Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

When Li Yao spread his brainwaves to dozens of kilometers away with his vitality field beyond the Divinity Transformation Stage, initiating a scanning storm of brainwaves, everything he “saw” was different from a moment ago.

The illusions on the crowded, busy streets were peeled one layer after another. The “big fishes” that were lurking in the deepwater surfaced one by one, revealing their different features in front of Li Yao.

From that perspective, inside the Seven Seas Grand Market, and especially around the Commodity Market, it was like the dark cloud before a major storm. Fatal traps were everywhere.

Li Yao detected seven groups of… unusual people after a random glance.

The first group was a bunch of people in the uniform of the regular guards of the Seven Seas Grand Market. Those people were like the “police” of this place, the defenders of order and peace openly.

By logic, the general policemen couldn’t have a high combat ability, and their main job was to calm the people down until the real experts arrived. In the meantime, while the seven policemen were trying to pretend to be normal, Li Yao could keenly sense their toughness from their gaits, postures, and constrictions of pores. The intense stink of blood leaking from their pores could’ve only belonged to the butchers who survived mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

Those people were either elite assassins or kings of mercenaries. They could be dominators on any random planets. Why on earth were they working as minor patrollers in this place?

Besides…

Li Yao detected hard, ring-shaped objects on the fingers of the policemen.

Although they had covered the objects with a flesh-colored bionic skin, and there seemed to be nothing at first glance, how could they escape Li Yao’s attention?

However wealthy the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors is, how can they afford to equip any random policeman on the street with a Cosmos Ring?

Li Yao sneered in his heart and marked the seven unattractive policemen.

He recorded the heartbeats, breaths, gaits, and body features of the seven policemen and combined them into a series of complicated information. Wherever the seven policemen escaped to, he could lock onto them easily.

Not far away from the area where the seven policemen were patrolling, a dozen merchants in fancy clothes were chitchatting with each other delightedly, as if they had just closed a few big deals. They were fat and greasy and just like all the other merchants.

However, their acting skills were slightly too much. A war was coming, and the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors was not a sure winner. One moment of carelessness, and all their belongings would be gone. At this moment, most of the merchants were rather uneasy. Even if they had truly accomplished several great deals, their joy was rather restrained.

Those people tried to look casual and comfortable to cover the anxiety in their hearts, but their disguises only betrayed them.

One block away from them, the third group of unusual people was the customers and a boss in a magical equipment store who were bickering.

Their disguises were immaculate, and they were completely devoted to their quarrel, as if they were about to burst into fury and start a real fight.

It was a shame that Li Yao had already seen them arguing inside the store when he wandered on the street with Li Jialing a moment ago. It had been such a long time, and they were still quarreling? Nobody was there to intervene?

It was too fake.

As for the fourth group of people, Li Yao was not even sure if they were real “people”.

It was an open van parked in a dilapidated street, fully loaded with rusted battle puppets and the remnants of artificial bodies. At first look, it was picking up the wasted and abandoned artificial bodies from the magical equipment stores on the street.

The ragged, rusty artificial bodies that were covered in dust looked like cold, iron bodies.

But were they really iron corpses?

Li Yao recalled “Life Claimer”, one of the four major assassin groups. The killers in the group were all ghosts. “Hanged Man”, their leader, was a powerful competitor for the strongest spectral Cultivator of the Imperium. If the open van was not loaded with outdated artificial bodies but ghost killers with Hanged Man himself among them, what would happen?

The other three groups of people were of similar cases. They were all lurking around the Commodity Market under different disguises.

In the meantime, they were absolutely not the only death dancers on the stage, just the weakest rookies, which was the reason why Li Yao noticed them after only a quick look.

Li Yao had no doubt that more dreadful, stealthy, and fatal assassins were hiding in places he could not see, holding their breaths and stopping the release of their brainwaves, transforming them into cold stones while they waited in patience…

It could be seen from the raging swirls in the air caused by the collisions of the wireless signals and the brainwaves. There were simply too many telepathic thoughts in the air, as if hundreds of experts were releasing their senses and examining the environment.

With Li Yao’s capability right now, if he were to boost his brainwaves to the maximum, it would be possible for him to track all the assassins hiding in the dark.

But as a result, Li Yao’s head would also become the most brilliant lighthouse that could be detected by everyone within a dozen kilometers.

Naturally, the loss could not make up for the gain.

Therefore, after locking onto the seven most eye-catching targets preliminarily and scanning the structures of all the streets, tubes, and buildings around, Li Yao abandoned the idea to boost his brainwaves and further investigate the environment.

He retreated 90% of his senses and simply left 10% of them around as the extension of his eyes to be the first alarm line.

“Pu—”

Although he retreated most of his telepathic thoughts in time, his brain cells were still seriously worn out. Li Yao felt that his head was dizzy and vomited a mouthful of golden blood.

“Brother Yao—”

Li Jialing asked in a hurry, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I simply increased the speed of metabolism by ten times and consumed countless cells before I vomited the dead cells in the blood to make room for the new cells.”

Li Yao said, “Grab two growth hormones for me to stimulate the development of new cells.”

Swallowing three dosages of growth hormones that were specially designed for the experts above the peak of the Core Formation Stage and digesting the drug that was supposed to be absorbed in days, making it flow around his body in ten minutes to nurture his burning brain, Li Yao took a long breath in relief and was finally back to himself for the next round of investigation.

This time, he did not scan the whole area but chose a more accurate approach.

Dozens of his telepathic thoughts crawled into the Cosmos Rings that he just threw in the corners of the street, like transparent threads flying in the wind.

Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

The Cosmos Rings let out feeble quakes. From the Cosmos Rings, super-tiny spiritual puppets even smaller than mosquitoes crawled out.

Those “spiritual bugs” were produced with Li Yao’s super delicate refining techniques under Xiaoming and Wenwen’s brand-new design. They were as good as the cutting-edge products of the same type in the Imperium, if not better.

The thirty-six spiritual bugs invaded the Commodity Market without a sound. Thanks to their special alloy materials and the anti-scanning coating, they did not trigger the alarm system in the market at all.

Six of the bugs floated above the simmering crowd, while the other thirty crawled into the ventilation tubes, maintenance tubes, and cable tubes wherever there was a gap.

At this moment, Li Yao completely set himself in the role of an assassin, analyzing where he should attack if he were one.

Very soon, Li Yao had astounding discoveries.

One… Two… Three!

He found three armed assassins in the ventilation tubes of the Commodity Market!

Although the three assassins were all wearing stealth camouflage cloaks and hanging on the wall of the ventilation tubes like paper, with their breaths, heartbeats, and temperatures reduced to the minimum through the special techniques, Li Yao saw through them immediately.

“What’s wrong with the ventilation tubes these days? Have they become supermarkets? Why are there so many people?”

Li Yao mumbled to himself. Then he vaguely felt that something was wrong. The three assassins had chosen perfect angles of assassination. In other words, the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors was too weakly defended. How could they allow other people to occupy such “commanding heights” so easily?

Li Yao recalled the “Godly Might Prison”, known as the greatest prison of the Imperium. The ventilation tubes there were thick and long, but every ten to twenty meters, a jailor had been asked to be stationed there.

Even though the Seven Seas Grand Market couldn’t have been as thoroughly guarded as the Godly Might Prison, it still seemed rather unbelievable that somebody could break into those places so easily.

Thinking about that, Li Yao grew even warier. He scanned the environment even more prudently. As he expected, from the darkness somewhere far away, a few vague auras locked onto the three ignorant assassins.

That explains a lot. The three assassins have long been discovered by the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. They are simply left alone because the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors wants to capture those behind them, right?

Li Yao thought to himself. Speaking of which, according to Li Wuji’s intelligence, the four families have selected at least a hundred people for the shocking assassination. The experts mobilized from the Li family alone are almost fifty. But there are only three goofy assassins who are obviously here to get themselves killed. Then, where are the rest of the assassins?”

The situation was complicated now.

The defenders of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors had obviously learned the assassination plan of the four families and locked onto the three rookie assassins who had surfaced, but they intentionally indulged the assassins to continue their operation, hoping to catch those behind them.

However, the operation carefully planned by the four families couldn’t have been so simple. So, the three rookies were likely to be the baits who were intentionally thrown out to be killed in order to cover the real killers in their operation.

Even the “real killers” could very likely be a smoke grenade. The trump card of the four families was perhaps one of the critical defenders of the place, or it might even be one of the four gods.

If things were as estimated, Blackstar the Great must’ve bought over one of the four gods as his accomplice, making the obscure turbulence even more dirty and unpredictable.