Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Wu Mayan watched the scenery with Li Yao quietly. A moment later, he remarked, ”Beautiful, isn’t it? But on Iron Plateau, only six cities boast such splendid views.

”The six cities are established on six extremely vast areas of debris, where many resources and techniques from before the apocalypse were left. They are also protected by high city walls, and the demon beasts cannot break into them.

”However, the towns and villages out of the six major cities are often attacked by demon beasts. When an egg of apocalypse explodes after becoming ripe, the creatures inside can even destroy an entire town!

”Therefore, the development level of the towns and villages vary. Some of them are hundreds of years behind Furious Bears City.

”It can’t be helped. Not all people have the privilege of living in Furious Bears City because of the insufficient resources here. Many farms and mines are scattered across the desert and must also be attended to.

”These places are among the luckier ones. Furious Bears City often sends a lot of qi-trainers to these places to protect the ordinary people.

”On the other side of Iron Plateau, there exists a large godforsaken area known as Dark Continent.”

Li Yao raised his eyebrow high to show his interest.

Wu Mayan explained, ”Dark Continent is the half planet that was the first to take the blow of the asteroids. It is not hard to guess that the place bled most. Chances are that all the shelters were demolished in an instant.

”For thousands of years, the six tribes of Iron Plateau have been struggling, growing, and expanding on this half of the planet. But due to the limitation of resources and technology, we cannot afford to establish towns in the Dark Continent.

”We’ve sent many an exploration team to the Dark Continent. They reported that it was a desolate world that had been completely destroyed by the apocalypse. There were no cities or towns. Demon beasts were the masters of the place.

”According to the exploration teams, there were human beings in the Dark Continent, too. However, they had absolutely no rules or moral standards. Theirs was a cruel society where the strong feasted upon the weak. Many survivors had even become real barbarians, no different from animals who ate raw meat and drank blood.

”The biggest wish of the qi-trainers is to grow stronger and set foot in the Dark Continent one day to save our compatriots!”

The young man’s face was brimming with determination.

While they were talking, the True Qi train slowed down and reached a new stop.

The intense scent of metal that filled the air belied where they were; it was the factory zone.

”We’re here. Let’s go!”

As the apocalypse was drawing near, all the factories in Furious Bears City were running at the maximum efficiency to manufacture more war machines.

The weapon factory was overloaded. The spiritual gas was threatening to explode, and coolants were splashing all over the floor. Yelling and collisions echoed nonstop. The air was sweltering to the point that it almost felt like one was burning.

Li Yao observed the qi-trainers’ magical equipment factory as a professional refiner.

Prototypes of assembly lines could be found in the factory, albeit very primitive and in lack of automation. There were still a lot of workers and blacksmiths doing their hard jobs with sweat dripping off their heads at their posts.

The technology of metal refinement on Iron Plateau was much more underdeveloped than the outside world. Most Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures were barely usable because they were mixed with too many impurities.

Although Li Yao was a brilliant star on the Skyhill Sword Seminar, he was not an omnipotent man. The creation of modern magical equipment included too many details. The enhancement of metals alone involved tens of thousands of techniques. It was impossible for Li Yao to have learned all of them.

With a rough calculation, Li Yao realized that, given the underdevelopment of Iron Plateau, it was impossible to produce the components necessary for the maintenance of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit within several months.

That was leaving the crystal reactor aside. The crystal reactor required dozens of special alloys and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. The facilities were unlikely to produce any of them.

Li Yao sighed and put the maintenance of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit to the back of his mind for a while. He focused his attention on studying the magical equipment in the factory.

As Xiong Wuji’s foster son and one of the most distinguished young geniuses in Furious Bears City, Wu Mayan was quite familiar with the manager of the weapon factory.

A fat qi-trainer soon brought the two of them to a warehouse that belonged to the weapon factory.

The manager smiled and said, ”Boss Xiong has told us that this brother killed two Emperor Sand Scorpions and rescued you. What a tough man! Boss Xiong said that this brother is free to choose whatever blades and magical equipment he wants and that he will be paying for them later!”

Li Yao was never courteous when it came to magical equipment. He kept his mouth shut, his eyes glittering, while he climbed up and down the big iron shelves inside the warehouse and examined the qi-trainers’ magical equipment.

Shua!

He took a black iron sword, which was more than two meters long, from a shelf and touched it, greatly fascinated.

Although it was a sword, it was broad, thick, and weighed more than sixty kilograms. The edge of the sword was not sharp. When it was being wielded, it was like a giant bat and could easily smash the enemy to death if it failed to slash them. Apparently, it was a good weapon to deal with demon beasts that had solid shells.

There were no decorations on the body of the sword, except for the dozens of small holes in rows.

”This is a jet sonic heavy sword. Everybody prefers to call it a ’sonic sword’. It is the favorite weapon for all the qi-trainers of Furious Bears City. Other than that, there are also sonic sabers, sonic bats, and sonic hammers, but they are all designed with the same mechanism.”

Wu Mayan explained, ”Uncle Sand Scorpion, look, there’s a circle of inlet holes on the grip of the sword that lead to the center of the sword. Enhanced by the rune arrays there, the spiritual gas transmitted into the holes will spurt out from one side of the sword and thus accelerate it! As long as you are above the 17th level of the Refinement Stage, it will be more than easy to wield the sword at sonic speed.”

Li Yao’s eyes suddenly shone. He sensed the sword with his spiritual threads and immediately understood the mechanism of the sword after a few seconds.

He walked to a corner of the warehouse, raised the heavy sword high, and slashed down after pouring his spiritual gas into the body of the sword.

Hiss—

Enhanced by the rune arrays inside the sword, his spiritual gas spurted out in eight streams from the holes on the two sides of the blade, as if a whale spurting water!

The edge of the sword was further accelerated by the enormous force resulting from the spurting spiritual gas. It broke the sonic barrier and surpassed the speed of sound instantly!

Shua!

Two sharp waves spread out from the air in Li Yao’s front with an earsplitting sound, as if the air had been wounded by Li Yao’s attack and was moaning.

Maximizing the damage by increasing the speed of the blades with a jetting mechanism?

Such True Qi weapons are simple in structure, easy to maintain, and do not require many Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. They are very suitable for the Refinement Stage Cultivators. Indeed, not bad!

Li Yao complimented the inventions secretly.

The Refinement Stage was merely the most basic phase in Cultivation both in the Flying Star Sector and in the Heaven’s Origin Sector. It was the starting point of a long journey.

When all Cultivators were devoted to training in the hope of building the foundation or even form the core, they sometimes overlooked the exploration and research of spiritual gas, which was considered to be the lowest form of spiritual energy and not worth studying at all.

But on Iron Plateau, since the qi-trainers were unable to enter the Building Foundation Stage, they had explored the mysteries of spiritual gas far and wide. After thousands of years of development, a brilliant system based on spiritual gas had been created!

The qi-trainers’ expertise on spiritual gas was far more sophisticated than that of other places in many aspects!

Li Yao put aside the sonic sword and picked a crystal bomb.

The crystal bomb looked like a bucket. It was half the length of Li Yao’s arm. The warhead was even larger than his fist, with sharp thorns occupying its surface.

Wu Mayan explained, ”This is a long-grip grenade, but we prefer to call it ’Wolf Fang’!

”The fighting styles of the six tribes on Iron Plateau are not entirely the same. The Furious Bears Tribe likes close-distance combat best.

”When the qi-trainers of the Furious Bears Tribe are about to be engaged in a battle, it is a common practice that we carry a lot of Wolf Fangs with us. If we run into demon beasts, we bombard them first with dozens of grenades and blow the heck out of them before we charge at them, waving our sonic swords and sabers, and slay them all until their blood congregates into a river. That’s the most gratifying thing ever!”

Li Yao was deep in thought. No wonder the magical equipment he saw most on the shelves most consisted of swords, sabers, and grenades, and there were barely any firearms.

Since the two kinds of magical equipment were the fundamental weapons for the qi-trainers of the Furious Bears Tribe, Li Yao planned to start with them and see whether or not he could make any improvements.

Based on the knowledge Li Yao had learned from Huangpu Shiyi, Li Yao was almost certain that the ’Wolf Fang’ grenades could be upgraded in various ways.

Li Yao narrowed his eyes and was drawing the structural designs of the new version of the grenades in his brain when Wu Mayan suddenly exclaimed in surprise and ecstasy, ”What? The Fierce Storm Assault Team and the Iron Bears Detonation Team are running a competitive test with their new magical equipment? Uncle Ma, please show us the way!”

Wu Mayan snatched Li Yao’s arm and said excitedly, ”Uncle Scorpion, we’ve chosen a good day to come. The two most awesome combat squads of the Furious Bears Tribe are having a competitive test with their new magical equipment. Let’s hurry and check it out!”

Behind the warehouse was a spacious test field. Two teams, both made up of almost twenty qi-trainers, were preparing for the test to come unhurriedly.

Speaking from the standard of Iron Plateau, the qi-trainers of the team on the left were all short. None of them were over two meters tall. More than half of them were females and were relatively slender.

The qi-trainers on the right, on the other hand, were all muscular giants who were around 2.5 meters tall. Their shoulders were as broad and thick as planks, and each of them weighed well over two hundred kilograms. They were the living embodiment of ’furious bears’.

The test had not begun yet. Neither side had summoned their spiritual gas. Therefore, Li Yao couldn’t tell what levels they were in.

However, both the lean qi-trainers on the left and the brawny giants on the right gave Li Yao tremendous pressure.

What a strong smell of blood. They are real experts!

Li Yao was greatly interested.

When several pieces of large magical equipment, which looked really weird, were trolleyed to the qi-trainers, Li Yao became even more interested.