Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao felt as if he had just said a tongue twister.

However, the truth behind the mist seemed much more complicated than the tongue twister.

Shouts, explosions, and magical equipment collisions were echoing in every corner in East Peace County at the same time. However, the noises were not expanding into the same area. Instead, they were short, fast, and clean, like the sharpest daggers!

The suicidal approaches of the soldiers were tough enough to suggest that no useful information could be found on their bodies. Pondering for a moment, Li Yao released Neltharion and observed the whole of East Peace County from above.

Despite the serial explosions, few locations in the city had actually been affected. Even the headquarters of the Cultivation sects that had been attacked fell quiet again after a quick battle.

There was not a large-scale confrontation in the city towers or the city gate, which were still under the control of the Cultivators of East Peace County.

Because the city gate was of paramount importance and could not be lost, the Cultivators guarding the city gate did not dare act recklessly and could only hold their position even though they knew that riots were taking place in the city.

It further proved Li Yao’s speculation in a different way. The Cultivators that seemingly belonged to Ghost Qin were a squad of elites whose purpose was certainly not to conquer East Peace County. Otherwise, they would have to control the city gate and the control pivot of the Ocean Suppressing Array before the main force returned as reinforcements!

Then, what exactly was their goal?

While Li Yao was thinking quickly, intense smoke suddenly soared from dozens of locations in the city at the same time. The black smoke raged like a fog and soon covered all the streets and alleys, enshrouding the entire city in absolute darkness.

Li Yao vaguely felt that almost a hundred streams of spiritual energy dashed out from every direction and fled to the east side of the city.

East Peace County was a port. To the east of it was the boundless ocean.

The serial explosions taking place in the city had been noticed by the Cultivators who were chasing the army of ghouls. The shocked Cultivators, especially the local ones of East Peace County, all retreated, cramming the road to the city on the land.

Li Yao thought of something. Like an unpredictable breeze, he flowed toward the headquarters of one of the Cultivation sects that had been attacked.

A few mysterious enemies who were suspected to be the Ghost Qin Cultivators seemed to have accomplished their mission. They were silently evacuating in order.

Li Yao suddenly jumped out of the black fog like a viper lurking in a crevice. His spiritual energy was condensed into four whips slapping the four mysterious enemies!

Greatly shocked, the four of them shrieked and launched all their weapons at Li Yao.

Li Yao grunted and vanished into the black fog, pretending that he had been heavily wounded by them.

But in fact, during the attack, he had pinned two thin metal chips beneath the boots of two enemies without alarming anyone.

The two metal chips had been baptized by his blood time and time again and attached with part of his telepathic thoughts. They were essentially two relatively primitive GPS devices.

Li Yao blinked in the darkness. After the lackluster redness flashed twice in his eyes, he immediately sensed that two scarlet spots were moving forward toward the ocean quickly!

Keeping a certain distance from the rapidly evacuating enemies, he rushed to the port of East Peace County, too.

The city wall of East Peace County facing the ocean was not very high, and it was not guarded by many Cultivators.

Li Yao sensed that at least a hundred mysterious enemies had jumped into the ocean and vanished!

Taking off the ragged clothes on his body, he slid into the ocean without a sound like a boneless fish.

This place was still the continental shelf. The water was not deep. The mysterious enemies were simply walking on the seabed like a bunch of creepy zombies.

Li Yao intentionally kept his distance from them and covered his traces with the seaweed and coral. He only followed them with Neltharion.

The number of the mysterious enemies was huge, and there were the two localization chips. So, he was not afraid that he might lose them.

However, something was indeed bothering Li Yao. There was obviously no sign of any ship on the ocean. Were they planning to walk on the bottom of the ocean for a day and a night against the pressure of the undercurrents while holding their breath?

Such a mission was too arduous even for the Cultivators!

After the hundred mysterious enemies walked on the seabed for about ten minutes, something suddenly showed up in the seabed up ahead. It was a shipwreck!

Yes. A shipwreck that must have sunk hundreds of years ago and had been seriously corroded, full of weeds, coral, and barnacles. No one would be surprised if a hundred zombies suddenly jumped out of it!

The mysterious enemies crawled into the shipwreck through the broken hull.

On the gloomy, terrifying ocean floor, the mysterious freaks were walking toward a gray, broken shipwreck that was packed with seaweed and shells!

The combination was indeed a scene of horror. Even Li Yao could not help but click his tongue, wondering if those guys were not humans but a certain kind of advanced zombies that could breathe and pump blood.

“Wait,” the mental devil said. “Theoretically speaking, if a zombie has breath, a heartbeat, and blood circulation, we will normally call it a ‘living person’.”

“…” Li Yao.

Right then, the creepy undersea shipwreck suddenly went through weird changes.

Ivory rays of light gradually flowed out of its body. Stimulated by the light, the seaweed and barnacles attached to the shell of the ship wriggled slowly and spurted out tremendous natural gel, sealing the damage on the shell without leaving any gaps.

Chi!

Li Yao sensed that a lot of water was being pressed out from the bottom of the shipwreck. The water inside the shipwreck must have been pumped away!

As a result, the previous shipwreck that was riddled with holes turned into some sort of undersea vehicle like the ‘submarine’ in modern Cultivation civilizations!

Are you kidding me? This is too sophisticated!

Li Yao was more and more curious about the force or the individual who had built the shipwreck and directed the whole scheme!

After pumping away most of the water in the cabins through the thousands of barnacles attached to the shell, the shipwreck moved up after shivering for a moment and snuck into the depths of the ocean.

Naturally, Li Yao followed it like a haunting ghost with the stealth techniques that he was best at.

He planned to maneuver Neltharion to sneak into the shipwreck many times.

However, the seemingly dilapidated shipwreck had been produced for the purpose of deep-sea voyage; there was not the tiniest hole that he could make use of on the surface.

Li Yao did not dare dig through the shell of the shipwreck through the drill of mystic rays, fearing that the change of pressure would expose his presence.

Therefore, he could only grope for the shipwreck’s structure and command Neltharion to stick near the location that appeared to be the command center.

Shua!

The front end of Neltharion was opened, and a tool that looked like a trumpet was extended out and stuck to the shell of the shipwreck softly.

Neltharion was a training model for Sparkle, a multipurpose exploration starship. The trumpet-like magical equipment was a device designed to investigate complicated underground structures.

The basic mechanism of the device was to analyze the feedback after sending a wave of a certain frequency into the environment. That way, the basic situation of the environment would be revealed.

However, after minor adjustments, it could also receive feeble soundwaves from the outside world, which essentially made it a highly sensitive detectaphone.

Sha! Sha! Sha! Sha!

A lot of raucous noises flooded into Li Yao’s brain. He felt that he was caught in an abrupt storm.

Holding his breath, Li Yao activated his computational ability to the maximum as he performed high-intensity filtering, analysis, and restoration inside his brain. It was not until almost an hour later that he finally managed to retrieve some intermittent voices from the noises.

“We have made it. This is what we are looking for!”

What he heard first was a comforting female voice that was full of surprise, who said, “I didn’t know that the ‘core’ we went through all the trouble to find was actually in the hands of the Cloud Ocean Sect. The Cloud Ocean Sect was ignorant enough to not recognize its value at all and simply used it as a random part of the defense array. What a great waste of the treasure!”

The pleasant female voice which sounded like a spring ring suddenly changed the topic. “Everybody, we owe the success and smoothness of our operation to our teamwork and devotion!

“Had it not been Mother White Lotus, who misled everybody into thinking that she was going to attack East Peace County, it wouldn’t have been impossible for our people to sneak into the city among the unaffiliated Cultivators and the disaster victims who were allowed into East Peace County in their panic!

“Later, Mother White Lotus also paid great sacrifices to distract the enemy’s main force so that we could attack the enemy’s weakness and launch a critical strike!

“Of course, without the valiance of the warriors from Cloud Qin and the elites under the command of the Heaven Battering King, it would’ve been impossible for us to discover the item that Lord Wang wants.

“Right now, the ‘core’ has already fallen into our hands. As long as we continue cooperating without any reserve as we did today, this world will certainly become ours!”

The comforting voice sounded like a soft, gentle breeze in summer.

However, when it poured into Li Yao’s ears, he felt that cold water was flushing through his ears, into his brain, and running down all the way through his spine. Even his bottom was almost frozen!

Li Yao had thought that Mother White Lotus had cooperated with Ghost Qin and looted East Peace County, only disguised as the Heaven Battering Army.

It had never occurred to him that, according to the pleasant female voice, the Heaven Battering Army seemed to be truly part of the whole scheme!

It was indeed a thoughtful arrangement.

They had pretended to the disciples of the six major sects first and then ‘pretended’ to be the soldiers of the Heaven Battering Army as the disciples of the six major sects. In such a case, even if some people saw through the two camouflages, few of them would link them to the Heaven Battering Army again due to regular thinking patterns!

However, part of them were actually ‘soldiers of the Heavenly Battering Army who pretended to the disciples of the six major sects who pretended to be the soldiers of the Heaven Battering Army’. Nobody would figure out their real identity at all!

Moreover, who was the Lord Wang?

When Li Yao recalled the uncanny death of the few soldiers of Ghost Qin, the answer was obvious. Lord Wang could only be the Lead Eunuch Wang Xi, the most powerful person in the past and a rat that everybody had stomped on today!

Lead Eunuch Wang Xi, ‘Heaven Battering King’ Qi Changsheng, ‘Mother White Lotus’ Wan Mingzhu, and Regent of Ghost Qin Han Baling—the Four Rapscallions that intimidated the entire Ancient Sages Sector—had joined hands!