Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

However, one’s soul was not a senseless artificial intelligence after all. Even if their memories were wiped out, they would still feel pain, suffering, and other emotions.

It was especially so when the green-spotted freak was refining the innocent souls of children into the most brutal ghosts. The pain that the children bore was certainly beyond any description.

The children had been thrown into a permanent slaughterhouse before they had a taste of life. They shouldered suffering that was a hundred times more miserable than being minced, and yet they could not kill themselves.

Even a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator such as Li Yao could not help but feel that his tongue was numb and his heart was racing when he thought of the torture.

The b*stard must be killed!

Killing intent suddenly rose inside Li Yao and occupied his heart.

Just now, the battle between the two troops in the forest was one among adults. Everybody had their mission in a battlefield. Li Yao never thought that he could stop all wars in the three thousand Sectors despite his ideals.

However, it was one thing to fight another adult, and it was a whole other thing to butcher children.

Even butchering the children itself was only a brief pain. Those that were killed would die a clean death.

It was a hundred times crueler to capture the souls of the children, burn them day and night, and seal them into magical equipment in order to reap the lives of more innocent people!

Li Yao could not ignore it.

He had to rescue the souls of the innocent children.

Although his target was probably an expert in the Nascent Soul Stage, and he should focus more on investigation as he was new to the place, this was where his belief lay.

If he turned a blind eye to such an unpardonable crime and escaped, there would be loopholes in his belief, and his level might plummet. He might begin to question his outlook and the spirit of the federation. It would be impossible for him to accomplish his mission well.

I will have to compete with a local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator sooner or later and gauge the expertise of the experts of this world myself anyway!

This is the deepest part of the mountains at the bottom a great canyon. There’s not another person in the hundreds of square kilometers nearby. Nobody is going to discover the fight!

The guy must be living in seclusion without a companion. So, there won’t be any unnecessary trouble!

Alright. Let your head be the offering for my cause!

After Li Yao became determined to kill the guy, he found another great benefit of executing him, which was that the guy’s identity seemed to be of great value!

Squinting, Li Yao slithered toward the crack without a sound on the steep cliff like a gray boa.

Right then, a vague sweet smelt, mixed with a feeble heartbeat, came from behind him.

The hair on Li Yao’s head and on his back immediately stood up. He turned to the left side out of natural instinct. After a huge noise, an iron whip seemed to have brutally slapped the crag where he had been lying a moment earlier, leaving a gorge more than half a meter deep there. Yellow smoke was even popping up from the gorge, and the rocks were corroded into holes that looked like honeycombs.

A giant lizard almost eight meters long, which looked like a hybrid of a crocodile and a dinosaur, had appeared on the crag above Li Yao at some point. A long tongue that was almost as thick as a boa was dragged from its great mouth. Thick poisonous fluids were dripping from the tongue onto the rocks, burning countless holes on them!

Four yellow and brown eyes were staring at Li Yao viciously. The reflection inside the tiny eyes showed another person standing right behind Li Yao.

It was the master of the mysterious cave, the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator who had a bird birthmark on his forehead and was torturing the souls of children!

“Huh?” The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator was somehow surprised by Li Yao’s quick response. He eyed the stranger up and down and cackled. “Capable of avoiding a full-strength strike of the Six-footed Crocodile Dragon, you are indeed something. No wonder you are bold enough to pry into my residence! Which family are you from? Who sent you here? Confess now, and I’ll save your suffering. Otherwise, I’ll burn your soul for three days and enjoy my wine over it!”

The appearance of the green-spotted freak was between that of a civilized citizen in the central area and a barbarian. He did look like a locally born and raised Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator.

However, Li Yao would not look down on him just because of his appearance—after all, he had just tricked Li Yao.

I was fooled!

The guy must’ve deployed some sort of barrier out of his cave, not to prevent others from prying or trespassing, but to inform him silently when a burglar is detected!

Li Yao secretly frowned.

The two types of barriers were vastly different.

The first type of barriers was meant to block the enemy so that they would know it was best to retreat, but the second type was intentionally letting the intruders in so that they would be fished up once and for all.

The fact that the guy dared to live in such a rough land on his own and deployed such barriers was obvious enough that the guy was very confident in his own capabilities and believed that everybody was asking to be killed if they barged in!

It was quite understandable. In such a desolate land at the edge of the civilization, a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, with a few primeval treasures, should be as confident as anyone could be!

I’ve made the same mistake as Su Changfa.

Although I’d reminded myself time and time again, I was still careless after discovering that the Sector is still in the medieval age and that those guys are half-civilized barbarians!

But in fact, although the so-called ‘ancient people’ and ‘barbarians’ may be not as good as the modern people in terms of knowledge system, they can be better at plots and schemes than we are!

Li Yao sighed. Now that an ambush was no longer an option, he could only suppress the enemy in a head-on clash.

It might not be bad, either. He could collect more experimental data and gain a thorough understanding about the maximum combat ability and battle patterns of the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators.

“Are you too scared to say anything now, junior?”

The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator with a birthmark on his forehead grinned even more hideously, thinking that Li Yao was already petrified.

He was not worried at all.

Before his seclusion, he had already been invincible in the thousands of square kilometers nearby. Right now, after he grasped such incredible arts and built tougher magical equipment, he was even confident in going to the splendid world at the central plateau. What could a junior who jumped out of nowhere, unarmed and unarmored, do?

The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator’s pupils suddenly constricted to the minimum. His facial expression was stopped between disdain and shock, as if every nerve there had been frozen.

The junior was gone.

Not good. Behind me!

The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator’s back seemed to have been slashed by a heavy saber brutally and almost ripped in half.

But it was merely the wind raised when Li Yao was kicking.

Saying one more word would mean a greater likelihood of his information being leaked. Li Yao was not interested in playing a pretentious game with the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. Whatever information he needed to know, he could always elicit it from the enemy after he suppressed the enemy.

Although the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator knew a lot of secret arts about souls, Li Yao was no worse than him with the mental devil and the memories of the ancient Cultivator!

Li Yao’s attack greatly shocked the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator.

He had been travelled in the Southland of Sorcerers for a hundred years and even paid a visit to the central plateaus occasionally. However, he had never seen such a ruthless opponent who performed a deadly attack without saying anything!

Moreover, how was the guy’s body tough enough to appear right behind him like a ghost without resorting to any magical equipment?

The guy’s attacks were simple and shabby, too, without any mysterious changes. He was more like a performer on the street than a high-level Cultivator.

But as it happened, the guy’s speed was amazingly high. He straightened his feet and came close like a rushing flying sword!

The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator shrieked and dashed upward quickly. Without looking back, he waved his hands backward, throwing out two clusters of green fog, which were condensed into two giant claws and snatched at Li Yao’s legs.

Boom!

Emotionlessly, Li Yao did not care about it at all and blew the two claws into smithereens after only one kick.

Pu!

The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator spewed a mouthful of blood, his hands shivering. The kick seemed to have hit two arms directly.

It’s basically as I have imagined.

Doing two things at the same time, Li Yao drafted his battle plan while he analyzed the presentation of the top warriors of this Sector.

The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator of this Sector boasts rather a high reserve of spiritual energy. However, he has yet to grasp the technique to activate the spiritual energy in the most straightforward way at the highest efficiency. Their moves are mixed with too many splendid and yet useless visual and sound effects. Or rather, there are too many ‘impurities’ in their attacks!

Judging from the experience in the other worlds of ancient Cultivators, it is because the spiritual energy is too abundant in their living environment and is not worth cherishing. Therefore, they have not developed Cultivation arts to increase efficiency.

Their Cultivation arts are often invented by themselves in primitive and crude ways. Such arts never receive hundreds of times of repetitive calculations and perfections or repeatability tests, double-blind tests, extreme tests, and so on.

The ancient Cultivation arts are to modern ones what workshops are to the factories with assembly lines. Even if their power can be impressive occasionally, they are far worse than the latter in terms of stability, repeatability, and efficiency!

Li Yao’s toes pierced into the rocks like nails before he stomped on it and charged at the local Nascent Soul Stage like a cannonball!

“My Fellow Cultivator, what’s the grudge between you and me? Why are you attacking so ruthlessly?”

The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator’s spine and arms were numb. He changed his form of address for Li Yao from ‘junior’ to ‘Fellow Cultivator’. Although he was asking, he did not stop his action. The giant lizard whose long tongue was like a weird boa immediately launched an attack from the high stance!

Pa!

The lizard’s long tongue hit Li Yao’s body brutally.

Before the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator had time to be overjoyed, Li Yao turned into ripples after being slapped by the long tongue. He was nothing but a blurred shadow!

The attack had missed the target!

Li Yao’s real body appeared right behind the giant lizard, pinched the lizard’s neck, and swung it brutally!

Who was Li Yao?

A guy who had been doing competitions of beliefs with Ding Lingdang for five years!

Even without magical equipment, his body itself had been polished into an invincible weapon by Ding Lingdang!

That was especially so for his core ‘lumbo-abdominal strength’, which was now even more brutal and fierce than the high-speed crystal trains after thousands of collisions!

With the core strength as the foundation, Li Yao strangled the lizard’s neck as if his legs were scissors. Then, cracking noises echoed inside the lizard’s neck. The bones, veins, and nerves of the animal all exploded. Before it even had the chance to scream, the enormous head of the lizard had been cut off!