Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao immediately felt his heart beating fast. Thinking quickly, he wondered what he had done wrong to make the Fist King grow suspicious about him.

There was no reason for that at all. In the battles over the last month, he had been always keeping a low profile and playing the role of a spiritual puppet dutifully without doing anything outrageous.

Li Yao was not scared of ‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie, but the Immortal Cultivators would be monitoring the place closely. He did not want to expose his identity so soon, which would make it impossible for him to find out what the Immortal Cultivators were up to exactly in the ‘war game’!

As it turned out, while the Fist King stared at him, the man’s spiritual energy turned into threads wandering into Li Yao’s iron shell.

Li Yao’s soul released ripples and activated the defense rune arrays around the crystal processor, keeping the Fist King’s reach outside of his core components. But he frowned hard in his heart.

‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie was both a top-tier expert who dominated the Land of Sins and an excellent refiner. Would the guy see through his cover?

Li Yao was quite uncertain.

Chi! Chi!

The Fist King’s spiritual threads touched the defense rune arrays inside Li Yao’s body, only to balk like earthworms that were burnt by fire.

Li Yao could obviously sense the surprise in the Fist King’s heart. Even the guy’s eyes became much deeper and more lackluster than before when he looked at Li Yao.

Shua!

The spiritual threads that slithered into his body split apart into hundreds of ‘branches’, which moved forward and tried to locate the gaps in his core components to invade the crystal processor.

Li Yao secretly cried for help, but his reaction was not slowed at all. He blocked all the Fist King’s spiritual threads without any trouble.

Their eyes had a subtle clash through the blinks of the man-made eyes. Perhaps it was Li Yao’s imagination, but some sparks that were not very malicious seemed to have been raised.

Was he… exposed?

Out of Li Yao’s expectations, the Fist King did not explore further but simply retracted his spiritual threads and gaze without leaving any trace. He glanced at the three Immortal Cultivator players and said, “You are indeed strong enough to fight by my side at the center of my army. Also… this spiritual puppet here is rather interesting. It seems to be a model with functions for self-learning and communication as well as those related to automatic recovery and upgrade?”

Li Yao knew that, as an important type of military magical equipment, hundreds of experimental spiritual puppets had been projected to the Land of Sins during the past hundreds of years by the Immortal Cultivators, including a lot of cutting-edge models with the functions of automatic learning and upgrading.

Of course, most of the spiritual puppets had a limited range of learning logics and fields of upgrade. They were not very stable and would often be trapped in logic loops, unable to free themselves, which would make them even less competitive than common puppets. Therefore, they were not the major gangs’ favorites.

In any case, the identity itself did not call for any suspicion.

Red Viper, Black Spear, and Flash Point looked at each other and said, unbothered, “If you like it, Fist King, you are free to take it away for studies.”

Han Te and Liu Li were both taken aback, but they did not decline the request of an unparalleled bandit like the Fist King. There was hesitation all over their faces.

The Fist King laughed and stretched out his brawny arms. “As you have seen, collecting spiritual puppets is my hobby. Be they bizarre models or jumbled monsters, I like to collect them, play with them, and study their structures carefully.

“However, a great war is about to break out, and my little hobby can only wait. We’ll talk after we take Liberty City!

“You can go back and get a good rest tonight. My men will offer you ammunition, crystals, and high-energy drugs that are enough for everyone’s use. Tomorrow morning, we will attack Liberty City. I hope that every component in each one of you is intact after the battle!”

…

With a headful of questions, Li Yao returned to his own camp. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that ‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie was not as simple as the legends or as he appeared.

He must have discovered an anomaly in Li Yao’s body. The hundreds of competitions of spiritual threads in the blink of an eye could not have been performed by a random spiritual puppet.

But why did he not point it out in public or pursue it any further?

Also, his last words were apparently meant for Li Yao.

In other words, he knew that Li Yao could ‘understand’ the meaning of those words and looked forward to an in-depth communication with him after the Battle of Liberty City?

What was going on?

“I have a vague feeling. The Fist King is not malicious. He is only very interested in you,” the mental devil said mysteriously. “Perhaps he has a special fetish. That’s why he wants to play with you and study your structure deeply.”

“What the heck?” Li Yao was rather shocked. “That’s too creepy!”

“This is the Land of Sins. What kind of perverts can you not find here?” the mental devil said solemnly. “Just recall the ripples of spiritual energy that spread out of the Fist King’s body. Did you not sense ecstasy and lust at all?”

“Well, not exactly lust, but ecstasy… Now that you pointed it out, there indeed seemed to be such a feeling!”

“Therefore,” the mental devil said, “I don’t know the reason, but he does seem to have special feelings for you. Be careful. He will certainly keep an eye on you closely. I do not want to fall into his hands and be dismantled for studies.”

“The game is getting more and more complicated.” Extending his mechanical arm, Li Yao scratched his iron skull. “The Immortal Cultivators must be watching the Fist King closely, and the Fist King has somehow taken an interest in me. How am I supposed to keep a low profile under such circumstances?”

“So, you can stop keeping a low profile!” The mental devil grinned hideously. “I don’t think that the Battle of Liberty City will be so simple. A lot of things will certainly happen, but they are not our concern. As long as we can take advantage of the chaos and find a piece of ‘high-molecular layer-by-layer scanning magical equipment’, we can escape and perform the ‘perfect melting’. After the soul and the body become one, we will be an experienced expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage. There will be no need to keep a low profile!”

Li Yao was of a mind to sneak into the Fist King’s nest to find out the truth, but the place would be under the Immortal Cultivators’ surveillance. He certainly could not feed himself to the trap.

Although they were told to get a good rest, the Fist King’s camp was obstreperous and ablaze with lights all night. Everybody was being mobilized without any stop.

The thousands of tents had all been cleaned up. The unorganized gangs and bandits were regrouped and deployed according to their performance over the past month. They were somehow transformed from mobs into many battle lines that could charge forward together.

The Red Viper Squad was indeed arranged to the center of the army, which was responsible for directly attacking the frontal defense line of Liberty City, which was most heavily guarded. After a lot of hard work, the place had become a hell that was full of traps, barricades, landmines, lightning towers, and all kinds of defense arrays.

Dawn arrived.

The morning sun tore apart the night sky, glowing as intensely as fire and illuminating the earth into an ocean of blood. Everybody seemed to be a slaughter machine that had just been bred in the blood pool.

The hundreds of sirens all over Great Iron City began to roar, triggering noises that were almost ripping apart the sky and waking up the brutality inside the bones of all the attackers.

Around Great Iron City, hundreds of thousands of chainswords, vibration sabers, and storm bolters were raised high. Reflecting the dazzling, blood red sunlight, they congregated into tornadoes of destruction.

A lot of the bandits had waited for more than a month and were already running out of patience. They finally went on a rampage, shouting and releasing their greed, anger, and violence.

“Kill them all! Kill them all!”

“Break into Liberty City, and we will have whatever we want!”

“After we kill Xiahou Wuxin, we will be the master of the Elysian World, and we will be able to rise to Manjusaka, the City in the Sky, to become the supreme angels. Hahaha!”

The sirens became more and more shrill and gradually suppressed the roars of all the bandits. Subconsciously, everybody focused their eyes at the top of Great Iron City, as if a second brilliant sun had risen slowly up there.

“It’s the Fist King!”

“‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie has finally shown up!”

“Fist King! Fist King! The incredible, invincible Fist King!”

All the bandits extended their arms and shouted at the sky, as if they were drunk.

“We were born in the desolate, barren wilderness. We have been struggling in the abyss of cruelty and blood. We have deformed ourselves and turned ourselves into the most ferocious animals. Yet, with unbelievable luck, we can only survive in the so-called ‘Bloody Worlds’.”

From the top of Great Iron City, the Fist King’s thunderous roars rumbled.

“What has been the life of even the strongest warrior among us? Senseless, homeless, worthless, and joyless!

“Look at yourselves and your companions next to you. Is this what you want to be? Is this the life that you want to live until you die?”

None of the bandits expected that ‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie would give such a speech. They were stunned for a moment.

“However, right over there, inside the so-called ‘Elysian World’…”

The Fist King waved his hands and pointed at Liberty City not far away.

“There are the cleanest water sources, the most abundant assets, unimaginable cuisine and other entertainment, and the most advanced medical magical equipment that can fix your incomplete, deformed body!

“The people in the Elysian World do not need to do anything other than lie on their spring beds to watch the assets fall from the sky to their front!

“Why?

“Why can they have everything without doing anything, and we have to struggle hard and brutalize each other in the Bloody Worlds, transforming into wolves, leopards, and even swine, only to get less than one percent of what they earn, while shouldering their blatant mockery? Why?

“Today, let me lead everyone to justice and reclaim what is supposed to be ours!”