Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Three days later, in the No. 4 multifunctional hall of the Combat Department of Flying Star University…

”This is everything about the methodology and circulation of spiritual energy in the Art of the Swallowing Whale. But the key point is still meditation. You must stimulate your stomach with your mindpower.”

Li Yao was giving a speech.

He was teaching an extracurricular course.

Visiting scholars and visiting professors were different. Such courses had no credits and, therefore, couldn’t be regarded as optional courses. They were merely a means of communication like public lectures.

However, almost seven hundred students from various departments were still attracted to Li Yao’s class, including many graduates who had become quite distinguished.

Naturally, it was because of his remarkable performance in the competitions against the experts from the Combat Department, the Flying Sword Department, and the Battlesuit Department over the past half year.

After being polished for half a year, Li Yao had an entirely different aura around him.

His face was still unattractive, but his messy hair looked like a black waterfall crashing down on broken stones. It was a soul-stirring color as if it were alive.

Spiritual energy was the source of the darkness of his hair. It was a sign that the spiritual gas inside his body was extremely profound.

He was wearing a plain, white robe and had bound his hair, which he couldn’t comb down, with a hair band casually. Standing on the podium alone, he seemed like someone from a different world.

The spacious multifunctional hall was occupied by the hundreds of Cultivators, but all their auras combined seemed to be no match for his. They couldn’t help but focus their eyes on him.

The course that Li Yao taught had a simple name, which was ’Art of the Swallowing Whale’.

The students were quite enjoying the course and taking notes on their light beams every once in a while.

Li Yao put his hands on his stomach and rubbed it softly, while he said, ”As its name suggests, when the ancient Cultivators invented the technique, they imagined that their stomach was a den where the most hungry and ferocious animals—such as lions, tigers, and dragons—lived!

”Turning your stomach into a dragon will naturally increase its capacity for food. The Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures indigestible for common people will be able to be absorbed easily. Just like this.”

Li Yao took a long breath. His abdomen slightly rose, and he let go of his hands. Noises like the roars of tigers, lions, and dragons were echoing from his belly, as if a bunch of animals were rushing close unstoppably.

The students were all amazed by it.

Li Yao smiled. ”Different approaches can lead to the same destination. If you will, you can also imagine your stomach to be a bottomless swirl.”

While he was talking, Li Yao’s abdomen fluctuated and raised the deafening sound of the tides. Everybody listening to it was shocked.

”Or rather—”

Li Yao continued his speech. ”We are all modern people, and we can adopt more modern means in our imagination. You may imagine your stomach to be a furnace heated to thousands of degrees. Whatever food is transmitted into it will be melted instantly!”

Before the loud noises of tides died down, they had already been replaced by the fulminations that were indicative of a fully functioning furnace.

Had they not seen it in person, the students would never have believed that one could utter such incredible sounds with the wriggling of one’s stomach.

”Alright.”

Li Yao stopped demonstrating the technique. He checked the time and said, ”Let’s call it a day. If anyone is interested, we have a final lecture on Friday, in which I will tell you the helpful and harmful relationships between special foods.

”Last ten minutes. Any questions?

”Third row on the left.”

A tall student stood up and asked in a loud voice, ”Master Sand, I’m a senior year student of the Combat Department. The utilization of nutrition is highlighted in the Combat Department, too. But you seem to have attached even more importance to it. If I may ask, do you think the top priority for a Cultivator is the food they have?”

”Indeed, I think so. In combat, refining, and even the training of pure computational ability, adequate energy is a categorical prerequisite.” Li Yao nodded as he spoke. ”Isn’t there a saying that has been passed on for tens of thousands of years? ’One can live without dignity, but one cannot live without food.’”

Everybody on the spot laughed.

The tall student couldn’t help but laugh, too. He took a few breaths to calm himself down, before he opened his mouth again. ”However, Master Sand, I’ve read a lot of ancient classics on training. They all stressed the significance of absorbing energy from nature. It was said that one wouldn’t need to take any food when they cultivated themselves to the highest level.

”It appeared to me like the most awesome Cultivators kept the furthest distance from meat and everything. The mouthwatering food in other people’s eyes was smelly and filthy for the ancient Cultivators.

”Why are modern Cultivators walking on the opposite path?”

Li Yao smiled. ”Diets like that are complete bullsh*t. Cultivators consume hundreds of times more energy than ordinary people do because of their daily training and combat. Where can they refill the energy if not from food?

”Retrieving sufficient energy by interacting with nature? That’s utter nonsense!

”The only absorbable energy in nature is solar energy. But how much can that be? Right now, many households have solar energy healers or solar energy generators. You must’ve experienced how long it takes to boil a tank of water with solar energy.

”And that is based on spacious solar panels. However hard Cultivators train themselves, their skin won’t be half as efficient as the solar panels. Besides, there is absolutely no need for them to turn their skin into such things at all.

”The normal energy in nature is not worth our effort at all, except on one occasion.

”That is the outbreak of sunspots or solar flares when other celestial bodies hit the sun.

”At that time, the radiation and electromagnetic waves will be drawn close to us like raging tides.

”That is the real energy of nature!

”However, such occasions are extremely rarely-seen. They will only appear every ten years or so and cannot be considered a regular training method at all.”

The guy scratched his head and nodded. Then he asked again, ”But the ancient classics in different era and from different sects all mentioned the importance of absorbing energy of nature and considered independence from food a symbol of one’s achievement in Cultivation. Why?”

Li Yao pondered for a moment and replied, ”Everyone, I know that many of you like to browse through the ancient classics and hope to discover an unparalleled technique from the ancient Cultivation world so that you will be invincible after you grasp it.

”I’m not saying that the works of the ancient Cultivators are not worth studying, but we must pay special attention to the difference between ancient Cultivators and contemporary ones during our research.

”In the ancient Cultivation world, the civilization of mankind was still nascent. Most people were still enshrouded in darkness and illiteracy. Ancient Cultivators didn’t have a clear, thorough understanding of the world, either.

”Therefore, they often had to resort to many pretentious tricks to maintain their high and mighty image among the ordinary people so that they could organize and lead the ordinary people more easily.

”When a Cultivator claims that he trains himself by absorbing energy of nature, he will sound mysterious and look like a deity.

”But if the Cultivator says that the accomplishment of his Cultivation is because he can eat eight bulls per meal, the ordinary people will revere him much less, won’t they?”

The students burst into laughter again.

”On the other hand, the ancient Cultivators did not value cooperation as much as we modern Cultivators do. They were often involved in ostensible or clandestine internal conflicts and wouldn’t show their real Cultivation arts to other people easily.

”As the saying goes, the truth can be concluded with one sentence, but a lie needs thousands of words to cover up. Many billionaires nowadays are publishing their biographies and spreading the keys to their success by telling people how they built their empires from scratch.

”But I don’t think any of you believe that what they wrote are the real tricks to their fortunes, do you?

”If so, why are you so confident that the ancient Cultivators would pass on the real techniques of Cultivation to their followers unselfishly?”

DANG DANG DANG

A crisp sound suddenly burst out.

Li Yao waved his hand and said, ”Alright, everybody. Class dismissed.”

”Master Sand!”

Many students rose up from their seats, planning to ask Li Yao more questions.

But Li Yao had dashed out of the multifunctional hall in advance and appeared in a quiet road elsewhere on campus one minute later.

Almost at the same time, his mini crystal processor buzzed.

Inside the light beam was a dark-gold, metal puppet that looked like a golden skull.

Li Yao smiled. ”Professor Mo.”

The golden skull was exactly Mo Xuan.

Mo Xuan and the other spectral Cultivators from the Heaven’s Origin Sector, after travelling here and there on Sparkle for almost one year, suddenly realized one day that there was no need for them to hide at all.

They were in a weird life form right now, but there were spectral Cultivators in the Flying Star Sector, too, and they enjoyed almost the same rights as ordinary people just like the spectral Cultivators did in the Heaven’s Origin Sector.

Since the bodies of the five of them were made of liquid metal, it would be more than easy for them to crawl into metal puppets and disguise themselves as local spectral Cultivators of the Flying Star Sector!

Considering the vastness of the Flying Star Sector, it was perfectly normal that several remote, unpopulated towns existed in the edges of a certain space zone.

Cultivators ending up as spectral Cultivators with their bodies gone when they were faced with cosmic storms was nothing unusual, either.

Therefore, after three months of planning, Mo Xuan and the other four spectral Cultivators appeared in broad daylight with new identities.

It was barely possible to confirm the validness of one’s identity in the boundless sea of stars. Also, since they were endorsed by the Glorious Sunlight Group, nobody would be suspicious about their identity at all.

Professor Mo Xuan became the supervisor of the Glorious Sunlight Refining Center without any trouble as a spectral Cultivator. He had already showed up in several half-public social occasions.

With his management, the construction of the Glorious Sunlight Refining Center had proceeded smoothly. After only half a year, two laboratories, one large and public and the other small and secretive, had been established.

The public Glorious Sunlight Refining Center was headquartered in the Cross Wind Space Zone, with a branch in Heavenly Saints City, where a lot of research work on the Combat Ability Detector and the chain gun was conducted.

Li Yao planned to develop it into one of the best refining centers of the Flying Star Sector in the future.

As for the other laboratory, Li Yao and Mo Xuan had built the secret laboratory based on Sparkle, which was smaller in scale but had more advanced facilities.

This place was their real center of refining. Only the one man and five ghosts from the Heaven’s Origin Sector knew of its existence.

The magical equipment that was not suitable to be made known to other people, as well as the further modification of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, would be worked on in that laboratory.