Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Destroy his body!”

The grey mist lady was the first to react. She screamed at Li Yao and Sparda.

Sparda spat and aimed the plasma gun at the hunter’s body, which had been split into two halves, before he opened fire. The plasma turned the body into ash instantly and crumbled into black powder in the storm.

But he was too late.

Or rather, the plasma was completely useless against the thing overflowing from the corpse—it was something that looked both like mist and flames. It seemed to have a life of its own as it moved up and down in the air, causing Li Yao to be reminded of the insect tide made of thousands upon thousands of flying insects. The small insect tide let out a “Squeak Squeak” sound as it fled at an incomparably fast speed to the distant coach and disappeared.

Soon, screams, fighting, and collisions were echoing inside the coach. After a while, the door of the coach was opened, and a middle-aged man in the uniform of a train inspector crawled out like a spider and stood on the roof of the coach steadily.

It was a typical oriental man with yellow skin and black hair.

It could be seen from the wrinkles on his face and his prematurely gray hair that he should have dedicated his entire life to this railway line. He should have long become an unknown component on the rail line and train. He simply shouldn’t have any relation with the world of superpowers.

But right now, a cluster of venom that looked like mist and flames was flowing inside his deeply hollowed eyes. His lips were curled into a smile that was both gentle and cruel. His countenance was exactly the same as that of Hugo Smith, the ‘hunter’ who had just died.

“Student Li Yao, it seems that I have to raise my evaluation of you again.”

The train attendant, who was born and raised in the East and had perhaps never left the country in his entire life, was speaking in his mother tongue in a very rigid tone. His tone was exactly the same as that of the hunter just now. “In just one short week, you turned from an ignorant ordinary person into an Awakener, then from a beginner to a deep one, then from a deep one to the current one, or maybe… you have already surpassed the category of a deep one and become something stronger and more dangerous?

“However, no matter how much strength you awaken, or as I said, in the face of the will of the earth, no, the universe, your resistance is still idiotic and futile. Go back to the right path!”

“You—”

Li Yao swallowed hard and looked at the grey mist lady solemnly, trying to get more information about the hunters from her.

Was this guy unkillable?

Every time he was killed, his… ‘soul’ would turn into a cluster of black mist, invade other people’s bodies, and be reborn in their bodies.

That was too unbelievable!

The grey mist lady’s face turned extremely awful, too. She shook her head at Li Yao, indicating that she did not know that the hunter had such an ability, either.

In the database of the Ark Foundation, there were only three pieces of intelligence about the super abilities of a hunter. The first was that he could change the frequency of the brainwaves and send them out in the form of special electromagnetic waves with the help of various wireless communication tools. In such a way, the memory of the previous life of ordinary people would be activated, and they would be controlled and turned into his puppets. The second was that he boasted extraordinary physical qualities and was adept at all kinds of combat and shooting techniques. His combat ability was definitely among the best. The third was that he could build a special force field around him, which would slow down the heartbeat of the person inside the force field and suppress the oxygen supply and the activity of the braincells, thereby creating an illusion similar to ‘Time Deceleration’ and slowing down the enemy.

The three abilities alone had already made the hunter one of the most troublesome enemies for the Ark Foundation. Therefore, it was not strange at all that a hunter was leading a team to block the author of ‘Forty Thousand Years of Cultivators’.

However, even the grey mist lady did not expect that a hunter would have a fourth special ability—”Immortal Body”!

How could they fight such a battle?

The hunter who was reborn smiled and whistled silently.

In a moment, more coaches were pulled open. Many guards, mechanics, and train crew on the freight train staggered out.

Almost all of them had headphones tied around their ears. Some of them were even sticking their phones to their ears with one of their hands. There was a dirty and cruel smile on their faces, and their eyes were deep and dull. It was obvious that they had become the puppets of the hunters just like ‘Zhao Kai’ a few days ago.

They struggled to climb up the roof.

It was raining cats and dogs. The escalator of the train was quite slippery. Many people had just woken up from their previous life. Their body and consciousness were not fully coordinated yet. Some of them did not have earbuds and had to press their mobile phone against their face with one hand. It was even more inconvenient for them to climb up. Some of them slipped and fell off the railway bridge, falling dozens of meters or even hundreds of meters. They were either smashed into pieces among the rocks or disappeared in the surging torrent. Normal people would’ve been scared out of their wits when they saw such a scene. But the puppets manipulated by the hunters had lost the concept of fear a long time ago. They were still climbing up without caring about their own safety. Even if half of them fell into the abyss, the other half would always jump toward Li Yao’s coach in various ways.

BOOM! CRACK!

Bolts of lightning flashed one after another, illuminating the pale sky and the earth. Li Yao felt that he was surrounded by hundreds of soulless puppets. The situation was extremely critical.

“Let’s go!”

The grey mist lady said in a low voice, “We will cover you. You will leave with Ghost Cat and Zhang Daniu!”

Li Yao did not reply. Taking a deep breath, he stomped on the ground and charged at the hunter again, ignoring the wounds on his ribs and shoulders.

While he was still in midair, he opened his hands. The light sword that had fallen to the side was absorbed into his palm again, emitting an even more furious redness. It turned into an almost perfect fan in midair and almost blocked all the escape routes of the hunter.

The rebirth ability of a hunter seemed to have its limitations, too. At the very least, his soul had just corroded the body. It was impossible for him to transform the old and feeble body, which had never been trained in physical strength or combat skills, into a body of steel that had been tempered thousands of times. Although he had super-class battle awareness, his nerves and muscles were not as quick as Li Yao’s. Therefore, he was still half a beat slower than Li Yao’s light sword.

Right then, two puppets under the control of the hunter lunged at Li Yao recklessly.

One of the puppets failed to calculate the distance and the landing point. It simply slid off the wall of the train next to Li Yao and crashed into a signal box next to the train. It immediately broke into pieces and looked extremely miserable.

Before the other puppet slid down, it grabbed Li Yao’s ankle and tried to drag him off the train, too.

Li Yao tried his best to kick the puppet away. He staggered and managed to maintain his balance, but the aura of the sword in his hand was somewhat disordered, allowing the hunter to narrowly escape.

“AHHHHHHHHH!”

Sparda, not far away, roared again. The plasma spurted out like a meteor shower and blew away many puppets. But such a weapon of fantasy still had to follow the objective pattern of limited energy. After firing for three minutes, one could clearly feel that the plasma shooting out of the barrel had dimmed a lot, and the muzzle of the gun had turned scorching red. When the raindrops hit it, earsplitting noises were echoing nonstop. It was obvious that the weapon would not last long.

Obviously, the subordinates of the hunters were not just expendable puppets.

A tall, muscular Awakened whose rain-proof cloak had been burnt away by Sparda’s plasma gun revealed greasy scales. Illuminated by the lightning, every scale was shining in bronze and iron.

Shua!

While Sparda was cleaning up the puppets nearby, the strange man with scales all over his body lunged at Sparda. His sharp claws drew three shining electric arcs in the air and cut the plasma gun in Sparda’s hand into four pieces. The energy inside the plasma gun was out of control. A dazzling ball of lightning burst out and wreathed Sparda and the strange man who looked like a lizard.

Although one of the two parties had been wounded, Li Yao knew that he did not have the advantage in numbers. Sparda was their most important long-range gunner who was responsible for cleaning up the claws and teeth of the enemy puppets. Without his support, the situation would only get worse.

Li Yao was about to go to the rescue, when the hunter grabbed his right hand that was holding the light sword.

He had been heavily wounded, too. Blood was flowing out of his shoulder and his ribs. His physical strength had almost run out. Naturally, his reaction was slower.

The hunter, on the other hand, took advantage of the few minutes of confrontation to quickly adapt and modify his weak body. At such a close distance, Li Yao could even hear his surging blood and the sounds of his muscles and bones growing.

In the pale lightning, Li Yao saw the hunter smile hideously at him.

Li Yao didn’t even blink. He let go of his right hand and threw the light sword to his left hand.

But right then, a streak of miserable brightness appeared in the sky, followed by the earsplitting sound of wind. The light sword was blown into pieces in midair.

Li Yao narrowed his eyes and looked in the direction of the shooting star. He saw that an Awakened of the Heaven’s Origin Sector was on one of his knees, holding a weirdly-shaped, glittering hunting bow.

It seemed that the hunter was baiting Li Yao with himself as bait so that Li Yao would be able to perform the technique again and sabotage the light sword when it was activated.

But Li Yao was not surprised at all.

Faced with an opponent like the ‘hunter’, the same move could not work twice. How could he not understand such a simple logic?

The hunter had sabotaged Li Yao’s light sword with himself as the bait, and Li Yao had also lured the hunter to open the door and end the battle neatly with the light sword as the bait.

When the attention of both sides was focused on the light sword in the air, Li Yao’s empty left hand had already stuck to the hunter’s abdomen.

In his palm, the burning butterfly reappeared and danced in the depths of the hunter’s internal organs.