Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao spent half an hour searching before he found Li Jialing on the ninth satellite of the fifth planet of the Martial Meritocrats Sector.

Li Jialing had been sending out feeble signals through his crystal suit while hiding in the deepest fold inside a crater.

The special signals could only be received when one was close enough to the satellite and adjusted the communication channel to a certain frequency.

Of course, it was the communication method that Li Yao and Li Jialing had agreed on earlier.

Seeing that Li Jialing, the little weirdo who was full of enigmas but also deeply connected to him, was safe and sound, Li Yao took a long breath in relief. Dragging Li Jialing’s elbow, he connected their communication channels and said, “Let’s go to my starship. We’ll talk later!”

Inside “Jingle Bell”, Li Yao stored the crystal suit and Little Black back into the Cosmos Ring. Wearing only the mustard-seed combat suit and warming up his slightly exhausted body, Li Yao more or less calmed down.

There was only one last step to go before the final escape.

His hands turned into two clusters of mists as he operated quickly on the control panel of Jingle Bell.

Li Jialing, however, watched him from the back in a daze while observing Jingle Bell in suspicions and fear.

“What’s up?”

Li Yao said without looking back, “Why are you flinching? You are scared of me?”

“Of course I am, because you are an out-and-out monster.”

Li Jialing swallowed hard and summoned his courage. “I knew you were strong, but I did not know that you were THAT strong. Even ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ was blown up by you. So many Immortal Cultivators were also killed by you on the live stream. I-I have never seen anyone as terrifying as you before!”

“Monster?”

Li Yao grinned. “I feel flattered to be respected as a ‘monster’ by you, because you are a little monster yourself. As I told you before, although my skills are extraordinary, my combat ability is unparalleled, and my level is immeasurable, I am a low-key and approachable man. So, you need not regard me as an omnipotent expert who can destroy a world free at will, and you can just consider me as a regular ‘brother’.”

“Huh. Low-key and approachable?”

Li Jialing said in disbelief, “If I had not seen your brutal rampage and massacre on the live stream in person, I might have believed you.”

Li Yao smiled again. Not planning to pursue the issue any further, he simply threw a Cosmos Ring at Li Jialing. “Take it. This is the storage chip of the mainframe crystal processor of Wuying Lan’s most confidential laboratory. I believe that the data of his most cutting-edge projects must’ve been stored inside, for example, the procedures that have been performed on you.

“Those things should be of great help to unraveling the secrets in you!”

Li Jialing grabbed the Cosmos Ring and breathed fast. Thinking for a moment, he asked again, “What happened to Wuying Lan?”

Li Yao replied, “Now that even ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ has been blown up, of course, he was killed by me. But speaking of which, his strengthening mutations at the last moment were truly something. I once practiced a technique named ‘apocalyptic body’. His mutations were like an upgraded version of the ‘apocalyptic body’. Had he not underestimated his enemy, it would’ve been quite tricky to deal with him!

“Right, when I eavesdropped on Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan’s conversation, they mentioned that Wuying Lan had performed exactly the same type of procedures on you as he did on himself. Also, the refinements on you seemed even more advanced. Does that mean you will be like Wuying Lan when you are in an extreme outburst?”

After hesitating a moment, Li Jialing nodded his head dutifully. “Yes. While my combat ability is not as tough as his right now, we are on the same path.”

“So—”

Li Yao grew excited. “You can turn into a magnificent and hideous primeval beast like Wuying Lan did? Come on. Make a change and show Brother Yao what it’s like!”

Li Jialing: “… No!”

Li Yao: “Why are you so reluctant? I’m not asking you to do it for fun but only in order to measure your extreme combat ability, so that I can draft a few tailor-made tactics for you and figure out if there are ways of teamwork in a battle for the two of us. You must know that there is a long future road up ahead where too many battles are awaiting us. ‘Lawless, unrestrained freedom’? How can you get such a precious thing so easily?”

Li Jialing bit his lips softly, with a hint of confusion and panic beaming out of his eyes.

Ever since his independent will was awakened, the young man with unique origins and experiences had considered it his sole purpose; to rise against Li Lingfeng and to escape from the cage. It almost felt that he lived his life for a single goal.

When he was in the cage, every second of his life was fulfilled. He felt that he was one step closer to his target after every second.

However, now that he was about to get rid of Li Lingfeng’s control, he was somewhat at a loss about where to go next.

“Brother Yao” was quite right. The universe was a large place, but where could he find real freedom?

After a moment of silence, Li Jialing said, “Where are you taking me to, Brother Yao?”

“Let’s run out of the Martial Meritocrats Sector with a space jump and find a world far, far away from here first!”

Li Yao performed final tests as he admitted to Li Jialing frankly, “When I fought Li Lingfeng, I elicited some very interesting intelligence from him. Our speculation before was correct. There is indeed a very amazing relation among you, Li Lingfeng, and Li Linghai, queen of the Imperium. After we are out of danger, I’ll explain everything to you in great detail. But you must understand one thing first. Until the issues between you, Li Lingfeng, and Li Linghai are completely resolved, you will never find real freedom. Do you agree?”

Li Yao did not intend to deceive Li Jialing.

On one hand, he was hoping to reach out to Li Linghai, queen of the Imperium, through Li Jialing, so that he could observe the operation of the power center of the Imperium at the closest distance. It required Li Jialing’s cooperation, and honesty was the foundation for any cooperation.

More importantly, he was now 99% sure that Li Jialing was his foster father’s child, and probably the only one.

Li Yao had deep feelings for his foster father. Naturally, he did not wish to push his foster father’s biological son to a different side, in which case the two of them might be engaged in life-and-death battles one day in the future.

At the very least, from his experiences with his foster father in the Heaven’s Origin Sector, his foster father was more inclined to the ideology of the Cultivators. He was a kind, righteous, and warm man.

Li Yao did not think that his foster father would want his biological son to become a selfish, iron-hearted, and even inhumane Immortal Cultivator, a cockroach that was armed to teeth!

Li Jialing looked at Li Yao carefully for a moment, before he nodded his head slowly. “I agree. However, leaving Li Lingfeng and Li Linghai aside, I’m more curious about the role you are playing in the whole incident, ‘Brother Yao’. Was our encounter really a coincidence?”

Li Yao said, “It was. You can stop overthinking.”

Li Jialing frowned deeply. “I still find it hard to believe, and I feel that something is greatly wrong with your arrival, ‘Brother Yao’. So, let’s change a different way of asking. Were you and me not related at all before our encounter?”

Li Yao was slightly dazed.

Li Jialing, the little freak that had been built by Wuying Lan and Li Lingfeng together, was truly unexpectedly smart.

He couldn’t help but scratch his chin as he said, “Let’s get out of here first. I’ll explain it to you later!”

“So, that is a yes?”

Li Jialing blew a whistle in contentment with a simple and brilliant smile of a common young man.

He took a long breath in relief and sat down comfortably while leaning against Li Yao’s hibernation capsule, not scared of Li Yao anymore.

Tilting his head and looking at Li Yao’s back, he said in a low voice, “Brother Yao, do you know that I have never trusted anyone in my entire life, not Li Lingfeng, not Wuying Lan, or anybody else in the Li family? I never believed anything they said.”

The young man paused for a moment. His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he said softly, “However, I have decided to take a gamble. I would like to trust someone without any reservation for the first time. I only hope that I’m making the right decision!”

Jingle Bell began to shiver softly, and its shell that was as smooth as jade was covered in a dark red halo. Blowing away the stones and dust on it, the starship flew to space!

“You can never be wrong to trust me!”

Li Yao laughed aloud while the starship trembled violently. “Look. Haven’t we already escaped—”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Before Li Yao concluded his sentence, more than ten violent fireballs already burst out around “Jingle Bell”. The rocks were spluttering out and crashing the shell of the starship in cracking noises.

The tiny stealth exploration starship was shaking as hard as a canoe in a surging tide. Li Jialing was knocked away, and he hit the ceiling with his head, which almost stunned him and made him rub his head hard.

Perhaps the raging, rampant, shocking performance earlier had used up all of Li Yao’s luck. Their almost perfect escape plan finally had a small error at the last moment.

Li Linghai detected where Jingle Bell was in time. Leading almost ten starships of the Immortal Cultivators, he came at the enemy aggressively!

Although the distance was too long for them to lock onto a tiny Jingle Bell, it was absolutely not a problem to aim at the gargantuan ninth satellite of the fifth planet of the galaxy. Cannons of mystic rays, crystal rail guns, and all kinds of space torpedoes bombarded the ninth satellite like a storm, until it was almost falling apart into pieces.

“Come on. You don’t have to go that far!”

Li Yao shrieked, “The space around us is so unstable. How can we perform a space jump?”

“What do we do now?”

Li Jialing clenched his fists hard; his face pale but with brutality beaming out. “I would rather die than being captured by Li Lingfeng back into the Li family to be studied like a freak and a monster. I might as well try my best to avoid that!”

“It’s true that we must try our best, not to fight against Li Lingfeng, but to see if we have enough luck!”

Gritting his teeth, Li Yao quickly altered the space jump pattern on the control panel and changed the destination into the nearest habitable planet in the star map database, before he turned on automatic navigation and landing. “However unstable space is, we have to jump out of here first. The time is too urgent for us to charge energy and lock onto the destination. We can only try a super-near space jump and see where it will take us to!”