by <unknown>
Li Yao's speed was extremely high, but his mind was more tranquil than ever. His eyes turned into the most precise crystal cameras. Stable, effective, and utterly devoid of feelings.
He had dashed to the back of the remnant crystal warship.
He was well aware of Neltharion's complicated structure. There were four doors for the crew and six projection platforms for crystal suits, but they were all heavily protected without the slightest gap. It would be impossible to open them without the pertinent spiritual passwords.
Besides, these entrances were all controlled by rune arrays. It was doubtful that the rune arrays were still functional after thousands of years of deterioration.
However, on the left side of the end of the warship, there was an entrance for maintenance staff that could be opened from the outside, so that it would be easier for the staff to get their job done.
The most exciting point about the entrance was that it was controlled by complicated mechanical structure. Since the crystal warship had been forged by more than five thousand kinds of different alloys, and the silver seawater seemed not very corrosive, it could still be working!
Soon, Li Yao found the maintenance entrance.
Beside the round control panel, there were seven holes in different shapes. The panel could only be opened by inserting seven different tools together at the same time.
A silver metal ball appeared in Li Yao's right hand, which flowed slowly like glue, crawled into the seven holes and coagulated at his telepathic thought.
"CRACK!"
The control panel was opened, revealing a sophisticated, spider-net like mechanical structure.
Li Yao's brain was functioning fast. The silver metal ball inside his palm turned into four different tools, while he handled the delicate mechanical structure quickly.
Just like a pianist who was fully focused on the instrument in front of him, Li Yao dwelled in his world, forgetting that he was in a cave that was about to collapse.
In the communication channel, Ding Lingdang's breathing was becoming heavier and heavier. Yet, she didn't urge him at all, because she totally believed in Li Yao, and if Li Yao said he needed thirty seconds, he would definitely give everyone a miracle thirty seconds later!
24 seconds… 25 seconds…
"BOOM!"
The flame dragons surrounding Ding Lingdang had almost lost all color. But they were as stubborn as their master; they roared out and smashed incoming rocks time and time again.
However, the overwhelming storm of rocks was beyond the capability of any human being. Her actions were slower and slower. Countless smaller rocks escaped the hunting and hit her body heavily.
28 seconds… 29 seconds…
"CRACK!"
Beside Li Yao, the seemingly intact shell suddenly glided open. A cabin door that could allow one person to come through at a time appeared and opened!
Inside the cabin door, there was an ivory brightness that stopped the seawater from flooding in!
"I made it! Come in now!"
Li Yao roared, but he didn't crawl into the cabin immediately. Instead, he stomped on the shell of the boat and rushed backwards to Ding Lingdang like a shooting arrow.
Ding Lingdang stayed in the seed explosion state for more than ten seconds. Her soul and spiritual energy were almost drained. She was merely carrying on with the last bit of perseverance inside her body.
Li Yao's arrival eased her. She collapsed in Li Yao's arms in great relief.
"Thirty seconds. Nailed it!"
Ding Lingdang wanted to laugh, but what came through the communication channel were chesty coughs. Li Yao could feel that her body was shaking even with the block of the thick crystal suits.
"Of course. You are a human-shaped tyrannosaur. What can those pebbles do to you?"
Li Yao smiled drily. He dragged Ding Lingdang toward the crystal warship. One rock after another bashed his back, but he bit his lips and didn't utter any sound.
The five of them entered into the maintenance channel, half rolling and half crawling. When Li Yao was shutting the cabin door, a giant rock weighing almost a hundred tons knocked the shell of the warship, raising such a loud yet dull noise that their eardrums were almost torn apart.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The world seemed to be swirling. The undersea crevice finally collapsed.
Team Blue Bronze had been locked into an iron coffin ten thousand meters underground.
…
Out of the crevice, in the bottomless trench, fourteen demons were cruising inside the pervading sea sand. But they couldn't sense the existence of any Cultivators.
"Smashed by billions of tons of rocks, the five Building Foundation Stage Cultivators are dead for sure!" One of the demons grinned hideously.
Yet, Wang Ji's face was gloomy. The voice that he gnashed through his teeth spread out clearly,
"Vulture Li Yao, such a way of death is too much of a bargain for you.
"My hatred won't be gone until I skin you, burn you, crush your bones and throw away your ashes!
"Alright. Let me get down to my business for now. I will look for you dead body later after I dig out the secret treasures left by Skeleton Dragon!"
Wang Ji waved his bone tail. The fourteen demons turned around at the same time toward the undersea town relics that belonged to Skeleton Dragon's tribe.
…
In the darkness, Ding Lingdang, Ba Weiqi, and Leng Ziming were over-exhausted after entering the seed explosion state. They were moaning in excruciating agony.
Li Yao took out three Flowing Brightness Grasses and three Heart Locking Flowers from his Cosmos Ring.
"Yan Zi, the three of them have run out of strength. Separate the Flowing Brightness Crystals from the roots of the Flowing Brightness Grasses, crumble them into powder, mix the No. 14 strengthening drug and the No. 21 recovery drug with a ratio of three to one, and then pour the power into the mixed drug with half a minute of stirring.
"Half will be taken orally, and half will be injected into their veins.
"As for the Heart Locking Flowers, squeeze out its sap and mix it with the No. 6 strengthening drug. Smear some of it on their temples and below their nose. The remaining part should be taken orally, too.
"The Flowing Brightness Crystal can help them recover their spiritual energy. The Heart Locking Flowers will prevent them from becoming deranged. You know the rest of the treating procedures.
"Don't take off your crystal suits right now. The air here is terrible and unsuitable for the wounded."
While he was talking, Li Yao crawled deeper into the maintenance duct.
"Wait, where are you going?"
The question was posed by Ding Lingdang and Yan Yangtian at the same time.
Li Yao's heart suddenly shrank. Ding Lingdang's voice was extremely frail due to her bad body conditions. The scared little girl in the city besieged by demon beasts seemed to be back.
He crawled back and groped for Ding Lingdang's hand. He held it tight and said, "Believe in me!
"I will be back soon.
"I'm going to find a way of survival for us, and a way to hell for the scumbags of the demon race."
While he was talking, he turned around again and crawled into the darkness, never to look back.
Li Yao put away all irrelevant thoughts. Translucent, complicated structure designs popped up inside his brain, which had all been learnt from his Neltharion.
He was going to the cockpit and control center of the warship.
Although he didn't know whether the crystal warship which had hibernated in the depths of Boneyard for thousands of years was functional or not, the fact that the seawater-resistance rune arrays on the cabin door were still working gave him a sliver of hope.
Even the chance was only 1%, he would not give up; he would make it happen with 10000% of his effort!
"Wang Ji…"
Li Yao's eyes were cold, his killing intent soaring!
Chapter 416: Spectral Cultivator fr
om 7,000 Years Ago! |
At the end of the maintenance duct, Li Yao opened a cover below his body and jumped down.
The cabin was entirely dark, without the vaguest ray of light. But inside his brain, countless structure designs overlapped and constituted a complicated 3D map.
Li Yao's eyes were gleaming. He saw everything around him clearly as if his eyes were penetrative.
"If this crystal warship is indeed the training target of Neltharion, their internal structures shouldn't be very different. Maybe it has undergone modification, but key facilities such as the cockpit must still be in their original place.
"My current location… should be the engine compartment!"
Li Yao's spiritual waves rippled out in the air and touched every inch of the cabin wall. As he expected, he found a lot of magical equipment that could only be found in the engine compartment.
Like a silent cannonball, Li Yao rushed at his full speed in the darkness.
The cabin door which was driven by spiritual energy had been locked, but there was a mechanical device nearby for emergency. After ten seconds of trying, the cabin door squeaked and partly opened slowly.
"Shua!"
Three glimmering green lights suddenly jumped out in front of him. There seemed to be three invisible rays that pierced through his brain and his body and scanned everything inside.
Li Yao suddenly felt extremely terrified. Countless pieces of attack magical equipment seemed ready to fire upon him in the darkness.
The glimmering green lights blinked for a moment. Then a green glow as mild as water appeared on the walls, outlining a narrow and long path and showing him the way.
Li Yao was overjoyed and thought to himself, 'This must be the screening magical equipment of the crystal warship. It is now automatically opened to me after making sure that I'm a human being!
'It seems that the crystal warship is not entirely broken yet despite the shabby appearance. Many key components are still functional.
'Besides, the previous master of the crystal warship must've hoped that a human being could find the crystal warship someday. That's why he set the defense rune arrays to be fully friendly upon the detection of a human being before he left or passed away.
'If a demon snuck inside, it would've been killed already!'
Li Yao moved forward without any hesitation. Through the med bay, crew living area, cafeteria, arsenal, crystal chamber, and two training rooms, he finally arrived at the cockpit, the control center of the warship!
He didn't find any corpses on his way. There was not much debris or scraps, either. Somebody seemed to have cleaned everything up.
Chi!
The Red Dragon Swallowing the Sun emblem carved on the cabin door stretched out like a blossoming flower. The cabin door glided open quietly, unleashing an intense smell of metal that could only belong to the large-scale crystal processors.
Li Yao swallowed and tiptoed in lightly while holding his breath.
The surroundings of the cockpit were almost identical to the simulation of Neltharion when his telepathic thoughts crowded into it. The operation dashboard was right in front of him.
Suddenly, a "beep" sound came from the corner of the darkness. A strong wind was blowing at him!
Li Yao felt a shiver run down his spine. He retreated immediately and crouched, his right hand grabbing the handle of his Boiled Blood Wind Slashing Saber while activating the Flash Vibration Claw on his left hand at the same time.
In the darkness, two clusters of dim, dying redness were blinking nonstop. A hoarse and sluggish voice was uttered. It took almost ten seconds for a single word to be spoken. The same dull syllables were repeated.
"Trap… Trap… Trap… Trap… Trap…"
Li Yao finally made clear that it was a hunched metal puppet in front of him that looked like a deformed skeleton because of the huge loss of components. Many units had been exposed to the air and seriously rusted.
It had only one arm. Its legs were intact, but one of them was longer and the other shorter. It stumbled close while its only arm was trembling,
"Trap… Trap… Trap… Trap… Trap…"
Its crystal processor seemed to have been wrecked, with 99.9% of its computational ability lost. The word was the only thing that it could articulate.
While it was talking, it moved its sole remaining arm and dug into its own chest, as if it was trying to take something out of its chest.
Li Yao observed for a while and then exclaimed in bewilderment after a shiver.
He realized something unbelievable—that the object in front of him was not a metal puppet but a spectral Cultivator!
Although both of them relied on mechanical structures as their bodies, metal puppets were non-living creatures driven by crystal processors, while spectral Cultivators were Cultivators in a different life form. The latter were alive, and the former were not!
Their structures, as well as the metal materials that made up their bodies, was not exactly the same.
Li Yao could even sense a fading yet still flickering soul inside the incomplete metal skull, just like a candle which was burning up in the middle of a heavy storm.
"How could it be!
"The era of Star Ocean Imperium was more than seven thousand years ago.
"Even this crystal warship belonged to the last batch of imperial fleets after the Armageddon Rebellion, it was still six thousand years ago.
"No spectral Cultivator could live such a long time. What kind of formidable being was this Cultivator?"
CRACK! CRACK!
However formidable the spectral Cultivator had been when he was alive, his thinking ability had deteriorated after thousands of years. He was merely pulling the metal cover on his chest.
"Something seems to be buried inside his chest, and he is planning to give it to me!"
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao tried to extend his hand.
The spectral Cultivator didn't object; he pushed out his chest.
Li Yao found a gap on his chest and pressed it. A green line suddenly appeared and spread out into a square hollow, lifting up a jade chip inside the chest.
"Hu…"
An exhausted and yet fulfilled moan sounded in the metal throat of the spectral Cultivator. Just like a soldier who had accomplished his mission, he fell to the ground with the heavy burden on his shoulders relieved. The red glow from his eyes gradually dimmed and was entirely gone three seconds later.
The spectral Cultivator had perished.
Li Yao was stunned.
"The fire of life of the spectral Cultivator has no reason to burn for thousands of years. He should've died a long time ago, but he simply persisted with some sort of secret art to wait for the arrival of a human being and pass the jade chip on!"
An eternal life might not be a bliss.
Living for thousands of years inside a metal body in a lightless crystal warship buried by billions of tons of rocks ten thousand meters below the ground?
Li Yao was frightened just thinking of the idea.
Life was totally more miserable than death in such an environment!
"The senior spectral Cultivator endured the sufferings in the darkness for thousands of years in order to pass the jade chip on to a human being.
"What kind of things are recorded inside?
"He had lost all his memories. Even his self-awareness was gone. But he kept repeating 'trap'. What exactly is this trap and who is it targeting?"
Although he didn't know what had happened to the deceased spectral Cultivator, the guy's doings gave him a very strong sentimental feeling.
He laid the metal body of the spectral Cultivator in a corner, posed it properly, and paid his respect, before he finally got down to the jade chip.
Jade chips were universally applicable in the military of the Star Ocean Imperium. They were also one of the most solid artifacts. Therefore, many of them had been found in the Heaven's Origin Sector.
The jade chip scrap that Yuan Manqiu found, whic
h contained the files about the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, was of the same type as the one in Li Yao's hand.
Therefore, although the interface of the jade chip was different from the standard interface of the Star Glory Federation's jade chips, Li Yao managed to build up a small commutator with the materials inside his Cosmos Ring.
He inserted the jade chip to the commutator, and then connected the commutator to a port on the back of his helmet. The crystal processor immediately hummed and started working, but it was not until five minutes later that the scanning was completed.
Li Yao was quite surprised. The crystal processor of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit had been modified multiple times by him with the most advanced components. It was even installed with a cooling system retrieved from an Occult Orb. Although it was only the size of a fist, its computational ability was as good as many large-scale crystal processors.
But it had taken the crystal processor five minutes to scan the jade chip. The information stored inside the jade chip must be tremendous!
Finally, the scanning was over!
But his crystal processor reminded him that most of the files recorded in the jade chip had been saved in a very mysterious structure and were unavailable at this moment, and that only a small proportion of data and images could be read.
What appeared first on his light beam was a giant Red Dragon Swallowing the Sun emblem. It gradually faded away, replaced slowly by the information of the owner of the jade chip.
Li Yao finally knew that the owner of the jade chip was named Gao Xingce, who had been a Core Formation Stage Cultivator as well as the chief gunner of the crystal warship.
Also, the name of the crystal warship was 'Sparkle'!
What followed was Gao Xingce's personal combat and training journal.
Information streams flooded into Li Yao's brain one wave after another, telling a tear-triggering story of valiance and sacrifice that happened thousands of years ago, ten thousand meters below the surface of Boneyard.
"July 23, year 899 in the Star Ocean Calendar.
"We just finished clearing Phantom Moon Constellation. There are no organized demon troops in this area anymore. Only demon bandits are still running away.
