Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

”Huh?”

Huangpu Shiyi was caught off guard.

He had made thorough plans to deal with Li Yao. He’d invited Li Yao to his workshop because he was going to convince him of the true meaning of the ultimate Daoism.

He was certain that, after a few hours of brainwashing, Li Yao’s mental defense line would definitely collapse!

He had never expected the guy to be so ’realistic’ as to not bother about the disparity between regular Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators at all as long as the reward was attractive enough.

Huangpu Shiyi had tempted hundreds of Cultivators and turned them into Immortal Cultivators.

But he had never seen such a shameless Cultivator before!

Crystal bombs techniques were what he had always been best at. They had been gathered bit by bit at the cost of lengthy suffering after he joined the Temple of Immortals. The setbacks he had endured and the price he had paid were unimaginable for other people. He wouldn’t have been able to grasp them without his extreme craziness!

And this guy was asking for all of them just like that?

Huangpu Shiyi’s face immediately turned cloudy. He coughed and said, ”We will have a lot of time in the future to discuss the techniques. Why don’t we talk about the difference between regular Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators first?”

Li Yao chuckled. ”You people of The Temple of Immortals are quite verbose. You talked about immortality and endless mysteries of the universe and the path that nobody had ever set foot on before. But I didn’t expect that you would be so petty. Just a few techniques, and you are trying to keep them a secret!

”How can I believe that there will be endless benefits after I join you if you are so mean?

”Bring me back. This is my only condition. Don’t talk to me again until you agree to it.

”You can turn it down, but if you agree to it, you’d better offer me something authentic. Truth be told, I’m a bomb expert myself. If I find out that you are giving me fake techniques, I will be even more disappointed in the Temple of Immortals.”

Li Yao finished his talk and walked out of the room, not once looking back at Huangpu Shiyi.

Huangpu Shiyi was coughing louder and louder. His graceful manners when enjoying the ant home and the monkey model a moment ago had entirely disappeared.

He pondered for a moment and could do nothing but wave his hands in frustration. Black Stone and White Dew immediately showed up.

Barely had Li Yao left his sight when Huangpu Shiyi slapped the desk hard and bellowed angrily, ”Damn. He is not even a Core Formation Stage Cultivator, and he dared to talk to me like that!”

In a corner, Su Jiuzhen gradually appeared out of thin air, before he shrieked, ”A young man in his twenties whose refining skills are in the middle-to-high level of the Building Foundation Stage and whose combat ability is in the beginning level of the Building Foundation Stage is indeed qualified to be egotistical.”

Huangpu Shiyi gnashed his teeth. ”Master Su, do I really have to bring out the best secret arts of mine to satisfy the boy so that he will be willing to join us?”

Su Jiuzhen smirked. ”Alternatively, you can look at the whole thing from a different perspective. You are not the only refiner at the Core Formation Stage in the Temple of Immortals. Your techniques are not the only valuable ones, either.

”With the boy’s current capability, there are bound to be a lot of other refiners at the Core Formation Stage in the Temple of Immortals who are interested in him. If one of them recruits him as a disciple in the future, what do you think his impression of you will be?”

Huangpu Shiyi was dazed. ”About that—”

Su Jiuzhen said with a cold smile, ”Competitiveness is a virtue inside the Temple of Immortals. The strong feast upon the weak, and the strongest take all! You wouldn’t want an ambitious but also hostile competitor among us in the decades to come, would you?

”Let’s put that aside. The few projects of yours all require large amounts of funding, which you must fight for against other people. If another refiner gets him as a disciple and their project produces results sooner than yours, what will you do?”

Huangpu Shiyi hesitated. ”Master Su, you do have a point.”

Su Jiuzhen continued his analysis. ”In my opinion, this is rather a fair deal.

”Although your hands can be temporarily recovered through secret arts, they can only last a very short amount of time. If you are alone, you wouldn’t be able to proceed with many large experiments or personal training sessions with your impaired hands.

”But if you have such a strong disciple as your assistant, your project will definitely be accelerated, you will be granted more funds, the speed of your Cultivation will soar, and your position in the Temple of Immortals will be much more solid, too!”

Huangpu Shiyi’s eyes were flickering as he thought, before they gradually came to a halt. He thought for a while and was still concerned. ”Master Su, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking thoroughly just now. But is this boy sincere about joining the Temple of Immortals?

”My crystal bombs and my techniques to distinguish the best points of explosion are extraordinary. If the boy learns all of them and yet has other plans, our starship might be seriously sabotaged!”

”You don’t need to worry about that.”

Su Jiuzhen explained, ”Gold Horn has been travelling unpredictably for a while, but we’ve basically locked the space zone it is in, and we will capture it within half a month! Talented as this Li Yao guy may be, how much can he learn in such a short time?

”As for his sincerity and whether or not he has other trump cards… I’ll take care of that and give him another test!

”If he has made up his mind to be an Immortal Cultivator, you have countless methods to tame him in the future as his master.

”If he has other cards and is planning some petty tricks, hehe, I will let him beg to be executed!”

…

Li Yao stayed in his room for only five minutes before Black Stone and White Dew came in and handed a crystal processor to him with a weird expression.

Huangpu Shiyi’s helpless face appeared in the picture, as he said, ”Are you willing to be my disciple as long as I teach you the crystal bomb techniques?”

Li Yao smiled. ”I’ll decide after the quality of the goods is determined. I’ll practice when you teach for a couple of days. If you are honest and your techniques are genuine, I see no harm in being your disciple.”

Huangpu Shiyi stared at him for a long time, before he took a deep breath and said, ”Alright. I’m sending you an information stream. You can study it for now. As for the files of a higher level, I’ll have to sort through them first. In three hours, Black Stone and White Dew will bring you to my workshop again.

”Remember, what I’m giving you is only half of what I know. Only after you become my disciple will I teach you the other half, which is more complicated.”

Li Yao nodded. ”I kind of like the notion of being an Immortal Cultivator now.”

Li Yao tapped on the light beam and received the information. It was a notebook personally written by Huangpu Shiyi, in which the structural designs and methods of refining of 572 kinds of crystal bombs were recorded.

The crystal bombs varied from the super bombs, which could blow up a planet back in the days of the Star Ocean Imperium, to the ’assault bombs’ that could be installed inside fly demon beasts for suicidal attacks, to the ’anti-crystal-suit bombs’ that were only the size of fingernails and yet could penetrate through a crystal suit and kill the Cultivator inside as long as they were deployed at the right location.

The frameworks of many of the bombs had been modified, rectified, and perfected by Huangpu Shiyi. Their damage had been significantly improved.

Li Yao felt that he had received a priceless treasure and completely devoted himself to it, his hands tremoring in excitement.

Huangpu Shiyi, hearing his conversation with Huangpu Shiyi and seeing his fascinated face, felt that her hands and feet were cold. She trembled and shouted, ”Li Yao, what did Huangpu Shiyi say to you? You didn’t make any deals with him, did you?”

Li Yao seemed to have heard none of it.

Huangpu Xiaoya clenched her fists and raised her voice. ”Li Yao, don’t be fooled! If you take the first wrong step, you will take countless wrong steps! We are Cultivators!”

There was still no response from Li Yao. His eyeballs were shivering rapidly, his hands tapping on the light beam nonstop, his mouth murmuring things that were utterly meaningless; he had apparently gone mad.

Huangpu Xiaoya was almost crying. ”Li Yao, don’t do that. Please, I—”

She summoned her courage and suddenly lunged at Li Yao, trying to snatch his crystal processor.

This time, Li Yao responded quickly. He raised his crystal processor high and, bending his right leg like a saber, kicked Huangpu Xiaoya right in her abdomen. She was blown away immediately.

Tears were all over Huangpu Xiaoya’s face. She was cramping, in too much pain to moan.

As if possessed by a devil, Li Yao strode forward with a hideous face. He clutched Huangpu Xiaoya’s hair and pulled her up to his face.

He glared at her gloomily with his bloodshot eyes until Huangpu Xiaoya couldn’t bear it any longer and sobbed silently. Then he said, one word after another, ”Don’t bug me when I’m studying magical equipment!

”Every second in the coming ten days is of paramount importance to me. If you hinder me again, I will slay you before Black Stone and White Dew interrupt. Do you understand?”

Li Yao threw Huangpu Xiaoya away as if she was a ragged bag and did not bother to look at her again. He returned to his crystal processor and concentrated his attention on the structures of hundreds of crystal bombs again.

In a corner of the room, an inconspicuous crystal camera he had never seen before captured everything that had happened dutifully.

In their cabin, Huangpu Shiyi and Su Jiuzhen were monitoring them on the light beam.

”What a brutal and coldhearted young man!”

”A natural-born Immortal Cultivator!”

Huangpu Shiyi and Su Jiuzhen looked at each other and smiled.

”However, the tests we have to run cannot be saved. To this moment, we cannot rule out the possibility that he has been acting.”

In the coming few days, Li Yao dedicated himself to the training of the techniques of crystal bomb refining.

To be an explosions expert, techniques in two regards must be studied.

Firstly, the creation of explosion magical equipment.

Not only must the refiner be familiar with the classic crystal bombs in history and their variations, they must also know what natural materials would lead to explosions when they were combined.

The experts of the trade could mix dozens of daily materials that were extremely stable and in no way explosive into powerful bombs.

But if they stopped there, they could only be called top explosions experts.

The really super explosions experts must have deeper understanding about the structure of the object to be bombed.

Every super explosions expert had a pair of sharp eyes that could allow them to see through the surface of an object and perceive the deepest structure of it, so that they could find the balance point of the object.

Once the balance was ruined, the entirely object would collapse!

Huangpu Shiyi was such an expert.

Back in the Skyhill, he had paralyzed twelve anti-gravity rune arrays of a floating mountain with only two regular crystal bombs.