Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

by <unknown>

  How should they put it? It was almost like the differences between the raw minerals that were just excavated from below the ground and the crystals that had been carefully polished. The furnace was now more delicate, elegant, profound, and impeccable, or to quote Li Yao's words, "smoother" now.

  Even the most insignificant air of smoke had been removed in Li Yao's test just now. The furnace at this moment did not look like a tool of productivity but a cautiously-carved piece of artwork. Before the refining work officially began, everybody already had uncanny faith in it and believed that what was to be produced from the furnace would certainly be the most extraordinary weapons!

  "Did you just…"

  However arrogant and disobedient Ye Qingyun was, he could tell the difference of the furnace in Li Yao's hands from when it was in his own. He immediately blushed and stammered in confusion.

  "This is a way to test the furnace of my own invention."

  Li Yao said, "Testing the furnace is so much more than simply learning the performance parameters of the furnace. On one hand, you must feel the 'spirit' and the 'emotions' of the furnace by examining the basic performance parameters. On the other hand, and more importantly, you have to pass your own ideas and determinations to the furnace in a certain way.

  "For a refiner, the furnace is his best partner and must not be treated as a cold, lifeless object. Furnaces are alive with their own feelings and personalities. The real furnace-testing is about communicating with the furnace in depth, telling the furnace your belief, and winning the acknowledgment of the furnace.

  "I am fond of music personally, and the road that I have chosen is somewhat related to music too. So, I had an in-depth communication with the furnace by the reverberation of music so that my heart and the heart of the furnace can be completely melted together. Only in such a way can I get the most perfect furnace to produce the most perfect components."

  The refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet all whispered in admiration.

  Ye Qingyun couldn't help but ask again, "The song just now was—"

  "'Orders of the General'."

  Li Yao said, "It is the heavy metal version of 'Orders of the General', which fitted the character of this furnace and my state of mind now.

  "Today, I only have limited time, and the level of the furnace here is not particularly high either. If there is a chance in the future, I would like to communicate with the fellow Cultivators more often and play more classic music to the fellow Cultivators here through the furnace. It is going to be some sort of academic communication."

  Li Yao did not disguise his capabilities at all; he was even blatantly showing them.

  It was because he was in the Imperium of True Human Beings, the world of the Immortal Cultivators.

  The idea of survival of the fittest was certainly not restricted to the battle-type Immortal Cultivators. It was the same among the creation-type Immortal Cultivators.

  Here, modesty and concession were meaningless.

  Now that he was going to spend a long time next to Queen Li Linghai, Li Yao naturally needed to find an appropriate place for himself in case somebody came looking for trouble every other day.

  In a way, a refiner in the Divinity Transformation Stage was even more valuable than a warrior in the Divinity Transformation Stage, because the former could provide technical support for countless experts in the Nascent Soul Stage and the Divinity Transformation Stage, thereby improving the top-tier fighters of the entire force significantly.

  On the other hand, if the technical support of Queen Li Linghai and even the entire faction of the reformists, namely the maintenance of the most cutting-edge crystal suits and Colossi, was under Li Yao's hands, wouldn't he be able to do anything he wanted?

  "Fellow Cultivator Ye, we can go and pick the crystal suits right now."

  Li Yao touched the metal flowers that were floating in midair. The nine metal flowers all began to shiver and turned into thousands of clear, thin petals that fell loosely like catkins.

  In the middle of the metal petals, Li Yao smiled at the many refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet.

  …

  Soon, they arrived at the warehouse of advanced crystal suits on Dragon Abyss.

  Dragon Abyss was Li Linghai's flagship and her nest when she snuck in space away from the capital.

  Naturally, Li Linghai's treasures in the past decades had been stored here. The advanced crystal suits from various schools of the Imperium and even ancient relics were as good as those stored in the secret warehouses of the four Kurfürst families.

  At this moment, Li Yao had become the center of the show. Surrounded by a large group of respectful refiners, he wandered amid a hundred silent metal statues.

  The Imperium of True Human Beings had a long history. After inheriting and absorbing abundant legacies of the Star Ocean Imperium and the Star Ocean Republic, it had arrived at the peak of the technologies of crystal suits after a thousand years of development.

  Every advanced crystal suit was like a piece of the most extraordinary artwork. Li Yao's telepathic thoughts crawled through the gaps of the crystal suits and tasted the extraordinary, indescribable feelings. He was so fascinated that he almost couldn't bear to drag himself away from the treasures.

  However, out of everybody's expectation, what he chose for Li Jialing, in the end, was not any of the few ultimate, most precious crystal suits, but—

  Chapter 2176: Getting Serious! |

  Li Yao squatted at a corner of the warehouse. With his fingers crossed, he stared at a pile of wasted garbage at the corner in deep thought.

  "Fellow Cultivator Li."

  Despite the weirdness of his move, Ye Qingyun did not dare to jump to any conclusion anymore. He simply said cautiously, "Those crystal suits are too seriously damaged. Most of them will be declared to be total-losses. After we return to the base, the usable units on them will be dismantled, and the other components will be remade…"

  It was quite true. Standing before Li Yao were blackened, burned, deformed crystal suits that looked like abnormal beasts.

  If they were not seriously damaged, the maintenance workshop on Dragon Abyss would have been capable of handling them. Now that they were to be abandoned, it suggested that they did not possess any value to be rescued.

  However, growing up in the magical equipment graveyard, Li Yao was best at turning garbage into goods. Such broken scraps of magical equipment were the best catalysts to trigger his whimsical creation.

  Staring at the armed shuttles and the crystal suits without blinking, Li Yao opened his fingers and waved his hand casually, attracting a "Giant Crab"—an enormous heavy-firepower crystal suit with a thick armor—to himself with the technique of remote manipulation.

  Then, he activated the function of a professional drawing on his crystal processor.

  Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

  Almost a hundred blank, virtual boards immediately popped up and hovered around Li Yao. Emitting ivory brilliance, they made Li Yao look rather mysterious and unpredictable.

  "Is he going to—"

  The refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet looked at each other in bewilderment, not having any clue what Li Yao was going to do. If he were going to draw the structure design of the crystal suits for adjustments and modifications, it did not seem necessary to create a hundred boards at the same time. After all, he could only start drawing the next design after he finished drawing the current one, right?

  Taking a deep breath, Li Yao closed his eyes slowly, his head teeming with the clearest, most detailed structures of the crystal suits, which were all scanned by him when he extended his telepathic thoughts into the damaged crystal suits for scrutiny just now.

  At his command, the perspective drawings of various facets of the few damaged crystal suits, as well as the 3D designs after they were combined, including the detailed graphs of the high-precision units such as the crystal reactor, the knees, and the elbows were displayed on the boards as quickly as a rising tide!

  Go
lden threads that were ten times thinner than the hair, like spirits that had their own wisdom, lengthened and joined each other. Growing from thin to plump, from plump to heavy, and from heavy to complicated, they eventually turned into mazes and castles!

  The refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet all bulged their eyes. Drawing a hundred designs with telepathic thoughts at the same time? It was incredible!

  Li Yao's performance was not over yet.

  What he did just now was simply "duplication". He just scanned the structures of the crystal suits and manifested them on the boards.

  However, in the next second, the hundred drawings rippled at the same time, like a pond under a spring breeze. As the ripples spread out, the complicated, precise structures began to fall apart, distort, and reshape. The speed of change was higher and higher, making them look like kaleidoscopes that were revolving fast.

  All the refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet felt dazzled and overwhelmed.

  "Is… Is he improvising the modification plans for those crystal suits? He wants to modify all the damaged crystal suits at the same time?"

  "Such a design is too unbelievable. Only the refining facilities with a precision of at least 0.1 threads can cut the profiled curved-surface components that he needs!"

  "He has squatted there for only a moment, and he has come up with so many crazy modification plans?"

  Many refiners in the Deep Sea Fleet were almost too shocked to breathe anymore.

  As the insiders of the trade, they could naturally see the value in Li Yao's modification plans.

  Although most of the modification plans were too whimsical and insane, the ideas in the plans were great eye-openers for them, who had never thought of such modifications before.

  In the meantime, Li Yao was disapproving his own plans at an amazingly high speed too. Many of them were vetoed by himself mercilessly before the refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet figured out if they were feasible.

  Bo! Bo! Bo! Bo!

  The boards were breaking like bubbles all the time, leaving starry spots of light that looked like fireflies, but new boards would immediately be generated, with castles made of lines and curved surfaces popping up on them.

  In the end, only a dozen or so boards were still drifting in midair, but the structures on them were so dense and complicated that most of the refiners here couldn't comprehend them at all.

  Even Ye Qingyun could only vaguely tell that Li Yao seemed to have taken parts of the units from the damaged crystal suits and kept the main framework of the "Giant Crab Battlesuit".

  It was not until this moment that Li Yao finally opened his eyes.

  Millions of golden threads were still lingering inside his eyes, as if ten thousand crystal suits had exploded inside his pupils.

  There was neither sorrow nor delight on his face, and he was surrounded by the vibe of terrorization, as if even the most powerful crystal suit was nothing but a toy in his hand.

  Li Yao closed his hands; his fingers like petals, tides, and winds, congregating into a burning tsunami.

  Pulled by his fingers, his telepathic thoughts were all projected to the boards. The dozen or so boards were immediately overlapped, and the virtual structure designs were embedded into each other perfectly without any flaw, making up the framework of one crystal suit that looked like a translucent gold giant.

  Li Yao waved his hands and enlarged the "gold giant" ten times before he carefully adjusted the structure at the critical parts.

  However, in the eyes of the general refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet, he was merely drawing curved golden lines in the middle of a mess.

  "What… What is he doing exactly?"

  "What kind of crystal suit can it possibly be to have such a complicated framework?"

  The refiners whispered to each other.

  Master Jin Tianzong, however, changed his expressions again and again.

  Narrowing his eyes, he zoomed in the picture while his eyelids cramped hard. He carefully studied the structure design that Li Yao had drawn for a long time, only to be surprised first and overwhelmed by disbelief later. Was this seemingly young refiner really confident to strengthen such a crystal suit? It was not an "adjustment", and not even a simple "modification", but a complete recreation!

  Looking at Li Yao's hands that were gradually releasing light, Master Jin Tianzong was filled with eagerness and envy.

  Ten minutes later, Li Yao "finally", or rather, "already", finished the modification designs and the spiritual energy flowcharts.

  In fact, it was not exactly a brand-new creation but a new structure for crystal suits that he had been considering since he was still in the Star Glory Federation.

  Starting from the prime days of the Star Ocean Imperium when the modern Cultivation civilization was just born, the modern refiners had embarked on a different path from the ancient refiners. They appreciated standards and procedures and attached great importance to mass production and the replaceability of the standard components.

  In the jargon of modern magical equipment production, it was module design. In the federation, the Imperium, and even the Covenant Alliance, it was often the case that more than 90% of the components in the magical equipment of the same level and for the safety purpose were replaceable.

  Such an approach greatly reduced the logistical pressure for a universal country that spanned countless space zones in a long-term war.

  It also provided infinite possibilities for a refiner to bring out their creativity as much as possible.

  It even allowed Li Yao to gain a profound understanding of most of the generic components on the crystal suits in the Imperium after carefully examining every component on the crystal suits that were brought by the Black Wind Fleet. That was why he could put up such an astonishing show—

  The gold, glittering, translucent giant, as if ripped apart into a sparkly fire by a gentle breeze, fell to Li Yao's hair and shoulders.

  Li Yao's hands, however, were moving faster and faster.

  Electric arcs popped out of his fingertips. Purple, red, blue, green… The electric arcs in different colors and shades continued to split apart. One into two, two into four, four into eight, until they evolved into an overwhelming net of electricity, covering all the damaged crystal suits and the Giant Crab Battlesuit.

  Huala! Huala! Huala!

  The electric arcs found their way into the gaps of the crystal suits hurriedly and dismantled all the crystal suits into the most fundamental components in the blink of an eye like a dissection. Even the Giant Crab Battlesuit that was as thick as a bull was reduced into a lonely metal skeleton by Li Yao.

  All the refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet felt that their blood was freezing.

  To maintain, modify, or even produce a crystal suit independently, one must learn how to dismantle the crystal suit into the most basic state where it could not be further dismantled.

  It was the rudiments for every refiner. All the rookies had to spend years practicing the dismemberment of crystal suits.

  On one hand, it was meant to improve their deftness and the keenness of senses. But more importantly, it was supposed to make them more familiar with the structure of crystal suits so that they could develop "intuitions".

  However, in the schools, the training camps, or the crystal suit centers, they had never seen anyone who was as fast as Li Yao.

  Li Yao, on the other hand, was not using his hand at all, but simply releasing electric arcs to process the seriously damaged and contorted crystal suits by the technique of remote manipulation!

  Many refiners looked at Ye Qingyun.

  Ye Qingyun swallowed hard, somehow feeling lucky that he did not do anything that would've humiliated himself just now.

  More refiners, however, stared at Li Yao's hands, hoping to see clearly at least one of Li Yao's movements. They couldn't bear to move their eyes away at all.

  Dismantling the crystal suit was only the first step.

  After all the damaged crystal suits were reduced into the most
basic parts, the unnecessary components all flew out and fell into the boxes of supply components nearby according to their categories precisely.

  The remaining components, and the metal skeleton of the Giant Crab Battlesuit, in the meantime, were enshrouded by the electric arcs that were denser and denser.

  The electric arcs fluctuated and breathed, like a field that boasted its own life, while they were gradually condensed into the vein and nerval networks of a giant.

  In the next—

  Li Yao's fingers were bouncing and moving at the highest speed, even raising the noises of storms and thunder.

  The electric arcs that were dancing around the components and the metal skeleton were immediately ten times brighter than before. They exploded brutally at the "heart" of the metal skeleton like countless balls of lightning!

  Chapter 2177: It's the Highest Difficulty That I Am After! |

  When the balls of lightning exploded, everyone's pupils constricted so hard that there was nothing but blankness and dashing electric arcs on their retinas.

  They couldn't see anything but only hear the cracking noises of electric arcs, the sounds of metals being cut, and the splashing sparks every now and then.

  An extremely weird metallic smell found its way into their noses, making them feel that they were in the middle of a noisy, blood-boiling battlefield witnessing the collisions and destructions of countless crystal suits.

  At the center of the balls of lightning, there was even a subtle attraction force that absorbed all the small magical equipment that they were carrying.

  Li Yao's fluffy hair moved automatically although there was no wind. The dancing electric arcs seemed to have cladded him with a special suit of refining. His hands moved nonstop, pressing the modification plans into the rune arrays and sealing them into the balls of lightning. He couldn't have looked more intimidating.

  It was not until ten minutes later that the anomalies gradually dimmed and dispersed.

  After the last spark was obliterated into nothingness, everybody was finally able to focus their eyes on the white smoke in the middle of the electric arcs.