by <unknown>
He believed that such smoke would be a smaller settlement of the qi-trainers and that there wouldn't be too many experts.
When he arrived at the settlement, he could observe the reactions the qi-trainers had about his faked identity. He could also collect more information about the big town where countless beams of smoke were floating.
After he gathered enough evidence that the qi-trainers in the big town were not as cranky as those from the Burning Sun Tribe, he would be able to make his next plan.
Sorting everything out in his mind, Li Yao turned off the crystal processor and put it back into his Cosmos Ring.
This was the last time he would use his Cosmos Ring.
Tonight, he found a crevice on a meteorite mountain to crash in like an animal would, except that he released Neltharion to a tree on the top of the mountain to monitor the surroundings.
Then, he closed his eyes and perceived the wild strength of the ancient deadly beasts billions of years ago while he was inhaling and exhaling.
Tomorrow, he was going to enter a small village around forty kilometers in the southwest.
According to the scouting of Neltharion in the day, the village was not large in scale and had a population of a few hundred at best. It was unlikely that they were all qi-trainers. He should be safe to go there.
When he was half asleep, he was suddenly woken up by an earsplitting noise.
Neltharion had discovered that a True Qi tank was rushing close from the other side of the meteorite mountain!
"Hunters from the Burning Sun Tribe?"
Li Yao shuddered, the hairs all over his body standing on end. He crouched quietly inside the crevice.
The front leg of the mantis-type demon beast had been polished so many times that it was almost glittering. Its surface was dyed with the venom extracted from the roots of the corrosive thorns, which was emitting vague stink.
Li Yao gripped his saber and carefully watched from the perspective of Neltharion, only to discover that the tank was from the opposite direction of the Burning Sun Tribe and had been made in a completely different style.
This True Qi tank was even rougher and clumsier. A ring of bones and shells of demon beasts was embedded to the body of the tank, and a giant horn, which seemed to have been chopped off from a rhino-type demon beast, protruded out of its front. The paint of the tank was not the red of the Burning Sun Tribe but a dim black.
If the True Qi tank of the Burning Sun Tribe could be compared to a burning leopard, the one in front of Li Yao's eyes was a furious black bear!
Behind the tank, two exhaust pipes more than three meters long rose up to the sky, spurting steam nonstop crazily. The exits of the exhaust pipes seemed to have been installed with noise magical equipment because they were producing thunder-like fulminations. It was only a single tank, but it sounded that an old train was passing by!
The two exhaust pipes were also flagpoles, on which two enormous flags were spluttering in the wind.
On the flag was a hideous bear head, which was biting a blood-stained saber.
"Battle emblem of the Furious Bear Union!" Li Yao mumbled to himself.
Just like the Burning Sun Alliance, the Furious Bears Union was one of the six major sects of Heavenly Saints City. It was even slightly stronger than the Burning Sun Alliance.
Previously, on the carrier of the Temple of Immortals, Huangpu Shiyi had asked their subordinates to pretend to be the Exos from the Furious Bears Union who had come to rescue Li Yao, only to be seen through instantly.
The flag of the Burning Sun Tribe is identical to the battle emblem of the Burning Sun Association, and the battle emblem of the Furious Bear Union has appeared on this True Qi tank right now. This is getting more and more interesting!
Li Yao observed more carefully and found that the one who was riding on the iron beast more than six meters long and spurring it forward with his spiritual gas was only a teenager.
The teenager was a bit slender, but there was ruthlessness on his face. He was wearing a hat made of mottled bear fur and two pads made of bear claws, the talons of which were still shining, on his shoulders.
A saber was held to the left side of the tank, and a hammer even longer than himself was dangling down from the right side of the tank, emitting rattling noises and raising sparks as it hit the ground during the rush.
There were no other qi-trainers behind the teenager. He was riding through the perilous desert late at night all by himself!
Something seemed to be chasing after the teenager in the desert behind him. A dragon of sand was rising up from the ground, and then it collapsed and became a valley several meters deep, as if something was tunneling below the ground.
Chi!
Riding the True Qi tank, the teenager took a large turn in the smoke and suddenly accelerated and sprinted toward where he had come from, directly at the object that was pursuing him!
BOOM!
A black shadow suddenly dashed out of the sand in front of the teenager. Its two pincers were more than one meter long, and its tail was even thicker than Li Yao's waist, with a glittering venomous needle at the tip!
"Emperor Sand Scorpion!"
Li Yao's face color changed.
It was one of the most brutal demon beasts he had met on Iron Plateau.
It had a steel-like armor covering its body that was almost weapon-proof. The venomous sting on the tail could be spurted out. As long as it touched one's skin, one would be entirely paralyzed in less than three seconds.
The opening and closing of the pincers displayed their enormous strength and could block Li Yao's vibration saber easily. Such a demon beast could also sneak below the ground in the stealth mode at an amazing high speed!
Its only weakness was that, the moment it spurted its venomous needles, the joints of its shell would slightly open and reveal its fatal core.
It was a valuable lesson Li Yao had learned after paying the serious damage to his Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit as the tuition fee.
Yet, the teenager had crashed face to face into an Emperor Sand Scorpion, which even Li Yao did not dare to mess around with. After an earsplitting boom, the horn in the front of the tank pierced into the shell of the Emperor Sand Scorpion deeply and instantly knocked it over!
At the moment of the collision, the teenager had jumped high with his saber and hammer in his hands and landed on the abdomen of the Emperor Sand Scorpion softly, his spiritual gas surging out. He then held his saber behind him, waved the hammer with both of his hands, and smashed down at the Emperor Sand Scorpion's abdomen brutally!
Are you kidding me? A teenager above the 10th level of the Refinement Stage? What kind of monster is this!
Li Yao was so startled that his eyes almost bulged out.
The teenager's fluent movements ended with sparks and noises. The shell on the abdomen of the Emperor Sand Scorpion was as solid as its other body parts, like countless overlapping shields that had been melded together. It was not something that a hammer could break.
In the blink of an eye, the Emperor Sand Scorpion had already knocked the teenager to the ground. The fierce battle raised a sandstorm, which wreathed both the human and the beast!
In less than three minutes, the teenager's long hammer was tossed far away from the sandstorm, followed by himself; he was sent flying like a kite that had lost the string. But before he landed, he had already picked up his saber. He glared at his opponent with a pair of ruthless eyes.
The teenager was soaked in blood.
There were wounds all over his body. Not any part of his flesh was intact. The wound on his left shoulder was deep to the bone, indicating that the attack could've chopped off his left arm. Such heavy injuries were unendurable even for many adult Cultivators in the space, but the teenager's face remained unchanged, except that his thick eyebrow had almost dropped off!
Li Yao was secretly surprised. He slithered toward the teenager like a viper sneaking among the crevices.
"I am Wu Mayan of
the Furious Bears Tribe, the adopted son of Xiong Wuji, and a true warrior of Iron Plateau! I am not one of the cowards in space! Bring it on, you pest!"
The young man waved his saber, but his voice seemed to be trembling, as if he had been wronged before and was about to burst into tears at any moment.
Li Yao pondered his words carefully. Was the Furious Bears Tribe really related to the Furious Bears Union?
His speed was neither slowed down because of his contemplation nor did he accelerate because of the dangerous situation that the teenager was in.
He kept the same speed because the Emperor Sand Scorpion was extremely wary. Even the slightest traces might be discovered. Once it snuck underground and lurked, Li Yao was not confident that he could even save himself, let alone the teenager.
The teenager's blood zigzagged down the saber and had dyed it almost entirely red. He roared and rushed into the sandstorm again, only to be blown back in less than twenty seconds with a crisp sound resulting from his broken saber!
The Emperor Sand Scorpion dashed out of the sandstorm and lunged at the teenager!
Right when it raised its tail high and launched one of its venomous needles, Li Yao sprinted from the darkness like a lightning!
He threw the mantis leg in his left hand toward the venomous needle, deviating it from its trajectory toward the heart of the teenager. At the same time, he bashed the hammer on the head of the Emperor Sand Scorpion into pieces. The remaining handle of the hammer was the shank of a tiger, which was sharp and looked like a hollow dagger.
Shua!
The 'dagger' pierced precisely through the only gap on the shell of the Emperor Sand Scorpion and into the venom gland in the center of its body.
Chi!
A spring of dark green venom soared up from the gap and sprayed into the air with a stinky smell.
Chapter 554: Defend the Savageness |
Li Yao kicked the teenager away and dodged the incoming venom himself.
The venom hit the ground with screeching noises, leaving deep, shocking holes on the solid rocks.
The Emperor Sand Scorpion in so much pain that it was bashing its tail and writhing on the ground, and yet it failed to remove the hollow shank from back.
The venom gland was like its heart, and the venom was the essence of its life. After three minutes of spraying, it gradually slowed down. The Emperor Sand Scorpion collapsed helplessly and died.
Li Yao jumped forward and removed the shank, half of which had been stained with the venom. It was a good material for refining and shouldn't be wasted.
The teenager sat on the ground and breathed heavily for three minutes, before he finally returned to himself from the shock of near death.
He was looking at Li Yao with appreciation and admiration, if not with a bit confusion, because he did not understand how Li Yao put down the big guy with just half of a bone blade.
Li Yao scratched his nose while he thought of more than ten possible plans to elicit information from the stranger. He then jumped off the back of the Emperor Sand Scorpion.
While he was in midair, he was suddenly greatly alarmed. After an earsplitting explosion, another Emperor Sand Scorpion that was in scarlet and smaller in size dashed out from the sand below him!
Li Yao's pupils constricted violently.
Damn. A pair of Emperor Sand Scorpions, one male and the other female, were in the company of each other!
Emperor Sand Scorpions were solitary demon beasts. They would never go hunting together unless it was their mating season.
It was quite unfortunate of him to have run into two Emperor Sand Scorpions!
Female Emperor Sand Scorpions were smaller, but they were faster, and their venom was deadlier!
Are you kidding me?
Did I use up all my luck during the battle in space? Why do such things keep happening to me?
Seeing that the Emperor Sand Scorpion was wielding its coldly blinking pincers at him, and there being no time to change his direction at this moment, Li Yao could do nothing except to roar and accelerate toward the enemy, waving whatever was left of his bone blade!
…
"Uncle, hang in there. You can't die!"
In a trance, Li Yao felt that he was a small boat on a raging ocean, one whose shell was broken and whose cabin was half filled with water.
The events of the previous few hours had become confused memories. From the intermittent pictures, he recalled that, soaked in blood, he had kicked apart half of the Emperor Sand Scorpion's pincer with brute force and gritted his teeth to take one of its venomous stings while he took the opportunity to pierce the broken pincer into the gap of its shell, thus finishing the pest.
He couldn't remember what happened later very clearly. He seemed to have been dragged into a cave by the teenager named Wu Mayan from the Furious Bears Tribe.
Wu Mayan had collected a lot of plants, rubbed their sap, and smeared it on his wounds. He had also brought out copious amounts of a fragrant drug and poured it into his mouth.
But his wounds were still burning like fire. They were red and swollen, as if a deadly chilopod had crawled on his body.
Li Yao felt amused. When he had faced off with Fengyu Zhong, a Core Formation Stage Cultivator, everything had remained under his control.
Yet, he had been humiliated by two little bugs.
I've been poisoned.
The venomous sting at the tail of the Emperor Sand Scorpion can cause nerve damage. If I were a common Cultivator, it might have taken half a month before I could get out of bed.
Even for me, it will take me an entire day to fully mend all the neural network if I dedicate all my spiritual energy to the job.
But the most important thing is that I survived!
Whatever is coming for me, just bring it on! I'm already the most unfortunate person in the world. I don't believe that I can be any unluckier! Li Yao thought to himself in discontent, anger flowing on his face.
Wu Mayan saw it and exclaimed in wild joy, "Uncle, you're awake? How wonderful! You must hang in there! I set off distress firework. Somebody is going to rescue us in a moment!
"My foster father is Xiong Wuji, the leader of the Furious Bears Tribe and the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau! My mother is the greatest doctor of the Furious Bears Tribe! She'll definitely cure you when we're back in Furious Bears City!"
Li Yao was utterly dumbfounded.
Le—leader of the Furious Bears Tribe, the best warrior of the six tribes on Iron Plateau?
You've got to me kidding me!
The title sounds rather impressive. The man must be unbelievably strong, at least much stronger than that Yan Chihuo!
Furious Bears City? Is it the enormous town of qi-trainers where beams of smoke have been popping up all day long?
Li Yao felt his head going dizzy, and he almost passed out.
He had planned to stop by the villages at the periphery of the desert first and see the qi-trainers' reactions to him.
He was not ready to deal with an opponent that was known to be 'the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau' when he had only just gotten started!
The best warrior! The man must be higher than the 80th level of the Refinement Stage, if not the 100th level. If he were to notice anything wrong about him, he could easily kill him with just a sneeze!
But since the poison from the scorpion had not been cleared yet, he had barely any physical strength right now, and he couldn't even run away at the moment.
Li Yao cursed Wu Mayan with the most profane language in his mind. Why did you come out late at night to hunt demon beasts alone instead of staying in Furious Bears City like a nice kid would?
But it could not be helped right now. He could only force himself to enter the deep sleep state and try to fix his damaged nerves as quickly as possible by summoning the primordial force inside his cells.
Later, he was awakened several times.
The first time, he was woken up by a series of rumblin
g noises that seemed to indicate that ten thousand iron beasts were gathering on the desert for a concert.
Then, Wu Mayan danced with great joy and shouted, "Father Xiong! Father Xiong! We are here!"
Li Yao sensed that a man with daunting aura crammed into the cave.
The cave was rather spacious, but this particular 'Father Xiong' was like a giant whose head could reach the sky. He gave Li Yao tremendous pressure even when he was still ten meters away.
Li Yao panicked. He was not ready to confront the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau yet. Therefore, he simply forced himself to enter the deep sleep state again and continued healing his wounds in order to avoid talking to 'Father Xiong'!
The second time, he was woken up by bumping.
At that moment, they were moving through the desert, accompanied by the morning star.
What Li Yao was placed on was a big crawling True Qi machine with six feet that looked like a spider but billions of times larger. The six long legs were all crafted with steel, packed with coldly shining rivets on them.
The torso of the machine was two round expansive cabins that could accommodate dozens of people at the same time. On the two sides of the torso were more than twenty turrets that were all heavy True Qi cannons more than half a meter in diameter.
Twenty brawny man, whose muscles were glimmering because of sweat, were standing on the two sides of the cabin. In front of each of them, a hollow iron tube riddled with holes was placed.
The iron tubes were surrounded by two dents in the shape of hands where they could put their hands.
The engine compartment was the destination of all the iron tubes.
The brawny men were like crew members who were rowing a boat. Listening to the drumming of a leader in the front, they echoed "Hee—Hah" in a fixed pattern.
While they shouted, the spiritual gas inside their body surged out through their hands and into the hollow iron tubes!
It appeared that the brawny men were all above the 10th level of the Refinement Stage!
The spiritual gas that the twenty qi-trainers unleashed was transmitted to the engine compartment in the rear through the hollow iron tubes. It was then redistributed, enhanced, and sent to the six long legs of the machine to drive the steel spider forward at a speed that was no lower than that of the True Qi tanks.