Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

by <unknown>

  "The point is, our starships may not be able to reach Heavenly Saints City in several years.

  "Besides, Heavenly Saints City is not fixed in one place but a moving metropolis floating in the sea of stars, searching for the areas with the most abundant spiritual energy; it will fly to any place that has more resources.

  "Sure, there are star beacons. But they are not prepared for country folks such as us.

  "Heavenly Saints City is the holy land for all the people in the Flying Star Sector. Everyone craves to be a resident of Heavenly Saints City and will head there at whatever cost.

  "Even though Heavenly Saints City is being enlarged every year, there are still too many people crowding into it.

  "Five hundred years ago, orbital rings started to be built on the periphery of Heavenly Saints City to accommodate more residents. They are known as 'star rings'.

  "At first, there was one ring. Then, two rings. Currently, even the ninth ring has been filled. The tenth ring is under construction!

  "Therefore, since three hundred years ago, Heavenly Saints City stopped opening to the general outsiders.

  "Every year, Heavenly Saints City will propose a certain quota of population and issue corresponding residential certificates to the outsiders. To apply for a residential certificate, one must first prove that one is a qualified talent for Heavenly Saints City."

  Li Yao frowned. "And how can one prove oneself?"

  Mu Ping extended two of his fingers and said, "There are two ways. The first one is to participate in the various matches hosted by Heavenly Saints City, such as Exo championships and refining competitions. The winners of the games will be entitled to enter Heavenly Saints City.

  "The matches are not necessarily for Cultivators. Many of them are for ordinary people, too. For example, last year, the management of Heavenly Saints City discovered after prolonged calculations that the city was short of three hundred chefs. Therefore, a match of cooking skills was held, and the top three hundred winners were authorized to live in Heavenly Saints City even though they were just cooks.

  "The second way is to accomplish certain special tasks.

  "For example, a space pirate has fled to the depths of the sea of stars after committing felonies in Heavenly Saints City. The guardians of Heavenly Saints City are not able to catch him for the time being. Therefore, they may propose a bounty with additional rewards, say, the permission to live in Heavenly Saints City, besides the monetary benefits.

  "However, either the matches hosted by Heavenly Saints City or the bounty tasks are usually only open to other major sects and the ordinary people under their protection. Small places like ours do not have the ticket to take part in such matches at all. On the other hand, we often miss the latest news, because we are not covered in the Spiritual Nexus. We can only learn what is going on in the outside world when we are attending kermises. It is hard for us to hear of the bounties in time.

  "Therefore, although Heavenly Saints City is heaven on earth, it is but a daydream for us. Haha."

  Mu Ping smiled, bitterly and regretfully.

  Li Yao scratched his hair. Kermises?

  In a place filled with remnants of starships where giant light beams were hanging on the walls, kermis sounded like a pretty odd word.

  But he didn't pursue it further. Pondering for a moment, he reflected on what Mu Ping had just said.

  It seemed that entering Heavenly Saints City would not be an easy job. But first of all, he had to move to the center of the Flying Star Sector where the news was more frequently updated. Or, he could join a random sect first in order to be qualified to participate in the matches of Heavenly Saints City.

  As for what kind of matches to take part in…

  In either the competitions of crystal suits or those of refining, Li Yao was confident that, even though he might not be the best in the Flying Star Sector, his skills were more than enough to earn him a place in Heavenly Saints City.

  Ten of millions of people lived in Heavenly Saints City. A vast majority of them must be ordinary people. Li Yao didn't believe that he would be worse than them.

  Suddenly, Li Yao thought of something that Mu Ping just mentioned. Confusion clear on his face, he asked, "Mayor Mu, you just said that every household in this area has crystal suits… But from what I've seen, there are not many Cultivators in the town. Then, who are the people wearing the crystal suits?"

  Chapter 444: Skill Card |

  Confused, Mu Ping blinked his eyes and asked, "What do you mean, Master Li? Our crystal suits are not specialized combat suits but are modified based on engineering suits and farming suits. They don't require Cultivators to wear. It is our country folks who have been using them.

  "There are only four Cultivators in Black Iron Town. I am the strongest one of all, although I am merely in the middle level of the Refinement Stage. That's why I was elected as the mayor.

  "This place is poor and underdeveloped, not something that young people with talent in Cultivation are particularly fond of. Most of them leave their hometown and make their living in bigger world fragments or starship towns. Young people want what is best for themselves. It's hard for us to say no. Therefore, the only Cultivators in town are the few old fellows like me, who have endured a lot of setbacks and haven't accomplished anything remarkable over the dozens of years of travelling outside. Now that we are old and our capability is unlikely to grow, retiring and resuming our old lives in our hometown is a better option for us. We quite enjoy it."

  Li Yao was confused and startled. He could guess a thing or two about engineering crystal suits, but what were farming crystal suits? Did farmers in this place till the land in crystal suits?

  It must be a joke!

  Besides, ordinary people could wear crystal suits?

  Li Yao's mindset was completely reshaped.

  Crystal suits were magical equipment of magical equipment. They were the ultimate weapons in the Heaven's Origin Sector. Not just random fighters, not many low-level Cultivators had even been equipped with crystal suits before MP crystal suits were promoted.

  It was partly because crystal suits were unaffordable, and partly because wearing a crystal suit required high personal abilities.

  First of all, through the high-sensitivity crystal cameras and ears, a crystal suit could gather a huge amount of information within a moment and pour it down into the brain of the Exo. The computational ability of the ordinary people was far from enough to handle it.

  Secondly, combat with a crystal suit was a great burden for the body of the Exo. The backlash against the body resulting from accelerating to sub-sonic or even super-sonic speed instantly and halting, turning or spinning in the very next second almost equaled to a free fall from dozens of floors high.

  If an ordinary person were to wear such a crystal suit, it was quite likely that, after an instantaneous acceleration, a suddenly halt, and a zigzag, their internal organs would all explode.

  Not to mention that the blast of spiritual energy when the formidable attacks were carried out in a crystal suit would definitely be enough to batter the soul of an ordinary person and turn them mentally retarded.

  Therefore, in the Heaven's Origin Sector, even Li Yao as a Cultivator had to learn crazily in a special Exo training camp for quite a few months in order to familiarize himself with the skills of how to manipulate a crystal suit, let alone ordinary people.

  But Mu Ping seemed to be implying that every household in the Flying Star Sector had a crystal suit and they were at full disposal of ordinary people without causing any injuries.

  That was indeed incredible!

  If I can learn such technology and equip every soldier of the Star Glory Federation with a crystal suit, a steel torrent of billions of crystal suits will be created. It will be as easy as pie to crush the Blood Demon Sector!

  Li Yao was greatly interested.

  Pondering for a moment, Li Yao realized that he wouldn't know what the crystal suits in this place were exactly until h
e saw them with his own eyes. Therefore, he asked Mu Ping to bring him to check them out.

  Mu Ping gladly agreed. Surrounded by dozens of children, he brought Li Yao to the outside of the town where the giant crab was being dissected.

  The residents of Black Iron Town lived on the relics of an ancient battleground. They occasionally hunted down intruding demon beasts, too. Therefore, they were quite familiar with the job.

  Dozens of muscled men were waving chainswords and battle axes in somewhat clumsy engineering crystal suits to cut open the solid shells. The scraps of the solid shell were then cleaned up, sanitized, put through anti-corrosive procedures, and stacked orderly.

  The solid shell was one of the best materials that could be used to trade with other towns.

  As for the crab meat contained inside, it was rough and hard, not readily edible. It would have to be minced and mixed with other meat and a nutrition drug, but it did have a special flavor with it. For the residents, it could almost be called delicious.

  Seeing that Li Yao had arrived, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at him in reverence.

  Mu Ping called down a hefty, brawny guy from the back of the giant crab. Together with his thick and black crystal suit, he was almost three meters tall.

  "This is Zhang Heiniu. Twenty-five years old. His Spirit Actualization Quotient has reached 85%. It's very likely that his spiritual root will be awakened soon. His fighting skills with a crystal suit are among the best in the few towns nearby!" said Mu Ping with a smile.

  Zhang Heiniu held his head high and grinned innocently, too.

  "Heiniu, this master wants to see your capability. You must try your best!" informed Mu Ping.

  As a remote village, Black Iron Town was not frequented by crystal suit masters. Zhang Heiniu was in high spirits the moment he heard the news. He rubbed his fists and asked the bystanders to clear the area.

  Suddenly, he stomped on the ground and sprinted forward dozens of meters like a black tornado. Then he came to an abrupt halt and punched the air in front of him twice. Waves were rippling out in the air, producing rumbling thunder-like noises.

  Li Yao was somewhat startled.

  Zhang Heiniu's attack was, of course, not very impressive, but it had far exceeded the limits of an ordinary person. By logic, the bones throughout his body should've been shattered into pieces by the immense blast.

  Right then, Zhang Heiniu bellowed. His body span weirdly, bringing out an intimidating aura around him as if he were a different person. Two clusters of black air circled his arms, which were pushed forward forcefully. The black air drilled forward like a helix and blew two giant holes on a metal remnant some twenty meters away.

  "This is—"

  Li Yao's eyes were almost frozen, and his mind was greatly shocked.

  Such a remote attack must have a high demand on the control of the shape and trajectory of the spiritual energy, not to mention the huge cost of spiritual energy and computational ability. It was clearly a move that only Cultivators could manage. How could Zhang Heiniu carry it out as an ordinary person?

  Zhang Heiniu seemed exhausted after performing the attack. He bent his body and took a moment to rest before he came back to Li Yao and said respectfully, "Master, my previous attack, 'Black Tiger Explosion', is supposed to hit a target at least twenty meters away. But the best I can do is reach fifteen meters however hard I train myself. I don't know if there is something wrong with my posture or the way I exert my strength. Please do enlighten me, Master!"

  Holding back the surprise in his heart, Li Yao asked Zhang Heiniu to take off his crystal suit.

  Since the main livelihood of Black Iron Town came from dismantling, recycling, and modifying the remnants, there were quite a few maintenance platforms in the town. Li Yao examined this particular engineering crystal suit on an open-air maintenance platform.

  "The crystal suit is not made of precious materials, just regular strengthened alloys. No wonder the crystal suit is refined in such a clumsy style. Otherwise, the demand in hardness wouldn't be satisfied.

  "The framework is quite impressive, in distinctive grassroots fashions. Simple, practical, highly-replaceable, and easy to fix. Very low requirement in maintenance skills.

  "The joints of the crystal suit are quite unusual… Brilliant, truly brilliant. Even the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit can learn many things from the brand-new design of the joints!

  "This is just an engineering crystal suit, and it already has so many extraordinary designs and structures. I wonder, how fabulous will the real combat crystal suits of the Flying Star Sector be?

  "Huh. What are these?"

  Li Yao discovered almost a hundred of rune arrays on the interior of the crystal suit that he had never seen before. Judging from the constitution and the circulation model of the rune arrays, their purpose was to buffer the blast and enhance the strength of the Exo.

  It appeared that these rune arrays provided perfect protection and tremendous aid to the Exo so that the body of an ordinary person was enough to support the crystal suit.

  As for information processing, Li Yao paid special attention to the crystal processor of the engineering crystal suit.

  He discovered that, not only was the crystal processor added with quite a few miniature units that were new to him, there were even two small slots on it. One of them was empty, while the other one had a card inserted in it.

  Li Yao took out the card with a pair of forceps.

  It was a card no larger than a fingernail and less than a millimeter thick. But there were countless crystal wires on the edge of the card. It appeared that the card had been piled up by layers of extremely thin crystal membranes.

  The surface of the crystal card was carved with more than twenty miniature rune arrays, which were bathed in glamourous brightness, with spiritual energy flowing vaguely.

  Such a sophisticated steric rune arrays building technique!

  The crystal card is only one millimeter thick, but it is actually a set of at least a hundred crystal membranes. If each of the membranes has been carved with twenty miniature rune arrays, there will be so much things that this fingernail-like crystal card can do!

  Li Yao secretly paid his compliments. Then he frowned as if he were deep in thought and asked Mu Ping, "What's the name of this? It looks rather familiar, but I can't remember what it is called."

  "This is a skill card. I believe Master Li must've been using them all the time before. Of course it looks familiar."

  Mu Ping explained, "For us the low-level Cultivators and ordinary fighters, although we can complete the simple attack and defense movements in a crystal suit, the more complicated skills and the ultimate ones are tantalizing yet unachievable for us.

  "But a skill card can store the ultimate moves of the high-level Cultivators. When they are inserted into a crystal suit, they will be automatically triggered. All the skills stored inside will be ready. With a telepathic thought, the crystal suit will take control of our body and let us perform the ultimate skill that we chose!"

  Li Yao's eyes bulged wide open. The Flying Star Sector was indeed a place of marvels. There were even such amazing things!

  Cultivators could seal their own moves in a crystal card and let someone else to use them?

  Mu Ping grinned. "The Flying Star Sector is too large a place, and the residents are scattered everywhere in the sea of stars. There are bound to be places Cultivators may not be able to attend to. Therefore, the skill cards were invented to equip the ordinary people and low-level Cultivators with their remarkable moves. The capability of the recipients is able to soar instantly.

  "This skill card has been sealed with 'Peak Fighters Luxury Bundle' provided by 'Ferocious Tiger Sect'. It is designed for the super experts among the regular fights and includes twenty uses of 'Black Tiger Explosion', five uses of 'Tiger Devil Slash', and one use of the extraordinarily fearsome 'Tiger Satan Heart Piercing Barrage'. The moves have all been sealed into the cards by the elites in Fero
cious Tiger Sect who spent a huge amount of their soul power sealing their telepathic thoughts. More importantly, such a skill card sells at only five thousand Flying Star dollars apiece. A marvelous item with a decent price. It is one of the most popular skill cards for Exos nearby."

  Chapter 445: Kermis Visiting |

  Li Yao was almost baffled. Even skills could be mass produced and sold?

  Pondering for a while, he decided to insert the skill card back to the slot of the crystal processor and reactivated the engineering crystal suit named "Rockman".

  The crystal suit had been designed for the purpose of dismantling and maintaining large starships in the vacuum of space. But the residents of Black Iron Town had added alloy plate armor and chainswords to it to make it a usable tool in a combat.

  Since it could be manipulated by an ordinary fighter, Li Yao had no trouble wearing it at all as an expert Exo.

  After reading the tutorials of the Rockman in three minutes, Li Yao took a few steps forward stumblingly.

  The Rockman seemed no different from the crystal suits that he used to wear, but it felt much more soft and gentle. Li Yao felt like he was soaked in a hot spring and couldn't tell that he was wearing a large crystal suit weighing more than ten tons.

  The buffer system and the assisting system are smartly designed. I barely need to exert my own strength. Every movement can be performed by the suit.

  The comprehensive information processing system is quite advanced, too. Most of the information has been preprocessed by the crystal suit. Only the final outcome and the most crucial information are displayed. Together with the simple and straightforward operation menu, even ordinary people will know what situation they are in and what they should do to cope with it.