Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Since Li Yao was still new to it all, he selected ’random’ for every setting. The system had automatically picked ’Ice Ocean’ as their battlefield.

It was a gray ocean with bitter wind, like the poles of a certain planet. There was nothing but marrow-freezing seawater as far as one’s eyes could see, except for some scattering icebergs which were floating on the surface of the ocean, colliding and breaking amid rumbling noises.

Wearing the Eight Arm Suit, Li Yao stood on one tiny piece of floating ice. Hundreds of meters away from him, on another floating ice, an ivory crystal suit was eyeing him. It was elegantly shaped, like a pure white feather.

White Feather Battlesuit, a masterpiece of Red Line School, one of the three main crystal suit centers!

A lot of information immediately popped up in Li Yao’s brain.

Of the three main crystal suit centers of the Flying Star Sector, ’Iron School’ was best at refining super-heavy suits. Their suits were all sturdy and durable, although sometimes with bizarre appearances.

The crystal suits created by Silver Heart School were more elegant and focused on multiple purposes. This School was adept at combining the crystal suits of different fields and creating a special one. For example, Li Yao’s Eight Arm boasted both the abilities of a maintenance suit and those of a battlesuit.

Red Line School, on the other hand, was best known for their light, speed-type crystal suits.

The White Feather Battlesuit was one of the most classic crystal suits invented by Red Line School. With the usage of the light metals and the new framework, the total weight of the crystal suit was only 80% of the weight of similar crystal suits, but the combat ability of White Feather was not diminished at all.

The most impressive presentation of the White Feather Battlesuit was conducted by a Building Foundation Stage Cultivator some time ago. In five seconds, the suit accelerated from stillness to the speed of sound, came to an abrupt halt, and sped up to the sonic speed again three times in a row!

The Ice Ocean Battlefield had a lot of floating ice. Most of the battles would be fought on them, which gave the White Feather Battlesuit a huge advantage.

Li Yao skimmed through his opponent’s profile. Lone Walker, a Building Foundation Stage Cultivator, 588 victories, 145 failures, win rate 80.22%, sync rate 81%. He was an experienced top expert!

More than seven hundred duels, with a win rate of more than eighty percent and a sync rate as high as 81%. He must be a real top expert who has slain many people. Then why did he challenge such a rookie like myself?

While Li Yao was confused, his opponent sent a message to him. ”My fellow Cultivator, is your sync rate… really 37%?”

Li Yao was dazed for a moment. ”Yes. Is there anything wrong about it?”

This time, Lone Walker was truly baffled.

He was quite a somebody in the World of Crystal Suits. Normally, he would never challenge rookies such as Li Yao. But just now, when he had been wandering in the duel zone, he suddenly noticed that the sync rate of ’Vulture’ was only 37%, and his interest was aroused.

Sync rate was the most important thing for an Exo. Every Exo always tried their best to improve their sync rate and hoped to reach the ’melded-with-my-suit’ level.

This ’Vulture’ was apparently a Building Foundation Stage Cultivator. By logic, his capability must be very good. Why did he have such a low sync rate?

Even many excellent middle school students had sync rates higher than 37%!

The test for the sync rate of the Great Illusionary Land could be cheated, of course. But Lone Walker knew that the real number would be within ten percent above or below the test result.

Therefore, even if ’Vulture’ had concealed part of his capability, his real sync rate would still be no higher than 50%.

Naturally, Lone Walker was greatly interested in such an eccentric fellow. That was why he went on and challenged him.

But Lone Walker did not expect that his opponent would be wearing an Eight Arm Suit.

Although Eight Arm was an advanced crystal suit produced by Silver Heart School, it was a hybrid maintenance suit and battlesuit after all. In the eyes of an expert such as Lone Walker, it was absolutely no match for a professional battlesuit. He frowned and said, ”Do you want to change crystal suit?”

Li Yao scratched his head. ”Change crystal suit? Why would I—”

Before he finished his sentence, Li Yao had vanished into thin air. The floating ice below his feet was stomped into a cluster of white powder!

Lone Walker’s pupils constricted violently. His crystal processor shrilled at a high pitch. Before his body was able to react, his crystal suit had made the defensive movements. He felt that an enormous strength hit his chest as if he had been fired upon by a giant cannon. The White Feather Battlesuit was blown away by more than a hundred meters and floated in midair, shaking.

Cold sweat immediately appeared on Lone Walker’s forehead. He looked down, not entirely recovered from his shock, only to notice that the ugly Eight Arm Suit had appeared in the place where he had been standing. The six artificial arms on its back were waving violently like the claws of a crab, making the crystal suit more hideous than ever.

Interesting!

Lone Walker grinned and roared. The super speed of his White Feather was made the best use of as he turned into a streak of bright light and darted at Li Yao!

Very impressive!

Li Yao instantly felt tremendous pressure.

His enemy seemed to have turned into rushing wind penetrating into his body through every gap on his crystal suit.

Fighting against an expert such as Lone Walker gave Li Yao a deeper understanding of why the Flying Star Sector chose to utilize crystal suits in their way.

By the optimization of the crystal processor, the filtering of tactics, and the automatic responses, the pause and pondering between the attack or defense movements was reduced to minimum. Although the creativity and independence of the Exo was restricted, their attacks were much more seamless. There were barely any gaps between two waves of attacks. It was like the most natural and fluent music without the tiniest flaw.

Swoosh!

Dazzling brilliance burst out from the White Feather Battlesuit. Hundreds of strings of spiritual energy condensed into glittering feathers which swooped at Li Yao, cutting countless wounds on the Eight Arm Suit immediately and even breaking many crucial crystal wires apart!

Skill card!

Li Yao gritted his teeth and backed off. He trod on the surface of the ice ocean lightly and blinked to another floating ice hundreds of meters away.

His opponent had unleashed a deadly skill with the skill card!

Optimization from the crystal processor, automatic implementations of tactics, together with versatile, powerful skill cards. Li Yao had to admit that such a fighting pattern was indeed charming in its own way.

However, there was a different path that he’d been walking on all the time.

Although there were barely any gaps between two waves of attacks, loopholes still existed. Every tactical movement that his opponent carried out was one of the standard movements inputted into the crystal processor previously. Standard meant patterns. As long as he figured out the patterns behind the movements…

Ci… Ci… Ci… Ci…

The six artificial arms on Li Yao’s back extended to his front. Various kinds of maintenance magical equipment ejected from the artificial arms and performed an emergency repair on the damages of the crystal suit.

Are you kidding me?

Lone Walker’s eyes bulged when he noticed what was happening. He had seen battlefield maintenance before, but he had never seen anyone who could repair themselves within several seconds at such a shocking speed.

Who is this guy, ’Vulture’? I’ve never heard of such a skilled mechanic among the Exos.

Lone Walker was deep in thought. But he didn’t stop; instead, he turned into a streak of light again and lunged at Li Yao.

Outside of the virtual battlefield, many other spectators had noticed the match.

Many fans of crystal suits and low-level Cultivators came to the duel zone not because they wanted to take part in a match, but because they were hoping to watch the matches between the top experts to learn more.

Lone Walker was a somewhat renowned expert in the virtual matching platform. His super-fast continuous striking tactics were textbook for many young people. Therefore, many people had followed him and paid special attention to his matches.

The moment his match started, the system had sent notifications to those spectators.

By default, all match tickets were available to everybody at the cost of one crystal coin. The income would be divided in a ratio of 3:7 and given to the loser and winner respectively. The players of the match could change the setting by themselves to turn off the spectator mode or increase the price of the ticket.

However, it was a rather common practice to leave the spectator mode on, which was considered to be a great method of communication and studying.

Cultivators were responsible for improving the Cultivation level of the entire civilization. Therefore, even the real super experts would sometimes peg the ticket for spectators at one crystal coin symbolically, in order to return the favor and benefit the public.

Countless spectators immediately crowded in to watch the game.

At first, everyone’s eyes were fixed upon Lone Walker. But when they read the profile of his opponent, they were all dumbfounded. A Building Foundation Stage Cultivator with a sync rate of only 37%? What had happened? Was there some sort of bug in the system?

Inside the ice ocean, Lone Walker was at a seemingly overwhelming advantage. The super mobility of his crystal suit couldn’t be better shown. White Feather seemed to have split into hundreds of shadows which surrounded the Eight Arm Suit in the front and almost suffocated his opponent like a dominating hurricane.

Compared with the naturalness and elegance of the White Feather Battlesuit, the Eight Arm Suit’s movements couldn’t be more unappealing. One moment, it was on all fours on the surface of the ocean; the next moment, it was rolling over like a donkey; now, it was running away with its head in its hands. Although it narrowly escaped the dense attacks of White Feather every time, the crystal suit was on the brink of destruction. If the Exo hadn’t been maintaining the crystal suit with the six artificial arms during the escape to keep its basic functions, it would’ve collapsed a long time ago.

”This Vulture is clearly no match for Lone Walker!”

”You don’t say! His sync rate is only 37%, but Lone Walker’s is 81%! They are not of the same level at all! I really wonder how he advanced into the Building Foundation Stage!”

”I understand it now! Vulture can’t be a battle-type Cultivator. He must an admin-type, a creation-type, or even a culture-type Cultivator! Although he is in the level of the Building Foundation Stage, he does not have the corresponding combat ability. This is just his entertainment!”

”Yes, yes. It all makes sense now. The guy is just an amateur here to relax. Lone Walker is wasting his time!”

”Are you serious? The guy’s maintenance skills are indeed impressive! He fixed up such a long fracture in front of his chest within only half a second!”

”Haha. I understand why he chose the Eight Arm Suit now. This guy must be a professional mechanic for crystal suits and an amateur of fighting in them! The Eight Arm Suit can prolong his life as much as possible so that he can fight the experts for another several minutes!”

”However, under the bombardment of Lone Walker, there is nothing but doom in front of him! Look, Lone Walker’s ultimate skill, ’Shadow Dance’!”

The streak of whiteness seemed to have grown two wings. It was even faster than lightning and flashed past the Eight Arm Suit. Blood spurted out, and a giant head flew to the sky!

”For an amateur, to be killed by Shadow Dance is something to be proud of.”

”Indeed. This battle lasted six minutes and fifty-four seconds. For Lone Walker, who is best at killing his opponent instantly, this is a long one.”

”This Vulture is indeed interesting. Should I go down there and play with him, too?”

The spectators were all whispering to each other, but their voices were suddenly frozen by the cold wind blowing on the ice ocean. The channel for spectators was cast into awkward silence.

It was because all of them had discovered that the one cramping on a floating ice sheet without the head was the White Feather Battlesuit, or in other words, Lone Walker.

In the meantime, the mysterious Vulture, who only had a sync rate of 37%, was still standing magnificently in the frigidness wearing his Eight Arm Suit!