Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Run!”

Han Te’s exclamation and his bullets roared out at the same out, only to be torn into shreds by the Thunder Salamander’s sharp claws. Before he pulled the trigger again, the storm bolter was already chopped in half by the claw that was soaked in electric arcs and flames.

Right before the Thunder Salamander laid its claws on Liu Li, Han Te charged forward and stopped it. The two of them rolled into a cluster of lightning and fire.

The mask that covered his face was torn off again, revealing a face that was as angry as an animal. Countless veins were protruding from his burnt, scarred cheeks, like snakes that would dash out of his body at any moment.

The right half of his body was also covered by dancing electric arcs, which were even condensed into the form of blades and armor, helping him to resist the sharp claws and tusks of the Thunder Salamander.

The guy and the lizard were actually on par in the fight.

But the other Thunder Salamander that showed up and distracted their attention launched an attack, too.

Its bloody mouth was opened to the maximum, and a red ball of light inside its throat got brighter and brighter, as if it were magma that had been highly compressed and condensed.

“Ahhh!” Holding her head, Liu Li began to scream.

At first, Li Yao thought that the girl was so scared that she was out of her mind, but then his soul sensed overwhelming quakes. A weird but powerful strength was released from the depths of the girl’s brain. The very special magnetic field imposed strong ‘interference’ on the spiritual energy reactions that were quickly expanding inside the throat of the Thunder Salamander.

Boom!

The fireball exploded inside the Thunder Salamander’s throat directly, causing it to writhe on the ground in pain. Its six claws cramped violently, and the weird tails with long bone spurs waved crazily, blowing off tremendous broken rocks.

The damage of such an extent was not enough to completely deprive the Thunder Salamander of its combat ability. The pain deep to the bones in fact completely triggered its aggressiveness. The deep purple stripes on the surface of its body emitted soul-stirring fluorescence, and blood mixed with saliva dripped from the tusks.

Liu Li seemed to have used up all her strength in that scream. She staggered two steps back and collapsed on the ground. Her breath became so feeble that she did not even have the strength to lift her arm.

“Liu Li, go now!”

Han Te’s right arm activated a saber of electric arcs more than two meters long, which glowed glamorously in the darkness. After three shocking collisions, his chest was left with a deep wound by the Thunder Salamander, but he managed to chop off the strongest foreclaw of the beast, too.

Seeing that his junior sister had collapsed to the ground, the young man was so anxious that he kicked a twisted rebar into the collapsing rocks while he shouted, “Come on, you two pieces of cr*p. Come and get me. Your father is here!”

While kicking the rebar, he threw out tremendous electric arcs, continuing to draw the attention of the two ferocious beasts. He then slowly moved away from the exit, into the darkness.

The two Thunder Salamanders were indeed attracted by his roars and ignored Liu Li and Li Yao.

“That’s right. Come here. Come to your father!”

Han Te’s face that was filled with blood gradually disappeared into the darkness. Bulging his eyes that were as huge as bells, he hinted at Liu Li, Now is the time. Run!

Liu Li gripped her wrist hard and sobbed soundless. With the last bit of her strength, she managed to stand to her feet again.

Han Te smiled brilliantly. His two irregular dimples seemed to be saying, That’s right, Liu Li, run. As your senior brother, I will certainly help you keep the two beasts occupied!

Right before the two Thunder Salamanders were about to be lured into the deeper part of the underground ruins that was even more rough and complicated, a calm, metallic voice suddenly echoed behind them. “My young friends…”

At such a critical moment, the voice was as loud as a rumbling thunder. The two Thunder Salamanders immediately turned around and looked at where Liu Li was.

Dumbfounded, Han Te stared at Li Yao, feeling like crying.

“Sorry to interrupt your self-sacrifice,” Li Yao said, “but I only want to tell you that there are actually three Thunder Salamanders in total. The last one of them, which is also the biggest and strongest one and must be some sort of leader of the hunting team, has been hiding on our escape route. This is a very delicate trap. They have eradicated the prey’s hope of survival since the very beginning.”

Han Te’s pupils constricted violently.

Liu Li widened her eyes in disbelief.

The third Thunder Salamander slowly surfaced in the darkness.

It was much greater in size than the previous two Thunder Salamanders and covered in a dark golden shell that looked like a reactive armor made of metal. The enormous sarcoma above its head was pulsing like a heart. After every ‘beat’, it would send out sparks that turned into blue flames on the ground.

Like a king of the Thunder Salamanders, it slithered to the two little fellows with the glamorous crown over its head unhurriedly, staring at the two of them from the high stance, as if being swallowed by it would be the greatest honor of their entire life.

“This… this is not a Thunder Salamander but its mutated, evolved species—the Thunder Juggernaut!” Han Te seemed to have been kicked right in the throat. His voice was completely twisted. “I might have been able to compete with the beast three years ago, but right now…”

“Senior Brother…” Liu Li called him in a low voice, hinting that Han Te need not say anything. The young man and the girl leaned against each other and abandoned their futile struggle. Illuminated by the deep blue light of the Thunder Salamanders, their faces were brimming with desperation.

“Is that so?” Li Yao twisted the tracks and moved with some difficulty on the uneven ruins while he observed the enormous slaughtering machine in front of him with great interest. “What an interesting little creature. Judging from its posture, it is not a natural species.”

The Thunder Juggernaut was infuriated by the hideous appearance of Li Yao and his peaceful attitude. With the sound of boiling magma spurting out of its throat, the sarcoma above its head expanded incessantly and soon became larger than its head.

It seemed as if ten thousand lightning bolts had been hidden inside!

Li Yao slightly adjusted the crystal cameras of the ‘Universal Janitor’ and stared at the opponent without blinking, examining the flow and model of spiritual energy inside the mutated beast.

He discovered that he had new perceptions of strength, battle, and the judgement of the enemy’s capability and his own after ascending into the Divinity Transformation Stage. He did not even need to observe with his naked eye. It would be much more accurate and efficient to directly sense the flow and expansion of spiritual energy.

The Thunder Juggernaut was about to launch the craziest attack.

However, it seemed to have sensed something. In an exclamation of shock, it turned around and ran away immediately without even looking at the two companions that were left behind. The sarcoma on its head withered instantly, too.

It had sensed the terror of the existence hiding inside the garbage.

But it was too late.

In the eyes of Han Te and Liu Li, they only saw three clusters of red light dash out of the body of the Universal Janitor all of a sudden and cover the three mutated beasts including the Thunder Juggernaut. Not only were the beasts all frozen, they even staggered and floated in midair.

The next second, the dark red clusters turned into thousands of red flashes that shone dazzlingly inside the bodies of the three mutated beasts. Then, the three of them were dissected neatly and completely into meat pieces no larger than the fingernail.

“Ew!”

Han Te and Liu Li were both dumbfounded, feeling that they were caught in a nightmare. Although they had seen a lot of bloody and brutal scenes during the years of struggle in the Land of Sins, the weird sight before their eyes was still far beyond what they could bear. Looking at each other, they trembled hard and threw up hard.

Li Yao had no time to care about the reactions of the two young fellows. While testing the brand-new ways to attack with his soul, he studied the structures of the three mutated beasts.

The red flashes that had dissected the mutated beasts accurately just now were created by manipulating countless tiny grains of dust and kneading them into long threads ten times thinner than the air before triggering a high-frequency vibration, leading to friction between the dust and the air at a temperature of thousands of degrees.

The threads of dust were close to the molecular level in the first place like the sharpest blades. Once they were heated to the limits, they were naturally invincible. Even the hardest armor and shell were not enough to stop them.

The only shortcoming was that the dust’s mass was little to none, and it would perish 0.1 seconds after vibrating in the air at a high frequency.

But more waves of dust threads would immediately follow up, cutting all the targets like burning sabers.

At least right now, Li Yao was very satisfied with the effect of his new attack.

As for the structure of the three slightly abnormal mutated beasts, there were no secrets before his dissection. All the details were revealed.

His guess was correct. None of the three mutated beasts were natural. They had not even mutated purely because of radiation.

Li Yao discovered very sophisticated magical equipment units in their bones and throats that could strengthen their bodies, improve their speed and strength, and allow them to launch attacks similar to a volcanic eruption.

Somebody seemed to be running experiments to create a perfect half-flesh, half-mechanical war machine by combining the most ferocious mutated beasts and magical equipment.

Li Yao found three very precise chips from the depths of the brain of the three beasts. Judging from the rune arrays carved on them and the fundamental architecture, they should be some sort of chips to scan and store data, which could record the details of their battle.

Thankfully, the radiation in the area was very serious. Li Yao did not perceive the existence of the Spiritual Nexus. The three chips could not upload the battle data in real time.

Perhaps some instructions had been written into the chips to force the beasts that had been implanted with the chips to appear at an empty, uninterrupted spot every once in a while so that the Immortal Cultivators could show up to collect all the battle data during the last period.

Pa!

The three chips before Li Yao were crushed into pieces by nonexistent hands, turning into three flames of fury.