Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Ye Changkong set his crystal processor into the stealth-and-sniper mode. He then put two lenses of data into his eyes. Glamorous colors immediately appeared in front of his eyes, which turned out to be a translucent city where Li Yao was surrounded.

Other than the structural designs of the dozens of floors into the underground, there was also the most detailed map about their corresponding parts on the ground. Every pathway and every window in every skyscraper was clear to him so that he could study the most promising plan of shooting unhurriedly.

Although Li Yao’s coordinates were gone, the coordinates of all the Secret Sword Agents were still scattered on the map in the form of bluish colors.

It was not hard to analyze Li Yao’s approximate location from the movement of the hunters. He was like a whale that was surrounded and being chased by countless tiger sharks. There was nowhere that he could run to!

Ye Changkong tapped his temples unhurriedly. He commanded the hunting airship to fly toward the location where Li Yao would likely rush out while his soul turned into spiritual threads and dived into the complicated map.

Shua!

He constructed a vivid underground maze deep inside his brain, assuming the role of ‘Li Yao’ and speculating his most likely route of escape in his place.

As the best sniper of the Heaven’s Origin Sector, Ye Changkong was a top assassin, too. To some extent, Li Yao and he were the same type of person.

Stealth, infiltration, assassination from the shadows, escape from ambushes that nobody could get away from… All those subjects were Li Yao’s best moves. They were also Ye Changkong’s routine work in his hundred years of battles.

The snipers in the military were often divided into groups of two, with one shooter and one observer.

However, after he advanced into the Nascent Soul Stage, Ye Changkong no longer needed an observer, nor could he ever find a partner that was suitable for himself. Even the most well-trained would be a burden instead of help for him when they worked as his observer.

For the past forty years, he had always been a lone wolf, just like Li Yao did.

After receiving the task to shoot Li Yao, Ye Changkong had collected all the known files about Li Yao and studied them for a whole weak. He had paid special attention to Li Yao’s successful and classical cases.

He had even asked Lu Zui to hypnotize him with the techniques of the Meditation Healer so that he would think himself Vulture Li Yao. He trained, drilled, and lived in the hypnotized state.

In such a way, he developed a deep understanding about Li Yao’s state of mind, habits, and thinking pattern.

Ye Changkong was amazed by the guy of the same trade as himself who was more than a hundred years younger. He even had the feeling that the two of them could be good friends. He often thought that, if it were Li Yao, perhaps he would consider changing his habits for decades and bringing an observer.

It was a pity that his mission was to destroy his ‘good friend’ whom he had never met before.

My young friend, you are immature after all. You are idiotic enough to trust a woman whom you haven’t met for ten years, who is filled with jealousy and anger!

If you had the chance to live to my age, you would certainly realize that it is better to trust a demon beast that has been injected with excessive exhilarant than to trust an infuriated woman because the behavior of the latter is even more unpredictable!

But it is a pity that you won’t survive today.

Your pattern has been completely scrutinized by me. You are trying to run away from here, right?

The maze in the brain of ‘Death Ray’ Ye Changkong was enlarged and enlarged until it stopped in a rusted, abandoned area in the southwest part of the capital city.

It was a factory area that was about to be demolished and reconstructed.

Tremendous forsaken factories of magical equipment, where all kinds of rusted tubes and black furnaces were piled up, made the place looked like a tomb of iron.

There was not an entrance or exit to the underground district here. Therefore, it was not a focus of the defense on the ground. There was not a second Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator in the five square kilometers nearby, either.

The terrain there was too complicated. Nobody knew where the jumbled tubes led to eventually. Also, as the city developed rapidly, the areas nearby had been built into a business district that was packed with people and vehicles.

Once the target snuck into the business district, it would be easy for him to get away.

Most of the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators are guarding the entrances and exits, but their number is too small after all, and they cannot watch over every weakly defended part of the capital city.

You will certainly not choose to run away from the main entrances and exits. In those forsaken factories of magical equipment, countless tubes extend into the ground, such as the discharge tubes of cooling liquids for metal refinement, the discharge tubes of dirty water, and those of the poisonous gas.

Pick a random tube, dig a hole, and you will crawl into one of the factories without anybody knowing anything.

You don’t even need to drill through the tubes. You are an explosion expert. As long as you calculate the precise location and angle, one tiny oriented crystal bomb is enough to blow your way up to the ground. With your speed, a few seconds is more than enough for you to dash into the business district that is teeming with people!

Come on. Don’t disappoint me. Do your best. Let’s see whether my bullets are faster than your body and your saber or the other way around! I’m going to remember the competition for the rest of my life!

Ye Changkong sent the battle plan that he had drafted in that moment to the crystal processors of all the members of the hunting group.

Three seconds later, everybody was in their crystal suit. They jumped off the airship and rushed to the forsaken factories of magical equipment not far away, like leaf butterflies that were landing on the forests of steel softly.

Judging from the information on Guo Chunfeng’s side, the hunt below the ground was getting more and more intense. Li Yao was about to flee to the underground space right below the factory area.

A second Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator that was closest to them was staying at an exit of the underground district seven kilometers away.

Ye Changkong pondered for a moment and decided not to tell his judgement to the ally in case there was trouble.

He had locked onto the location of Li Yao’s appearance. Also, he was in the company of almost twenty partners who trained day and night for their teamwork. As long as they could stall Li Yao for 0.1 seconds, it would be good enough!

Shua!

While he was still in midair, twelve small balls ejected out the back of Ye Changkong’s crystal suit. They exploded into twelve sparrows and entered stealth mode after flashing briefly.

The twelve stealthy sparrows flew in every direction around the factory area and had every corner under control.

The hunting group landed on the ground quietly. Everybody’s crystal suit was added with stealth units for the mission. They melted into the steel forest like chameleons that had grown venomous fangs. Then, they concealed the emittance of heat and spiritual waves and compressed their breath and heartbeat to the minimum while lurking in the middle of the dark debris.

The fatal trap was ready. Whichever part of the factory area Li Yao was going to jump out from, they would be able to bite him instantly—for at least 0.1 seconds!

Ye Changkong, on the other hand, climbed to the top of an enormous chimney hundreds of meters tall at the southeast corner of the factor area.

It was the commanding height of the area, without any obstacles in the several square kilometers nearby, which made it the perfect location for a sniper. Also, the wall of the chimney was very thick, and there was a circular platform on the top. It was very comfortable to either kneel or crouch there.

Shua! Shua! Shua!

Through the data and information that was bouncing on the lenses on his retina, Ye Changkong quickly figured out twenty-nine coordinates where Li Yao was most likely to erupt out. In five seconds, he set the gun’s parameters according to the coordinates.

He also changed his crystal suit into stealth mode before he wrapped a disguise cloak around his crystal suit, which could prevent the spiritual energy inside from dispersing. The sniper rifle Herald, which had also entered stealth mode, slightly protruded out through a gap on the disguise cloth.

While the marrow crystals were getting hotter and hotter in Herald, his head was calmer and calmer. His mind was empty, and he entered the indescribable state of transcendence!

In a moment, all the buildings nearby and the earth were melted in his eyes and turned transparent. He could vaguely ‘see’ that countless Secret Sword Agents were running and roaring. He also sensed that a streak of brightness was fleeing in a hurry to the nineteenth coordinates that he had estimated earlier!

It was a shooting skill of ‘Death Ray’ Ye Changkong’s own invention. By sharpening his senses to the maximum, he was able to perceive the target by the ripples and the feedback of the telepathic thoughts. All the barriers and obstacles would be nonexistent in his eyes!

You are such a disappointment!

Ye Changkong sighed in his heart, but the veins, nerves, and muscles all over his body had already been adjusted to the most perfect state by his natural instincts as fast as lightning. Herald aimed at the nineteenth spot instantly, and he pulled the trigger before the target burst out of the ground!

No sound, no light, not even any waves because of the dispersion of spiritual energy. A marrow crystal that he had refined for eighty-one days with his blood ripped apart the sky and pierced into the ground!

Right after the marrow crystal, which barely existed, broke the limits of time and space and crossed hundreds of meters instantly, three things happened at the same time.

Firstly, the ground exploded without any warning, and a streak of blackness rushed out, only to be hit by the bullet and blown apart.

Had there not been the second thing, it would have been a classic, textbook case for any sniper.

But secondly, Ye Changkong’s pupils constricted violently, and all the cells over his body were shrieking. Somebody seemed to have clenched his heart and his genitals hard, making him almost cry out in pain. He suddenly realized that the blackness that he had hit was not a human being but a piece of magical equipment that could spread out the spiritual waves of a human being!

Had there not been the third thing, he would have shuddered very, very, very hard right now!

But thirdly, right below his body, deep in the dark chimney, a saber aura, which was as invisible and inaudible as his bullet, swept up at the speed of a tide.

The thing about the ‘speed of a tide’ was that, when anyone noticed that their knees were drowned by water and realized that a great tsunami was coming, it would already be too late even if they ran away immediately!