by <unknown>
"One of the two parties in the war is the Imperium of True Human Beings, and the other party is the new federation, which is the unification of the Heaven's Origin Sector, the Blood Demon Sector, and the Flying Star Sector!
"Just think about it. How many dazzling sparks will burst out? How many blood-freezing stories will be told? How many unforgettable heroes, losers, and traitors will emerge in the universal war between the imperium and the new federation? Intense feelings are sure to be generated. Bloodthirst, betrayal, loyalty, determination, desperation, and hope!
"Such a way is the most delicious meal that anybody can expect. I am shivering in excitement just thinking about it!
"Compared to such a war, is the battle between the Heaven's Origin Sector and the Blood Demon Sector worth mentioning at all?
"Therefore, both of us share the same purpose here. We want the Heaven's Origin Sector, the Blood Demon Sector, and the Flying Star Sector to join hands as quickly as possible so that the new federation will have a high-speed development for a hundred years to increase its capability as much as possible. Maybe, it will be qualified, however undeservedly, to be a real opponent for the Imperium of True Human Beings, won't it?
"After all, only the evenly-matched wars are fun!
"See? I have told everything to you so frankly. You are finally assured, aren't you?"
"… Asshole! I'm even more worried right now, alright?" Li Yao said. "How can there be such a terrible monster in the world?"
The mental devil sniffed. "The two of us are mental devils for each other. We are two sides of the same coin. In other words, I know you as much as you know me. Is it really fun to pretend to be an ignorant, innocent lily?
"Stop fooling yourself. In fact, deep down in your heart, you too yearn for wars, devastating combat, dangerous rescues, and the satisfaction of one against many, don't you?
"You are as bloodthirsty as I am. You want as much killing, risk, and turbulence as I do. You hate a monotonous and lackluster world. From the magical equipment graveyard to this day, you have never changed at all. You are always the fatal vulture, aren't you?
"Why did you teleport to the Blood Demon Sector by yourself instead of following the main troop when you left the Flying Star Sector?
"Right. You knew that you were contaminated by the Blood Stripe Virus. You were unwilling to affect other people and would rather sacrifice yourself!
"What an honorable reason. What a great man of integrity who will trigger tears when other people talk about him!
"However, both you and I know that it is completely bullsh*t. It was an out-and-out lie!
"Deep down in your subconsciousness, you longed for more fierce combat, more perilous battles, and more shocking adventures, and you did not want to be bound by any rules or laws. That was all!
"Subconsciously, you knew that, if you had returned to the Heaven's Origin Sector with the main troop, you would have become a screw in the gigantic machine that is the world of Cultivators. The best you could expect is to become a relatively important unit.
"What's the word on the Nexus of the Heaven's Origin Sector? Every Cultivator has their responsibility!
"In the Heaven's Origin Sector or the Flying Star Sector, even a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator cannot do anything freely. Even battles have to be arranged and circumscribed by a set of rules. If the federal government gives you a mission that you are not interested in, can you really turn it down?
"That was the reason you chose the Blood Demon Sector.
"In this place, you are the only dominator of yourself. You are no longer affected by any rules or laws. You can kill anybody or anything you want according to your own will without any hinderance!
"The bottom line is, right above the 'Ultra-Level Federal Hero Li Yao', there is another Li Yao, one that does not belong to the federation but only belongs to himself and the Earth!
"There's no need to deny it. I know everything about your subconsciousness. Oh. Right. More precisely speaking, I am your subconsciousness!
"You know it. You've always known it."
Li Yao was silent. A wind was suddenly raging inside his brain and blew off a gold leaf from Ou Yezi's memory tree.
The mental devil extended its hand and picked the fallen leaf. It then folded the leaf from the two sides to the middle before it put on the leaf on its lips and blew at the leaf. Weird noises were echoing for a while before the mental devil suddenly coughed violently.
"Do excuse me. I haven't learned how to whistle with a tree leaf yet. Sorry for my poor performance."
"Then why are you still whistling?"
"I just feel that, while we are discussing such a profound and philosophical topic, playing the blues can significantly improve the style of our conversation."
"…" Li Yao.
"Right." The mental devil snapped away the memory piece and suddenly changed the topic. "Over the past few days, while you were training the body, I had a little adventure in the depths of our consciousness and discovered a lot of interesting stuff. Do you want to know what I have found?"
Li Yao raised his eyebrow. "What is it?"
The mental devil opened its mouth and spat out a little bug that was emitting vague gold colors like a firefly.
The body of the bug was like a round, transparent droplet of dew. However, when Li Yao focused his attention on it, he saw…
A blue world, Earth.
Hiu! Hiu!
A racing car that looked like black fire was drawing a burning line on a highway near the river at a speed that far exceeded the limits of any machinery. All the pointers and data on the dashboard were jumping crazily, until they were ripped apart into dancing streaks of brightness.
The whole of Earth was shaking violently.
"The Vulture Plan has failed. It is too formidable. We cannot destroy it!
"Run away!
"Run away to the edge of the universe and never come back. Forget everything about Earth!
"It is too strong and too dark. We cannot destroy it. We cannot destroy it in another thousand, million, or billion years!"
In the next second, the racing car of black fire seemed to have rushed out of the road, the troposphere, the stratosphere, Earth, and into the endless sea of stars.
Standing in the middle of the cosmic dust, Li Yao stared at the blue planet passionately. He declared in the vacuum, one world after another, "I am going to complete the Vulture Plan. I am going to destroy it!"
His soul shivered, and he was back to reality.
"That's it?"
"What do you think? If our consciousness can be compared to a vast ocean, the information I found was all buried in the deepest trench. It is already a miracle that we can excavate some of the pieces with our current strength!"
Li Yao pondered for a moment and said, "Therefore, the purpose of the Vulture Plan is to destroy something, a being that is extremely dark and formidable. What is it exactly?"
The mental devil opened its hands and said, "Whatever it is, it is not something that we can destroy right now.
"Maybe, that is the reason we crave for fights, adventures, and training deep down to our bones. We've always wanted to be stronger subconsciously so that we will be able to implement the Vulture Plan one day!"
Li Yao took a deep breath. He seemed to envision a road leading to the blue planet named Earth in the depths of the sea of stars.
It was a road of thorns and flames that pierced through the entire universe and extended to infinity.
Leaning against the memory tree, the mental devil was also squinting, as if it had seen the same burning road in the universe, too. Staring attentively, it suddenly let go of the amusement on its face. It turned very tranquil and mumbled, "It's a brilliant path, isn't it?"
Li Yao smiled and nodded. He strode toward his own road.
Chapter 972: Problem of the Cosmos Ring |
Five days later, on the ocean three hundred kilometers west of Void Turmoil City, a devilish warship that was pretendi
ng to be a gray whale slowly popped up and spurted out a giant pillar of water into the sky.
Inside the devilish warship, Li Yao was observing the situation in Void Turmoil City through the biochemical eye hidden inside the water pillar wholeheartedly.
Naturally, it was impossible to see the details due to the long distance. He could only sense the turbulent magnetic field and burning flames of demonic energy above Void Turmoil City.
Having just experienced a great battle, the city was now still heavily besieged by the coalition army of demons.
The elites of the Sea Clan in the coalition army were guarding the water in front of them. Therefore, the devilish warship of the Blade of Chaos did not dare draw any closer and simply dropped Li Yao there.
He could only count on himself for the rest of the journey.
Li Yao rejected taking any companions.
Firstly, the training of the three tactical squads of Skyfire had not been completed yet. They had to seize every second to practice in order to carry out the important missions to come soon.
Secondly, the mission of sneaking into Void Turmoil City, which had been occupied and besieged, and bringing someone out would not necessarily have a better result when there were more hands.
With Li Yao's current capability, unless his teammates were of the same level as the Fire Ant King, others would only be adding to his trouble.
If he was not able to complete a mission, another hundred or so teammates would not help much!
"President."
Standing behind Li Yao, Yuchi Ba said respectfully, "The overall structural design of Void Turmoil City, including the hundreds of secret channels mixed among the drainage canals when we built the city, have been saved in your crystal processor. Through the secret channels, you will be able to show up in any place inside Void Turmoil City. Of course, that is, if you pass through the undersea defense line guarded by the Sea Clan first."
"Understood." Li Yao nodded. "You will wait for me here and closely watch the situation in Void Turmoil City. If everything goes well, I will bring Jin Xinyue out in half a day. If there's something wrong, meet me at the three backup rendezvous points in one day, three days, and seven days respectively. If you don't see me in any of the rendezvous points, you will stop waiting and return to the Mysterious Shadow Domain directly. Jin Xinyue and I will figure out what to do on our own."
Shua!
Li Yao stuck his right index finger and middle finger to the center of his eyebrow and summoned the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.
The newborn Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit enveloped his body like a stream of thick, black liquid that consolidated instantly in a hideous form. The seemingly withered muscles and shells expanded continuously and unleashed such intense demonic energy that it condensed into black spirals around the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, making everybody on the devilish warship shake in fear.
If an ignorant Cultivator had seen such a view, he would certainly be extremely vigilant with the misconception that the greatest devil had arrived!
Li Yao inwardly frowned. This is too eye-catching. I really didn't see this coming.
A lot of biochemical materials had been added to the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit during the modification, transforming it toward a perfect combination of a crystal suit and a biochemical beast. Such a methodology had significantly improved the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit's performance, but it had also raised an issue that had never occurred to Li Yao before.
The Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, which was covered in tremendous living cells, could no longer be stored in a Cosmos Ring!
Generally speaking, Cosmos Rings could not be used to store living creatures.
It was because the functioning mechanism of most of Cosmos Rings was that the molecular structure of a three-dimensional object would be compressed into a 'four-dimensional amalgamation' of a higher density. Then, when the object was to be retrieved, the Cosmos Ring would unfold the 'four-dimensional amalgamation' in the three-dimensional space.
For example, if a newspaper was too large to be carried, it could be compressed hard into a cluster so that it would be able to be stuffed into a small space handily.
It was a compression from the two-dimensional space to the three-dimensional space.
When one meant to read the newspaper again, he would only need to take out the paper ball and open it, restoring it to the two-dimensional level.
It was not hard to imagine that when a newspaper was unfolded after being rolled into a ball, there would be certainly a lot of crinkles on the surface, and a lot of fibers that were invisible to the human eyes must have been fractured, too.
The storage of the Cosmos Rings was the same. The process of compression and extraction would deal a certain amount of damage to the object.
For the lifeless objects, such tiny damage could be overlooked, and their original properties and functions could be maintained, like a crinkled newspaper that could still accommodate readable information.
However, for cells that were highly competent, especially the braincells used for thinking, such damage was hardly resistible.
Countless savants among both human beings and demons had been dedicated to the project of storing living creatures with Cosmos Rings.
However, the best result after thousands of years of research was that some of the cells could maintain minimal activity inside the Cosmos Ring through the protection of special rune arrays.
Li Yao had once utilized the special preservation rune arrays to preserve a huge amount of food inside his Cosmos Rings, which could keep the freshness and the spiritual energy contained inside the food for several years. It was an application of the technology in reality.
But there was still a long distance to go from food to a living being.
It was especially so for the braincells, which were most mysterious and feeble in a living creature. After being 'folded' and 'unfolded', even if the living creature did not seem any different, their brain nerves might have been seriously damaged.
It was the reason why biochemical beasts could not be stored inside Cosmos Rings. After all, the core of a biochemical beast was the biochemical brain, which, although did not boast self-awareness, had to maintain a high activity in order to handle the computation of astronomical information.
Thankfully, the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was not entirely a biochemical beast, and its core was still a crystal processor with a tough performance.
In order to fit the brand new Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit into the Cosmos Rings, Li Yao, the Fire Ant King, and the other experts came up with all kinds of whimsical approaches that late proved to be failures without exception.
In the end, the Fire Ant King proposed a solution.
Although the Cosmos Rings could not be used to store living creatures, they were fine with dead bodies.
From ancient times to present day, Cultivators had often thrown materials such as bones or cores into their Cosmos Rings after the hunted down animals or demon beasts. If they had excavated some rarely-seen wood, they would often stuff the treasure into their Cosmos Ring casually, too. It had never been reported that the specifications of the objects were any different when they were retrieved again.
It was evidence that the storage of the Cosmos Ring would not jeopardize the intactness of cells.
Many crystal suits were directly built with tremendous Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. Even the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit had adopted a lot of materials that were ripped off from Skeleton Dragon's body after the battle on Boneyard.
Other than the tough bones, a lot of high-extensible, soft materials had been applied. At that time, the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit had still been able to be stored in the Cosmos Rings freely.
Therefore, Li Yao and the Fire Ant King came to the conclusion that, if the braincells were not involved, as long as the activity of the cells was kept to the minimum level, it was possible that the cells would not be hurt during the 'folding' and 'unfolding' of the Cosmos Rings.
The Fire Ant King had done some research before. He had even developed a cell depressor based on the assumption, which could significantly reduce the activity of the cells and set them into the 'hibernation' or 'apparent death' state.
The Fire Ant King planned to store the biochemical beasts in Cosmos Rings in such a way so that the portability of the ultimate weapons could be greatly improved.
However, such a 'hibernating drug' proved to cause great damage to the braincells. The biochemical brains could not be 'unfrozen' after they 'hibernated'. He could not make any progress however many experiments he conducted. Eventually, he had to abandon the project.
Since the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was not using a biochemical brain, it was not a problem. After being injected with the 'hibernating drug', the strengthened cells on the surface of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit all entered the 'hibernation' state, and the activity of the cells were lowered to the minimum, which allowed them to withstand the damage during the 'folding' and 'unfolding'.
After the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was retrieved from the Cosmos Ring, it would be injected with an activation drug, which would stimulate the mitochondria inside the hibernating cells to burn furiously and restore their activity!
In such a way, the storage problem of the brand new Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was solved, although not entirely satisfactorily.
The 'hibernation' and 'activation' would both take one to two seconds, which could be quite an annoying lag in an ever-changing battlefield. However, after analyzing the pros and cons carefully, Li Yao still believed that it was acceptable to trade a few seconds for the significant improvement in performance.
After all, it was new technology and a piece of new magical equipment that had just been invented. A lot of problems would definitely occur, but the technical issues could be slowly addressed by the technical improvement. As a refiner with keen senses, Li Yao had high hopes for such a piece of new magical equipment.
What was most dissatisfying for him was that, when the activation drug was deployed to awaken the biochemical cells attached to the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, the mitochondria inside the cells would burn furiously because of the stimulation and unleash incessant demonic energy, to the point that visible black swirls would condense around his body. It was indeed too eye-catching!