Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao’s head was dizzy. He was surrounded by absolute darkness. The warehouses and pathways nearby had been entirely blocked, but new gaps and hollows had also been created by the violent quakes. The flood was squeezed and twisted during the collapses and gave birth to rapid undercurrents, swirls, and bubbles!

The area he was in was both like a maze and swamp. It had been entirely reshaped in the tremors just now.

The furious spiritual energy was spinning around him quickly like ten thousand swirls. Even when he fully released his telepathic thoughts, they were devoured by the swirls, and he could not perceive the surroundings at all.

There was nothing but blank noise in the temporary communication channel. The communication between Lei Dalu and him had been entirely cut off!

It seems that I will have to find another way out. Thankfully, I have the map of the underground fortress. Although the area has collapsed, it is unlikely that the entire underground fortress has been destroyed. There is bound to be a way out.

While Li Yao was pondering, his breath suddenly halted for a moment. His intuition told him that a great danger was coming his way, as if—

A high mountain was crashing at him at a high speed from below the ground!

Gritting his teeth, Li Yao blinked backwards more than a hundred meters in the flood that looked more like mud now.

Another collapse took place here and buried the area where he had been standing earlier. An enormous black shadow appeared out of the broken rocks!

The shadow was dozens of meters long. More than half of it was buried inside the rocks. What was exposed to the air were five thick limbs that were covered in thorns. The lumpy shell of the shadow made it looked no different from a giant rock. However, blood-freezing redness was beaming out of the joints of the shell, which looked like the patterns of a deadly beast.

The translucent, complex eye of the shadow glittered suddenly like clusters of crystals like an enormous spotlight. Li Yao was enshrouded in the thick brightness.

Li Yao spat and finally realized why there would be such uncanny, large-scale collapses.

It was the work of the Lustful Rock Spiders, the enormous beasts lurking on the upper level of the underground fortress!

Even Bai Xinghe, a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, would rather not mess around with them and simply concealed his spiritual energy when he was passing through their hunting range.

It seemed that the changing of routes of the Nether River and the serial explosions in the underground fortress had affected the habitat of the Lustful Rock Spiders too.

Maybe the place it had been lurking in was not appropriate for his survival, or perhaps it had sensed the tremendous spiritual energy spurting out from the fortress and decided to have a good meal. Whatever the reason was, the big monster had sneaked down to the lower level of the fortress, too!

The Lustful Rock Spider was naturally blessed with earth-escaping techniques. The thick rock stratums would not be enough to stop them at all!

“In a head-on clash, the brave one wins. Bring it on!” Li Yao bellowed.

With the chaos in the environment, if he were pushed somewhere else by the Lustful Spider Rock, chances were that the way leading to the Star Prier’s House would be entirely blocked.

He had to kill the monster no matter what and find a way to the Star Prier’s House!

The Feathered Dragon Saber had not resumed the form of a saber yet and remained a drill. A huge amount of spiritual energy was flowing out blatantly, making it looked like a burning torch.

Li Yao gritted his teeth, ready to have a great battle with the Lustful Rock Spider!

Right then, the rocks above his head fell down crazily again, and a giant pillar of thorns revealed itself!

The giant pillar was a limb of another Lustful Rock Spider!

A second Lustful Rock Spider crept out of the rocks!

The majority of the second Lustful Rock Spider was buried inside the rocks. Only a tiny bit of its body was exposed to the air. There was no telling how large it was.

However, the limb that it extended out just now was almost twice as thick as those of the first Lustful Rock Spider!

Cold sweat was pouring off Li Yao’s head.

“Huh. In fact, those who suit their actions to the situation are wise. A tactical retreat when necessary is a smart move under certain circumstances.”

The first Lustful Rock Spider remained absolutely still while it stared at Li Yao with its complex eyes.

Li Yao suddenly felt that something was not right.

After scanning the surroundings with his telepathic thoughts, Li Yao discovered that the defensive paint on the surface of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was mostly gone, and the flexibility of the super alloys was quickly diminishing!

In other ways, the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was turning into a rock quickly!

“Petrifying mystic rays!”

Li Yao shuddered heavily.

From the ancient classics he had read, Li Yao knew that a lot of beasts of the earth class in the primordial era, when the universe had just been created, boasted terrifying techniques that could pour spiritual energy of the earth class into the body of other creatures in weird forms through mystic rays and take away their vitality, transforming the victims into stone-like objects.

Those objects were also known as fossils!

The scholars in the world of Cultivators had excavated a lot of fossils, including many strong dinosaurs. Some of them were naturally made, but some others were impossible to have been made in a natural environment from a geographical standpoint. The latter were the masterpieces of the deadly beasts.

Li Yao did not realize that the Lustful Rock Spider could also trigger petrifying mystic rays. It was perhaps because they were the descendants of the primordial beasts and had passed on in the depths of the underground for billions of years!

Huala! Huala! Huala!

Before Li Yao came back to himself from his surprise, another hundred Lustful Rock Spiders that were smaller in size crawled out of the rocks.

The new Lustful Rock Spiders were about the size of Li Yao. They were fast and agile. Wherever Li Yao could enter, they could enter without any trouble, and for the places that Li Yao could not enter, they could still enter through their earth-escaping techniques!

There was only one thought in Li Yao’s brain.

Run!

It seemed that the Lustful Rock Spiders belonged to the same clan. Since their habitat had been destroyed, their entire clan had migrated to look for a new home.

During a migration, it was reasonable that abundant food needed to be stored first.

Hiu! Hiu!

Two small Lustful Rock Spider charged at him, one from the left and the other from right.

Li Yao raised his hands and threw out two crystal bombs, blowing the two Lustful Rock Spiders into pieces.

When he took a breath in relief, thinking that the Lustful Rock Spiders were too fragile, he discovered that the body liquids of the Lustful Rock Spiders would significantly reduce the hardness of his crystal suit when they stained it. The vulnerability of his crystal suit soared as it was doused in the gray bodily fluids, further petrifying!

Damn. They are essentially self-detonating bombs!

Li Yao was caught off guard. One of the power rune arrays of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit had been corrupted by the body liquids of the Lustful Rock Spiders when they exploded. It soon turned into a rock and stopped providing any impetus.

No wonder even Bai Xinghe was not willing to deal with these insects!

Without any hesitation, Li Yao released another hundred crystal bombs, not to trigger explosions, but to freeze the flood in front of him with the tremendous frost rune arrays inside the bombs.

Crack! Crack!

The ice was shattered by the Lustful Rock Spiders within one second. A soul-stirring pursuit was happening in the absolute darkness!

Li Yao could only cry for help. He could not tell where he was and simply rushed forward crazily in the maze-like underground fortress.

When he was slow for several seconds, a few Lustful Rock Spiders would catch up with him, and he would be involved in a harassing battle.

The small Lustful Rock Spiders did not boast high combat abilities, but they would detonate themselves automatically when they were heavily wounded. Their spluttering body liquids were like quick-drying concrete. A tiny speck was enough to seal one of the rune arrays on the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.

The two giant Lustful Rock Spiders, on the other hand, would only show up after a long while.

Every time Li Yao took a breath in relief and thought that he had gotten rid of them, the two Lustful Rock Spiders would suddenly leap out from the rocks and stir up everything around Li Yao!

Bai Xinghe had mentioned that the Lustful Rock Spiders searched for the enemy with spiritual waves. If there were no spiritual waves, they would not be able to detect anything.

Li Yao had the idea that he could risk taking off the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit and concealing all his spiritual energy. Then, he could pretend to be an ordinary person and hide in a corner.

But after hesitating for a long time, he did not have the courage to do so.

Right now, the Lustful Rock Spiders were right behind him, darting petrifying mystic rays at him nonstop. He had only managed to resist their attack with his spiritual shield and his crystal suit.

If he retreated his crystal suit and converged his spiritual energy, turning himself into an ordinary person, his own skin would probably end up become rock when it was scanned by the petrifying mystic rays!

It is not going to work out if I simply keep on running!

Maybe because Li Yao had blown up two Lustful Rock Spiders, or maybe because the spiritual waves from the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit were more intense than those of the other crystal suits, the Lustful Rock Spiders chasing after Li Yao would not let him ago.

After he slayed more than thirty Lustful Rock Spiders, more rune arrays on the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit turned into rock, and the specifications of the crystal suit plummeted.

Li Yao gritted his death. He would be killed sooner or later if he kept running about like a headless chicken.

He had the map of the underground fortress, but the problem was that he did not where he was.

Calculate now!

Li Yao drew the routes that he just ran and compared them with the multiple pathways inside the underground fortress.

He was going in straight lines most of the time, which did not have many features. The crystal processor outputted seven coordinates he could be at after analysis.

Having no other choices, Li Yao could only turn around and circled around at the risk of being corrupted by the Lustful Rock Spiders.

After running three laps, he finally collected enough features to locate his precise coordinates in the map.

I’m now in the southeast corner at the bottom of the underground fortress. There’s a long way to go to the Star Prier’s House. I basically have to cross the entire fortress.

Besides, the Lustful Rock Spiders are right behind me. Even if I’m lucky enough to make my way to the Star Prier’s House, I might not be able to get rid of them.

It will be a major disaster if those bastards rush into the Star Prier’s House!

The last thing Li Yao wanted was for the Star Prier’s House to be destroyed, not only because Lei Dalu and Bai Kaixin were probably hiding in the Star Prier’s House treating their wounds, but also, and, more importantly, because the three hundred super crystal processors of the Star Prier’s House could search for the coordinates of the other Sectors. They were the only hope for him to return to the Heaven’s Origin Sector.

He could not lose them no matter what!

Therefore, until he got rid of the Lustful Rock Spiders, he could not draw close to the Star Prier’s House.

Is there any place nearby where I can keep myself away from the Lustful Rock Spiders?

Li Yao glanced over the important locations on the map of the underground fortress. Finally, his eyes stopped at location at the deepest part of the underground fortress, which had been clearly added most recently.

Li Yao discovered that he was close to Yan Xinjian’s secret training room.