderous roar was echoing in every Secret Sword Agent’s communication channel. “What are you waiting for? Capture him now!”

The wall made of the veterans was easily crushed by the Secret Sword Agents.

However, they never realized, or rather, they did not have time to bother even if they did, how the fearless, disobedient old guys would react!

“What’s the meaning of this? You want a battle?”

Fury bursting out of the old artillerist’s eyes, Zhang Danao simply took off his military uniform, revealing his slender body that was covered in saber and claw marks. He picked up a giant loudspeaker and shouted, “Something is definitely wrong with these sons of bi*ches. We cannot let them take away our captive!

“Brothers of the Crystal Cannon Legion of the No. 55 Regiment, charge with me now!”

After Zhang Danao’s roar, the dozens of worn, old men, who were mostly wrinkled and short of a limb or two, seemed to be injected with ten times more exhilarant and were back to their golden years decades ago. Waving bottles of water, shopping bags, and their artificial limbs, they moved forward together with Zhang Danao!

The veterans further away did not know what was happening in the beginning, but to maintain order during the triumph parade, all the veterans were wearing short-distance communicators and established an independent communication channel, which could not be blocked by Lu Zui however hard he jammed the Spiritual Nexus!

For a moment, roars were echoing nonstop in the communication channel of the veterans.

“Somebody is attacking our fellow veterans in the front!”

“It’s those stealthy brats of the Secret Sword Agents!”

“They don’t know what they are doing!”

“Are there any comrades from the No. 35 Regiment? Our men are being bullied in the front. Need backup! Need backup!”

“None from the No. 35 Regiment are here, but the No. 28 Regiment is. Coming right now. Hang in there!”

The first wall made of dozens of veterans was crushed easily, but the second wall, made of hundreds of veterans who were holding each other’s hands, was pushing forward slowly but surely. Behind the second wall, the veterans from different towns who were total strangers before were quickly forming the third wall.

No… It was not a wall but an ocean of tough iron!

The several hundred Secret Sword Agents soon found it impossible to move when they were drowned in the ocean of veterans. At a loss, they hesitated and observed the flags of the veterans that represented the glorious history of their troops before, but they could not see where Li Yao was hidden behind the flapping flags at all!

“What are you doing!” Lu Zui’s furious voice was echoing again in the communication channel. “Why are you not moving?”

The Secret Sword Agents looked at each other in bewilderment and failed to come up with a reply.

Even the craziest person among them did not know what they should do under such circumstances now.

The attack of the crystal railgun from the crystal warship might have caused dozens of casualties, which could have been explained by the professional term ‘collateral damage’.

However, slashing the angrily shouting veterans with chainswords directly? It was a whole different thing. Even the most insane person did not dare to do such a thing!

While they were hesitating, a few explosive noises were breaking out in the sky. Ding Lingdang and Wu Mayan both noticed the change of the situation and broke out of the skyscrapers, getting rid of their opponents!

Ding Lingdang made best use of the specialty of ‘Blazing Tyrannosaur’. Craning her head, she shouted out the most deafening sound!

“Do not let them take that guy away! It’s Li Yao! Vulture Li Yao!”

Vulture Li Yao exploded above all the participants of the parade. Everybody felt that their head was dizzy, and their ears were hurting.

“What’s going on? Li Yao is already dead!”

“Wasn’t he killed on the Grand Desolate Plateau in a crash?”

“I know her. She is ‘Crimson Queen’ Ding Lingdang, isn’t she? What’s happening? Who is she fighting? She said that Vulture Li Yao is not dead… but right here?”

Other than the veterans, most of the participants of the parade were the students from the high schools and the colleges. Ding Lingdang was quite popular among those hot-blooded young people.

When she activated her spiritual energy to the maximum in midair and summoned nine roaring dragons of fire, which were her signature, many young people recognized her immediately!

“Li Yao is not dead, but he is wounded. He needs protection. He needs all of us!” Ding Lingdang shouted without bothering anything. “Do not let Li Yao be captured by those people. They are all bad guys!”

Hearing her words, the crowd below was seething with even more excitement.

Most of the ordinary people, of course, did not know the truth yet.

But they could tell that the crystal warships in the sky were extraordinarily aggressive.

Just now, a red shadow jumped in the air and had a head-on clash with the ball lightning. Many people here had witnessed it in person, too.

Intuitively, they vaguely knew that the shadow was protecting them!

For the ordinary people, their fists were not strong, their legs were not fast, their computational ability was not high, and their minds were not as agile as the Cultivators’.

Maybe, they could not do anything in such a confrontation.

But at the very least, they could still wave the flag in their hands hard and shout out the voice that was sweeping everything with the last bit of strength in their chest under Ding Lingdang’s lead.

“Stop right now!”

“What’s going on here? Speak now!”

“Is it Li Yao? Is it?”

The sound was echoing all over the central district.

The few Core Formation Stage Cultivators who were fighting Ding Lingdang a moment ago now arrived, too.

However, under so many pairs of scorching eyes, they did not know whether or not they should continue attacking.

Those Core Formation Stage Cultivators, who had trained for more than a hundred years and could blow up a crystal tank after a single punch, had never known that the eyes of ordinary people could be so overwhelming. They felt that they were being suppressed!

During the moment when they hesitated, Wu Mayan, with bruises all over his body, flew to Ding Lingdang, too. He opened his arms and put on a bloodstained smile to the Core Formation Stage Cultivators in front of him.

“You’ll have to get past me if you want to touch my masteress!”

“You little guy!”

Their backs leaning against each other, Ding Lingdang asked in a low voice, “Are you alright?”

“Of course I am. I am the man who will be the strongest qi-trainer in history!” Wu Mayan shrieked. “Masteress, just lead the roars. The punches of those scumbags are not even one tenth as strong as yours!”

The triumph parade, as an unprecedented event in the history of the federation, had naturally garnered a lot of media attention.

If Lu Zui had been able to settle Li Yao cleanly in a few minutes, the media might not have noticed it. Even if they did, Lu Zui had his ways to cover or wipe out the news.

However, he had been delayed for too long, and the situation was too big a mess!

The reporters and photographers from almost a hundred media outlets were crowding toward the center of chaos hurriedly. Those who could not make their way through all dashed to the skyscrapers on the street, trying to look for a high stance where they could observe the riot.

The confrontation between the Secret Sword Agents and the veterans was captured clearly by them.

Of course, at this moment, the so-called ‘confrontation’ was just a one-sided battle where the veterans were teaching the ‘immature brats’ a lesson.

On Hidden Star, looking at the situation down there, which had completely fallen into chaos, and the faces of the soldiers, students, workers, teachers, and merchants on the light beams, Lu Zui’s eyes suddenly lost focus.

He was gritting his teeth, confused, angry, and grasped by desperation. A bottomless hole seemed to have appeared on his face, absorbing all his facial organs and expressions.

He extended his hands, shivering, as if he touched a piece of burning charcoal when he was trying to catch a nonexistent straw. His hands shrank violently, but he had nowhere to put them. Eventually, he had to place them in front of his chest like the paws of a mouse.

“Open fire. Bombard him. Bombard him!” Lu Zui mumbled.

There was nothing but silence on-board. All the crew members, all the marines, and all the ‘patriots’ knew clearly that their cause had come to an end.

Opening fire right now would lead to dire consequences and would not reverse their failure at all.

Even if they were determined to open fire, where they should aim at?

On the small square in front of the parliament building, at least ten thousand Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars flags and ten times more flags of schools, troops and civil organizations were flying.

All the flags were equally vivid and hot while they were fluttering in the wind!

Li Yao was hiding below a certain flag, right in the middle of tens of thousands of ordinary people.

Open fire? At whom?

The ‘patriots’ leaned against their chairs lethargically. Looking at Lu Zui in a daze, they did not have the strength to move anymore.

On the street, Li Yao was protected by countless pairs of hands. More than a hundred flags had covered both him and the hundreds of veterans nearby. Everybody was asking questions.

“You are Li Yao?”

“Are you really Vulture Li Yao? You are not dead yet? What has happened?”

“Why does the Secret Sword Bureau want you? What did you do?”

Li Yao did not know how he should answer.

After a few minutes of breathing, he was gradually back to himself and regained the strength to talk.

But he could still not think, not because he was feeble, but because his head was occupied by something more scorching and exciting!

From all directions, the roars, sweat, passion, and fury of the tens of thousands of ordinary people congregated into tsunamis that were crushing his head and cleansing his soul!

Such tsunamis made his eyes red and swollen, his nose sour and dry. Even if he opened his mouth, he could not say anything out but only let out the most primitive, barbaric roar!

He had experienced the same feeling several times before on Iron Plateau in the Flying Star Sector.

The Iron Plateau natives called such a phenomenon ‘resonation of the fighting will’!

Right now, Li Yao felt that his own soul was vibrating, melting, and rushing together with the souls of tens of thousands of ordinary people!

The feeling was ten times, a hundred times, a thousand time stronger than the resonation of fighting will on Iron Plateau!

During the intense vibration, his withered muscles were revived, his dried veins and nerves bulged again, and a tiny sprout grew out of his lackluster heart, showing the dawn of a whole new level!