by <unknown>
Supervising Heiye Lan had many benefits for Li Yao personally.
On one hand, he could take the chance to study the secret arts and techniques of the Imperium of True Human Beings.
In the more extreme situation, he could even consider killing Heiye Lan directly, thereby stopping the Ancient Sages Sector from joining the Black Wind Fleet once and for all!
Of course, such a course of action would definitely lead to recoil. There was no telling what kind of madness the Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector would do in their fury after they found that they had been tricked.
All in all, he would have one more option in his basket.
"I am not as optimistic as you," the mental devil said coldly in his brain. "I'm thinking about a story."
"What story?" Li Yao asked.
"Two countries are at war. A is a spy that Country 1 sends to Country 2. One day, A receives a mission to secretly escort B, a spy of Country 1, to the headquarters. According to A's supervisor, B doesn't know that his identity has been exposed yet. So, on the surface, the two of them are just on a trip to the headquarters to report for duty together.
"A knows that great responsibility is on his shoulders, and he must not expose his identity. Having no choice, he can only sacrifice 'B', his compatriot.
"Therefore, on the way, A and B, the two spies of Country 1 who don't know each other's identity, set up all kinds of traps and schemes for each other. Eventually, A finally 'escorts' B to the headquarters despite all the dangers!
"However, after they arrive, A and B are both captured!
"As it turns out, Country 2 knew that A and B are both spies but did not want to alarm them. So, they devised such a subtle trap by telling A to escort B in secret and telling B to escort A in secret. In fact, the two spies were escorting and fighting their own people, while Country 2 took advantage and captured the two spies with the least trouble!"
"A childish story," Li Yao remarked calmly. "There are too many loopholes. It's impossible that such things happen in reality."
"Indeed, it is impossible," the mental devil said. "However, when a spy from the Star Glory Federation supervises a spy from the Imperium of True Human Beings, he may be supervised by the locals of the Ancient Sages Sector. Such a sparrow-mantis-cicada story can definitely happen!"
Chapter 1530: Tartarean General! |
Li Yao felt creepy again after hearing the mental devil's conspiracy theory.
However, on second thought, hesitating like that was meaningless!
Whether or not the two Divinity Transformation Stage had seen through his real identity was beyond his control.
Since it was beyond his control, he might as well leave it aside and simply focus on what he was in charge of cautiously!
Meng Chixin was quite right about one thing. If one wanted to forge iron, one would need something tougher than iron. What he needed to do was grab all the critical factors within his control and simply leave the rest of them be!
The destiny of the Star Glory Federation will not end here. I believe that the future of humanity will be on our side!
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao stared at the two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators, his eyes glittering, as he declared, "Alright. I will certainly try my best without sparing anything to accomplish your three missions, seniors. I will do what I can to fight for the best future of the Ancient Sages Sector!"
"Great!" Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun were both moved. "Next—"
"What are your orders, seniors?" Li Yao said solemnly. "Please do tell me!"
Meng Chixin shook his head. "Nothing more. Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture, you will be making great contributions if you can accomplish the three tasks. We are not demanding people who do not know the importance of rewards. Now that you have taken the three most arduous and critical tasks, you are definitely entitled to the greatest share of the treasure. The twelve of us will each pick a Colossus later anyway. Why don't you choose first, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture?"
Wu Suiyun chuckled nearby, too. "You can take your time to feel all the Colossi placed here, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture. Trust your instincts and see which Colossus is connected with you."
I get to choose any Colossus?
Li Yao's heart was racing. Without any hesitation, his eyes darted toward the black-skeleton-like Colossus in the deepest part of the temple of Colossi, which was half hidden in the darkness and had a red cross on the facial cover that looked like a sole, bloody eye!
His eyes were so ravenous that he could not disguise his temptation at all!
A Cultivator could be connected with a piece of magical equipment. The so-called 'connection' was not entirely groundless. For experts who had advanced to a certain level and gained a profound understanding of the parameters of their body and soul, it was possible for them to decide within a moment what kind of magical equipment and weapons were most suitable for them.
The black-skeleton-like Colossus was Li Yao's dream model. It was as brilliant as the fireworks in the night sky. All the other Colossi were eclipsed by its existence. They were so boring that Li Yao did not even bother to look at them.
Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun looked at each other and smiled. "What? You're interested in 'Tartarean General'?"
As it turned out, the black-skeleton-like Colossus was named 'Tartarean General'. Saving the formalities, Li Yao nodded and said, "It is indeed a very tempting Colossus. Wasn't Heiye Lan attracted by it in the beginning, too?"
However, Li Yao knew that the 'Tartarean General' right now was Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun's personal Colossus. The two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators were unlikely to offer their beloved treasure to him easily. He would have to find a way to get it!
"The Tartarean General is indeed a very powerful Colossus," Meng Chixin said, "but it is extremely difficult to control and has a high demand on the immensity of the soul. One moment of carelessness, and it may backfire on the user. Are you sure that you want to pilot the Tartarean General, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture?"
Li Yao was dazed. Judging from Meng Chixin's tone, was it possible that they would offer the 'Tartarean General' to him?
Seeing the disbelief on his face, Meng Chixin was greatly amused. "Are you curious why Wu Suiyun and I don't pilot such a powerful Colossus ourselves, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture?
"As a refiner, you should understand the simple logic that the more powerful the better doesn't necessarily apply to magical equipment, right? It must fit the level and style of the user.
"The Tartarean General is indeed extremely powerful, but like we said just now, it poses a heavy burden on the soul and the reserve of spiritual energy. The Colossus is like a bottomless hole that can never be fed. The user can be drained if they are careless!
"That's why we intentionally chose the Tartarean General as the trigger of our trap and lured Heiye Lan into the Tartarean General. When her soul and spiritual energy were deeply bound to the Tartarean General and she was unable to free himself, we took advantage and invaded her brain!
"Heiye Lan is a living person and has a body of flesh and blood to accommodate the soul and the spiritual energy. The foundation is relatively stable.
"The two of us, in comparison, are just ghosts without real entities. Our control over the soul and the spiritual energy is not as good as that of living people in the first place. That's why we needed to work together in order to drive the Tartarean General to perform only the simplest of movements.
"Even so, using it for just five minutes consumed a great amount of our soul power, and we were nearly split apart!
"If we had stayed inside the Tartarean General, we would have been drained and vanished forever!
"It's like a three-year-old waving a saber that weighs fifty kilograms. They will be injured or even killed before they hurt their enemy!
"Tell me, however sharp and powerful the saber is, what can it do for a three-year-old? The child might as well choose a poisoned dagger that
is much lighter and more lethal, right?"
Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun pointed at two Colossi on the maintenance platforms nearby that were around fifteen meters tall and relatively slender. "The two Colossi over there have little demand on the soul immensity and consume far less. They are perhaps the scout Colossi that the Nuwa Clan used for reconnaissance. They are the Colossi that we usually use. If we hadn't planned to pick up the tricks to manipulate a Colossus from the Imperium of True Human Beings, we certainly wouldn't have activated the Tartarean General!"
Li Yao's heart was pounding. He asked, his voice trembling, "Then, can I use the Tartarean General?"
Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun looked at each other and nodded. "If we must choose a fellow Cultivator as the user of the Tartarean General, you seem to be the best candidate, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture!"
Li Yao was slightly dazed. "Why?"
"The reason is simple," Meng Chixin said honestly. "Although we have all announced that we should be united, who can guarantee that so many Cultivators from various sides that have the deepest grudges will really be united without any mistrust?
"Even Wu Suiyun and I have our own unwavering stances!
"I'm from the Dark Cloud Prairies. Naturally, I belong to the 'anti-Great-Qian' side. Wu Suiyun is from the Great Qian Dynasty. Even if she doesn't like the court, it's unlikely that she will stand on my side. She will certainly choose to help the Great Qian Dynasty!
"Let's take a look at the other Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators.
"Han Baling, Qi Changsheng, Wan Mingzhu, and Wang Xi are the hardcore rebels, while Qi Zhongdao, Ba Xiaoyu, Emperor Phoenix, Master Bitter Cicada, and Yan Liren are more in favor of the Great Qian Dynasty.
"To whom do you think we should give the Tartarean General, the most powerful Colossus here? If it is given to one of the Four Rapscallions, Wu Suiyun won't agree. If it is given to the supporters of the Great Qian Dynasty such as Qi Zhongdao, I will have concerns, too!
"But you are different, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture. You are from the Southland of Sorcerers. Although you are making a living in the central plateaus, you have never shown much hostility to the Four Rapscallions. We are all the barbarians in the eyes of the people from the central plateaus. So, I believe that your attitude will be more neutral, right?
"Therefore, if you are the one using the Tartarean General, Wu Suiyun and I can both agree.
"Of course, that is on the premise that you are capable of using it. It is a wild horse that can be very hard to be bridled!"
Li Yao's mind was in chaos.
The mental devil was still shouting inside his head. This could still be a trap of the two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators. They were offering the powerful Tartarean General to Li Yao generously on the surface. But in fact, they were going to deal with him in exactly the same way that they dealt with Heiye Lan. While the Colossus devoured Li Yao's spiritual energy crazily and consumed his soul, they would seize his weakness and invade his brain!
At the very least, it was a test to see if 'Master Spiritual Vulture' did not know the first thing about the usage of the Colossus!
However, having walked into the possible trap, Li Yao could not retreat. If he backed off right now, he would raise suspicion.
Besides, Li Yao had his own trump cards. He and Heiye Lan were absolutely different!
His brain had been blasted by Ou Yezi's uncanny dreams before. His soul was polished to the point that it was as tough as iron. He even had a second personality, the mental devil that came from the Blood Stripe Virus!
More importantly, Li Yao had another trump card—Black Wing!
Even if Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun had truly guessed everything, it was impossible for them to know that Li Yao had Black Wing, a 'fat meatball' from the Star Ocean Imperium, to help him control the Colossus.
Black Wing, as a liquidous ancillary crystal processor designed to maneuver the Colossus in the Star Ocean Imperium, was certainly able to eliminate all the impurities in the cockpit of the Colossus, including two ghosts that should not have existed there!
Therefore, if the two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators were preparing the same trap for him, they would certainly realize that they were terribly wrong!
With everything going so far, he might as well have a try!
Holding his head high, Li Yao strode toward the Tartarean General. With his eyes glowing, he asked earnestly, "How do I use this… Tartarean General?"
Meng Chixin and Wu Suiyun flew to the two sides of the maintenance platform. Soon, they picked up two metal tubes as thick as boas that were scattered on the ground and inserted them into the holes at the top of the protruding spine on the back of the Tartarean General. Very soon, gurgling noises were coming over as some liquids were injected into the spiritual residence of the Tartarean General.
Li Yao knew that it was oily buffer liquids that could both connect the brain of the user to the crystal processor and neural network of the Colossus and reduce the vibrations caused by spiritual energy and radiation.
Without Black Wing, a piece of ancillary magical equipment of a higher level, such liquids were always used as the medium between a Cultivator and a Colossus.
"Crawl into it from the entrance of the spiritual residence up above," Meng Chixin said. "We have activated all the rune arrays of the Tartarean General. The Colossus is like an armor that is larger in size. You will know how to use it after you get inside."
Chapter 1531: Roars from Inside the Tartarean General! |
Under the watchful eyes of the two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators, Li Yao flew up into the cockpit of the Tartarean General—or rather, the spiritual residence—immersing himself in the fluids that were as dark as ink and as thick as ointment.
The fluids were not as cold as the gloomy shimmer that they reflected on the surface. Instead, there was a certain warmth in them, making them feel like amniotic water that nurtured fetuses.
As the nerve buffer liquid slowly drowned his skull and entered his lungs and internal organs through his nostrils and bronchia, facilitating the exchange with his body liquids, hormones, nerve electricity, and spiritual energy, Li Yao had made full preparations.
He asked the mental devil to stay on the highest alert before he set up dozens of interconnecting traps inside his brain. He even established a 'maze of memories' with part of Ou Yezi's memory pieces.
If the two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators were bold enough to infiltrate, they would certainly be lost inside.
On the other hand, Li Yao was also secretly calling Little Black, which was hiding inside his Cosmos Ring. Should there be any anomaly, the fat boy would jump out and take over the operations of the entire Colossus!
Black Wing was a liquidous ancillary crystal processor designed for Colossi. It even boasted the powerful abilities to resist viruses. If the two Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators dared to invade, chances were that they would be taken by Little Black for viruses and annihilated without any mercy!
"Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture, are you ready?" Meng Chixin casually asked from outside.
"I'm ready. Bring it on!" Li Yao replied solemnly.
"Alright. Then, let's just see if you are qualified to be the master of the Tartarean General!"
When Meng Chixin roared, Li Yao felt the Tartarean General suddenly jerk up. Immense spiritual waves and telepathic thoughts flooded into his brain like surging tides, igniting both his body and his brain. Once he recovered from his brief daze, he melded with the Colossus into one!
He turned into an iron giant almost thirty meters tall, surrounded by vague black smoke!
Colossi were not a type of magical equipment that could be mass-produced.
Every Colossus was created based on extremely rare Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures and the extraordinary beasts in space. They boasted unique features and even… characters. One might even say that they were 'living' super magical equipment!
Ju
st like Meng Chixin said, a Colossus was to a Cultivator what a wild horse was to a fierce warrior, who would have to resort to all kinds of methods to tame it before they could ride it!
For a moment, freezing winds were blowing inside Li Yao's brain, and he saw all kinds of illusions. Creepy fire was burning. Infinite thoughts, desires, and information were raging, roaring, and struggling!
They were the sparks bursting out from every piece of memory that had been sealed for hundreds of thousands of years inside every section of the black bones and every shell on the Tartarean General!
Li Yao could feel that, in the primeval era hundreds of thousands of years ago, the feeble, insignificant human beings in the universe, whose fate was manipulated by superior creatures, were thrown into hell and crumbled to dust after their value was exploited, but the victims were unwilling to disappear forever. They condensed the last bit of their will, their memory, and their feelings into furious fire that dashed out from the deepest parts of the earth all the way up to the firmament, burning the splendid buildings and palaces in the heavens to the ground!
It was the true meaning of Tartarean General. Human beings—feeble and insignificant as they might be, even when they sank to the deepest part of hell, and even if they had been turned into dust and ants—would roar to the deities and devils who were high and mighty in the sky!
This is my Colossus!
Li Yao's brain was having a storm. He confirmed again, The spirit of the Colossus fits perfectly with my belief. It is mine. It is definitely mine!
Tartarean General is not a good name. Even if you are not a general, even if you are just an unimportant soldier in hell, you are still qualified to challenge the mightiest devils as a champion of human beings!
Since your arms and legs are long and slender, and you are a cross on your face, I will simply call you… Tartarean Skeleton!
Li Yao's telepathic thoughts flowed to every limb and every nerve perception chip on the Tartarean Skeleton as fast as lightning.