Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The mosquito that returned from hundreds of kilometers away over all the mountains hovered around his head for a while before it reached his mouth, only to be swallowed in the next second. The guy chewed it for a while, his cheeks moving up and down, and spat out a mouthful of green saliva. Then he chuckled.

“Black Nose was truly a dumbass who hadn’t grown any more intelligent after decades. He was still as stupid as swine and as greedy as a dog. After the slightest incitation from the few villages, he was bold enough to perform a head-on attack on the Appeasing Ambassador’s army!”

The green-spotted freak shook his head in disdain.

As his facial muscles were twisted, the birthmark that looked like a bird seemed to be flapping up and down, making it even more hideous.

The three thousand Sectors all originated from Pangu and Nuwa. The mysterious world that had never been visited before had been raised by Pangu or Nuwa, too.

All the existent civilizations of human beings more or less inherited the essence of the Pangu civilization in terms of language and social system.

Therefore, their languages were generally similar to each other. They were like the dialects of the same language.

Having absorbed many of Ou Yezi’s memory pieces, Li Yao was adept at many vernaculars of the medieval era in the first place.

During the five years of development of Kunlun, the federation had excavated a lot of remnants that stored the spells and runes of the Pangu civilization, allowing him to gain a deeper understanding of the language system of the Pangu civilization.

The language adopted in this Sector was similar to the ‘Lotus Small Seal Calligraphy’ at the early years of the medieval era, with slightly different strokes. Therefore, the words on the banner ‘Appeasing Ambassador of the Fifth Prefecture of the Southland of Sorcerers’ had been recognized by Li Yao easily.

The green-spotted freak’s accent, on the other hand, was both blurred and creepy. It sounded like a viper zigzagging inside one’s ears. Anybody who heard it would find goosebumps rising all over their body.

Li Yao listened carefully for a while and compared it to dozens of dialects in the age of the ancient Cultivators. Finally, based on the context, he was able to get what the guy was saying.

The green-spotted freak sniffed and said, “Did it never occur to Black Nose what they were going through? Would the Appeasing Ambassador who was bold enough to assume his office at such a troubled time be easy to deal with? I only pity the great flesh on his body and the ‘Gloomy Fire Blood Transformation Saber’!”

Although he was talking about ‘pity’, there was not any real pitifulness on the green-spotted freak’s face, just as he was not really thinking that the Appeasing Ambassador was hard to deal with even if he was talking as such.

It appeared that the battle in the forest was completely disregarded by him. The Appeasing Ambassador’s victory and the barbarians’ failure were both trivial, not worth mentioning.

Li Yao realized that the so-called Black Nose must have been the fat, bald man who was riding the rhino demon beast.

Judging from the green-spotted freak’s tone, he was an old acquaintance of Black Nose’s, but the two of them were not in a good relationship.

Since he had been able to observe the competition between Black Nose and the female sword Cultivator and still scorn them, it was obvious that he was far stronger than either of them.

The green-spotted freak sneered for a while longer before he dropped the issue and refocused his attention on a few sword embryos and broken rune arrays on the altar.

It turned out that the altar was sort of a working table for him.

As a master of refining with knowledge about both the past and the present day, Li Yao realized what the green-spotted freak was doing after the first observation.

He estimated that the green-spotted freak must have accidentally discovered the mysterious cave where the armor and dead bodies of the Pangu Clan were hidden.

However, perhaps because of the passage of time, or perhaps because he wasn’t the first lucky dog to discover the place, few relics there were still of value except for half of the arm armor.

Because of the Pangu Clan’s enormous body size, even half of the arm armor would still be enough to be built into many marvelous weapons if it was refined into ingredients first.

Therefore, the green-spotted freak must have been living in the place in seclusion, dismantling the giant’s arm armor and modifying it into magical equipment that he could use.

Judging from his monologue, he had not met Black Nose for decades. Also, based on the decorations of the cave, it was very possible that he had hidden himself here for ten to twenty years.

Li Yao vaguely saw that dozens of square holes had been dug out on the wall of the cave that was as smooth as a mirror. The holes had been smeared with a layer of bone powder at first before almost twenty semi-products were placed in them. It appeared that they were all plucked from the giant’s arm armor, a job that could not have been finished quickly.

In the age of ancient Cultivators, the professions of Cultivators were not clear yet. The high-level Cultivators often studied multiple disciplines and knew a thing or two about medicine, poison, refining, rune arrays, and many other subjects.

The green-spotted freak was probably an expert in the Nascent Soul Stage who had lived in seclusion for decades after locating the ‘treasure’, partly to train himself and partly to build powerful secret treasures. It was a rather common practice for the ancient Cultivators.

However, the ancient Cultivators, who did not know much about the fundamental subjects, apparently would not study the basic mechanism as modern Cultivators would after receiving the secret treasures of the Pangu civilization.

The green-spotted freak was merely interested in the super alloys on the arm armor and considered it materials for his sword.

As for the aerodynamics, the circulation of spiritual energy, the ergonomics, and the mysterious mechanisms in many fields behind the arm armor, he turned a blind eye to them all. Li Yao could not help but feel that it was simply too wasteful.

That being said, the green-spotted freak indeed had his own expertise in refining.

He took over a sword embryo made of the remnants of the Pangu Clan’s armor. Touching it in fascination for a while, he spat another mouthful of green saliva, which turned into a green fire the moment it reached the sword embryo. When the fire perished, a few zigzagging streaks had been left on the sword embryo.

The green-spotted freak narrowed his eyes and observed the streaks by aiming them at the light. Then, he unpacked a colorful silk bag on his waist and took out a black badge from it.

The badge was the size of a palm. Almost a hundred big-headed children were carved on the surface in an eccentric style. Every big-headed child was laughing in delight, but there was a creepy feeling hidden in the deepest part of their smile.

Such a picture of children laughing was truly more disturbing than a picture of ghosts walking at night.

The green-spotted freak recited his spell in silence. Two streams of bright green smoke escaped from his nostrils, circling around the badge nine times, before they diverged into green threads that were even thinning and crawled into the noses of the big-headed children in the picture!

A weird thing happened!

After absorbing his telepathic thoughts, the big-headed children who were rigid on the metal badge suddenly began grimacing. The delight on their faces was now mixed with misery and suffering!

Suddenly, the green-spotted freak extended his long, narrow fingers and snapped the badge three times. After a grunt, his telepathic thoughts fished up a few souls from the badge like lines!

The few souls looked like children if not babies, except that their bones were bulging and their bodies were twisted. They could not have looked queerer.

The green-spotted freak kept grunting. His immense spiritual energy crashed at the souls of the children like a few giant hands, kneading and torturing them as if they were mud.

Because of the painful suffering, the souls of the children were finally infuriated and launched counterattacks at him brutally!

However, how could the children whose souls were deprived of a body soon after they were born and had no specialties except for their pureness expect to compete with a great expert in the Nascent Soul Stage?

The green-spotted freak, on the other hand, was like a cat playing with the mice. He dealt with the souls of the children unhurriedly, building up their aggressiveness and bloodthirst.

This is much more an evil art to sacrifice the living people. This is a secret technique that looks like a way to tame ghosts!

Li Yao was more than shocked.

It was obvious that the green-spotted freak was to answer for the dead bodies of the children at the periphery of the cave.

He killed the children, plucked their souls, and sealed them inside the weird badge.

The badge was similar to an ‘artificial body’ in the modern Cultivation civilization, where one’s remaining soul could be hidden and nurtured.

Naturally, the guy did not have any good intentions. He was hoping to cleanse and turn the ignorant souls of children into gremlins before he melted them into swords and artifacts in order to increase the power of the magical equipment!

To explain what ‘gremlins’ were, the notion of ‘ware spirit’ must be explained first.

According to the ancient Cultivators, the flying swords and the magical equipment were personable. With enough time, after absorbing enough natural essence, they would be connected to their owners, and a ‘ware spirit’ might be born. If so, the magical equipment would be able to automatically attack or defend without the control of the owner.

Magical equipment that boasted a ware spirit was also known as ‘spiritual treasure’, an existence of a higher level. They were also the ultimate treasures that countless ancient Cultivators sought after.

In the opinions of modern Cultivators, the so-called ‘ware spirit’ could be defined as artificial intelligence that could automatically search, cruise, make judgements, attack, or defend based on the tactical plans embedded.

It was very difficult to develop an artificial intelligence that was a complete simulation of a human being’s brain even for the Star Glory Federation, not to mention the medieval era where everybody was still groping in darkness.

Right now, a popular theory in the federation even had it that the ‘ware spirits’ were very common in the age of ancient Cultivators because they were the military artificial intelligences, and their mutants of the Pangu civilization left after the primeval war.

The primeval ware spirits were something tantalizing but often unreachable. Therefore, some of the evil guys turned their malicious eyes to human beings.

Killing human beings, retrieving their souls, and attaching them to the magical equipment could achieve the effect of ‘artificial intelligence’, too, if not better.

Children’s souls were the best choices for such evil arts to transform human beings’ souls into ‘ware spirits’.

It was because the souls of children were pieces of unpolluted, white paper. They were like the ‘initial state’ of a crystal processor whose architecture was just constructed but had not been written with any front-end operation system and specific instructions yet. Therefore, the user would be able to fill in new instructions without bothering about the system conflicts.