Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

When he walked through the narrow, long pathway, hearing the explosions and screams rising like tides, and entered the observation room next to the real-life test field, “Shadowless” Duan Rui’s heart was palpitating again and again. He felt he was back to a hundred and twenty years ago, when he lurked in a dark, stinky gutter for three days and three nights to assassinate a colonel of the Imperium.

Duan Rui was among the best assassins in the ten or so Sectors at the edge of the third quadrant of the Imperium of True Human Beings.

His amazing abilities of assassination and survival could be seen from the fact that he had retreated from more than three hundred assassination operations safely and lived more than a hundred and forty years in one piece.

It was quite rare for an assassin to live for more than a hundred years, particularly so when one pissed off the four major groups of assassins in the third quadrant of the Imperium and was given the “Black Death Order”.

But during the twenty years that he was hunted, he even assassinated the leaders of two groups of assassins and forced them to reach a “truce” with him on his own.

“Shadowless” Duan Rui was the only person to have made such an appalling achievement among the assassins in the third quadrant in the past hundred years.

“Shadowless” Duan Rui definitely should be proud of himself.

Therefore, when he was recruited by Queen Li Linghai with a high reward, he thought that he was the best assassin under the queen’s command, and he received the funding from Li Linghai for many years, practicing his unique arts with incessant Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures.

Finally, the queen asked him to surface and carry out a mission, after when his invisible sword had been feeling thirsty for a very long time.

However, after he came to the “Deep Sea Palace”, the queen’s most confidential base, where he was faced with the brutal men whose notoriety spread out to the entire Imperium, he was soaked in cold sweat and realized that he was just one of the most common experts under the queen’s command.

Di Xinghui, an expert of mental warfare known as “Soul Swallower”, who removed the “Blood Moon Sect”, their family’s nemesis for generations, by himself!

Mao Feng, a “space hunter” who traveled the sea of stars and made a living by hunting alien species!

Zhao Tiande, a super body fundamentalist who could allegedly tear apart a starship barehandedly and who boasted infinite strength and multiple terrifying techniques!

All of them were the tough men whose fame and capabilities were as good as his.

Just like “Shadowless” Duan Rui, they had vanished from their respective circles a long time ago. Everybody thought that they were dead.

However, they had actually arrived at this place at the same time. Also, their strength was even better than before after being nurtured by the inexhaustible resources that were provided by Li Linghai. The brutality beaming out of their eyes was even more dazzling than before!

The notorious experts who had never seen each other before but had heard each other’s names too many times looked at each other with complicated feelings.

On one hand, they were shocked at the immeasurability of Queen Li Linghai’s force, which had recruited so many desperadoes nationwide without alerting anyone.

In the meantime, they were more or less excited, knowing that the queen had secretly recruited so many tough experts and gathered them here for something great!

With complicated feelings, everybody walked into the observation room.

The magnificent man standing at the observation room, who was as daunting as a starship and as aggressive as a crystal bomb, however, gave all of them a great surprise.

It’s “Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou!

“Shadowless” Duan Rui’s pupils constricted to the minimum. The muscles all over his body constricted beyond his control, and he made the highest defensive posture subconsciously.

The twenty or so fearless desperadoes next to him held their breath too, with subtle reactions happening to their muscles and joints.

They were all scarily brutal men, but “Bloody Butcher” Wang Tu was not on the same level as them.

Their difference was almost like the gap between a killer whale and a tiger shark.

“Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou was a gladiator at the beginning.

Martial arts were highly appreciated in the Imperium of True Human Beings. When there were frictions between Sectors, it was also a common practice to settle the disagreement by a game in the arena.

Many Sectors that were powerful enough would carefully raise their own experts in martial arts to win the games in the arenas.

But some of the less powerful Sectors, due to the lack of advanced techniques, knew that the gladiators of their enemies were too strong and their own warriors would be committing suicide in a fight with them.

Therefore, they would hire strong warriors from the outside world at a high price and ask them to fight as the champions of their Sectors.

That was the origin of “rogue gladiators” as a profession.

They were the “professionals” who wandered among different worlds and fought for the employers in the major arenas.

It was not hard to imagine that, without absolute confidence in their own strength, nobody would be bold enough to take part in such a dangerous profession.

Once they lost a game, even if they were not beaten to death by their opponent, their employer, who would lose great interests, might vent their fury on them.

“Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou, on the other hand, was among the best rogue gladiators.

He once even accomplished a spectacular fifty-game winning streak, where he killed the opponents in forty-nine games.

The only time he did not kill his opponent on the spot was because his opponent kneeled and begged for mercy.

Then, out of kindness, he only blew up the opponent’s bones and internal organs but left the brain intact, giving the guy an opportunity to transfer the soul into an artificial body.

However, that was how he earned the nickname of “Bloody Butcher”.

He was a man who considered “fighting” his belief.

He was also a man who considered the rules of an arena inviolable laws.

Now that it had been decided that the disagreement between two parties would be settled through a game, once the winner was revealed, the loser should admit failure promptly without regretting.

It was a shame that people had changed.

Wang Kou’s rules were perhaps abided by three to five hundred years ago, but at a time when manners mattered no more, few forces were not playing dirty tricks in the darkness.

It was Wang Kou’s fiftieth game, where he encountered the strongest and most respectful opponent of his life; another rogue gladiator with remarkable achievements.

For those who were as capable of fighting as Wang Kou, the only reason they did not settle down but continue living a vagrant, thrilling life could be their passion for fighting.

Wang Kou and his opponent both admired each other.

The best way for the gladiators to show respect for each other was to kill their opponent with their best effort!

Eventually, Wang Kou offered an immaculate death to his opponent and won the match.

However, the force that his opponent represented suddenly went back on their agreement and did not admit the ruling in the arena. Instead, they wanted to settle the problem with starships.

Later, Wang Kou let the particular force know what the wrath of a gladiator was. He was henceforth known as “Bloody Butcher”.

“Shadowless” Duan Rui knew “Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou so well because he once received a mission to assassinate the guy.

It was after Wang Kou burst into fury, broke into the nest of the force that violated the rules of the arena, and went on a killing spree. The man also blew up three of his enemy’s mines and was almost determined to kill everybody who was in his way.

Ninety-seven assassins took the job to assassinate Wang Kou.

“Shadowless” Duan Rui was the most patient one with the clearest head.

Patiently, he watched Wang Kou kill the ninety-six killers one after another before he made the most judicious judgment with his clear head.

He could not kill Wang Kou.

He would rather break the rules of the assassins and leave his group, living a refugee’s life from the moment on, than to try and kill the guy because the former promised a greater likelihood of survival.

It was exactly how dreadful “Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou was!

But right now…

“Shadowless” Duan Rui and the thirty brutal bandits were all greatly shocked!

It was impossible!

What was even more terrifying, appalling, and unbelievable than the existence of “Bloody Butcher” in this place was that—

He was shaking!

“Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou was shaking!

“Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou, who had secured fifty triumphs in the arena in a row and brutalized the opponents using the cruelest methods in seventy-nine games, who challenged a powerful force on his own until his enemies were all shuddering in panic, and who had taken care of almost a hundred assassins casually—the super bandit that intimidated Duan Rui, Di Xinghun, Mao Feng, and Zhao Tian, making them unable to move forward—was really shaking!

Although he was still unleashing a shocking aura from his body, he was merely emboldening himself. Wang Kou’s hair, Wang Kou’s fingers, Wang Kou’s legs… In everyone’s perception, every hair on his body was shaking hard, as if he had been frozen to the bones!

What… What can possibly scare “Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou into this?

“Shadowless” Duan Rui and the other brutal men all swallowed hard. Their eyes surpassed “Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou and glanced at the test field with random gravity on their opposite side.

The test field was empty, but the aftermath of spiritual energy was still raging like a tsunami. A fierce battle was just over.

Broken, seriously twisted crystal suits were lying all over the ground. Blood and screams were erupting out of them now and then.

The hundred elite soldiers inside seemed to have just been crumbled by one, no, a horde of primeval beasts heavily.

Are you serious? This is supposed to be only a “test”!

“Shadowless” Duan Rui and other bandits felt that their blood was freezing.

What was tested inside just now? A super strengthened alien beast?

Shua!

The door between the test field and the observation room was opened. A man that seemed rather young and plain walked in.

“Shadowless” Duan Rui blinked his eyes and looked around, only to discover that other people were as confused as him and did not seem to know the young man. He couldn’t have been a famous expert outside, right?

But in the next second, the scene that made almost everybody’s jaw hit the ground took place!

“Bloody Butcher” Wang Kou rushed forward in a hurry and bowed to the young man deeply, before he said respectfully, “Senior Li, you’ve been troubled!”