Forty millenniums of cul.., p.876
Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 876
The b*stard must be killed!
Killing intent suddenly rose inside Li Yao and occupied his heart.
Just now, the battle between the two troops in the forest was one among adults. Everybody had their mission in a battlefield. Li Yao never thought that he could stop all wars in the three thousand Sectors despite his ideals.
However, it was one thing to fight another adult, and it was a whole other thing to butcher children.
Even butchering the children itself was only a brief pain. Those that were killed would die a clean death.
It was a hundred times crueler to capture the souls of the children, burn them day and night, and seal them into magical equipment in order to reap the lives of more innocent people!
Li Yao could not ignore it.
He had to rescue the souls of the innocent children.
Although his target was probably an expert in the Nascent Soul Stage, and he should focus more on investigation as he was new to the place, this was where his belief lay.
If he turned a blind eye to such an unpardonable crime and escaped, there would be loopholes in his belief, and his level might plummet. He might begin to question his outlook and the spirit of the federation. It would be impossible for him to accomplish his mission well.
I will have to compete with a local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator sooner or later and gauge the expertise of the experts of this world myself anyway!
This is the deepest part of the mountains at the bottom a great canyon. There's not another person in the hundreds of square kilometers nearby. Nobody is going to discover the fight!
The guy must be living in seclusion without a companion. So, there won't be any unnecessary trouble!
Alright. Let your head be the offering for my cause!
After Li Yao became determined to kill the guy, he found another great benefit of executing him, which was that the guy's identity seemed to be of great value!
Squinting, Li Yao slithered toward the crack without a sound on the steep cliff like a gray boa.
Right then, a vague sweet smelt, mixed with a feeble heartbeat, came from behind him.
The hair on Li Yao's head and on his back immediately stood up. He turned to the left side out of natural instinct. After a huge noise, an iron whip seemed to have brutally slapped the crag where he had been lying a moment earlier, leaving a gorge more than half a meter deep there. Yellow smoke was even popping up from the gorge, and the rocks were corroded into holes that looked like honeycombs.
A giant lizard almost eight meters long, which looked like a hybrid of a crocodile and a dinosaur, had appeared on the crag above Li Yao at some point. A long tongue that was almost as thick as a boa was dragged from its great mouth. Thick poisonous fluids were dripping from the tongue onto the rocks, burning countless holes on them!
Four yellow and brown eyes were staring at Li Yao viciously. The reflection inside the tiny eyes showed another person standing right behind Li Yao.
It was the master of the mysterious cave, the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator who had a bird birthmark on his forehead and was torturing the souls of children!
"Huh?" The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator was somehow surprised by Li Yao's quick response. He eyed the stranger up and down and cackled. "Capable of avoiding a full-strength strike of the Six-footed Crocodile Dragon, you are indeed something. No wonder you are bold enough to pry into my residence! Which family are you from? Who sent you here? Confess now, and I'll save your suffering. Otherwise, I'll burn your soul for three days and enjoy my wine over it!"
The appearance of the green-spotted freak was between that of a civilized citizen in the central area and a barbarian. He did look like a locally born and raised Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator.
However, Li Yao would not look down on him just because of his appearance—after all, he had just tricked Li Yao.
I was fooled!
The guy must've deployed some sort of barrier out of his cave, not to prevent others from prying or trespassing, but to inform him silently when a burglar is detected!
Li Yao secretly frowned.
The two types of barriers were vastly different.
The first type of barriers was meant to block the enemy so that they would know it was best to retreat, but the second type was intentionally letting the intruders in so that they would be fished up once and for all.
The fact that the guy dared to live in such a rough land on his own and deployed such barriers was obvious enough that the guy was very confident in his own capabilities and believed that everybody was asking to be killed if they barged in!
It was quite understandable. In such a desolate land at the edge of the civilization, a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, with a few primeval treasures, should be as confident as anyone could be!
I've made the same mistake as Su Changfa.
Although I'd reminded myself time and time again, I was still careless after discovering that the Sector is still in the medieval age and that those guys are half-civilized barbarians!
But in fact, although the so-called 'ancient people' and 'barbarians' may be not as good as the modern people in terms of knowledge system, they can be better at plots and schemes than we are!
Li Yao sighed. Now that an ambush was no longer an option, he could only suppress the enemy in a head-on clash.
It might not be bad, either. He could collect more experimental data and gain a thorough understanding about the maximum combat ability and battle patterns of the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators.
"Are you too scared to say anything now, junior?"
The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator with a birthmark on his forehead grinned even more hideously, thinking that Li Yao was already petrified.
He was not worried at all.
Before his seclusion, he had already been invincible in the thousands of square kilometers nearby. Right now, after he grasped such incredible arts and built tougher magical equipment, he was even confident in going to the splendid world at the central plateau. What could a junior who jumped out of nowhere, unarmed and unarmored, do?
The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator's pupils suddenly constricted to the minimum. His facial expression was stopped between disdain and shock, as if every nerve there had been frozen.
The junior was gone.
Not good. Behind me!
The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator's back seemed to have been slashed by a heavy saber brutally and almost ripped in half.
But it was merely the wind raised when Li Yao was kicking.
Saying one more word would mean a greater likelihood of his information being leaked. Li Yao was not interested in playing a pretentious game with the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. Whatever information he needed to know, he could always elicit it from the enemy after he suppressed the enemy.
Although the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator knew a lot of secret arts about souls, Li Yao was no worse than him with the mental devil and the memories of the ancient Cultivator!
Li Yao's attack greatly shocked the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator.
He had been travelled in the Southland of Sorcerers for a hundred years and even paid a visit to the central plateaus occasionally. However, he had never seen such a ruthless opponent who performed a deadly attack without saying anything!
Moreover, how was the guy's body tough enough to appear right behind him like a ghost without resorting to any magical equipment?
The guy's attacks were simple and shabby, too, without any mysterious changes. He was more like a performer on the street than a high-level Cultivator.
But as it happened, the guy's speed was amazingly high. He straightened his feet and came close like a rushing flying sword!
The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator shrieked and dashed upward quickly. Without looking back, he waved his hands backward, throwing out two clusters of green fog, which were condensed into two giant claws and snatched at Li Yao's legs.
Boom!
Emotionlessly, Li Yao did not care about it at all and blew the two claws into smithereens after only one kick.
Pu!
The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator spewed a mouthful of blood, his hands shivering. The kick seemed to have hit two arms directly.
It's basically as I have imagined.
Doing two things at the same time, Li Yao drafted his battle plan while he analyzed the presentation of the top warriors of this Sector.
The Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator of this Sector boasts rather a high reserve of spiritual energy. However, he has yet to grasp the technique to activate the spiritual energy in the most straightforward way at the highest efficiency. Their moves are mixed with too many splendid and yet useless visual and sound effects. Or rather, there are too many 'impurities' in their attacks!
Judging from the experience in the other worlds of ancient Cultivators, it is because the spiritual energy is too abundant in their living environment and is not worth cherishing. Therefore, they have not developed Cultivation arts to increase efficiency.
Their Cultivation arts are often invented by themselves in primitive and crude ways. Such arts never receive hundreds of times of repetitive calculations and perfections or repeatability tests, double-blind tests, extreme tests, and so on.
The ancient Cultivation arts are to modern ones what workshops are to the factories with assembly lines. Even if their power can be impressive occasionally, they are far worse than the latter in terms of stability, repeatability, and efficiency!
Li Yao's toes pierced into the rocks like nails before he stomped on it and charged at the local Nascent Soul Stage like a cannonball!
"My Fellow Cultivator, what's the grudge between you and me? Why are you attacking so ruthlessly?"
The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator's spine and arms were numb. He changed his form of address for Li Yao from 'junior' to 'Fellow Cultivator'. Although he was asking, he did not stop his action. The giant lizard whose long tongue was like a weird boa immediately launched an attack from the high stance!
Pa!
The lizard's long tongue hit Li Yao's body brutally.
Before the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator had time to be overjoyed, Li Yao turned into ripples after being slapped by the long tongue. He was nothing but a blurred shadow!
The attack had missed the target!
Li Yao's real body appeared right behind the giant lizard, pinched the lizard's neck, and swung it brutally!
Who was Li Yao?
A guy who had been doing competitions of beliefs with Ding Lingdang for five years!
Even without magical equipment, his body itself had been polished into an invincible weapon by Ding Lingdang!
That was especially so for his core 'lumbo-abdominal strength', which was now even more brutal and fierce than the high-speed crystal trains after thousands of collisions!
With the core strength as the foundation, Li Yao strangled the lizard's neck as if his legs were scissors. Then, cracking noises echoed inside the lizard's neck. The bones, veins, and nerves of the animal all exploded. Before it even had the chance to scream, the enormous head of the lizard had been cut off!
Chapter 1344: The Local Nascent Soul Stage Is Angry! |
Although the Six-footed Crocodile Dragon had been beheaded, its enormous body was still cramping under the control of the nerves. Stinky, venomous blood sprang from the broken neck and spluttered over Li Yao's face and body, turning him into a glittering, bloody man.
Li Yao's formidability was quite a surprise for the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. The death of his beloved pet that he had raised carefully for decades was quite a devastation for him, too.
However, now that the enemy was contaminated by the slightly green blood of the demon beast, he was sneering to himself again.
The Six-footed Crocodile Dragon had been found next to a poisonous spring upstream from the Poisonous Dragon River, the turbulent river at the bottom of the canyon.
The poisonous spring was clear and seemed fresh and drinkable, yet no plants or animals were thriving nearby.
The Six-footed Crocodile Dragon, which had only been the length of an arm at that time, was the only creature that dared to crawl out of the crevice and drink water from the spring. The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator who happened to be collecting herbs nearby noticed it and realized that it was a naturally-distinguished beast. So, he had brought it back to his cave as a pet.
The beast usually fed on vipers, scorpions, centipedes, and the like, and it took more than a hundred snakes as thick as bowls for one meal. The venom had been accumulated inside its internal organs. The saliva of the beast was so poisonous that it would kill any victim immediately if it was smeared on the blade.
The toxicity of the blood, on the other hand, was a hundred times higher than that of the saliva!
The mysterious weirdo, despite his toughness, did not have the first clue about the mysteries of the Six-footed Crocodile Dragon and simply allowed the dragon blood to corrupt him. Would it not be…
Seeing the green smoke popping up from his body, Li Yao was rather interested. He dipped his fingers into the dragon blood and savored it for a moment.
Not bad. Not bad. Many kinds of neurotoxins, blood circulations toxins, and cell toxins can be found inside the dragon blood. It equals to a combination of the venoms of the cobras, green bamboo snakes, kraits, and blue ocean snakes, with an effect dozens of times stronger! They can rust one's nerve endings, cerebral cortexes, and respiratory muscles instantly, making the victim enshrouded in hallucinations. The victim's nerves will then lose control, and his limbs will not stop cramping. Eventually, the victim will die of muscle paralysis and hypoxia!
This is rather tough for a natural venom!
However, there's still a major gap between such a venom and the genetic poisons carefully made by combining the body fluids of hundreds of different kinds of venomous insects and demon beasts based on modern genetic technology!
Part of Li Yao was now the mental devil, who was a great expert of genetic refinement and cell amplification. With his ability to analyze, resist, and crack the venoms infiltrating his body, he was now basically immune to all poisons!
It had also been the greatest reliance when Li Yao travelled in the Blood Demon Sector years ago.
After the unification of the three Sectors, Li Yao felt that it would be difficult for him to make a breakthrough soon according to normal training methods now that he had advanced into the Nascent Soul Stage at such a young age.
Therefore, he had come up with many seemingly 'unorthodox' methods together with the trustworthy demons such as Jin Xinyue and the Fire Ant King.
Improving the body hardness and triggering the potentials of the cells with the combinative poisons was one of the methods.
It was in fact the very same method that Yan Xibei had adopted to build his 'apocalyptic body' on Iron Plateau years ago.
After five years of refinement, Li Yao's body, although not very attractive, was in fact ten times stronger than Yan Xibei's hideous 'apocalyptic body'!
Besides, he could also reduce all the pores to the minimum through Gui Suishou's Great Dream Tortoise Hibernation Art. When his skin was as smooth as a mirror, it was impossible for the venom to leak in. How could it deal any damage to him?
It appears that the demon beast herding technology of this Sector is still rather underdeveloped. They are merely domesticating animals and not interfering with the growth of the animals through genetic approaches when they are still embryos.
However gifted the natural demon beasts are, they are not monsters born for killing like the biochemical beasts of the Blood Demon Sector!
Li Yao suddenly shook his body. The high-speed vibrations of his muscles blew away all the venom attached to his body into a crimson mist.
Now seen and now invisible inside the crimson mist, he was even more mysterious and terrifying.
The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator was so scared that his heart was pounding.
He knew a thing or two about the famous experts in the Nascent Soul Stage in the central plateaus, in the north, and overseas, but he had never heard anything about such a brutal and weird man before!
Besides, he could not figure out what the mysterious expert was doing in the Southland of Sorcerers, when every renowned expert had been gathered in the north for the upcoming great event.
Is it possible that he learned the news that I'm crafting magical equipment here and came to rob me of my treasures?
Absolutely not!
After I found the cave and the treasures inside it, in case anybody coveted it, I faked my own abrupt death decades ago. I haven't visited the outside world for dozens of years. Also, the array I deployed has informed me of all trespassers, who were all killed by me. Even their souls were swallowed without sparing anything. It is impossible that any news was leaked!
The more the local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator thought, the more he was appalled. Knowing that it was a time of life and death. He rubbed his hands, and a round, pale pearl suddenly shone inside his palm. A streak of green brilliance flowed throughout his body, covering him in a battle armor outside his green feather cloak!
The greasy armor was connected by countless hexagonal scales. The joints were also strengthened by the skulls of many bizarre-shaped demon beasts. The two curved horns on the helmet that looked like curling vipers added to the barbaric air of the gear.
The local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator was holding a lackluster flying sword in one hand and a tiny, colorful flag in the other. Dozens of mysterious sparks were flying around him, fully demonstrating the demeanor of the evil scoundrel.
Li Yao eyed the ancient armor somewhat with appreciation. He felt that he was walking into the history books and fighting against the ancient people in person.
"Hu!"
His blood boiling, he did not intend to put on his crystal suit at all. Utterly naked except for the palm leaves, he dashed toward the fully-armed local Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator.
Ding Lingdang and Iron God Yan Ba were right!
