Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao’s training journal, March 12.

Ever since I came to the Blood Demon Sector, in order to conceal my identity, I have never conducted systematic training. After going to the Skeleton Island, the Mausoleum of Chaos, and the Gloomy Wind Islands of the North Pole, I have been fighting and killing all the time. There has not been time for me to catch my breath and meditate.

Today, I have finally got a stable environment where I can restart the systematic training.

The battles in the Skeleton Island, the Mausoleum of Chaos, and the North Pole gave me a deeper understanding of the mysteries of the primeval cells and the mitochondria. They also motivated me to explore a new combat pattern.

Cultivators walk on the path of pure energy and fight by triggering the spiritual energy in nature whereas demons focus more on the excavation of the strength deeply buried in the cells.

Then, is it possible to combine the two methods of training perfectly?

After all, in my eyes, there is no fundamental contradiction between them. In fact, they are quite complementary. Energy and material should be united.

After Han Tuhu, Suo Chaolong, and the Fire Ant King were convinced, I began to analyze the storage chips that we looted from the Nether World.

The storage chips were all protected by powerful barriers. I am only good at cracking the carriers by brute force instead of bypassing them. Thankfully, there are quite a few experts on barriers in Han Tuhu’s Flying Tigers Legion. We worked together for two days and retrieved a lot of useful files.

I benefited a lot from the files and developed a deeper understanding about the relationship between cells and spiritual energy later.

Now, I will try to modify the ‘ultimate core’ on the cellular level.

The so-called ‘ultimate core’, from the perspective of energy, is a cluster of highly-compressed spiritual energy that is condensed inside one’s abdomen.

But from the perspective of cells, it is a lump, or rather, the ‘second brain’, that grows out of the end of the spine.

In the past, Cultivators often considered the ‘second brain’ as an organ to manipulate the ultimate core, to form the nascent soul, and to overlook the deeper development of itself.

Since the ‘first brain’ can be developed in order to increase the brain cell activity, why can’t the second brain?

If the second brain is trained to the point that it is more developed than the first brain, what will happen?

After thinking that through, I am no longer anxious that I cannot break into the Nascent Soul Stage any time soon.

Since the very beginning, my path of Cultivation has been destined to differ from that of regular Cultivators.

If Cultivation is compared to climbing a mountain, and the ‘Nascent Soul Stage’ is a higher mountain than the ‘Core Formation Stage’, most Cultivators have been holding up their heads and climbing upwards without bothering anything. However, I have stopped temporarily and moved horizontally to the depths of the mountain named the Core Formation Stage.

Who knows whether or not any treasure is buried at the middle of the mountain?

On the other hand, I have also been pondering how to upgrade the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.

Right now, the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit has basically reached the peak of the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector in terms of technology. There is barely any room for modification.

But it is no longer adapted to my new body and new combat pattern.

For example, the arm of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit is fully enclosed. But in my new combat pattern, I can trigger bone blade and scales on my arm at any time, and I can even summon a crystal on my right palm in order to launch the powerful Cell Obliteration Cannon!

Won’t it be awkward if my hand is covered in the crystal suit?

Will my Cell Obliteration Cannon not hit the enemy until it blows a hole on the armor of my hand?

That’s too hilarious!

Therefore, I will need to upgrade the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit now. My preliminary design is to add a series of active components on the armor of the hand and a boost system that is triggered by marrow crystals in order to maximize the performance of the Cell Obliteration Cannon!

Then, when I think more deeply, now that I have a profound understanding about both crystal suits and biochemical beasts, I have discovered that the two types of ultimate weapons have their own advantages and shortcomings.

Is it possible to combine them?

The synthesized nerves, infinitely-proliferating cells, self-circulating medication drugs, if applied to crystal suits, will significantly improve the size, the working time of the crystal suits, and the protection that they can offer to the users!

Maybe, the crystal suits in the future will be perfect combinations of the studies of spiritual energy and the biochemistry. They will be built with super-strengthened alloys as the framework, entangled by synthesized nerves, and enveloped in self-recovering muscles and mustard-seed-level liquid metal as the armor. Crystals and demon cores will be embedded into the crystal suits at the same time, and they will adopt a dual-core operation system with both crystal processors and biochemical brains. They will be terrifying existences dozens of meters tall!

If such powerful war machines can truly be invented, we will have hope to fight against the Imperium of True Human Beings!

…

Li Yao’s training journal, March 15.

After more than a month of sneaking, lurking, and evading, we have finally arrived at the Blade of Chaos’ central base, the Mysterious Shadow Domain!

Outside my expectations, the Blade of Chaos deployed their central base in a world fragment whose teleportation array to the Blood Demon Sector is in a trench more than four thousand meters deep inside the ocean!

Nobody in the Pantheon of Demons will uproot the Blade of Chaos however hard they try to!

At first glance, the Mysterious Shadow Domain is like a dense primitive forest. It is occupied by demonic plants hundreds of meters tall.

The Fire Ant King told me that all the demonic plants have been modified by him to integrate into a whole. The forest even boasts a simple thinking ability. The interconnecting roots and branches are almost like a weird biochemical brain!

There are not too many members of the Blade of Chaos in the Mysterious Shadow Domain. Only several hundred of them work in the place, but they are all the specialists that the Fire Ant King summoned and raised after decades of effort.

Their original mission was to study the legacy of Chaos that the Fire Ant King discovered and analyze the secret training arts in it in order to provide technical support for the entire Blade of Chaos.

Therefore, the most powerful biochemical brains and the most advanced training facilities have been installed in the place, too. I believe that the memory unit of the main biochemical brain of the Nether World will be cracked in no time.

In the past few days, the Fire Ant King has gradually recovered. I have chatted with him several times and learned quite a few methods to develop demonic plants from him.

The demonic plants share many similarities with several ancient divine grass strains that are recorded in the classics of the Hundred Smelting Clan.

With the sap exploited from the demonic plants, I will be able to produce more than ten kinds of precious cooling liquids. My purification of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures will reach a whole new level!

…

Li Yao’s training journal, March 18.

Yesterday, my systematic training had to be paused. It couldn’t be helped. The Blade of Chaos, the federal soldiers, and the Blood Lion Battalion are now cramming in a small Mysterious Shadow Domain. There are a lot of complicated issues that have to be addressed.

After half a month’s communication, the Fire Ant King, Han Tuhu, Suo Chaolong, and I have agreed unanimously that, in order for us to play a great role in the unprecedented change of the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Blood Demon Sector, and the Flying Star Sector, a new organization must be founded so that our strength can be combined!

Other than anything else, the tension and hostility among the Blade of Chaos, the federal soldiers, and the Blood Lion Battalion alone is enough to call for a new organization.

We don’t know whether or not we should feel lucky or sorry. Right now, the three forces have all ended up in the worst situation.

The supreme leader of the Blade of Chaos has been exposed, and ‘Void Turmoil City’, their most important base, is also in crisis. All the branches of the Blade of Chaos are currently being suppressed and on the verge of collapse.

The Flying Tigers Legion have suffered a lot of casualties and lost all their crystal suits and supplies. They are now in the heartland of the enemy all by themselves. Should anything go wrong, they will immediately experience a destructive strike.

The silver-blood demons of the Blood Lion Battalion, as the descendants of the refugees of the Heaven’s Origin Sector in the past, already had an awkward position in the Blood Demon Sector. Considering that they have been completely deformed because of the modifications, their outcome will not be very nice when they show up in public.

The three forces are like three hedgehogs that are shivering coldly in a snowstorm and have to hug each other to preserve the warmth. Even though they might get hurt by the thorns of hatred on each other’s bodies, they cannot let go of their opponents in the past.

In order to coordinate the members and unite them under the same banner, a new organization has to be established immediately.

However, as for the definition of the organization, it took us a long time to settle the details.

The Blade of Chaos and the silver-blood demons are unlikely to let go of their grudge easily. The federal soldiers are restrained by military laws, too, which forbid them from joining other military organizations. Their pride as Cultivators and soldiers also makes it difficult for them to regard the demons as their real comrades, even though they fought side by side and shed blood together in the Nether World.

Therefore, we have established ‘Skyfire’.

On the surface, this is a ‘reading club’, or rather, an organization of history fans, founded to explore the origins of mankind and demon race according to the legends and to unravel the truth buried in dust in the past forty thousand years or even longer.

Neither the laws of the federal army nor the rules of the silver-blood demons and the Blade of Chaos seem to prohibit their members from joining a reading club and studying history, after our analysis.

Right now, the Skyfire Reading Club also has an affiliated… sports team.

The ‘members’ of the reading club, when they are too tired of reading books, will go outdoors and exercise. It is perfectly necessary, reasonable, and not illegal at all, right?

Skyfire is a little ‘experiment’ that we are carrying out. We want to see if there is a second way out for human beings and demons except mutual destruction by founding, operating, and developing the organization.

I have designed a battle emblem for the Skyfire. No. A ‘medal of reading’.

The medal is round. The lower half of it is the shadow of three black trees which constitute a ‘dark forest’. But the crowns of the trees and above are shrouded in furiously burning fire.

The fire will rip apart the dark forest and pave a brilliant way out.

I hope ‘Skyfire’ can really burn a new road in the cold, dark forest.

Even if it can’t, at the very least, the fire will give a bit of warmth and brightness to the living creatures who are shuddering in fear in the dark forest and encourage them to set a fire, too!