Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

July 7.

Today is the happiest day of my life.

Since it’s summer holiday, all the young members of the Xie family from every corner of the Flying Star Sector have returned to our hometown.

According to the tradition, this is the time when the younger generation holds a match within the family.

In the previous family competitions, my ranking was always very low, and I was sometimes overwhelmed by my cousins three or four years younger than me.

But this year, out of so many members of the Xie family, my comprehensive rank made its way into top 10!

My hand speed ranked the top among all!

My entirely family was shocked. My great grandfather and great grandmother summoned and praised me. My father and my mother were overjoyed, too, saying that our ancestors must have worked very hard to enlighten me.

In fact, it had nothing to do with our ancestors. I may not be very smart, but I do know that Master Sand Scorpion should be credited for my improvement.

Master Sand Scorpion can always come up with surprising training methods to torture me. They are barely sufferable, but I have to say that they are very effective. One will receive huge returns as long as they can grit their teeth through the process.

Moreover, he is cold to everybody else, but for some reason, he is very patient with me. Whenever I go to ask him about questions I don’t understand, he always stops doing whatever he is busy with and gives me guidance unwearyingly.

It is quite odd that, after his interpretation, the seemingly esoteric theories of refining become straightforward and self-explanatory just like one plus one equals two.

A bold idea recently occurred to me.

I want to be Master Sand Scorpion’s disciple.

Not the teacher-student relationship in school where one teacher has hundreds of students, but a true disciple!

But it is quite difficult!

I’m aware that Master Sand Scorpion has only one true disciple named Wu Mayan, who is in the Battlesuit Department of Flying Star University.

Wu Mayan is a real super genius. He has become a big name on campus after only several months.

Although he is only fourteen years old, his combat ability is close to that of the Building Foundation Stage. When he entered Flying Star University, the Combat Department, the Battlesuit Department, and the Flying Sword Department fought for him so hard that the deans were nearly bashing their heads.

It seems like he was born in a crystal suit, and he has natural instinct for them. After studying in the Battlesuit Department for only four months, he has already become an expert in crystal suits. None of the junior year students or below are a match for him. Only several senior experts in the senior year ever manage to draw with him.

Last month, he was appointed as a representative of Flying Star University in the intercollege crystal suit match. It was the first time in history for a freshman year student. He defeated five elite students from the Battlesuit Department of Heavenly Saints Institute with a ’Lone Wolf Battlesuit’. The entire Heavenly Saints City was shocked!

It is safe to say that Wu Mayan is even more famous than Master Sand Scorpion, who has always been lying low on campus.

Somebody from the five main arenas has come to ask him whether or not he was willing to fight with the professional Exos in the arenas.

Sigh. Only such talented geniuses deserve to be Master Sand Scorpion’s true disciple.

I’m afraid that there’s still a long way to go for a fool like me, isn’t there?

But forget it. I planned to stay at home for one month, but I’ve decided right now that I will return to Heavenly Saints City tomorrow.

Master Sand Scorpion said that he would be staying in school for his training during the summer holiday. I will just go to find him and ask if he’s willing to recruit me as his disciple.

Anyway, he’s not likely to bite me, is he?

…

July 13.

I’m so angry! I’m so angry! I’m so angry!

What kind of guy is he? How can there be such an annoying boy!

I returned to Flying Star University and found Master Sand Scorpion today. I summoned my courage and proposed my request.

As it happened, the super genius Wu Mayan was present, too.

After I proposed my request, before Master Sand Scorpion said anything, the guy bulged his eyes and looked at me from top to bottom carefully. If I could read his mind, he must have been saying, ”Huh? Someone of your aptitude is hoping to be the true disciple of my master?”

Not only did he stare at me, he even whispered with Master Sand Scorpion for quite a while. I overheard that he was speaking evil of me!

Thankfully, Master did not listen to his jibber-jabber. Although he didn’t agree to my request immediately, he did not turn it down, either.

Hehe. There’s still hope since he did not reject me, and I won’t give up trying as long as there’s the tiniest hope!

One other thing. Is the boy really fourteen years old? He is several inches taller than me, and his chest is as broad as a wall.

Crap.

If Master Sand Scorpion really recruits me as his disciple, wouldn’t I have to call the annoying kid ’Senior Brother’?

That would be a huge bummer!

…

August 29.

Recently, I’ve been feeling that Master Sand Scorpion is more and more like an iceberg. However magnificent it appears, it is always ten times greater below the surface of the ocean!

Without me knowing, it’s been five months since he came to Flying Star University.

Over the past five months, he has either been napping in the library or dwelling in the Ares Laboratory.

After the previous accident, the progress of the Ares Laboratory was kept confidential. Nobody knew how their project is going.

Therefore, in the Refining Department, suspicions about Master Sand Scorpion’s skillfulness in refining have reappeared after several months of silence.

Of course, I knew that Master Sand Scorpion must be very excellent in refining. But honestly speaking, I’d never seen him craft anything in person, and I couldn’t help but wonder how excellent he was.

But what happened today shed light on his capability, or rather, part of his combat ability.

A month ago, various journals and websites featuring magical equipment started introducing a tool named ’Combat Ability Detector’ on a large scale.

Most of the articles were bragging about the magical equipment, claiming that it could run a series of complicated calculations based on data of moving speed, air vibrations, and spiritual waves and give an estimation of the enemy’s combat ability.

Besides, the ’Combat Ability Detector’ has recorded the appearances of the commonly-seen demon beasts, thousands of kinds of starships and the most popular crystal suits in the Flying Star Sector.

After scanning with the magical equipment, one is able to tell precisely which crystal suit the enemy is in, the advantages and disadvantages of the crystal suit, and all the other important information for the battle.

Growing up in a noble family of refining, I’ve seen too many such things. The more fabulous a piece of magical equipment sounds, the more likely that the journals and websites have been bribed. These articles are merely ’advertorials’.

However, publishing advertorials on so many different journals and websites at the same time is a huge investment, too. The producer of the Combat Ability Detector must boast tremendous capital.

I was quite curious about the magical equipment.

The few commercials set up on the Spiritual Nexus were quite professional and distinguished, too.

Therefore, I ordered two of them, one regular model and one crystal-suit-embedded model that could be installed to a crystal suit conveniently.

Five days ago, the Combat Ability Detectors were finally delivered. I tested them in person and had to say that, although they were not as immaculate as the advertorials claimed, they were definitely worth my money.

From the perspective of a refiner, the magical equipment was elegantly designed and very robust. The spiritual energy circuits were very smooth, and it was unhindered and flawless when it was functioning.

Although it was a piece of cheap, popular magical equipment, I found that it employed a lot of extremely complicated super-tiny rune arrays and crystal chips, as well as seven very sophisticated distributions.

Such a design was a definitely a masterpiece.

I felt at the time that the magical equipment would be a hit.

As I expected, after it was on sale for only one week, not only was it greatly complimented on the Spiritual Nexus and by the experts and professors in the circle of refiners, even the academic journal of the Refining Department of Flying Star University listed it as one of the ten most recommended tools of the month.

Besides, it was the monthly bestseller in the category of mini magical equipment on many websites.

Bestseller after only one week. It was quite beyond my expectation.

After I investigated the sales, I discovered that a great number of orders from Iron Plateau were placed on the very first day that the Combat Ability Detector was sold to public.

The six tribes of Iron Plateau bought a hundred thousand Combat Ability Detectors altogether!

Naturally, my curiosity was aroused.

Although the communication between Iron Plateau and the space has been reestablished, the fat orders still seemed quite odd, considering that the magical equipment was only just invented after all.

The manufacturer of the Combat Ability Detector was an unknown company. But after I traced it on the Spiritual Nexus, I found that the company was affiliated with the Glorious Sunlight Group!

Wasn’t the Glorious Sunlight Group an enterprise of Master Sand Scorpion, according to Sister Long?

I went to ask Master Sand Scorpion cautiously with a Combat Ability Detector.

But he admitted very frankly that the Combat Ability Detector was the first piece of magical equipment developed by ’Glorious Sunlight Refining Center’, which was under his name. He was the supervisor of the entire development process, too!

In other words, the Combat Ability Detector was Master Sand Scorpion’s work!

I was immediately dumbfounded.

I knew that Master Sand Scorpion was awesome, but I didn’t know that he was that awesome.

That was not the end of it. Later at dinner, I met Master Hou Zitao.

Master Hou has been quite mysterious over the past months. He has been dedicated to the development of a super weapon. Occasionally when I saw him, he would always look somewhat at a loss, as if he hadn’t closed his eyes for ten days and ten nights.

But today, he was exultant and jumping up and down like a monkey. The moment he met me, he told me that his super weapon, ’chain gun’, had been successfully developed. The experiments showed satisfactory results, and the performance of the new weapon far exceeded his expectation. It is about to be mass-produced, and it will definitely be a hit!

Of course, I congratulated him. But he said, embarrassedly, that the magical equipment was not crafted by him alone, but co-developed by him and Master Sand Scorpion. Or rather, Master Sand Scorpion was the bigger contributor to the project and was the lead refiner, and he could only be listed as the second refiner.

I took the opportunity and asked his opinion on Master Sand Scorpion’s capability in refining.

He scratched his hair for a long time and replied with two words.

”Can’t tell.”

There’s only one month before the Edge Sharpeners’ Meeting that is held every five years.

I’m wondering what the facial expressions of the guys who are doubting his capability in refining right now will be when he shows up in the meeting hall with his Combat Ability Detector and the chain gun.

I’m really looking forward to it!