by <unknown>
Occasionally, the spider would jump up high and cover a distance of almost a hundred meters, passing the rough valleys and hills easily by spurting the air out below it.
Such True Qi machines were totally different from the modern magical equipment that was based on crystals and crystal processors. They were crude and primitive, but they brought an air of resolution and stubbornness with them.
Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the Great Dark Age, when the relics of the ancient Cultivators had just been excavated, such True Qi war beasts were the first to be manufactured. The humans at that time had fought against the demon beasts with them as well as the blades accelerated by spiritual gas, so that humanity could rise again!
Li Yao had thought that he could only see True Qi machines in a museum. He had never expected that he would be lucky enough to lie in one.
For a fan of magical equipment, it could almost be called a nice surprise.
However, despite the high speed of the steel spider, it was not installed with any suspension or deceleration facilities, and its structure could not have been any simpler. Every bump and quake had been precisely fed back to Li Yao's bottom, which was almost shattered into pieces.
The qi-trainers on the steel spider, on the other hand, were like seasoned sailors who had witnessed too many storms. Intense as the bumps might have been, they remained absolutely still, as if they were dozens of rivets that had been stabbed into the ground.
While Li Yao felt that his world was swirling, he vaguely overheard a quarrel at the front of the cabin.
One of the voices was sharp and high-pitched; it seemed to belong to Wu Mayan, who was declaring, "I did not run away secretly! I was out on a hunting trip! I have surpassed the 11th level of the Refinement Stage! I'm not a child, nor one of the pussies from space! I need to prove to everyone that I am an out-and-out warrior of Iron Plateau! I want to join the battle against the apocalypse! I want to fight the apocalypse side by side with Father Xiong!"
The other voice was deep, hoarse, and sounded like a bellowing bear. "You claim that you are not a child, and yet you made other people seriously wounded for you!"
Wu Mayan was totally rendered speechless. He was silent for a long time, before he asked, somewhat guiltily, "Father Xiong, is this uncle alright? He was quite awesome! Although he was merely in the 13th or 14th level of the Refinement Stage, he put down two Emperor Sand Scorpions barehanded with nothing but a few bones!"
'Father Xiong' replied, "He suffered heavy wounds and was poisoned by the venom of the scorpions. If it were a regular person, they would've died long ago! But he is strong. Really strong. His body is slowly recovering right now! You can tell from the countless old scars on his body that he is not someone to die easily!"
Li Yao was secretly relieved. Judging from the man's tone, he had not found any issues with him yet and was not hostile at all, at least for now.
He entered the deep sleep state again and devoted himself to the recovery of his body.
When he woke up for the third time, they had arrived at the entrance of a splendid city.
The entire city was surrounded by walls dozens of meters high. They were made up of green rocks and extended to the middle of the dense fog, making it impossible to tell how long they were. Li Yao roughly estimated that each side of the walls could be dozens of kilometers long.
Illuminated by the morning sunlight, the city wall was emitting a metallic glow. There was a giant defense rune array every ten meters or so. Countless cracks of different layers had been left on the defense arrays, clear signs that the defense rune arrays had been broken, mended, rebroken, and re-mended many times. Gory battles must have taken place over and over at the city walls.
When they drew closer, Li Yao discovered lots of askew calligraphy among the cracks, which seemed to have been carved with swords and sabers. All of the words were more than one meter in diameter and apparently written by different hands. Some of them were deeper, and some were mottled and unclear because of the erosion of wind and rain, suggesting that they might have existed for hundreds of years.
Li Yao glanced at them and remembered two lines of proud declarations quickly.
The first line was 'Reach the 100th level of the Refinement Stage if you are a man! Damn the Building Foundation! Damn the Core Formation! Damn the Nascent Soul!'
The second line looked rather ancient. It had been corroded into two shallow traces by the passage of time.
'If we cannot defend human civilization, at the very least, we can defend our savageness!'
Chapter 555: Test Passed? |
Li Yao was chewing on the two lines when the city gate, which was more than fifty meters high and had an enormous bear claw painted in the middle, was gradually pulled open together with earsplitting noises.
This was the big town of the qi-trainers' that Li Yao had seen earlier, Furious Bears City!
Li Yao half lay inside the torso of the steel spider. He pretended to be drowsy, but he was actually peeping at the outside through the gaps on the windows and observing Furious Bears City.
The scale of the city was absolutely beyond his imagination. In the Star Glory Federation, a city of such a scale would be called a metropolis with a population of hundreds of thousands.
Li Yao looked at the horizon and discovered that the city skyline was actually made of countless coruscating skyscrapers.
Those skyscrapers were all elegantly shaped and built with translucent crystals. They were neat and tidy and brought a strong feeling of perfectness. Compared to the qi-trainers' primitive and straightforward style, they were like architecture that should appear hundreds of years later.
It was not until Li Yao observed it more carefully that he noticed that the skyscrapers' shells of crystals had all been broken. Several skyscrapers had been blown into two halves down the middle. Some had even collapsed into messy mountains of garbage.
It seemed that this place was debris of a metropolis.
On the debris, a lot of simple, shabby buildings had been constructed in the same style as when human civilization had just been reborn at the end of the Great Dark Age. They were impractical, thick, dark, and clumsy. A lot of rebar was exposed to the air without any decoration, constituting a continuous forest of iron.
The southwest side of the city seemed to be the factory zone. Countless high towers stood in the area. They were all riddled with holes from which thousands of streams of black smoke were being spurted. The black smoke was the exhaust from when the spiritual gas was utilized. It formed hundreds of pillars piercing into the sky like the paths to the heaven.
Li Yao sensed a feeble spiritual wave of the fire class from there.
He immediately realized that it could be the place where the magical equipment was manufactured in the Furious Bears City. However, there was no telling how advanced their maintenance workshops were and if they were good enough for him to repair the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.
Li Yao pondered everything that he had observed carefully and was deep in thought.
The style of the buildings in the debris was very similar to that of the cities of the Star Ocean Imperium during its prime years.
But the buildings had been destroyed by a major disaster.
Many years later, survivors of the disaster had returned and established a whole new city based on the debris.
That had to be why the buildings at present were in two completely different styles, one old and the other modern.
He was going to observe the city in greater detail, but two brawny men in robes made of bear hide lifted him into a fully-sealed True Qi tank, which drove toward the center of Furious Bears City in a hurry.
Half an hour later, Li Yao was carried into a bleached building. A vague aroma of herbs was floating in the air.
It should have been the hospital of Furious Bears City.
"Mom!"
"Yan'er!"
Li Yao heard the voices of Wu Mayan and a middle-aged woman, but the middle-aged wom
an's voice sounded extremely odd and unbefitting.
"Mom. You must save this uncle. He rescued me from two Emperor Sand Scorpions!"
Wu Mayan was almost crying. He seemed to be embarrassed that Li Yao was seriously wounded because of him.
Li Yao secretly glanced around. The room was big, but it was packed with almost twenty people. Wu Mayan and a plump, middle-aged woman were standing on the left. The woman was wearing brown linen clothes. She was neat, tidy, and gave every feeling of comfort. However, she did not seem to be part of the environment.
On her right side stood almost twenty fully-armed muscular men wearing black robes made of bear hide and armed with heavy weapons!
The men's muscles were all bulging, and they were all wearing anxious faces. Even the shortest of them was more than two meters tall. They were walking to and fro in the room like a bunch of bears. Now and then, they yelled impatiently.
"Sister Lan, how is he?"
"Aunt Sha, he is not dying, is he? Although the guy is not very capable, he was brutal enough to have slain two Emperor Sand Scorpions all by himself! A tough man indeed! He should die a hero's death in the battle against the apocalypse if he is to be killed! It will be a shame if he dies now!"
"Sister Lan, you must rescue him. At least keep him breathing! We will carry him to the battlefield of the apocalypse, the most glorious destination for every warrior of Iron Plateau!"
When all the other men were shouting and yelling, the 'shortest' man in the lead was silent, as if he were a statue.
Li Yao's attention was all focused on him.
The eyes of the man were deep. His lead grey beard and scruffy hair were linked. His appearance was identical to everyone else's, except that there was a scar in the shape of a cross in the middle of his chest, as if somebody had torn open his abdomen and sewn him together in a hurry!
The room was rather big, but he seemed to be very cautious, as if fearing that, if he stretched out his arms, the entire building would be demolished by his daunting aura!
The man gave Li Yao a terrifying feeling.
It was he who was the first to rush into the cave, which was immediately occupied.
He was even more horrifying than the other raging men combined!
He was most likely Xiong Wuji, whom Wu Mayan referred to as the leader of the Furious Bears Tribe and the best warrior of the six tribes on Iron Plateau.
The middle-aged woman was apparently used to the raucousness of the qi-trainers. She assured them calmly and walked toward Li Yao.
Li Yao's heart was pounding as he knew that the middle-aged woman was the doctor of the Furious Bears Tribe. There was no choice except to resort to his acting skills now!
Swoosh!
Li Yao jumped up from the bed and crouched in a corner of the bed, while he glared at the woman with a pair of alarmed eyes, his killing intent soaring, as if he was ready to lunge out at any moment!
The human-shaped bears all exclaimed, "Don't attack!"
The middle-aged woman was as tranquil as before. She opened his hands. Two clusters of mild green brightness were released from her palms and floated toward Li Yao like two small lanterns.
Her voice fell into Li Yao's heart like soft feathers. "Don't be scared. You are in Furious Bears City of the Furious Bears Tribe. There are no demon beasts in this place. We are all your compatriots and your friends. My name is Sha Yulan. I am a doctor. The teenager you saved last night is my only son. I cannot thank you enough, and I will definitely not harm you.
"The wounds on your body are terrible. I don't know what you've been through, but you are absolutely safe now that you've arrived in Furious Bears City.
"Just let me examine you, will you?"
Li Yao seemed a bit agitated. He glanced around and uttered animalistic roars deep down his throat.
"Is he a wildling on the desert?" asked one of the qi-trainers in a low voice.
Sha Yulan replied softly, "I don't think so. He seems to be able to understand what I'm talking about. My friend, if you understand me, let me perform a full examination on you. I am just a doctor, and I'm no threat for you."
Li Yao thought of something and realized why he felt that Sha Yulan was not part of the environment.
It was because the way Sha Yulan talked, namely her accent, pitch and stress, was totally different from the rest of the Iron Plateau natives; it was more like the space residents' tone!
Thousands of thoughts filled Li Yao's mind.
In the moment of his hesitation, the two clusters of gentle light flowed into his body. They circulated around his limbs, veins, nerves, and internal organs like two warm streams. Wherever they reached, the dry cells were injected with new energy, and the speed of the recovery of his neural network was three times faster!
Countless questions were still lingering on Li Yao's mind, but he gradually relaxed despite his wariness and allowed Sha Yulan to do the rest of the examination.
"Thank you for your trust, my friend. I will cure you shortly."
Sha Yulan's voice was soft, yet there was a sense of unquestionableness in it. Li Yao felt that he could trust her for some reason.
A spiritual stripe was painted on each of Sha Yulan's fingertips. Spurred by her spiritual energy, ten bright green threads flowed out of her fingers and navigated along Li Yao's muscles and veins as the doctor examined his body carefully.
Suddenly, her fingertip shivered.
Li Yao looked at where she was looking, only to find that she was staring at the tattoo of the Black Spider Death Curse on his chest!
His heart was immediately racing again, and he felt that his lips were dry.
He did not cover up the Black Spider Death Curse because he was scared that somebody might see the camouflage and grow suspicious of him.
He had assumed that nobody on Iron Plateau would be able to tell what it was.
However, Sha Yulan's eyes stopped by the tattoo for a long time. She slightly frowned. There was no telling what she was thinking about.
Who is she exactly? Does she really come from space and happen to know of the Black Spider Death Curse?
It was not until five seconds later, when Li Yao was soaked in sweat, that Sha Yulan retreated her eyes and said slowly, "My friend, do you feel that your head is dizzy, that you cannot remember your past clearly, and that you don't even know what you are?"
Li Yao was dazed and nodded his head somewhat confusedly.
"Due to the poison of the Emperor Sand Scorpion, your brain has been seriously damaged although your body is strong enough to be recovering. Some of your memories were lost. Even your language ability might be away for a while."
Sha Yulan seemed to be explaining to Li Yao as well as the rest of the qi-trainers.
Li Yao was overjoyed. He couldn't believe that he had fooled them with such shabby acting skills.
Wu Mayan exclaimed, "Mom, you mean that the uncle's brain is wounded? Is it treatable?"
Sha Yulan replied, "The wounds on the body can be cured within several days. But the human brain is too sophisticated. I will try the best I can, but how many memories can be recovered, when his memories can be recovered, and if his memories can be recovered, will all depend on himself."
Hearing that, the qi-trainers started shouting and yelling again.
Sha Yulan frowned. She walked to Xiong Wuji and whispered to him for a while.
Xiong Wuji's eyes suddenly shone. He bellowed, "What's all the fuss about? The patient needs peace! Get out of here now! The apocalypse is coming. Go to your posts and prepare for the battle!"
Xiong Wuji was apparently very respected. The obstreperous human-shaped bears acted like they had run into a tamer when they heard him, and they all left the ward nicely.
"Your wounds are heavy, too. Go back and take a rest now. How are you going to participate in the battle of the apocalypse if you are unhealthy? Your father and I are here for him," said Sha Yulan to her son.
Wu Mayan knew that he had done something wrong, and he
did not dare disobey his mother's words. Therefore, he nodded and waved. "Uncle, you must hang in there. I'll bring you delicious food for lunch! I guarantee that you will be as strong as you can ever be, and you will distinguish yourself in the battle against the apocalypse!"
After Wu Mayan left, Xiong Wuji locked the door of the ward from the inside.
Li Yao had just calmed down, but Xiong Wuji's action made his heart beat fast again.
Sha Yulan retreated behind Xiong Wuji and asked calmly, "Alright. There are no irrelevant people here anymore. Let's talk frankly now. Who are you exactly?"
Note: "Er" as a suffix is a way to express intimateness in Chinese.
Chapter 556: Unnegotiable |
Li Yao cursed silently, not knowing whether he should play dumb or tell the truth.
Although Xiong Wuji was standing casually five meters away, the intimidating aura he released was growing exponentially, as if an invisible bear had hugged him!
Sha Yulan said, "Whoever you are, you saved my son, who is also the adopted son of Xiong Wuji, leader of the Furious Bears Tribe. We cannot thank you enough, and we mean you no harm. I wasn't lying to you on purpose, either.
"I have never seen the tattoo on your chest before, but I can sense a unique feeling of evilness from it that is the distinguishing characteristic of the Black Spider Death Curse.
"I'm aware that only those who have killed the best assassins of Black Spider Tower are likely to be harassed by the Black Spider Death Curse.
"If you are really a native of Iron Plateau, then I can't help but wonder why a member of Spider's Thorn has landed on Iron Plateau for no good reason and was killed by you."
Li Yao failed to come up with any response.
It was not entirely because of his bad acting skills. He had never expected that somebody on Iron Plateau could recognize the Black Spider Death Curse!
"My friend."