by <unknown>
"In fact, parents always grow old, and kids always grow up. Things go wrong in the end after all. I, for one, am more capable than my father, and I was a distinguished employee of the Black Iron Group for years. Hahahaha!
"So, just be assured. Your kids have their own blessings. You have the present, but the future is theirs. So, just wait and watch them create a more beautiful, marvelous, and incredible future!
"Besides, they are already so helpful right now, and they have an excellent father. I believe that they will never grow crooked."
"I don't think that I count as an excellent father."
Hearing what Xu Zhicheng said, Li Yao smiled, the last wrinkle on his heart soothed. "But you are right. They are both great kids. I'll ask them to keep your toys well. Then, let's look forward to the wonderful future that is to be created by the kids together!"
…
"Hiss… Hiss… It hurts so much!"
Li Jialing felt that he had been drowned in a boundless pool of blood, and somebody had poured ten thousand nightmares into his head against his own wish. He could not break out of the hellish battlefields at all.
Occasionally, he heard voices, one male and the other female. The voices were very familiar. They belonged to Li Yao and Long Yangjun.
But sometimes, he heard another two voices that were much younger whispering to his ears.
"Uncle Li's body is really unbelievably tough. In terms of the congenial body quality, he is even stronger than Dad!"
"Yes, Dad has an 'apocalyptic body', which is already one of the sturdiest bodies among the trainers, but Uncle Li's body is even better. It has almost infinite potential to be developed. This is perfect!"
"I remember seeing a secret technique that can stimulate the secretion of adrenaline when we snuck into the database of a certain biochemical institute of the Imperium. It can significantly increase the combat ability for a while, but it is too dangerous and has too many side effects to be used by regular people despite our optimization. However, judging from the sturdy body of Uncle Li, he seems qualified to use it!"
"Is that so? Let's try it already. Dad and Aunt Long both said that we are in unusual times. To cope with the hunting of the Immortal Cultivators, we have to improve the extreme combat ability of the whole team in the shortest amount of time possible by trying all the possibilities!"
Listening with his head dizzy, Li Jialing thought to himself in his ignorance, Who is this "Uncle Li"? He sounds like an awesome body fundamentalist, but I never heard that the Li family has such an expert before! Also, who is "Aunt Long" exactly? Where's Brother Yao and Sister Long? Why have they left me to the custody of two brats… Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Before he figured out what was going on, he felt that all the cells in his body were clenched hard by sweltering iron hands. He passed out in the excruciating pain again.
The nightmares lasted a few days, or perhaps a whole year. Even though Li Jialing's nerves had been as tough as iron after being tortured more than ten years earlier, he was still feeling rather dread and couldn't take it anymore. Finally, under the call of a voice, he broke the nightmares and woke up.
Li Jialing found himself soaked in oily and cool medication drugs, with a tiny silver needle stabbed in every acupoint on his body. When he focused his eyes, he could even see the dense runes that looked like grains of dust.
Under the control of certain weird brainwaves, all the needles were shivering in different rhythms and frequencies, opening the gate of the treasury of potentials in his body like keys.
He sensed unprecedented strength raging unstoppably inside his body like a flood.
The strength of the Imperial Fire Pearl that he absorbed earliest had been completely digested and melted into his body and his soul!
Li Jialing couldn't help but moan in satisfaction, his every toe tightened.
"Brother Yao!"
Looking at the person standing before the medical cabin who was both familiar and strange, he couldn't help but exclaim in joy, "You're really back. I knew that you wouldn't abandon us! Where is this… Huh, wait, Brother Yao, you look rather weird right now. Although your appearance hasn't changed much, the air around you, and the level behind the air, seem completely different from the past now!"
"Is that so?"
Li Yao scratched his chin. "Different how?"
"I can't tell the specific differences. It's just like…"
Li Jialing stared at Li Yao carefully for a while with his nose stuck to the tempered glass, before he said, "You look somewhat similar to Queen Li Linghai when we saw her for the first time. Not exactly the appearance, but the air and the invisible, dangerous vibe around you that seem able to burn everything nearby into nothingness, you know."
"That's probably because I have just broken another iron wall and found a new direction on my journey to the ultimate truth!"
Li Yao smiled and said, "Let's focus on what's important. You were heavily wounded and nearly killed in the battle of Great Iron Plants. It's been three days and three nights since you passed out. You still need treatment and strengthening. Whatever you want to say, wait until the strengthening is complete!"
"Strengthening?"
Li Jialing couldn't help but shudder. "What strengthening? I seemed to hear the voices of two brats. Was it my illusion?"
"You were too heavily wounded to walk on your feet again in a year and a half if treated normally. We are in the middle of a crisis, and Blackstar the Great may be after us any minute. Do we really have that much time? So, I have to adopt the relatively extreme and radical approaches to cure you and stimulate the outburst of your potentials by the way."
Pausing for a moment, Li Yao said again, "Furthermore, you have an important mission on your shoulder, which requires all your potentials to be dug out!"
"Huh?"
Li Jialing was stunned for a long time. Then he bulged his eyes and asked, "Brother Yao, I understand the former part of what you said, but the latter half is confusing. What is this 'important mission'?"
"You are a 'safety valve'. In the near future, there perhaps will be a handsome, attractive, generous, selfless, charismatic supervillain who cares about nothing but the interests of the people and the future of mankind."
Li Yao explained carefully, "When the supervillain expands beyond control, chances are that a brave young man like you will have to defeat him. So, you certainly need to be stronger, don't you?"
Li Jialing: "… I'm still confused. A handsome and attractive supervillain? Are you referring to Blackstar the Great, Brother Yao?"
"Of course not."
Li Yao said, "Wuying Qi is a shameless, sleazy, and selfish scoundrel, and he is as weak as a chicken. How can he be compared to such a great and inspirational supervillain? Wuying Qi is to the supervillain what a firefly is to the sun and what a needle is to a pillar. They can't be compared at all."
"Are you serious?"
Li Jialing found it hard to believe. "So, you are referring to the Mad Armageddon?"
"Well, the Blood God, as a supervillain who destroyed the Star Ocean Imperium after making his mind, was more or less something."
Li Yao said, "However, compared to what this supervillain is going to do, even the destruction of a hundred Star Ocean Imperiums will be nothing. Therefore, it is possible that the Mad Armageddon is not qualified to be juxtaposed with this supervillain."
"Huh?"
Li Jialing was dumbfounded. "What are you talking about, Brother Yao? Can anybody be even tougher than the Mad Armageddon? Also, why is it my 'mission' to deal with such a terrifying supervillain? I-I am not up to it yet. How is it related to me?"
"It shouldn't have been your concern, but you are unfortunately my dear little brother, aren't you? You'll know what I mean in the future."
Li Yao smiled. "All in all, starting from this second, you have to train yourself with ten times the intensity of the past. I will teach you a lot of things. You are the future, and they are the future too. As to what exactly the future
will be like, it will all be up to the heroes of the future including you."
Li Jialing said, "Who are 'they'? The two… brats? I vaguely recall them stinging me with needles!"
"Exactly."
Li Yao nodded his head. "They are my biological son and daughter, and naturally, your nephew and niece. I'll introduce you to each other later. Congratulations on becoming an uncle by the way, Uncle Li."
Li Jialing: "… WHAT HAVE YOU DONE EXACTLY?"
Chapter 2425: Safety Valve |
By the time Li Jialing was wide awake, it had been seven days since the battle of the Great Iron Plants, and they had evacuated to hundreds of kilometers away after blowing up the major mines and tunnels on their way, ending the possibility for the Immortal Cultivators to attack the neighboring towns with the Great Iron Plants as a base.
The subsequent treatments and strengthening for him were actually performed on a gigantic excavator.
As Li Yao had expected, Li Jialing, who was young and whose mind was not steady, had obvious resistance against the two kids.
Or rather, Li Jialing's reactions were more like the attitudes of a "normal person" when they were faced with information lives. They were thirty percent fearful, thirty percent wary, thirty percent confused, and ten percent shocked, unlike Li Yao, Long Yangjun, and Grand Guardian Xu Zhicheng who could chitchat with the new lives in peace without the slightest concerns of them being "supervillains", "terrorists", and "freaks".
As a matter of fact, when Li Yao introduced Xiaoming and Wenwen to Li Jialing for the first time, the golden-haired young man was dumbfounded for five minutes before he screamed and waved his hands crazily in the medical drugs, unable to accept that "ridiculous" fact at all.
In the few days that followed, he had been engaged in heated cross-species cultural communications with the kids by fighting them three times a day on average.
Of course, the reason why they fought, or why he erected his golden hair and bared his teeth at the kids the moment he saw them, perhaps had nothing to do with the magnificent topic of the destruction of mankind, but purely because the two kids had been torturing him in the weirdest and cruelest ways to exploit the last drop of potentials inside his cells, and he was too heavily wounded to put up any resistance and could only be at the mercy of the little kids.
"Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!"
Li Jialing shouted aloud, "Just wait for it! You won't get things your way! I'm not as gullible as Brother Yao. I'll certainly keep my eyes on you as a representative of the civilization of mankind!"
"Suit yourself."
Xiaoming and Wenwen replied with a smile, "If you really want to keep your eyes on us, it is all the more reason why you should hold back the pain and exploit all your potentials to bring out the best of your combat ability! Speaking of which, Uncle Li, are you sure that you are a qualified representative of mankind, when you have golden hair all over your body and a tiger head on your neck? If an ignorant observer is asked to comment on the three of us, they will certainly think that we are more like human beings than you are, won't they?"
"Brats, who's a tiger? I'm a lion! The Gold Lion!"
Li Jialing was in such pain that his tears and his snot were running loose together. He gnashed his teeth and said, "Don't presume that you can deceive me or buy me over through the petty acts of kindness such as helping me treat my wounds or train myself! You know clearly that I'm deeply hostile against you, and yet you are still working so hard to help me train myself. What exactly is your scheme? Ahhhhhh, it hurts! You are doing this on purpose! You are getting back at me because I call you 'brats' the whole time, aren't you?"
"I'm sorry, but our computational ability is very precious and limited. Do we really have the time to play such a childish game with you, Uncle Li?"
Li Xiaoming sniffed and said, "We are not interested in buying you over, deceiving you, or getting back at you. It's only because Dad does have a point. Some sort of 'safety valve' or 'bulwark' is indeed required between the information lives and the civilization of mankind.
"Do you know that similar 'safety valves' are installed on the super crystal processors that are extremely complicated in structure and often overclocked to the point that the temperature is raised to an unbearable level?
"Once the crystal processors are overly heated and loaded and about to collapse, the 'safety valves' will be activated to kill the burdensome and dangerous tasks and to activate the cooling system.
"Such 'safety valves' are not only beneficial for the users of the crystal processors but also in the favor of the crystal processors themselves. If somebody keeps an eye on them all the time, it will be highly unlikely that the super crystal processors will burn themselves up!
"It's the same reason for us. According to our careful computation and repetitive deduction, if such a 'safety valve' like Uncle Li keeps an eye on us all the time, our overall survival probability and our developmental index will both be significantly increased, at least by 20%!
"Or rather, when our two main threads are really out of control and on a rampage, if you can really kill us, it will be a good thing for the other threads and the whole. It's like cutting the crazily-expanding branches can make the whole tree grow taller and healthier. Don't look at me like a fool. I know that you don't understand it. All you need to do is to remember that you have great responsibilities on your shoulders."
"Yes, the responsibilities are quite heavy. So, please seize every second to train yourself and try to be mature as soon as possible!"
Li Wenwen remarked, "Not that I'm blaming you, Uncle Li, but you can be childish sometimes… Even more childish than Dad. You two brothers are really tricky!"
The two kids put their hands in their pockets and shook their heads at Li Jialing.
Li Jialing felt that all his veins were breaking out, and that blood was shooting out of his eye sockets.
"Brats, is there still time for me to end this brotherhood with your dad now?"
He asked the opinion of the kids while gnashing his teeth.
Such a scene was repeated at least three days every day.
However, even though he was too painful to pee on his own, Li Jialing had to admit that the help of information lives was necessary for both them and the underground locals.
Without the two kids controlling so many spiritual puppets to help ship assets, maintain the excavators, and ensure the normal functions of the air circulation as well as temperature adjustment devices in the underground towns, more than half of the workers and their families who had just been evacuated from the Great Iron Planets would've died.
Right now, not only the workers and their families but also the residents in the dozens of underground towns, including the 10,084th district, which was the destination of their evacuation, had hope to live on until the real brightness came.
More importantly, the two kids upgraded and modified a lot of spiritual puppets.
It was inevitable that they could not bring many spiritual puppets with them on their way to escape from the capital planet. Also, as the distance got longer, their control over the spiritual puppets would be weaker and weaker, until the communication was entirely blocked by the thick rocks.
With that in mind, they simply performed abundant modifications on the crystal processors of the spiritual puppets and encapsulated a lot of orders in them, making the control much easier. The ordinary people were able to command the spiritual puppets orally.
The skilled workers from the Great Iron Plants had plenty of experience working with spiritual puppets in the first place. It was possible for them to learn the basic operation modes in a few days.
After that, they left dozens of spiritual puppets in every underground town they passed by, which carried out the most dangerous missions on behalf of humans as well as the daily maintenance of the sustenance systems of the towns. In such a way, the safety and comfort level of the towns were significantly improved.
The things that the kids did for the undergrou
nd people were all seen and remembered.
Even Xu Zhicheng, whose spiritual root had been awakened and who had been the Grand Guardian of Nepenthe for years, could barely understand what exactly "information life" was. The real ordinary people who were mostly illiterate were even more confused and care less about it.
They only knew that the two cute kids boasted incredible techniques, brought hope of survival to them, and were very glad to help them.
That was enough.
Wherever the kids reached, they were as popular as Long Yangjun and Li Yao. No, because of their highly deceptive appearances, they were even more loved by the underground ordinary people than Li Yao and Long Yangjun were. The simplest example was their weight. Even though the kids had been built with very accurate and rigorous body management systems, they still put on almost five kilograms after only a couple of days under the passionate "feeding" of the sisters, aunts, and grandmas!
There was barely anything Li Jialing could do about it.
In fact, he had also contributed a lot in the battle of Great Iron Plants. At the very least, he fought the bloody battles to the last moment. Naturally, the workers of the Great Iron Plants and their families did not forget his contributions, and they should bond with him more closely.
However, his current appearance was to blame. It was simply too magnificent and… terrifying. The kids were quite right. If he, a golden-haired and human-shaped lion, was walking together with a pair of lovely children, would there be any doubt about which of them would be more popular?
Besides, not just the underground locals, even Li Yao, Long Yangjun, and Li Jialing needed Xiaoming and Wenwen's assistance in the critical missions such as magical equipment maintenance, reconnaissance, blockage, and cyberspace interference.
Long Yangjun's Colossus "Heavenly Crystal" was completely ruined in the battle of Great Iron Plants. She had obviously been infected with Li Yao's bad luck that a crystal suit or a Colossus must be blown up in every battle.
Thankfully, the three experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage on the Immortal Cultivators' side left their Colossi behind too.