Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

In one of the paintings was depicted a mountain piercing the sky which was surrounded by strong wind. It ripped open the sky like an unparalleled sharp saber, where a sea of stars flowed out and formed a giant eye.

In another painting, a boundless desert was presented. A dust storm was sweeping across it. But a small figure was above the sand fighting the heaven and the earth until they breathed their last breath.

Several other paintings also included bloody battlegrounds, misty mountains, and bottomless valleys.

Two of the paintings were full of brilliant colors and shadows, as if the painter had knocked off the ink bottle during the creation. There was no telling what was on the paintings at all.

All the paintings stored immense soul power. After a quick look, Li Yao had been deep attracted to them, which were absorbing his soul like nine swirls.

For a moment, he was on a high mountain, climbing up to the infinite sea of stars against the raging wind.

In the next moment, he was in the depths of a desert. Billions of tons of sand were savaging his head. He gritted his teeth and fought it desperately with his body tightened.

Then, he appeared in a small bamboo boat on a limpid stream which was flowing between mountains, while his soul melted with the lovely nature contentedly and comfortably, all his lusts gone.

He even found himself in the two paintings of brilliant colors, where he was observing the mystery of all mysteries in absolute tranquility without entity.

However…

The painting that he stared at for the longest was the ninth one.

Completely different from the previous eight paintings, it was a scene of an ordinary, commonly-seen vegetable market with the most exquisite details.

A vegetable market with noises, ditches, and crowds, where cabbages, onions, fish, ribs, and beef were sold.

Li Yao’s soul entered the painting. He smelt the freshness of cabbages, the sweetness of fruits, and the intense scent from fish; he heard bargaining and bickering, pounding when meat was being chopped off, and laughter from the chitchatting neighbors; he saw beaming, satisfied faces everywhere.

Li Yao had no idea why the understanding on ’Building Foundation’ of this painter was a random vegetable market. However, he did feel that the painting was resonating with something in his mind vaguely.

The painting dimmed. The smiling faces of the people changed to ones that had been blackened by smoke and burned by fire, which belonged to the soldiers who had been fighting side by side with him over the past ten days.

Among them, there were veterans who had been on active service for more than ten years; there were rookies who’d enlisted half a year ago and had just finished the basic training and didn’t know the first thing about a war.

There were Core Formation Stage Cultivators who could blow up a skyscraper casually; there were also Cultivators at the beginning phase of the Refinement Stage whose spiritual root had awakened not long ago addressing him respectfully as ’Senior Brother’.

All the faces, including those of the ordinary people, soldiers and Cultivators, blended together, as they squinted and curled their lips. Their pure white teeth glared, and they beamed with the brightest smile in the world.

”LUM DUM! LUM DUM! LUM DUM!”

Li Yao’s heart was beating faster and faster. The circulation of his blood was ten times rapider than before!

Driven my something mysterious, his spiritual root started beating like his second heart!

Absorption! Absorption! All his spiritual gas was swallowed by his spiritual root, without anything being left.

”Ahhhhhh!”

Li Yao’s eyes bulged. Two streams of blood dripped down from the corners of his eyes, as his spiritual root continued expanding until it occupied his entire brain.

Invisible spiritual tentacles slowly tangled his nerves and his veins, integrating with his body and forming an inseparable network.

”CRACK!”

When he couldn’t bear it any longer and thought his skull was going to be pierced through by his spiritual root, lightning suddenly struck inside his brain, before his spiritual root started constricting violently. All the spiritual gas contained inside the spiritual root was condensed into liquid state and, through invisible spiritual tentacles, reached all his limbs and internal organs like an elixir.

Thousands of rivers seemed to be raging inside his body and crushing all his nerves and cells to pieces.

Yet, the infinite vitality buried deep inside the rivers reconstructed his broken cells and nerves and made them stronger and more vibrant than before.

The nine paintings of ’Meditations on Building Foundation’ blinked one by one in front of his face. ’Breaking the Enemy’s Formation’ was played and replayed, attacking his internal organs through his ears. More than twenty years of memories flushed into his brain and created a coruscating skyscraper three-dimensionally.

Every cluster of nerve endings had been stuffed by the rivers of spiritual liquid. Li Yao floated in the air and cramped, his arms and legs all stretching out. Cracking noises were echoing inside his bones, while surging tides were crushing the seashore of his veins. The rhythm of his heartbeat and the palpitation of his spiritual root finally resonated and produced a unique, powerful note!

A long time passed.

”Hoooo…”

Li Yao woke up from the amazing, extraordinary scenes inside of his body and found himself lying on the ground exhausted. His limbs were as dry and thin as wood. Lackluster mud was everywhere on his skin, which was the waste of the metabolic process just now.

He had been reborn and made a great leap forward in the path of Cultivation.

By his perception, more than one year had passed. But looking at the spiritual clock on the wall, it was only half an hour after he had first entered the training room.

”I made it!

”The spiritual gas inside my body has all been transformed to liquid state, which is circulating in the newly formed spiritual arteries slowly. My spiritual root has evolved, too. It can transform spiritual gas into spiritual liquid continuously now!”

Li Yao wanted to smile, but he didn’t even have the strength to curl his lips.

”Zi! Zi!”

From the holes on the walls of the training room, deep blue thick liquid flowed out, which was the super nutrition liquids specially prepared for Cultivators who had just entered the Building Foundation Stage.

After a moment, Li Yao was drowned inside the deep-blue nutrition liquids. He opened all his pores and started devouring spiritual energy crazily as if he had been starved for years.

Centered around him, a swirl was revolving slowly inside the training room.

While he was refilling his spiritual energy, Li Yao’s soul flew to the depths of his brain to the tree of memory of Ou Yezi.

As he expected!

After he entered the Building Foundation Stage, Ou Yezi’s tree of memory had been further unlocked.

The crown of the tree of memory was glitteringly gold, illuminating his brain in a dazzling glamour.

”The huge number of memories after Ou Yezi entered the Building Foundation Stage can be absorbed by me now!”

Li Yao was more than excited.

Back in the Hundred Smelting Clan 40,000 years ago, a lot of events had taken place during the dozens of years when Ou Yezi was at the Building Foundation Stage.

Firstly, Ou Yezi was qualified to enter the second level of the Heavenly Refining Tower where he would study more advanced secret arts on refining.

Secondly, demonic Cultivators invaded and caused bloody wars. Ou Yezi upgraded the 108 Hands Chaos Gale Hammer Technique to 189 moves, which worked out effectively on the battleground allowing him to punch 24 demonic Cultivators at the Building Foundation Stage into pieces at the same time.

Thirdly, Ou Yezi was recruited by Daoist Yu Chang, an Elder of the Hundred Smelting Clan, as his student and became one of the core disciples of the Hundred Smelting Clan.

It was a piece of memory when Ou Yezi first got in touch with the vital secret arts of the Hundred Smelting Clan.

Now, they were all Li Yao’s and ready to be absorbed by Li Yao at his will.

”Excellent!

”As long as I can absorb the memory pieces from when Ou Yezi was at the Building Foundation Stage, I will be able to grasp the real secret arts of the Hundred Smelting Clan and refine the legendary weapons that have not been seen for millenniums!

”Moreover, I will be able to train myself with most brutal ways of fighting on the battleground of the demonic Cultivators’ invasion 40,000 years ago!

”After that, even I’m to be faced with a demon king, I will not be entirely on the losing side!”

Sparkling memory pieces aroused Li Yao’s vehement greediness, who almost couldn’t wait to start studying them without anything bothering him.

But he knew that now was not the time yet.

He withdrew from Ou Yezi’s memory pieces hesitantly and returned to reality. The deep-blue nutrition liquids, which had been thick a moment ago, were now transparent and tasteless.

The spiritual energy contained inside had all been absorbed by Li Yao’s body, which was filled up again and full of vigor, like a new-born baby.

The effluent was soon extracted by the sinkhole on the ground of the training room. After a while of humming sounds, even the air was extremely dry.

Ten round dynameters dropped down from the ceiling, which were spinning swiftly in midair, driven by power rune arrays.

Li Yao smiled.

This was a test that he had preset in order to find out how strong he was after he entered the Building Foundation Stage.

”Not fast enough… Triple the speed!”

”Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!”

Ten dynameters were revolving fast, at thirty revolutions per second, while they were flying at random directions in the air.

Every dynameter was the size of a watermelon, but the sensitive area on it was only the size of a fist. Only by hitting the sensitive area precisely would the punch be counted and the strength of the punch be recorded. Otherwise, the punch would be deemed as a failure.

It was not easy to hit such a small sensitive area on a dynameter which was revolving this fast.

Taking a deep breath, Li Yao squatted. A dense aura suddenly burst out from his body.

At first glance, it was more modest and restrained, and fast less eye-catching compared with that when he was at the Refinement Stage. But in fact, it was more firm, steady, and inexhaustible. There were absolutely no weak points.

Li Yao turned into a laser. The small training room was filled with hundreds of his blurred shadows. The light beams around displayed a series of readings. It was not until a moment later that the sound of the dynameters being punched echoed.

Half a minute later, all the blurred shadows gathered in the center of the training room where they consolidated into Li Yao’s real body. The ten dynameters were quivering over his head, which seemed like they could fall to the ground at any moment.

A drop of sweat appeared on Li Yao’s forehead, as he watched at the light beams around him in satisfaction.

The reading on the first light beam was 111.11 kg.

The reading on the second light beam was 222.22 kg.

And so on. Until the tenth light beam where the reading stopped at 1111.11 kg.

In half a second, he had punched each dynameter one hundred times with exactly the same strength which rose up according to the number of the dynameters. There was no error whatsoever.

This was the true power of a Building Foundation Stage Cultivator!