Forty millenniums of cul.., p.1201
Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1201
In the coordinates five light seconds away from the arena, twenty arsenal starships of the Burning Prairie Fleet were stationed. All their weapons were locked onto the nearby arena.
Ten Colossi were also ready to go. The pilots of the Colossi included Long Yangjun, Yan Liren, Meng Chixin, Wu Suiyun, Fiend Blade Peng Hai, the Fire Ant King, and other top-tier experts.
The space had been strewn with torpedoes in case the enemy suddenly teleported an enormous troop for a sudden assault.
Crystal cameras filled the arena, too, to capture every detail from every angle.
Super remote communication magical equipment that looked like artificial satellites was scattered outside the arena, sending the sound and picture back to the flagship of the Burning Prairie Fleet and the highest command center of the Defense Counsel in the Heaven's Origin Sector in real time.
Including Ding Lingdang, the Speaker of the Federation, the leaders of the federation were all watching the important competition.
Although the proposal of General Di Feiwen was somewhat ridiculous, it was true that the federation was still far away from a final victory. The Imperium and the Covenant Alliance were like two mountains on the federation's head that were yet to be completely removed.
The defeated soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet, especially the fleet near the brown dwarf that was still intact, were too important for the Star Glory Federation. Any possibility of gaining the fleet was worth a try.
On the other side of the arena, the space began to twist, but the scale was quite small. It could be clearly seen through scanning that only one starship had jumped over.
"The Immortal Cultivators are here!"
Inside the arena modified from a forsaken space station, Li Yao was sitting cross-legged in a plain version of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, as if he were confident of his victory.
But his voice was echoing in the communication channel nonstop.
"Did they really send one starship that has removed all the turrets and deactivated the spiritual shield?"
"Yes," Long Yangjun replied. "As we have analyzed more than a hundred times, there is a 97% likelihood that they will not set up any trap against you because killing you will not stop the fast development and rise of the Star Glory Federation. It will only bring the ultimate doom of the Black Wind Fleet. The vice commander of the enemy is a very rational man. He wouldn't do such a stupid thing!"
"Well, you never can tell," Li Yao said. "What if he has gone mad and decided to die together with me?"
"If you're so scared, why did you agree with the proposal in the first place?"
"How could I say no? I am Vulture Li Yao, the dominator of three sectors and the husband of the Speaker of the Federation. How can I go on a rampage in the center of the cosmos if I'm scared of a tiny Black Wind Fleet? Face is all that matters to us the Cultivators! Right, fellow Cultivators, you must watch the battle closely. Should anything go wrong, the ten Colossi must attack together and save me!"
Chapter 1863: Fiery Eye, Heavy Cannon, Death Shadow! |
"Got it," Long Yangjun replied. "You are such a disappointment. Haven't you swallowed the tenebrum energy left by the extraterrestrial devils and almost broken into the Divinity Transformation Stage? In such a situation, you should be blowing the enemy into smithereens without saying a word. Why are you talking so much?"
"One will not fail a battle only if one knows oneself and one's enemy well," Li Yao said. "I've collected a lot of files about Di Feiwen, the No. 2 person of the Black Wind Fleet, only to discover that he is a shrewd, cunning guy that is even more difficult to deal with than Heiye Ming. He is almost a scoundrel! Such a guy has come up with an idea to decide the future of the Black Wind Fleet with an open duel? I don't buy it! There must be some sort of scheme!
"Hey, you have run multiple investigations into the three champions of the Black Wind Fleet. They are indeed between the high level and the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage, and none of them are in the Divinity Transformation Stage, right?"
"Of course," Long Yangjun said. "Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators are not vegetables in your garden that you can harvest every season. Even in the Imperium of True Human Beings, they are rare experts, alright?
"There were a few experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage in the Black Wind Fleet at the very beginning. They suffered heavy casualties in the battle that caused the fall of the Black Wind Sector a hundred years ago. The Cultivation of a lot of them plummeted to below the Divinity Transformation Stage. Without sufficient resources and a stable environment, it was practically impossible for them to recover.
"After arriving in the Heaven's Origin Sector across the sea of stars through all difficulties, the best warriors naturally followed Heiye Ming to perform the first wave of the sudden assault, only to be wasted in the barrage and the collision of the Colossi!
"Those left in the fleet near the brown dwarf were either second-tier experts in the Black Wind Fleet or experts from the four smaller worlds. How could there be a battle-type Immortal Cultivators in the Divinity Transformation Stage?
"Haven't we already analyzed the issue more than ten thousand times? Can you stop being a chatterbox and turning the supposedly magnificent atmosphere of competition into such cowardliness? Where is your dominance, Monster Li?"
"Hehehe. How can I dominate the competition without the cowardliness before the competition? If none of them are in the Divinity Transformation Stage, it will be easier. Not that I'm bragging about myself, but right now, against those who are below the Divinity Transformation Stage, I'm most certainly—"
"Most certainly what?" Yan Liren suddenly interjected.
"N—Nothing," Li Yao stammered. "I can rank in the top three more or less below the Divinity Transformation Stage. Anything wrong?"
"…Although the enemy do not have battle-type Immortal Cultivators in the Divinity Transformation Stage, the three experts are still not to be underestimated. Their overall combat ability is between the high level of the Nascent Soul Stage and the peak of it. But they have obvious advantages and shortcomings. Some of their techniques are even as powerful as those in the Divinity Transformation Stage.
"'Fiery Eye' Wan Xiu, an expert from the Fiery Spider Sector, is a rare super expert that has advanced to the high level of the Nascent Soul Stage as a Gun Cultivator. His abilities in remote manipulation have already reached the most amazing level, allowing him to boost more than a hundred bullets to above seven times the speed of sound while ensuring the delicate control of them. Not only can he adjust the trajectories of the bullets freely, he can also perform highly-difficult if not inexplicable movements such as making right-angle turns.
"Furthermore, he has also practiced a secret technique of the Fiery Spider Sector. From the moment he was born, his eyes have been nurtured by special medical liquids extracted from a very special fiery spider. In such a way, his optical cells and nerves have all mutated, giving him a color gamut that's four times broader than that of normal people.
"Normal people can only see three basic colors, and their sight can reach several hundred to a thousand meters away. But his eyes can absorb the waves of more than ten invisible lights and see a dozen basic colors. He can see any grain of dust clearly within thousands of meters.
"After he killed a hundred and nineteen Immortal Cultivators of a hostile sect at the age of twenty-two, his name 'Fiery Eye' rose. Right now, he is the chief coach of firearms in the Black Wind Fleet!
"'Heaven Cannon' Lei Long is from the Hard Rock Sector, one of the smaller worlds. Thanks to his unusual talent, without any genetic modification or nurturing of secret techniques and solely based on the strength in his bloodline, he weighed eight kilograms when he was born and surpassed fifty kilograms by the age of four. Right now, he is a super muscular man, more than 2.8 meters tall, weighing three hundred and sixty kilograms.
"Even in the Imperium of True Human Beings where geniuses appear on a daily basis, it is still rare for someone to grow into such a body build 'naturally' without special procedures and genetic modification.
"Because of his exceptional talents and bones, and due to the Steady Star Technique, which is designed to strengthen the body, 'Heaven Cannon' Lei Long became a terrible legend in the Hard Rock Sector. It is said that he once devoured high-energy food five times of his own weight quickly and digested all of it while he was having it. Then, he punched with his full strength, and the damage penetrated through nine crystal suits, all of which were too seriously wrecked to be repaired.
"After the punch, his weight was measured again, and it was exactly the same as the weight before he had the food, without even a difference of one gram. It is indicative enough of his precise control of his internal organs!
"His nickname 'Heaven Cannon' does not imply that he is a specialist of heavy firepower but means that his fists are as powerful as the main guns of a starship! Do not let him come close to you in the competition later. You should know that even his crystal suit is specially made. The materials to make a crystal suit for him are enough to craft three for a common Immortal Cultivator.
"'Death Shadow' Murong Wei is from the Black Wind Sector. He is a rapid, agile Immortal Cultivator who focuses on assassination. It is said that nobody has ever seen his shadow, and those who have seen it are all dead.
"He once performed special training. In a completely enclosed training room, a hundred crystal cameras were placed in every corner to capture the room from every perspective without any blind spots. But after they shot for twenty-four hours, all the pictures were still empty, as if nobody was in the training room.
"But in fact, he had been in the training room the whole time, except that he had been moving at such a high speed for twenty-four hours that even the most advanced crystal cameras could not capture him. He is as fast as that!
"Speed, strength, and control, the three experts of the Black Wind Fleet have accomplished the best in those fields. Even real Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators can't be much better than them in those aspects, although they might be more balanced and fluent. It will not be difficult for you to defeat one or two of them, but you must be careful if you want to crush three of them in a row quickly."
"Got it." Li Yao put on a smile behind the facial cover of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.
It was quite true. The files of the three experts of the Black Wind Fleet had been hovering in his head for days even without Long Yangjun's introduction. They turned into a database that consisted of billions of entries of information. Then, he analyzed all the data in great detail to infer the method to defeat the opponents.
The opponents were indeed very strong. Perhaps that was why Di Feiwen, the No. 2 person of the Black Wind Fleet, had pushed them out to fight for better conditions of surrender.
If he could not secure a clean and neat triumph or even failed in one of the matches, the Black Wind Fleet probably would still surrender, but the difficulty of negotiation would be significantly improved.
Di Feiwen, if this is your clever plan, I'm afraid that… you are terribly mistaken.
Li Yao slowly raised his head. The smile on his face grew more and more intense, as if it were slowly puffed by nonexistent tusks.
'Fiery Spider' Wan Xiu, 'Heavy Cannon' Lei Long, and 'Death Shadow' Murong Wei, three experts of the Black Wind Fleet, arrived.
Chi…
The three double airtight gates on the outer wall of the space station were slowly opened. Three ferocious, aggressive, and murderous crystal suits of the Imperium appeared from three directions.
The crystal suit on the left side had been installed with countless guns, magazines, and honeycomb-type launchers, making it look like a moving arsenal.
The crystal suit in the middle was more than four meters tall, even larger than many light Ares Extensions. At first glance, it appeared to be an iron tower covered in lumps.
The crystal suit on the left side, in the meantime, was the complete opposite. It was less than two meters tall, which could be either because the armor was as thin as paper or because the Immortal Cultivator wearing the crystal suit was particularly short and slender. But the two sabers crossed on his back that looked like crescent moons made it impossible for anybody to underestimate his dangerousness.
Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!
The appearance of the three Immortal Cultivators seemed to have activated the violent energy inside the space station. Invisible electric arcs appeared and collided, causing serious interference to all the crystal cameras that were floating in midair. All the spectators that were watching the competition could not help but feel as if the entire space had been twisted when their auras crashed into each other brutally.
At this moment, countless people were paying close attention to the soul-stirring competition.
In the highest command center of the Defense Counsel of the Federation, the newly-elected Speaker Ding Lingdang, Guo Chunfeng, Bai Kaixin, and other leaders of the federation observed the three aggressive Immortal Cultivators on the light beam solemnly.
The request to duel that Di Feiwen had proposed was indeed weird and strongly reeked of a scheme. But he was the most capable person in the Black Wind Fleet to clean up the mess, and his prestige was more than ten times higher than Heiye Lan's, who the federation tried to back up. If the war was to be ended soon, at least two of the matches had to be won first.
Li Yao… Your capability has improved again!
Ding Lingdang's eyes were glittering. Perhaps she was the least worried among the leadership of the federation because she believed in Li Yao's capability and had no doubt that three Immortal Cultivators were not going to be a problem for Li Yao.
On the other hand, on Black Ray, the lone starship from the Black Wind Fleet that had been disarmed, Di Feiwen, who looked more like a vicious merchant than a general, and the experts of the defeated troops of the Black Wind Fleet stared at Vulture Li Yao on the light beam.
This was a legendary expert from the edge of the cosmos who had rendered their hundred-year expedition futile and collapsed their enormous fleet!
Chapter 1864: I'm in a Hurry. Come Together! |
Fiery Eye, Heavy Cannon, and Death Shadow, the three experts from the Black Wind Fleet, were all ruthless, brutal men who had killed countless people and left countless terrible tales behind them.
Even among the experts of the Black Wind Fleet who were watching the battle, a lot of people had seen them destroying everything in their way unstoppably with their own eyes. Some had even experienced their overwhelming magnificence personally.
But their enemy…
It was Vulture Li Yao!
Ten years was long enough for the expedition army to get enough knowledge of their prey, the 'Star Glory Federation', or knowledge that they thought was enough.
They had heard the name of Vulture Li Yao before, but they did not think that it was a big deal back then, mistaking it for some sort of propaganda and deification. Turning a dead hero into the idol of a country was a trick that had been adopted too many times.
They had collected some of Li Yao's battle videos from a hundred years ago. They had to admit that he was rather distinguished to have trained himself with such abilities at the edge of the cosmos.
But he was still nothing more than 'distinguished'.
None of the Immortal Cultivators had considered Li Yao an obstacle on their path to conquer the Star Glory Federation.
It was not until Li Yao announced his grand return with eleven experts from the Ancient Sages Sector and twelve Colossi, blew up the space gate, and killed the commander of the Black Wind Fleet that the defeated soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet suddenly realized that all the rumors were true. Vulture Li Yao was as intimidating as the rumors made out!
When he was in the Core Formation Stage, he had killed the star child, an elite scout from the Imperium of True Human Beings. Then, he united the Heaven's Origin Sector, the Flying Star Sector, and the Blood Demon Sector on his own. The commander of the Black Wind Fleet, the extraterrestrial devils, and the resurrected member of the Pangu Clan had all been slain by him. How could the defeated soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet not feel shocked and scared by such an expert?
Before the battle started, all the Immortal Cultivators were already soaked in cold sweat. They only hoped to win at least one of the three matches, even if it was a tie. As long as the failure was not too humiliating, the last bit of dignity of the Black Wind Fleet would remain.
"My fellow Cultivators…" Di Feiwen was particularly ugly, but he had a warm and comforting voice. Whoever heard him talking would feel that they were walking in a spring breeze and could not refuse to believe what he said. "Watch the show carefully now. Don't forget our deal. I believe that nobody will regret it after witnessing Vulture Li Yao's astonishing performance."
Inside the space station, the three Immortal Cultivators between the high level and the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage slowly landed.
Even the condescending experts from the center of the cosmos did not dare act arrogantly faced with Vulture Li Yao, a local tyrant from the edge of the cosmos. They bowed to Li Yao at the same time to show respect.
"…Fellow Cultivator Li, to decide the fate of the Black Wind Fleet and even the Star Glory Federation, we are going to have a fair competition as per our agreement," 'Death Shadow' Murong Wei said cautiously. "We have already taken enough advantage of you by sending out three champions on our side. Then, it is only reasonable that you get to decide the order of our fights. I wonder, which of us do you want to compete with first?"
"In that case…"
Li Yao nodded. While warming up his wrists and ankles casually, he walked to the three Immortal Cultivators.
