Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“What’s the meaning of this? Is the crystal suit not good enough for you?”

Li Yao found it rather curious. The Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, Dark Flame Gold was definitely the strongest crystal suit of the three Sectors right now, but Black Wing did not care for it at all. Was it possible that Black Wing had seen better crystal suits before?

Where was the little fat guy from exactly?

Li Yao jabbed on its body here and there in great interest.

Black Wing grunted like a dissatisfied fat puppy before it slithered back into the Cosmos Ring to sleep.

Li Yao scratched his head and looked at the second crystal suit.

The Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, Dark Flame Gold was perfect except for one great shortcoming. Since Cosmos Rings had been embedded to the crystal suit, and Cosmos Rings could not be stored within other Cosmos Rings to avoid the conflict of the four-dimensional space, all the Cosmos Rings embedded to the crystal suit had to be removed first and carried by Li Yao personally before the crystal suit was stored.

On a battlefield, after retrieving the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, Dark Flame Gold from the Cosmos Ring, Li Yao would have to implant the rest of the Cosmos Rings on the crystal suit in order to maximize its performance.

As a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, Li Yao boasted immense soul power now, and he was deft at remote manipulation. However, after practicing thousands of times, he found that the whole process would still take him two to three seconds, which was basically the same as the time cost of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, Blood Demon Form, his last main crystal suit.

For a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, in an ever-changing battlefield, a time of two to three seconds to put on a crystal suit was too long. The enemy would definitely be able to launch a critical strike in advance.

Therefore, Li Yao prepared a backup crystal suit, which was a general Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit refined out of the best Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures!

Of course, the specifications of the general version were not as incredible as the Dark Flame Gold, but the advantage was that it could be put on extremely fast. It could be retrieved from the Cosmos Ring in a quarter of a second and be ready to fight in another quarter of a second!

If the battle was expected and he had enough time to put on his crystal suit, he would use the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, Dark Flame Gold, but if it was an unexpected encounter or assault, he would put on the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, General Version and look for an opportunity to perform an air change later!

Li Yao’s eyes soon passed the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, General Version and stopped at a third crystal suit in the corner.

The first two crystal suits had been handled by the specialists of crystal suits led by Professor Mo Xuan, but the third crystal suit had been modified by him personally. Almost every detail was carefully considered and carved.

Out of everyone’s expectations, the crystal suit that Li Yao had chosen to modify himself was not a powerful combat suit but a low-level engineering crystal suit from the Flying Star Sector known as ‘Rockman’.

The Rockman was a general-purpose engineering crystal suit that played an important role in the modification of asteroids or the maintenance of starships. It was simple in structure, reliable in performance, and cheap. Also, it could be combined with a lot of combat units and turned into a half-armed crystal suit. It was one of the most popular crystal suits for the normal citizens of the Flying Star Sector in both work and daily life.

When Li Yao first entered the Flying Star Sector, he had once fought the Storm Prison Pirate Gang with a ‘Rockman’.

When the Flying Star Sector reinforced the Heaven’s Origin Sector, they had brought a number of ‘Rockman’ suits over. Later, maintenance factories and assembly lines had been established in the Heaven’s Origin Sector, and the Rockman Engineering Crystal Suits had been manufactured on a large scale.

The particular Rockman that Li Yao had modified, however, was not the latest model produced in the federation but an original antique from the Flying Star Sector, an old-fashioned model from more than fifty years ago. It was full of bumps, dents, and patches, and it appeared to be falling apart.

But Li Yao felt that it was not good enough. He attached a layer of vivid rust to the surface of the crystal suit and even sprayed the soil and dust of the Flying Star Sector on the gaps of the crystal suit.

Even the mainframe crystal processor of the Rockman was an old product that had been used for more than thirty years. Tremendous work logs inside the crystal processor proved that the Rockman had been sold almost ten times and that its every master was either a starship technician or the bottom-level soldier in a carrier or a guard in a certain world fragment. All in all, the unimportant Mr. Nobodies.

“Li Yao!”

Guo Chunfeng, his old friend and the new director of the Secret Sword Bureau, was standing next to the Rockman.

“The crystal suit is done. The logs have all been fabricated according to your ideas. We have worked with friends from the Flying Star Sector and collected authentic logs. Every detail has been considered. There can’t be any loophole in them.”

Guo Chunfeng patted the shoulder of the Rockman carefully, only to find that his hands were covered in rust, and he frowned. “However, just don’t fight in the Rockman. This is pure garbage. A high-speed movement of the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator is more than enough to rip it apart in midair!”

While speaking, Guo Chunfeng handed over a Cosmos Ring. “The rest of the things that you wanted, including… the feces of different dates, are all inside. They are quite difficult to find. I do wonder what you are up to this time!”

“What else can he be up to?” Ding Lingdang said. “Some other shameless tricks that will trap the Immortal Cultivators miserably, for sure!”

Li Yao smiled and took the Cosmos Ring. He thanked Guo Chunfeng and explained, “Nothing really important. I just feel that our greatest advantage right now is intelligence. The enemy is in the daylight while we are in the darkness. We know more than the Immortal Cultivators do.

“For the Immortal Cultivators, the only thing that they know is the incomplete coordinates of the Flying Star Sector that the star child sent. They can only infer that a civilization of human beings is inside the Flying Star Sector at best.

“But this is not the Flying Star Sector but the nearby of the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Blood Demon Sector. They only sensed that the two Sectors are melting and have therefore come for reconnaissance.

“The Immortal Cultivators do not know that civilizations of human beings that allow the birth of Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators exist, too, in the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Blood Demon Sector. They do not know that the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Flying Star Sector, and the Blood Demon Sector have joined hands against them, either.

“I feel that it’s a point worth taking advantage of. As for exactly how I can take advantage of it, I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’ll keep everything prepared first in case of a rainy day!”

While talking, Professor Mo Xuan and the Fire Ant King showed up from the preparation rooms nearby.

Li Yao was quite amused by Professor Mo Xuan’s new appearance.

Professor Mo Xuan’s real body was the liquid metal. He often walked in a human-shaped artificial body. But this time, he had chosen an artificial body that was round with countless extensible metal tentacles, making himself look like both an octopus and a jellyfish. He floated in midair with spiritual energy and could not have looked weirder.

“Professor, you do look like a villain in the movies now!” Li Yao could not help but chuckle.

Professor Mo Xuan waved his metal tentacles and said in a rather dull voice, “This is a masterpiece of the Refining Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution. It may look ugly, but the sixteen tentacles each have their different functions. They are most suitable for an exploration mission in a foreign world!”

The Fire Ant King was in light-gray armor, but it was not a crystal suit.

Li Yao observed carefully. Greenness was vaguely emanating from the light-gray, which made the Fire Ant King look like a ‘treeman’ that was covered in dry rind.

Suddenly, the ‘armor’ on the Fire Ant King dissected. Tiny vines and branches grew out of the armor and flapped like the twigs of a willow. He was like a cluster of super large thorns!

The Fire Ant King smiled at the center of the thorns and said, “Li Yao, you’ve travelled far and wide, but I’m afraid you’ve never seen such strange armor before, have you? Technically speaking, this is also biochemical armor, except that it is not refined out of demon beasts but built with demonic plants!

“I collected a type of microorganism that lives near an underground volcano in the Blood Demon Sector that is heat-proof and can survive without oxygen. I melted them into the more than hundred demonic plants I’d bred and finally produced such a ‘living’ plant armor!

“The greatest feature of such an armor is its adaptability. When it is in the cold, dark vacuum in space, a hard shell, whose defense ability is even higher than the super alloys employed in crystal suits, will automatically be generated on the surface. The shell can sustain and maintain itself by the stellar radiation. Once the armor is in a suitable environment and has absorbed enough nutrition, it will be able to proliferate infinitely. A vine on the armor can grow to dozens of kilometers away!

“I have been dreaming about building such plant armor since I received part of Senior Ba Yanzhi’s legacy decades ago, but the resources at my disposal were not enough, and I was scared that I might be exposed. So, I never succeeded!

“But right now, Skyfire is one of the strongest forces in the Blood Demon Sector. My dream for all those years has come true now!”

The Fire Ant King waved his hands excitedly, like a giant tree full of thorns that could dance.

Of course, the tree was a man-eating one.

Li Yao secretly complimented him and realized that none of the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators and demon emperors could be underestimated. Everybody had their own ultimate tricks!

It was also the most marvelous part about the world of Cultivators. There were still endless techniques and treasures in the vast world waiting to be explored by him!

“Right. I’ve also brought this!”

The Fire Ant King removed the plant armor and took off a weird pendant from his neck.

It was a glass syringe filled with bright green liquid, in which a gold finger was soaking!

“This is a finger of the Pangu Clan.”

In everyone’s astonishment, the Fire Ant King declared proudly, “I chopped it off from the corpse of the Pangu Clan that had been melted to the throne in the Mausoleum of Chaos.

“Although it is fossil now, all the cells dead, it is still easy to tell that the Pangu Clan was made of flesh and blood, too. They were creatures just like us, not legendary omnipotent deities that completely surpassed us!

“There are no deities in the world. Even if there are and they want to crawl above my head, I will punch them down!

“Evolution means that the next generation is always better than the last.

“Therefore, no matter how much I respect Gui Suishou, I cannot concur to his absolute pessimism!

“Even if the Pangu civilization is truly our parent civilization, so what? No child is willing to stay in the shadow of their father forever. The child will resist and eventually win!

“Learn them, absorb them, and exceed them! If the Pangu civilization indeed created us, this is the best reward that we can give them!

“Let’s go, fellow Cultivators. The world is destined to be ours!”