Forty millenniums of cul.., p.384
Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 384
He raised his head to check the time. An hour had passed while he had summoned his spiritual energy and trained crazily.
Wu Mayan had watched him to train for an entire hour with his shocked expression unchanged. He stuttered, "Un—Uncle Sand Scorpion. Are you done with your training?"
Brutal man! Absolutely a super brutal man!
During the expansion of veins with spiritual gas, the pain would grow exponentially as the training process proceeded.
The training sessions of the expansion of veins for normal qi-trainers were usually around half an hour. They would have to take a brief rest between each session. He did not expect that Uncle Sand Scorpion would be so tough that he could persist for an entire hour!
Li Yao shook his head. He waved his hands and said, "The gas has run out."
"What?"
Wu Mayan and Fu Dong were both flabbergasted. "Eight high-level True Qi containers have been used up in only one hour?"
…
Li Yao spent five hours in the training chamber. Except for the half hour when he consumed food crazily, he devoted all his time to training at the highest intensity and sabotaged the barbells and iron blocks, which weighed hundreds of kilograms, to the point that they sounded like were about to break apart.
Eventually, he used up 42 high-level True Qi containers and increased the pressure to seventeen times the standard pressure!
Even Fu Dong, the manager of the training chamber who had always thought that he had seen everything, was extremely shocked, much less Wu Mayan. The young man had completely forgotten what happened in the test field yesterday and almost started worshipping Li Yao as a god!
When the training was done, Li Yao did not return to the hospital with Wu Mayan, because Fu Dong told him that someone else was waiting for him on the fourteenth floor below ground.
It was Xiong Wuji.
The deeper he went, the fewer traces of man-made architecture could be found. The minus fourteenth floor was essentially a natural underground cave, with mysterious and dark pathways leading to everywhere. Giant iron doors were embedded to the crude walls of the cave.
Clang! Clang!
Countless ferocious animals seemed to have been locked in the depths of the cave. They were bashing the heavy and thick iron doors with all their might.
Roars resembling those of primordial beasts leaked out from the gaps under the iron doors and raged in the pathways, making the ears of everyone who heard them sore.
"This is the most special training chamber in the temple of techniques. Only those with distinguished performances in the first test are qualified to enter this place!"
The pathway was almost blocked by the high and mighty Xiong Wuji, who said coldly, "It is even safe to say that this is where the qi-trainers do their real training!"
Chapter 569: Titan Warriors |
"The training of souls is different from the expansion of veins; it is much more dangerous. You will not necessarily be able to pass it even though your soul is very solid.
"Do you hear the screams in the secret cells below? They are all the experts of the Furious Bears Tribe. They used to be determined, unwavering tough men, but they all became mentally deranged because of the blast to their souls. They have completely lost themselves and have become animals who know nothing but slaughtering. Therefore, they can only be locked in this place to wait for their eternal peace.
"I did not plan to bring you to the real training place of the qi-trainers in the beginning, but your performance earlier was widely beyond my imagination.
"With everything reaching this point, I have no other alternatives other than to wager on you.
"It's all up to you now. Do you want to go in or not?"
Xiong Wuji's philosophical words raised a lot of questions in Li Yao's mind.
The creepy screams from the depths of the cave almost terrified him, too.
However, expanding the veins with True Qi Locks could only increase the body's spiritual gas capacity. He wouldn't be able to fully control the overflowing spiritual gas when it was unleashed.
Li Yao vaguely sensed that the technique of spiritual gas resonation that Yan Chihuo had performed had something to do with the so-called 'real training' deep underground.
Staring at Xiong Wuji without backing off, Li Yao replied briefly, "I would like to have a try."
Xiong Wuji nodded and pushed open a rusted iron door next to him.
The iron gate was almost one meter thick and looked strong enough to be installed in a vault. The interior side of the gate was riddled with interconnecting scratch marks, as if somebody had mauled the iron frenziedly.
"After you go inside, just follow your heart and try to enter a meditative state. If you are really connected to the 'Titan Warriors', you will be able to enter the 'Titan Illusionary Land'. Do note that the Titan Illusionary Land can be very tempting. It's very easy to dwell in it and fail to return to yourself. You must not forget who you are, or you will be just like the prisoners below."
After finishing the speech, Xiong Wuji locked the door from the outside.
Li Yao observed his surroundings carefully. Behind the iron door was a crude cave whose walls were full of bumps and hollows. With a closer look, Li Yao discovered that they were all traces of fists deep into the rocks. There was no telling how many people had savaged the cave, but the rocks had been pressed so hard that they looked metallic.
In the middle of the cave were countless bizarre-shaped stones that were emanating glamorous colors. They looked the same as those Li Yao had seen on the meteorite mountains.
Li Yao immediately realized something. These are the scraps of the meteorite mountains. They are pieces of the apocalypse!
Some of the meteorites were carved with messy runes; some had shabby pictures, which looked like the wall paining of the primitive barbarians, carved into them. In the pictures, many mighty giants were fighting against ferocious beasts.
Several other meteorites looked like fossils, in which biological remains that had lithified were stored. They were all larger than Li Yao's head and had extended countless tentacles spread out in various directions like octopuses.
LUM DUM! LUM DUM!
While Li Yao was gazing at the fossils, a powerful heartbeat echoed inside his brain.
Li Yao was suddenly alarmed.
He had realized what the objects sealed inside the meteorites were.
They were hearts. Judging from their scale, they were the fossils of hearts that belonged to giants more than three meters tall!
Did all the runes, paint, and heart fossils come to Iron Plateau together with the meteorites during the apocalypse? What are the Titan Warriors that Xiong Wuji mentioned just now?
As the heartbeat inside his brain became faster and faster, the runes and paintings on the meteorites seemed to turn into flowing lines that were spinning slowly deep inside his eyes.
Li Yao vaguely heard roars that were as loud as raging thunder. Thousands of noises congregated into a magnificent battlefield!
Li Yao stared at the largest heart fossil. He narrowed his eyes and entered a meditative state accompanied by the sounds of a beating heart and roaring.
A bottomless hole seemed to appear below his feet. He was falling, falling, and falling, until he heard an earsplitting explosion and found himself in a whole new world!
This was a bleak and vast world, and it seemed to be a planet in the primitive phase. Far ahead were erupting volcanoes whose magma had almost consumed the entire sky.
On the ragged land, tens of thousands of giants were grouping. Their average height was around four meters, and their shoulders were twice as broad as those of human beings. Their heads were the shape of triangles, their chins protruding significantly. Two sharp tusks jutted out like ivories.
Their skin was crimson, as if on fire, on which glamorous flowery stripes were growing. They did not look like tattoos but more like they had been there at birth. The flowery stripes turned into different forms and shades as their masters waved their hands and legs.
All the giants were wearing simple beast hide, some of which was covered with the bones or shells of eccentric beasts. Contrary to the rest of their primitive getup, they were holding very delicate metal blades that resembled axes and sabers in their hands!
Li Yao felt like he was having a heart attack, but then he suddenly discovered that he had become one of the red giants, too, and that he was charging forward under the command of his leader.
"Ughhhh!"
The red giants were apparently poor at speech. They could only utter several simple syllables, but the glamorous stripes that were continuously changing on their bodies were a unique form of communication for them.
Although Li Yao couldn't understand their language, he could sense the meaning expressed by the roars and the changing stripes.
From beginning to the end, all the crazy roars and the bouncing stripes had but one meaning.
"Let's fight! Let's fight! Let's fight!"
In the continuous mountains ahead of them, countless hollows appeared, making the mountains look like honeycombs. From the hollows crawled out terrifying beasts almost five meters tall that seemed to be hybrids of spiders and mantises. Several bigger holes even produced enormous beasts more than ten meters tall. It was like an exposition of gargantuan creatures.
The ferocious beasts out of one's worst nightmares had in fact triggered the burning fighting will of the red giants, who charged forward without any hesitation. With the sabers flying and the axes dancing, they constituted a steel torrent and savagely crushed over everything in their way!
"Hoo!"
In the beginning, Li Yao still managed to keep his head clear. But as the battle became heated and the red giants beside him continued roaring, unfathomable waves were released from their brains, which bolstered Li Yao's fighting will without him knowing.
He had planned to find a place to hide and observe the battle of the two unknown species as an outsider.
However, when he slashed open the shell of a strange beast and green, thick body fluid splashed all over his body, he suddenly felt that the blood of the beast was even more thrilling than the hardest liquor, which motivated his soaring fighting will. He was devoted to the battle, forgetting where or who he was!
The battle lasted an entire day. It was not until two blood-red moons appeared in the sky that Li Yao sat cross-legged on the battlefield, where blood was flowing like rivers, and gradually came back to himself.
But the scenes of slaughtering had been etched into his brain.
Looking around, he found that there were barely any red giants left now. The lose-lose battle had almost destroyed the two unknown species at the same time.
But the surviving giants couldn't have been more excited. Now and then, they would stab their saber into their enemy's dead body and raise it high, while they danced and roared in triumph.
For some reason, Li Yao felt that his throat was itching. He craved to yell, shout, and even continue fighting in the uncanny world.
The thought suddenly alarmed him. He shuddered, and after a blink of dazzling light, he had returned to the dark cave in reality.
However, he was soaked in sweat and stinky, black mucus. He felt extremely comfortable as if he had just gone through a gratifying fierce battle.
Li Yao took a long breath in relief. He was going to stand up, when he suddenly felt that his leg hurt. He lowered his head and discovered that a shallow wound had appeared on the outer side of his right leg.
Li Yao remembered clearly that, in his illusion, a giant insect had slashed him in exactly the same place.
What is going—
Li Yao was deeply confused. He pulled open the iron door while he pondered on his experience.
He could tell that the red giants in the illusion had been triggering special waves from their brains when they roared in the same way that the qi-trainers' technique of spiritual gas resonation functioned.
Is this the source of the qi-trainers' technique? Did they find the heritage of an unknown species during their struggle against the apocalypse and learn the technique of spiritual gas resonation from them?
The illusions felt similar to Ou Yezi's memory pieces, but they seemed to be more advanced than the memory pieces! My body has undergone high-intensity training without me knowing while I was fighting in the illusions. Even the wounds that I suffered in the illusions have been fed back to the real world!
But why is such a technique hidden in a destructive apocalypse?
Three minutes later, Xiong Wuji opened the iron gate. Although he was still expressionless, there was astonishment deep inside his eyes.
"You saw it."
Not a question, but a statement. "I'm getting more and more curious now. Who are you exactly? You are definitely not a common Cultivator, at least not one of those Cultivators Sha Yulan has described.
"Normal qi-trainers can only stay in the 'Titan Illusionary Land' for half an hour. But you stayed in it for three hours on your first try, and you are still rational without being mentally deranged."
Li Yao asked in a hurry, "Are Titan Warriors those red giants with skin like fire? What species do they belong to, and why would their heritage appear in an apocalypse?"
Xiong Wuji said, "Titan Warriors are the name we made for the mysterious foreign species because of their large size. Judging from the size of their hearts, they are at least twice as tall as us. Also, they are born with bloodthirst and ruthlessness. In all the illusions, they are always doing the same thing: fighting! Therefore, we've been addressing them as Titan Warriors!"
Chapter 570: Heritage of Fighting Will! |
"As for why their heritage appeared in an apocalypse, I'd like to know the answer to the question, too."
An indescribable expression surfaced on Xiong Wuji's face, as he mumbled, "For thousands of years, we only knew that, although the eggs of apocalypse often bring about tide-like eccentric beasts over time, we could also receive a huge amount of heritage from the pieces of the meteorites after we defeated them.
"We loath the outbreak of the apocalypse because countless towns and villages will be ruined.
"But we also look forward to the disaster because we will receive more knowledge and be even stronger after each outbreak as long as we are still alive!
"We turned into the Titan Warriors in the Titan Illusionary Land. We learned advanced battle skills after endless combat. Moreover, we learned the techniques to fully release one's fighting will, to control spiritual energy with one's fighting will, and even to reverberate with other people's fighting will!"
It was not until then that Li Yao learned that the so-called spiritual gas resonation was formally known as 'Reverberation of Fighting Will'.
Fighting will was a very hollow concept. One's fighting will might soar in a battle, but fighting will alone was never enough to win the battle however elevated it was. A three-year-old could never defeat a trained soldier from the special forces no matter how determined and resolute he was.
However, the rule seemed to be broken among the Titan Warriors.
They were a species whose capability grew with their fighting will!
Xiong Wuji stared at Li Yao and asked, "The other purpose for which I brought you here is to let a space resident experience everything. Tell me from the perspective of a space resident, what exactly do you think apocalypses are? Are they salvation or destruction?"
Li Yao was deep in thought. He shook his head after a long while and replied in confusion, "I don't know."
He really couldn't tell the answer.
Before, when he witnessed the miserable appearance of Iron Plateau in person and heard the story that Sha Yulan and Xiong Wuji had told him about the arrival of the apocalypse, he had naturally thought that apocalypses were strikes launched by species stronger than mankind.
There were too many species in the sea of stars. The Star Ocean Imperium had destroyed countless alien species during its expansion, too.
However, the civilizations of such alien species were usually very underdeveloped. In most cases, they had never even set foot off their home planets.
But it was still possible that stronger civilizations were thriving in the vast universe where human beings had not set foot in yet.
When those civilizations noticed the potential of mankind, they launched an attack in advance in order to demolish it.
It was a natural and reasonable deduction.
However, after what he had just experienced, Li Yao found the theory ungrounded and questionable.
The first thing to be doubted was the speed of the apocalypse.
According to Sha Yulan, the astronomers of Iron Plateau five thousand years ago had determined that the meteoroids of the apocalypse were travelling toward them on a large scale no faster than one third the speed of light, which was not an impressive speed. Besides, during the hundred years of observation, there were no signs that the meteoroids had the capability to perform space jumps.
Since they could not perform space jumps, they could only pass through various space zones slowly and dutifully, and therefore gave human beings abundant time for the resistance and the escape plans.
But the question was, Iron Plateau had only thrived in the recent ten thousand years.
If there really was an alien species that had a civilization far more developed than that of mankind, their territory must have been very close to what the Star Ocean Imperium's old territory so that they could detect the human beings' existence in such a short amount of time and launch a close-distance attack unhurriedly.
But people in the era of the Star Ocean Imperium had explored their surroundings far and wide, and they never found such a terrifying neighbor beside them.
The only possible explanation was that the 'apocalypse' had been launched ten thousand years ago, or a hundred thousand years ago, or even before the ancient Cultivation world was formed and before the first monkey to walk upright was born.
It was possible that the apocalypse was not aimed at Iron Plateau.
