Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Qi Zhongdao glanced at the heads of the six major sects and asked, “Does any of you wish to have a life-and-death battle with Han Baling, Qi Changsheng, and Wan Mingzhu right now?”

The elders and leaders of the six major sects looked at each other in bewilderment and shook their heads as quickly as possible.

“Then, just retract your flying swords and magical equipment!”

Qi Zhongdao pondered for a moment and said, “The situation is becoming more and more chaotic. This Divine Palace… does not look like a place where the deities live at all. There is also the matter of Wang Xi, His Majesty, and Master Spiritual Vulture. Let’s not act recklessly before we find them!”

“Right. Where has Zhu Zongyou been?”

On the bridge of the Nuwa warship, both Li Yao and Long Yangjun were a bit anxious. They examined every Grand Illusionary Land with their bloodshot eyes, but they failed to find any trace of Emperor Phoenix anywhere.

Even the ten or so bodyguards from the Fiery Phoenix Legion that had always been close around Zhu Zongyou had gone missing, although Li Yao had paid special attention to them before!

“How strange!” Li Yao scratched his head hard. “Have they hidden in a certain corner as ‘dark hunters’?

It was a pity that most of the surveillance cameras had been damaged or rusted after such a long time. Some of the intact surveillance cameras could not be activated because of the insufficient computational ability.

The hundred or so pictures were only enough to cover one percent of the space on the entire Nuwa warship.

In the temple of the Colossi, surveillance cameras had been deployed in the four corners and the middle of the dome. But at that moment, the only functioning one was the camera in the northeast corner. Observing the entire temple from that perspective, the picture near was of reasonable quality, but the picture far away was blurred as if it were covered in a mist.

Long Yangjun pulled the threads of light to adjust the angle and resolution of the picture. She suddenly pointed at the dome in the depths of the Half-Step Grand Illusionary Land and shouted, “Wait. What’s that?”

Li Yao narrowed his eyes. He shaped his spiritual energy into translucent membranes and covered them on his retina in different layers in order to strengthen his eyesight before he looked into the hazy mist.

For the convenience of maintaining the Colossi, almost a thousand mobile rails had been installed on the dome of the temple of the Colossi so that the large-scale tools and facilities could be moved more easily. A lot of bizarre-looking maintenance magical equipment was also dangling down from the rails, like the vines falling down from the branches in a murky forest.

The rails on the dome that were almost hidden in darkness did not have anything that called for attention at first glance. Only if one observed in the most careful way would they notice feeble airwaves spreading out slowly, like the ripples in a pond caused by a gentle breeze.

“It’s dust,” Li Yao mumbled, his eyelids bouncing. “A tiny bit of dust was blown softly and spreading in the air from quite a few rails. It’s almost like… something invisible is crouching on the rails and crawling forward slowly!

“As for their target—”

Li Yao marked the few rails that were spraying dust and looked at the intersection of their extensions. His eyes went straight downward, but his heart instantly froze!

Below the intersection of the rails was the Colossus that looked like a black skeleton with red nerves!

“What’s that? What’s that exactly?”

Li Yao suddenly grew anxious. He was certain that some weird, invisible beings were approaching the black-skeleton-like Colossus, which seemed to have finished its maintenance and been fully charged with spiritual energy with the dozens of thick tubes connected. They were moving stealthily above while the Cultivators on the Great Qian Dynasty’s side and on Ghost Qin’s side were fiercely arguing with each other!

Li Yao and Long Yangjun looked at each other and noticed the anxiety in each other’s eyes.

“Is there any way that we can see who they are?” Li Yao gnashed his teeth.

“It’s very difficult. If we activate the automatic defense rune array inside the warehouse of the Colossi, it is very possible that somebody will notice our existence!”

Long Yangjun thought quickly and bit her lips softly. She put on a vague smile and said, “However, there’s a way that is worth a try. This Nuwa warship hasn’t been maintained for a long time. A lot of magical equipment has aged and deteriorated. They can be functional for a while and nonfunctional a moment later. For example, some of the fire extinguishing magical equipment and the recovery magical equipment…”

Despite her plain face, she had a pair of stunningly beautiful hands. When her fingers were bouncing, it was like a gorgeous dance on the threads of light.

As the small finger on her left hand curled, a light ball no larger than the size of millet rushed out of the tip of her finger and entered the pillar-shaped crystal processor like bioelectricity!

On the surveillance picture, from one of the rails where feeble ripples were spreading out, a cluster of thick, blue gas spurted out!

The gas was designed to extinguish fire and should have surged out incessantly.

However, as a piece of ‘unmaintained’, ‘aged’ magical equipment, under the stimulation of the spiritual waves of the outside world, the device was only able to produce one cluster of inert gas, which seemed acceptable enough.

When the Cultivators on the two sides were staying at the highest alert, such a noise that sounded almost like a fart was as shocking as thunder!

Qi Zhongdao, Han Baling, Yan Liren, Qi Changsheng, Ba Xiaoyu, Master Bitter Cicada, Wan Mingzhu… All the super Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators darted their keen eyes toward the rail instantly!

The being behind the invisible ripples crouching on the rail never expected even in his wildest dreams that a cluster of bluish gas would suddenly spurt out right above him. Although he reacted promptly enough and retreated immediately, part of his body was still outlined by the blue gas. In the fuzziness, it appeared to be armor!

“Somebody is in midair!”

Although the target was exposed for only 0.1 seconds, Qi Zhongdao, Han Baling, and the other super Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators were too extraordinary to let go of him again now that his traces had been seen.

Shua!

The brilliance of the sword burst out of nowhere like lightning and darted toward the invisible man from dozens of tricky angles in the sharpest auras!

Yan Liren had attacked again!

“Who’s acting mysteriously up there? Get out!”

Yan Liren sniffed. As his spiritual energy surged out, the sword auras entangled the rail almost a hundred meters above the ground like visible dragons.

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

A series of dazzling sparks erupted on top of the rail. Outside of everyone’s expectations, the invisible man was not hurt but retreated fast into the darkness in a feeble ripple.

“Huh?” Yan Liren was slightly dazed. His smile was even more brilliant. He shook his short, thick right arm, and the dragons of lightning phantomized by the sword auras expanded by almost ten times in spluttering noises. The bloody mouths of the dragons that were wide open bulged into balls of lightning and exploded everywhere around the invisible ripple!

Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!

Under the stimulation of the intense electric arcs, the invisible ripple suddenly uttered a dull scream, and his body was fully revealed. It turned out to be a Cultivator wearing a fully-enclosed, weird armor. His entire face was covered by a spider helmet. There was no telling who he was exactly.

“This is—”

In the bridge, Li Yao and Long Yangjun jumped to their feet simultaneously.

“Isn’t it the armor that you were wearing just now? You have other accomplices!”

Long Yangjun blinked dozens of kilometers away in almost twenty shadows. The red crystal suit was entangling and condensing on her arms again while she glared at Li Yao angrily.

“He is not one of my people. The style of his crystal suit is obviously different from mine. You will see it if you look at it more carefully!” Li Yao smiled bitterly.

He had already seen the badge of trident-like black lightning on the chest of the stranger’s crystal suit.

It was the emblem of the Imperium of True Human Beings!

His worst fear had become reality. There were indeed spies of the Imperium of True Human Beings in the Ancient Sages Sector. They appeared to be a tough tactical squad, and they had discovered the Nuwa warship, too!

Long Yangjun thought quickly and immediately realized what was going on. “They belong to… your hostile force?”

When the air in the bridge was growing tense, the atmosphere in the temple of the Colossi was tenser than ever.

While all the Cultivators were confronting the mysterious person in the crystal suit anxiously, Mother White Lotus Wan Mingzhu shrieked, “There are other rats on the ceiling!”

Pu!

She raised her broken arm and shot out a section of broken bone from her body, which exploded into overwhelming smoke in midair and covered the rails like raging ferocious beasts!

The smoke seemed to contain weird waves. Wherever the white smoke reached, the stealth techniques were instantly cracked.

With a series of cracking noises, the ten or so people wearing crystal suits on the rails were all exposed!

The Exos looked at each other in bewilderment. Realizing that they had already been uncovered, they simply leapt down and formed a well-trained battle formation around their first companion who had already been shocked unconscious!

Although Qi Zhongdao, Han Baling, and the other super Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators were knowledgeable and broad-minded, they were stunned briefly when they saw the crystal suits, built in the industrial system of the modern Cultivation civilization, for the first time, like Long Yangjun earlier.

The joints of the fully-enclosed armor, the streamlined design to reduce the windage to the minimum, the shimmers beaming out of the gaps when they were moving, and the external rune arrays that were extremely strict in structure and could be carved within one square inch… Everything made the locals of the Ancient Sages Sector uncomfortable!

“Who… are you people exactly?” Qi Zhongdao demanded, raising the Heaven Flipping Seal into midair. The silver balls and the rails were rotating at the highest speed, all set to go!

Faced with the mysterious strangers, the Cultivators from the Great Qian Dynasty and the Ghost Qin were equally baffled. The chasm between them was somehow shortened.

“Master Righteous One, do not attack. They are my imperial guards!”

At the center of the ten or so Exos, one of the strangers wearing a phoenix helmet with crimson, fiery stripes on it suddenly smiled.

Then, he touched his temples slightly. The helmet of the crystal suit immediately dissected into hundreds of pieces and folded back to his neck, revealing Emperor Phoenix Zhu Zongyou’s young and immature face.

However, the young emperor had a mysterious smile.

“Your Majesty!” Qi Zhongdao and the rest of them were greatly surprised. Looking at Emperor Phoenix and his imperial guards’ fancy attire, they were lost for words. “This—this—”