Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The speech used up Gu Zhengyang’s all strength. He waved his hands and said, “A fierce battle last night and a bumpy journey in the entire day, you must be exhausted. Go back and get some rest!”

Han Te rolled his eyes and said in a hurry, “Master, what about the bandits? The Black Water Gang is certainly not easy to mess with. They will not stop just because their scheme did not work out in Broken Stone City!”

“I’ll deal with them later.” Killing intent that seemed to come from a dominating tiger in a forest beamed out of Gu Zhengyang’s eyes. “Although the Black Water Gang is strong, the Village of Peace is certainly not docile. If they want to bite a piece of meat off our body, they’d better be prepared to lose several teeth!

“The Black Water Gang isn’t the only dominator in the Double Dragons Valley. I’m very interested to know how many dead bodies they can bear to drop in the Village of Peace. If our doom is truly inevitable, we can always die together, and I will not leave a single bullet or any piece of compressed food for them!”

Han Te received Li Yao’s brainwave message again. He rolled his eyes and scratched the back of his head. “Master, we looted tremendous assets last night. Most of them are aggressive magical equipment, including a lot of crystal bombs. But we lost a great number of warriors last night, and there are more guns than soldiers to use them right now. Since there’s plenty of weapons and ammunition, is it possible… for some of them to be allotted to me and my junior sister for our use?”

Gu Zhengyang was slightly dazed. “Crystal bombs and the likes are very dangerous. There are explosion specialists in the village who are responsible for them. Why do you want crystal bombs?”

With an innocent face, Han Te said solemnly, “As I told you a few days ago, we discovered that abundant battle data is stored in the crystal processor of this Universal Janitor. The deployment and control of crystal bombs is among them. It seems that connecting a lot of crystal bombs in a suitable formation can multiply their power. We want to do our best for the village.”

“Is it true?” Gu Zhengyang asked suspiciously.

“Yes, village leader,” Li Yao replied.

Gu Zhengyang raised his eyebrows, somewhat in surprise. “It can talk?”

“Yes, village leader.” Li Yao continued peacefully. “I have the most advanced man-machine interaction system installed, which allows me to communicate with human beings in more than thirteen ways, including both plain text and encrypted forms.”

“This is indeed not an ordinary civil puppet for cleaning and maintenance purposes!” Gu Zhengyang paced around Li Yao. He knocked Li Yao’s tracks and said, “What… are you exactly? Some sort of military puppet? What year do you come from? What is your original mission? Do you have any memory of your past?”

“I do not know, village leader,” Li Yao said calmly. “The data regarding my previous mission has been erased during the last forced shutdown. I was reset to follow the first human being to restart me. However, I do remember my code name—Fiend Star 59.”

“This is a rather advanced man-machine interaction paradigm!” Gu Zhengyang bulged his eyes and mumbled. “It is much better than the few spiritual puppets that were jumbled up through all kinds of work. Those spiritual puppets can only say some rigid instructions intermittently. They are nowhere near as logical as this one. We have truly found a treasure this time. Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?”

“Thank you for your compliment.” Li Yao continued indifferently and inflexibly. “I have the function of automatically learning and updating my language database. The more time I spend with human beings, the more abundant my database and the more similar my interaction pattern will be to human beings’.

“However, I need abundant energy to turn on more databases and more powerful functions. The man-machine interaction ability was actually activated just now.”

Han Te and Liu Li did not expect ‘Grandpa Yao’ to make such a move. After a long daze, Han Te finally stammered, “Yes, we—we only just noticed that it had such an advanced function.”

“Exactly, dad,” Liu Li explained. “All kinds of weird things happen in the Land of Sins. Even mom came across a mysterious old lady who offered her a chip that stored information about Cultivators. We’ve only excavated a war puppet from the ancient times. Isn’t—isn’t it perfectly normal?”

Gu Zhengyang was somewhat suspicious at the beginning. However, he thought of the world depicted in ‘Little Cultivators’, where the civilization was so advanced and the magical equipment industrial system was so well-developed. The facilities flying in the sky, digging below the earth, and swimming in the ocean far exceeded his imagination.

The spiritual puppets that could communicate with human beings fluently appeared in ‘Little Cultivators’, too. They appeared to be very common.

He splayed his fingers and pressed his hand on Li Yao’s iron shell, extending his spiritual energy into the Universal Janitor for investigation.

With the sophisticated soul power of Li Yao in the Divinity Transformation Stage, naturally, his soul waves were not detected at all.

Gu Zhengyang explored for a long time but sensed nothing wrong. He was finally reassured. Frowning, he asked, “Do you know how to use crystal bombs?”

“I know a thing or two about it,” Li Yao said.

Shua!

From a hole on his chest, a cluster of green light shot out, which turned into countless glittering lines that formed the structural designs of crystal bombs. They were truly overwhelming and dazzling.

“Well…” Gu Zhengyang was dazed again. He was not a magical equipment specialist, much less one familiar with crystal bombs. Although Li Yao only showed him the structures of the most basic and simple crystal bombs, fearing that he might be shocked, the guy was still confused and did not know what they were about at all.

“Dad!” Liu Li took the opportunity to persuade her dad. “You said that the future of the Village of Peace counts on us. Then, let it begin from this mission. If you protect us as if we are chickens, how can we grow into falcons that fly above the clouds, and how can we explore the secrets of Manjusaka?”

Gu Zhengyang’s body shook hard. After much hesitation, he finally clenched his fists and said, “Alright. We have indeed reaped too many assets this time. There will be additional gear even if every villager is armed three times. I was thinking of sealing the assets in Warehouse No. 3 in case we need them in the future, but now, they will all be allotted to you and this… Fiend Star 59. However, whatever plan you come up with, you must report it to me in advance. Do not act on your own!”

“Hooray!” Han Te and Liu Li both cheered.

Li Yao waited on the side in silence, truly like a war machine that had been sealed for hundreds of years.

…

On their way to Warehouse No. 3, Han Te asked, “Grandpa Yao, why did you suddenly talk just now? We were a bit scared!”

“I can’t play a mute forever, can I?” Li Yao said casually. “Besides, you are indeed in need of some powerful crystal bombs to deal with the coming storm. The crystal bombs from the sky are too lousy and require serious modification.

“Crystal bombs, on the other hand, are too dangerous to be given to two teenagers who are still wet behind the ears without good reason.”

“Those crystal bombs are too lousy?” Han Te exclaimed. “The biggest crystal bomb I saw was almost as large as half a tank. After it exploded, it ravaged everything in the five hundred square meters around it. Is it lousy?”

“It is exactly because the bomb ravaged five hundred square meters that it was lousy,” Li Yao said coldly. “Distributing the power evenly in a range of three to five hundred square meters can only kill the common soldiers but will not deal much damage to the elites of the enemy who are wearing heavy armors. If the purpose is to annihilate the common soldiers, there are a lot of ways to achieve it. Why do you have to waste a precious crystal bomb?”

“Therefore, Grandpa Yao, are you an explosion expert?” Liu Li asked, full of expectations.

Li Yao smiled. “More or less.”

…

If the Land of Sins that was rife with dust and pollution had seasons, they were not spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Rather, they were simply ‘the lurking season’ and ‘the hunting season’.

In the half year before a Bliss Ceremony, the assets from the sky had been mostly drained. Energy and ammunition were among the scarcest resources. The valuable strategic assets had to be preserved for the next ‘Bliss Ceremony’.

During this period, all the forces were abjectly poor. Even if they vanquished other villages at the cost of countless resources, they would not be able to loot much.

Therefore, although the people in desperation would have small-scale, scattered conflicts for survival, large-scale ones rarely broke out. Everybody simply lurked like snakes, mice, and bugs in winter, waiting for the arrival of the Bliss Ceremony.

That was the lurking season.

When the Bliss Ceremony ended, all the forces had refilled their ammunition and energy. They were given brand-new firearms, blades, and catapults that were more powerful than the gears before, and they also knew that other forces had equally full warehouses.

So, it would be a carnival of war, a festival of blood, and a time to hunt and be hunted!

Gu Zhengyang had survived dozens of ‘hunting seasons’ in the Land of Sins.

He had also witnessed countless small villages being completely demolished by the gangs from Double Dragons Valley, their assets that they earned through all kinds of difficulties from the Bliss Ceremony looted.

Since rumor had it that the tough bandits of Double Dragons Valley had set the Village of Peace as their target this year, Gu Zhengyang certainly did not dare act carelessly. He had been training the warriors, making better preparations for war, and strengthening the waterborne fortress day and night. He also sent out a lot of reconnaissance squads to investigate the situation in Double Dragons Valley.

The news from the Double Dragons Valley was quite bad, too.

In the Bliss Ceremonies in the past, the gangs in the Double Dragons Valley had always fought each other brutally. Several gangs had been entirely wiped out every time.

But there did not seem to have been a large-scale fight in Double Dragons Valley this year. All the gangs appeared to be reserving their strength. There was no telling what they were up to.

Also, the tough bandits paid special attention to restricting the flow of information out of Double Dragons Valley. Several members of the exploration squads of the Village of Peace were discovered by the bandits and killed mercilessly!