Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The technique through which Huangpu Shiyi trained his eyes was named ’Phantom Breaker’. It allowed the user to concentrate the spiritual energy in the eyes and meld one’s spiritual threads into one’s eyesight. Wherever one’s eyes reached, the spiritual threads would penetrate into the target and sense the tiniest structures of the object that were unperceivable to eyes.

When cultivated to the highest level, ’Phantom Breaker’ would not only make the user see through the deepest structures of an object but also allow them to sense the weakest part of them instantly.

By that time, with a quick glance, the heavily protected target would become a clear, detailed skeleton, and the weakest part of the ’skeleton’ would emit vague red brightness. One would know where to attack without thinking, just by looking at it.

This was only for the deployment of one or two crystal bombs.

When it came to the serial explosions that required three or more bombs, more factors would be involved that would interfere with each other, and the demand on the computational ability of the bomber would soar, too. Countless theories would have to be applied, such as chaos theory, turbulence model, butterfly effect, uncertainty principle… The mysterious and complicated theories dazzled Li Yao and made him greatly enjoy himself.

To study so many theories at the same time required much more than a few days.

Thankfully, there was a mysterious zone of memories inside Li Yao’s brain. By staying in the Heaven’s Refining Tower, the virtual time could be significantly lengthened.

Li Yao sank his consciousness into the deepest part of his brain and dedicated himself to training hard with the extended time inside the Heaven’s Refining Tower.

At first, Huangpu Shiyi was not entirely open-minded.

Although he said that he had given Li Yao half of what he knew, he had only offered less than thirty percent of his knowledge, which also contained the most sophisticated theories.

By Huangpu Shiyi’s estimation, with the computational ability of a Building Foundation Cultivator, it would take Li Yao three to five months to memorize all the theories, and much longer to understand and grasp them.

Also, theories couldn’t be readily applied to real battles, and they were barely of any help to the improvement of one’s capability.

But what he didn’t know was that Li Yao was an experienced bomber who wouldn’t have defeated enemies multiple times stronger than himself in the dangerous battles without the traps made of crystal bombs!

In the subject of explosions, Li Yao had set up as many bombs as Huangpu Shiyi had. It was just that he had learned everything by himself and was lacking the support of systematic theories.

Therefore, the theories that Huangpu Shiyi had offered him were, to him, what a pillow was to a drowsy man. He couldn’t feel more satisfied!

During the prolonged time inside the Heavenly Refining Tower, Li Yao studied the theories that Huangpu Shiyi had given him and compared Huangpu Shiyi’s bombs with his self-made crystal bombs in the past.

He made new discoveries almost every second and new understandings every minute. His capability was improving at a higher speed than an exploding crystal bomb!

Only three days had passed in reality. But Li Yao had generally memorized all theories and totally grasped the structural designs of hundreds of Huangpu Shiyi’s crystal bombs.

His speed stunned Huangpu Shiyi, who was vigilant and made up his mind not to teach him the rest of his techniques easily. Otherwise, even if the guy was willing to join the Temple of Immortals in the end, he might not enjoy many benefits from it personally. It was not unusual that a master was starved after they taught everything they knew to their disciples in the Temple of Immortals!

But he didn’t expect that Li Yao wasn’t just a consumer. After getting part of Huangpu Shiyi’s knowledge, the guy seemed to be quite satisfied. His attitude toward Huangpu Shiyi had changed significantly. Not only did he often go and discuss esoteric problems about crystal bombs with Huangpu Shiyi, the guy even revealed part of his own techniques and skills of refining!

This time, Huangpu Shiyi was both surprised and amazed.

Ever since his hands had been destroyed by lightning due to his crazy training more than twenty years ago, he had basically abandoned the path of a sword-forger.

Later, on his way to the Million Star Space Zone in search of an elixir to cure his hands, he encountered a space storm and was almost killed. But the accident proved to be a turning point for him. After his narrow escape, he found the heritage of a long-deceased senior by luck, including ’Phantom Breaker’ and half of a manual on the craft of crystal bombs.

Since then, Huangpu Shiyi had been mostly focused on the refinement of explosive magical equipment.

In the circle of refiners, this research field was not as popular as melee weapons, guns, or starships. There were not many such experts in the Temple of Immortals, either.

He barely had the opportunity to communicate with specialists who had equal expertise to himself. After a long time of practicing in solitude, he found it hard to improve after he had reached his bottleneck.

The questions that Li Yao raised had precisely hit the points he was unsure about. After several deep discussions, not only was Li Yao greatly enlightened, Huangpu Shiyi had sorted out many problems that had baffled him and made great progress, too.

He had tested Li Yao several times, but Li Yao did not care at all and shared many secret techniques with him nonetheless.

With Huangpu Shiyi’s sharp eyes, he could easily tell that much of the information Li Yao had provided was invaluable. Some of it had been lost a long time ago!

If the guy was not determined to join the Temple of Immortals, he would definitely not share such top confidential arts with him!

This time, Huangpu Shiyi was really confused.

”What is this guy, Li Yao, exactly? Is he stupid? But the tricks and responses he took in the beginning were very excellent, and he seized the opportunity to ask for more benefits greedily and right in time, too.

”Is he smart? But he did not keep anything to himself at all and brought out so many ultimate skills promptly and honestly. Even I have never heard of some of the refining methods and tricks. They are definitely top secrets of top secrets. Why did he tell me all of them so easily? Does he really consider me his Master?”

Huangpu Shiyi and Su Jiuzhen had discussed with each other for a long time. Their conclusion was: ”Li Yao lived alone in the periphery of the sea of stars for more than twenty years. He was naturally quick to respond due to the suffering of the harsh environment.

”However, the number of people he got in touch with was too limited after all. He is too young, too simple, and sometimes naive.

”For such an arrogant young man who thinks too highly of himself, the only thing we need to give him is flattery and compliments. He is not afraid of sticks, but he cannot resist carrots. With some adulation, he will be so ecstatic that he won’t know who or where he is, and he will confess all the secrets that he knows about!”

After he figured out Li Yao’s personality, he was even kinder and friendlier toward Li Yao when they were together, and his tutelage gradually turned both thorough and detailed.

But, of course, he had calculated everything through.

He had concluded that, for each technique or skill that he taught Li Yao, Li Yao had returned at least two. Although they were not as good as his, but there was a great number of them!

Huangpu Shiyi was a talented genius, too. After receiving Li Yao’s techniques and Cultivation methods, he had been training crazily for several days, and his capability in refining had soared, to the extent that he felt that a breakthrough was coming near. He was so happy that he was almost crying.

At first, he recruited Li Yao as his disciple purely for the purpose of getting more skills. But gradually, he changed his thoughts. Since the boy had a simple mind despite his sharp tongue, he was quite easy to be manipulated as long as one knew how to deal with him, that is to say, how to flatter him and talk to him nicely.

It did not seem a bad idea to really treat the guy as his disciple. He could be asked to perform dangerous experiments in the future so that Huangpu Shiyi wouldn’t have to do them personally.

Besides, the guy had indeed got something in his head. He was throwing out tricks that Huangpu Shiyi didn’t know about every day. Huangpu Shiyi was completely hooked by them. To maintain the friendship, he had to trade his own techniques for them continuously.

After all, it was quite a fair deal. It couldn’t be more in his favor with a ratio of 1:2 during the barters.

Just like that, the relationship between the ’master’ and the ’disciple’ was getting better day after day. In the end, they really looked like a devoted teacher and a loyal student.

However, Su Jiuzhen didn’t let loose of monitoring Li Yao in secret at all.

Li Yao was still living in the same suite as Huangpu Xiaoya. It was partly for the sake of easier surveillance, and partly to set him as an example for Huangpu Xiaoya.

But Huangpu Xiaoya was not influenced at all.

In the first couple of days, she was mired in despair and irritation and couldn’t get herself out. But as time went by, she grew more and more silent and indifferent. She seemed to have become the girl made of lightning, like when Li Yao had seen her for the first time.

The only difference was that all the lighting was frozen, not jumping anymore.

Seven days after Li Yao and Huangpu Shiyi made the deal, Huangpu Xiaoya was brought to talk to Huangpu Shiyi, too.

Three hours later, when Huangpu Xiaoya was back, her eyes were hollow, and she was quieter than ever, like the tranquil and depressed ocean before a storm.

She sat cross-legged on her bed and stared at Li Yao across her, who had been carefully studying crystal bombs for an entire hour. Then she suddenly jumped up and looked down upon Li Yao in disgust, as she gnashed her teeth. ”I’m not an ant, much less a monkey!”

Li Yao’s eyes were still focused on the crystal bombs. He murmured something to himself and completely ignored her.

Huangpu Xiaoya raised her voice, not speaking to Li Yao, but more like speaking to herself, ”Ants can only wave their antennas, and monkeys just squeak! But when ordinary people laugh, we know they are happy; when ordinary people cry, we know they are sad! We drink the same water, we breathe same air, we speak the same language, and we sing the same songs!

”We are all ordinary people when we were born! Our parents are likely to be ordinary people, and our descendants may be ordinary people for all eternity!

”No. We are ordinary people, except that our strength may be a bit larger than the rest!

”For your and the other timid scumbags’ information, I, Huangpu Xiaoya, will never abandon my identity as an ordinary person, and I would like to fight for that until my last drop of blood is shed!”

Li Yao finally raised his head and glanced at her. He said casually, ”You will die.”

Huangpu Xiaoya’s hair was messy, her face flushed. She suddenly burst into laughter like a crazy witch. She bellowed with her head held high and her face full of pride, ”I may die, but Cultivators are destined to live forever! This is the ’immortality’ that we pursue, which is totally different from you people without hearts!”

Li Yao sniffed. He stopped listening and resumed his study.

Today, the question at hand was ’seven-star dilemma’. It was a question about which distribution of seven crystal bombs could bring up their damage to maximum when they were circuited.

If he could find out the optimal solution, the damage of the serial explosion would not be just seven times the damage of a single crystal bomb, but more than thirty times it!