Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

by <unknown>

  "Besides, most people carry their Cosmos Rings with them. For suspicious space pirates who didn't trust anyone, like Fengyu Ming, it's simply impossible that he kept his Cosmos Rings elsewhere, at least not all of them.

  "However, I didn't find a single Cosmos Ring among the residue.

  "The only possibility is that the mysterious murderer took his Cosmos Rings away after killing him.

  "Fengyu Ming was thrown into the crystal reactor alive. Therefore, his Cosmos Rings were taken away before he was killed. At that time, there was still a horde of space pirates outside. There was definitely not much time for an interrogation. Ten minutes, tops.

  "Fengyu Ming should've known that he was dead for sure after he was captured. Then, here comes the billion-dollar question.

  "If it were any of us, would we have been confident to make a space pirate who was clear of his fate surrender all his Cosmos Rings nicely?"

  Cold sweat was appearing on Bai Kaixin's and Lei Dalu's foreheads. Both of them had slain countless space pirates and were well aware of the difficulty of handling the evil, malicious, and cunning foxes.

  It might not be hard to kill them, but it was a whole different matter to make them submit their secrets, magical equipment, and Cosmos Rings.

  It was especially so when it came to Cosmos Rings, which were small, hard, and easily concealable. The experienced space pirates had ten thousand ways to hide them.

  Moreover, a lot of assets and even magical equipment could be stored inside a Cosmos Ring, which might be the only hope for the space pirate to reverse the situation. There was no way that they could hand it over until they were tortured to an unbearable point.

  How did the mysterious man get them within several minutes?

  Bai Kaixin and Lei Dalu both felt that a chill run down their spines. They seemed able to envision that, in a dark, gloomy engine compartment, an obscure phantom was tormenting Fengyu Ming in ways that they couldn't fathom and made the guy succumb within several minutes.

  "Let's put Fengyu Ming aside for a moment and check these three crystal suits."

  Xiong Tao turned to another three wrecked crystal suits. He pointed to the damage on them and said, "Iron Tiger Battlesuits are best known for the plate armor on the front. There are two small launchers that can send out flying swords in its chest. But someone has torn open the crystal suit in one attack with a piece of claw-shaped magical equipment, avoiding all the solid structures. The heart of the Exo inside was ruined on the spot.

  "This Gold Eagle Battlesuit was slashed open from the left shoulder to the ribs on the right. All the joints in between have been cut through, even including the plate armor on the back. Of course, the Exo inside couldn't be more dead.

  "As for this Phantom Spider Battlesuit, its helmet now looks more like a honeycomb. We found part of a broken shell and yet failed to determine what it was made of after all the thorough analysis!

  "Those clean, straightforward wounds give me that feeling that it was not a fight, not even a massacre, but a… dissection!

  "Yes. A dissection. Those brutal space pirates were no better than corpses on the slab faced with a sharp scalpel when they confronted the mysterious man!

  "My conclusion is—

  "Firstly, the mysterious man is particularly good at melee combat. It's likely that he hasn't advanced into the Core Formation Stage yet, but his abundant battle experience made up for that. His attacks were deadly and effective.

  "Moreover, he has a far deeper understanding of crystal suits than common Exos do. Or rather, it may be a natural gift of his. Like a shark that can smell blood hundreds of kilometers away, he can perceive the gaps and weaknesses of every crystal suit precisely!

  "But the knowledge alone was not enough to inflict such perfect wounds.

  "He should also be in possession of several pieces of extremely powerful magical equipment, or even a super crystal suit made of magical equipment that has been refined out of materials beyond our recognition. Even I can't evaluate the level of such a crystal suit.

  "If I am to give a summary of the guy, he is… extremely dangerous!"

  Bai Kaixin took a long breath and asked, "Anything else?"

  "Yes!"

  Xiong Tao nodded and projected dozens of holographs from his mini crystal processor. "These are pictures of the explosion scenes on Ghost Jail that I took. I have located thirty-three points of explosion so far.

  "Blowing up a starship, even from the inside, is not an easy task. Starships have been built to withstand explosions. The fast-response filling foams can suppress an explosion and the resulting fire, too.

  "The points of explosions were not randomly selected but carefully calculated. The most critical places were chosen so that the most damage could be done with the fewest crystal bombs. The guy even took the distribution of crystal tubes into consideration so that more enemies would be affected by the explosions.

  "Proficient! He was definitely a proficient explosion expert!"

  Bai Kaixin's white eyebrows suddenly moved although there was no wind. He extended three fingers and said calmly, "So, there was an interrogation expert, a melee expert wearing a super crystal suit, and an explosion expert who worked together to take down Fengyu Ming and sabotage Ghost Jail before we were able to do so?"

  Lei Dalu grinned and said, half smiling, "Maybe, it was not three of them, but one. The mainframe crystal processor of Ghost Jail must've stored the surveillance footage of the entire starship. Even if it was damaged by the explosions, I believe Uncle Xiong must have methods to recover the information inside. Let's dig it out and there are bound to be traces of this mysterious man."

  Xiong Tao squinted and said coldly, "And here comes the most important point."

  What appeared in the light beam was the broken mainframe crystal processor of Ghost Jail. It had been cleaned up preliminarily, but there was a shocking hole in the center of it.

  Xiong Tao pointed at the hole and said, "Look. The information storage chip group of the mainframe crystal processor is supposed to be in this place. But right now, the place has been messed up. It seems somebody stabbed their hands in and uprooted the entire chip group by force."

  Lei Dalu's eyebrows almost flew off, yet he even had the mood to whistle.

  Xiong Tao sighed and said, "But that is still not the most surprising part.

  "The most surprising part for me is what happened to the alarm system. Nineteen alarm rune arrays, sixteen in plain sight and three hidden, were deployed in the mainframe crystal processor of Ghost Jail.

  "The alarm rune arrays are kept in the hibernation state during the peacetime. When somebody attacks the mainframe crystal processor, they automatically trigger and erase all the critical data inside it.

  "But as it turns out, although the chip group was uprooted forcefully, none of the rune arrays were activated.

  "Do you understand? It's like a crazy, brawny man slashed you two hundred times with a rusted blade recklessly, but none of the attacks reached the critical parts of your body. Not half of your veins or nerves were injured!

  "This is a real expert in magical equipment who has a profound understanding of the internal structure of the mainframe crystal processor. Impressive. Very impressive!"

  Lei Dalu grinned. "Is he even more skilled than Uncle Xiong?"

  Xiong Tao shook his head and said, "It's not comparable.

  "The world of magical equipment has too many crossroads, each of which lead to an unknown destination. Even the best refiners can't boast that they are experts in every kind of magical equipment.

  "My research field is super large magical equipment, and I've been working on starships. In regard to refinement, maintenance and modification of starships, I'm confident that I'm as good as anyone.

  "This mysterious man, on the other hand, must've focused more on personal magical equipment, namely flying swords, battle sabers, firearms, and crystal suits. He is an expert in these regards.

  "In our Great Horn Exo Society, Old Ji
e and Little Mai can both be call crystal suit experts. But sadly, they were both killed in the big explosion last time.

  "As for me, I'm truly uncertain whether or not I can beat this guy in the field of crystal suits."

  Both Lei Dalu and Bai Kaixin were greatly shocked.

  Only those who were well aware of Xiong Tao's background knew what a high evaluation he had just given!

  Chapter 459: Stormy Sword, Cut Your Throat! |

  After a tiny cracking noise as if a few strings inside his brain broke off, Li Yao's eyes were filled with blood, and the world was swirling around him, giving him a strong sense of nausea.

  Not good. My computational ability ran too high. The cerebrovascular vessels were broken again.

  And not one of them, but many. I'm going to be paralyzed!

  Li Yao hurriedly stopped contemplating. His boiling brain cells gradually calmed down. He quickly picked out a few drugs from the myriad of medications beside him. Half of the drugs were taken orally, while the other half were smeared on his temples.

  The drugs spread throughout his brain and fixed his cerebrovascular vessels, which were as wide as a spider's web, together with his thousands of spiritual threads.

  Three minutes later, more than ten lackluster pearls of blood popped up on Li Yao's forehead. The internal bleeding inside his brain had been drained.

  The blood-red in Li Yao's eyes gradually disappeared. He felt refreshed and took a long, relieved breath.

  This was the seventeenth brain bleeding for him in two days.

  It could not be helped. A side effect of bringing up his brain activity and computational ability exponentially in the Super Perceptive State was that the burden for the cerebrovascular vessels would greatly increase, too. The blood would be flowing hundreds of times faster inside the brain.

  Veins and nerves were the body parts that were the hardest to be trained. When they were functioning at hundreds of times their capacity, naturally, they would explode from time to time.

  I have to find a few Cultivation arts that focus on the training of cerebrovascular vessels some day in order to improve the toughness of my cerebrovascular vessels. Without a large enough blood supply, my computational ability can barely do me any good.

  Li Yao was gazing at the light beams in the midair on which hundreds of structural designs were still glittering. But due to his plummeting computational ability after exiting the Super Perceptive State, he couldn't even understand any of them.

  These were the files whose difficulty had been classified as Level 6.

  Over the past two days, Li Yao had grasped the files up to Level 5, but he was somehow stuck in Level 6.

  Everyone knows best what they are good at. His research field had been small magical equipment and crystal suits. As for super-large comprehensive systems like a starship, he had hardly touched upon them before, and his knowledge about them was little to none.

  The first five levels of the maintenance manual had basically covered all the common faults that may happen to a starship and their corresponding solutions. A lot of articles were on the modifications of a starship for a specified environment. After he understood them, the basic maintenance and modification work would be no trouble for him.

  Starting from Level 6, the truly mysterious and sophisticated core units were involved. Many theories that Li Yao had never heard of popped up, too.

  Two months, or even two years, of devotion to them without the enlightenment of a master might not be enough to comprehend all of them, not to mention that he only had two days.

  Li Yao was well aware of the limitlessness of the world of magical equipment. He had never intended to become a starship specialist, either. Therefore, he simply turned off the light beam and unplugged the jade chip.

  The structural designs and spiritual energy flowcharts of hundreds of commonly-seen magical equipment of the Flying Star Sector stored inside the jade chip, on the other hand, had been analyzed and processed without much trouble.

  Most of the magical equipment fell into the category of middle- or small-scale magical equipment, which was precisely what Li Yao was good at. Many kinds of magical equipment shared a lot of similarities with their counterparts of the Heaven's Origin Sector. Therefore, it didn't take long before Li Yao grasped all of them.

  With the scattered components of the training area, Li Yao assembled twelve inconspicuous alarms to monitor the pathways around him.

  Once everyone approached the area, the alarms would not ring out, but send a telepathic thought to an iron scrap that Li Yao wore close to his body. A feeble buzz would be triggered so that he would know somebody was coming.

  Over the past two days, Li Yao had examined every corner of the training area and made sure that there was no surveillance magical equipment.

  Together with these alarms, the training area would be his own kingdom.

  Extending twelve spiritual threads to ensure that the alarms were functioning normally, Li Yao smiled and took out the three Cosmos Rings that he looted from Fengyu Ming.

  During the two days, other than cleaning up the debris and studying the starship maintenance manual, Li Yao had also spent some time examining two of the Cosmos Rings.

  The first Cosmos Ring contained a lot of high-nutrition food and clean water, both of which were not very worthy. But they had been preserved in the best storage rune arrays and wouldn't go sour even if they were kept in the Cosmos Ring for decades. Even a gluttonous Cultivator would be able to feed themself up for several years with the supplies inside.

  Inside the second Cosmos Ring was a huge amount of Flying Star dollars, gold, diamonds, crystals, and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures that were much more valuable than cash and jewelry.

  By his preliminary estimation, Li Yao had come to the conclusion that the load of money was enough to buy quite a few decent crystal suits or even a small second-hand carrier with a few crew members who preferred money to life.

  As for the third Cosmos Ring, which was the most discreet and had been refined into the appearance of a capsule…

  Li Yao casually retrieved all the objects inside the Cosmos Ring and placed them on the ground, before he stared at them in great interest.

  Miscellaneous magical equipment of various kinds was lying in front of him. Li Yao tried for a long time to figure out what they were for.

  These gadgets were all magical equipment for disguise and escape.

  There was a capsule that, once crumbled and smeared on the body, would change one's skin miraculously from a young man of twenty years old to a dry, crappy old man within several seconds.

  There was also a piece soft magical equipment made of unknown materials that had the color and feeling of flesh. A muscular man could turn into a young girl with alluring curves after sticking the magical equipment to his body.

  Altogether, there were four sets of such camouflage magical equipment, with compatible clothes and identity certifications. One could pretend to be an old man, two young men with one taller and the other short, and a young girl whose face was plain but had an amazing figure very easily.

  Every one of them had background files that were tens of thousands of words long. Even the residences and professions of their remote relatives were listed clearly.

  These items almost awed Li Yao.

  Fengyu Zhong truly deserved to be known as a seasoned space pirate. No wonder he could escape from Heavenly Saints City's siege multiple times. The things that he prepared for his only son were evident enough of his cunningness.

  If Fengyu Ming had decided to abandon the starship and sneak into Star Lord Temple with that magical equipment, he really might have been able to get away.

  It was a pity that, although Fengyu Zhong had prepared quite a lot of contingency plans, he must've never anticipated that somebody would play a decapitation move on his only son inside his own starship, and that the guy would coerce his son to surrender all the Cosmos Rings with both carrots and sticks.

  What is
this?

  Other than disguise magical equipment, there were quite a lot of sordid, malicious weapons.

  For example, a needle launcher that could be hidden below the tongue and would eject poisoned needles when activated.

  Li Yao also discovered three blades that were thin, transparent, and barely recognizable unless one were to touch them with one's own hands.

  For a Cultivator that had studied 'Thousand Finger Soft Bone Technique' and boasted an amazing hand speed such as himself, the three blades couldn't be more useful.

  The last thing that he found was a ragged jade chip.

  What kind of files are stored inside the jade chip to make it qualified to be kept together with Fengyu Ming's tools for his last escape?

  Li Yao's curiosity was aroused. He inserted the jade chip into the crystal processor.

  Appearing on the light beam first was an intimidating declaration. 'Stormy Sword, Cut Your Throat!'.

  "This is—"

  Just browsing through the table of contents was enough to let Li Yao's eyes bulge wide open and his eyebrows fly over his head. He couldn't help but exclaim in disbelief.

  The 'Stormy Sword' was written by the great bandit Fengyu Zhong in person based on his decades of experience as a space pirate. To put it more simply, it was… an introduction to robbery!

  This notebook might as well be called 'A Practical Handbook for You To Become A Super Space Pirate in 100 days'!

  I understand it now. Fengyu Zhong wrote this for his only son to study in order to prepare him to succeed Storm Prison someday.

  This notebook is so detailed. If one could learn all of it, they would definitely be qualified to be a super space pirate.

  I'm the captain of Sparkle, which is currently wandering like a lone wolf in the Flying Star Sector. It's hardly likely that I will cooperate with any organizations here.

  In that sense, the strategies that Sparkle should employ are quite similar to the space pirates'!

  This notebook is definitely worth properly studying!