Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Watching the glittering octagonal rune arrays dangling down from the ceiling, Li Yao secretly wiped his sweat.

He was truly lucky. Since Bai Xinghe’s internal organs were exposed to the air because of his heavy wounds, it had taken him longer to pass through the sewage processing poll.

For Li Yao, with the help of the ‘Ice Butterfly Powder’, he did not waste a second in the hunting.

If he had been three to five minutes late, perhaps Bai Xinghe would’ve rune away through the secret teleportation array!

Judging from the complexity of the runes on the teleportation array and the energy level of the crystal that Bai Xinghe had inserted to drive it, it was a middle-sized teleportation array that could send people to almost twenty kilometers away.

Capital Nest was a big place. Li Yao would never find him again if he ran twenty kilometers away from here!

Gazing at the teleportation array, Li Yao reminded him, “Don’t forget that we cannot be more than a hundred meters away from each other, Boss Bai. We should enter the teleportation array together.”

Bai Xinghe smiled and set his hands in a certain gesture, while his telepathic thoughts surged into the teleportation array along with his spiritual energy.

A deep blue, cone-shaped pillar of light was immediately triggered inside the teleportation array.

Bai Xinghe eyed Li Yao and made a ‘let’s go’ gesture.

Taking a deep breath, Li Yao raised his alertness to the maximum, and he stood right next to the strongest, most brutal bandit on Spider Den.

He was too close to the Pirate Potentate. Although he had other trump cards and had made full preparations, he still found it hard to breathe.

Bai Xinghe chuckled in a low voice. “An expert in the high level of the Building Foundation Stage, adept at the arts of explosion and with such a sharp head, has never been known before? Even though you are new to Spider Den, you should have been a famous guy in space before.

“I wonder, which face is hiding behind the name of ‘Bloody Vulture’?”

Li Yao was surprised, knowing that Bai Xinghe had sensed his psychological weakness. He was even more alarmed now.

Before he replied, the blue brightness was denser than ever. They seemed to be placed in the middle of certain thick blue liquids.

In a trance, Li Yao found himself in a completely different space.

It was a dry cave, with withered plants everywhere on the ground. Other than the teleportation array under their feet, there was only a zigzagging gap leading to nobody knew where.

After the two of them walked out of the teleportation array, Bai Xinghe punched back and destroyed the transportation array with his surging spiritual energy.

Now, even though Fengyu Zhong could find the teleportation array on the other side, it was impossible for them to jump over through it.

Li Yao glanced around. They could not have jumped to more than twenty kilometers away. Judging from the environment here, it should be—

The underground of Spider Den!

Li Yao thought of something and asked, “Is this the underground fortress of Spider Den?”

“This is just one of the entrances,” Bai Xinghe replied casually. “I explored the fortress as a ‘treasure hunter’ from the age of seven. I know every maze inside the place as clearly as I know the back of my hand. This place is more comfortable to me than my own bed. Is there a better place to serve as my last base?”

Li Yao was curious. “If you can establish a teleportation array, why didn’t you teleport us to the control center of the underground fortress directly? For the purpose of confidentiality?”

Bai Xinghe smiled and explained, “The fortress of the Star Ocean Imperium is much more complicated than you think. The center of the fortress is enclosed by a very powerful rune array based on the mother lodes below the ground, which can block all the space jumps.

“It is like an invisible shell that enshrouds the entire underground fortress. You cannot be teleported into it and can only walk into it on your feet.

“Such a design is meant to avoid the scenario where the enemy appeared right inside the fortress through certain mysterious teleportation techniques.

“Now, let’s get going.”

Bai Xinghe lowered his head and crammed into the zigzagging gap in an extremely awkward posture.

Li Yao frowned.

For some reason, although everything had been under his control after he found Bai Xinghe, he had a stronger and stronger sense of danger now.

Endless pictures and sounds turned into crazily dancing butterflies inside his brain. They were about to condense into a mottled image, when they crumbled all of a sudden at the last moment!

Seeing that Bai Xinghe was about to disappear into the gap, Li Yao perceived the crystal bomb and found it still inside Bai Xinghe’s stomach, functioning. He made up his mind and followed Bai Xinghe into the gap.

The gap was precisely the size of the skull and limbs of a human being. Once someone crammed into it, they would not be able to move their head and limbs at all and could only move forward slowly, boosted by their power rune array.

After wriggling forward for more than half an hour, the path was gradually broadened, and Li Yao could crawl on all fours.

After crawling for another twenty minutes, a metal tube with a fracture on it appeared on the side of the path.

They struggled into the metal tube through the fracture. Five minutes later, the two of them appeared in a dim metal pathway.

The air was so stuffy that it seemed to have been frozen here for ten thousand years. One could even squeeze rust out of the air there.

Li Yao glanced around and suddenly asked, “Wait a moment. Boss Bai, the map of the underground fortress and the Spider Key to deactivate all the traps have all fallen into Bai Wulei’s hands together with your broken hand?

“Or rather—”

Li Yao finally realized the source of his unease. “Are there really such things as the map and the Spider Key?”

Bai Xinghe chuckled in a low voice again, which was echoing in the dark pathway. “Of course there are. Don’t presume that the Temple of Immortals is made of fools. They have been carefully planning for I don’t know how long. Even my most trusted first true disciple has been converted to their side. I have truly suffered a brutal failure. What’s there to say?

“The path we are currently on is not the main road of the underground fortress, but a shortcut that I explored myself. We won’t be discovered if we go this way.

“The underground fortress is made of countless complicated mazes. It is a hundred times larger than Capital Nest. The space pirates have been exploring it for hundreds of years and they haven’t covered all the area yet. Are you worried that you might run into Fengyu Zhong and Bai Wulei?”

While talking, Bai Xinghe walked forward. After a short while, he took out a bottle from his pocket and squeezed two drops of ointment before smearing them on his eyelids. Then, he threw the bottle to Li Yao.

“Smear the ointment on your eyelids. It will be good for you.”

Li Yao straightened his arms and kept the bottle as far away from himself as possible, while he observed and probed the bottle carefully with his spiritual threads.

As a refiner who had read a lot of classics in the Heavenly Refining Tower on the ancient materials, he knew a thing or two about most Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures.

The right gold ointment did not seem poisonous.

Pondering for a moment, Li Yao closed his left eye and rehearsed for the combat mode where he only used his right eye. Then, he opened his facial cover and smeared a drop of the ointment on his left eyelid.

Shua!

After the cool ointment leaked into his eyelid, countless narrow, golden threads immediately popped up in the dark pathway ahead of him.

The threads were like snakes in a sea. They were floating, hovering, and entangling each other in midair. Occasionally, dozens of gold threads would condense together and blossom like a flower, only to split up abruptly and dart out like electric arcs at an amazing high speed!

Li Yao vaguely felt that the activity of the gold threads was patterned. But after calculating for a while, he found that it was too complicated for him to get a result.

Closing his left eye and looking ahead with his right eye, which was not smeared with the ointment, Li Yao found that the hallway was absolutely empty.

Li Yao was secretly alarmed. It must be a certain defense array that was still functioning after ten thousand years.

The technology of the Star Ocean Imperium was truly unbelievable!

“This is just a minor measure of defense in the underground fortress on the safest shortcut that I carefully selected,” Bai Xinghe said. “On other roads, the traps and rune arrays are too many to count!

“After ten thousand years, with the passage of time and the intense tectonic movements, only less than one tenth of all the traps are still functioning.

“If it were ten thousand years ago when the fortress was just built, nobody would’ve been able to take over it without sacrificing tens of thousands of Cultivators!”

Li Yao threw the bottle back to Bai Xinghe and said, “Lead the way.”

Bai Xinghe was surprised. “You only smeared one of your eyes?”

“One eye is enough,” replied Li Yao.

There was no way that he would smear Bai Xinghe’s ointment on both of his eyes.

If Bai Xinghe had done something untoward to the ointment, at least he could save one of his eyes and retain the ability to counterattack.

Bai Xinghe did not say anything more. His body suddenly turned into a streak of greenness as he dashed into the great array of gold threads.

The swimming golden threads, upon sensing that an object of intense spiritual energy was approaching, were dancing twice as fast as before!

Yet, Bai Xinghe seemed to be well aware of the patterns of the gold threads. He jumped and moved inside the array casually.

At first, he stuck to the ground like a dry leaf, then he moved forward on the wall like a gecko, and next he sprinted forward holding the ceiling. After a few jumps, he was already dozens of meters away.

Li Yao stared at his routes of movement without blinking his eyes. Then he darted into the array of gold threads in exactly the same way as Bai Xinghe did.

The dim, dark pathway did not seem to have an end. The area where the golden threads were dense was almost a thousand meters long. Li Yao was able to follow Bai Xinghe in the beginning, but as he went deeper and the gold threads became thicker, Bai Xinghe’s shadow turned mysterious and unpredictable.

Li Yao had smeared the bright golden ointment that allowed him to see the array only on his left eye. Therefore, it was inevitable that he had misjudgment on the trajectory and speed of the golden threads.

Just the moment before he charged out of the array, his crystal suit accidentally touched one of the golden threads.

In the next moment—

Hiu! Hiu hiu hiu hiu!

Dozens of gold threads, in unstoppable brilliance, turned into flying swords and darted at the critical parts all over Li Yao’s body brutally at a speed ten times higher than before!