by <unknown>
If I can get those treasures, my Cultivation will definitely reach a higher level. I will be able to surpass the noble families and even dominate the entire Flying Star Sector!
Li Yao did not know if Yan Xinjian really thought that way. However, it was not a solo task to hunt for treasures on Spider Den. He needed strong support.
Besides, he was now the mortal enemy of the space pirates. Not to mention Spider Den, if he so much as drew close to the Spider Den Space Zone, countless space pirates would have blown him out of the sky without any hesitation.
Moreover, how was he going to explain everything to the other Cultivators? When the message was out, he would not be able to own all the treasures.
Therefore…
After a painful, prolonged hesitation, he killed his own wife, Yun Suoyu, and slew the entire family of his supervisor!
Did his wife really cheat on him?
From the context, Li Yao felt that she did not.
Otherwise, Yan Xinjian would not have felt so guilty, to such a degree that he could not let it go after decades.
Yan Xinjian was merely devoured by the constantly expanding greed in the bottom of his heart. He did such an insane, inhuman thing only because he needed a justifiable reason to desert Heavenly Saints City and sneak into Spider Den!
He made it!
After he defected to Spider Den, because of the murders he committed, most of the space pirates did not doubt him.
But at that time, he was still alone and did not have the power to conduct large-scale searches.
Therefore, he managed to incite the Cultivators to wage a war on the space pirates. Then, with his advantage as the previous vice commander of the coalition fleet of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City, he was granted temporary leadership by many pirate gangs because he was familiar with the enemy.
For an unparalleled expert such as Yan Xinjian, there was no way that he would relinquish the leadership after getting it 'temporarily'.
In the decades that followed, he defeated the Cultivators, purged Spider Den, and seized absolute power. Finally, he achieved his purpose and excavated the underground fortress on a large scale.
Yan Xinjian knew that the secret treasures would raise a storm of blood should they appear on the ground. Not only would all the space pirates be fighting for them, it was also very likely that the Cultivators would come back again.
Therefore, Yan Xinjian simply built a secret training room deep below the ground and shifted the training facilities and precious resources of the Star Ocean Imperium, as well as the treasures he looted in space, into the place!
When all the arrangements were completed, he killed all the insiders and set up multiple traps. Then, he left some bait before he entered the secret training room, preparing to break into the Divinity Transformation Stage.
It was a perfect plan.
Yan Xinjian calculated everything, including the possibility of an apocalypse.
But he missed out one thing, which was his heart.
He did not expect that his wife whom he had killed decades ago would show up again right in front of him when he was breaking into the Divinity Transformation Stage from the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage.
Yan Xinjian's mind was disturbed. He was mentally deranged and heavily wounded. After a few days in a critical condition, he died. The only thing that remained was his soul.
Thankfully, he had been prepared for such a scenario and could continue his training as a spectral Cultivator in the artificial bodies.
However, the speed of his training was much lower than when he was alive.
Just like that, he continued training for a hundred years below the ground, hoping to restore his capability.
The high-intensity training was very damaging for the artificial bodies. He had to switch to a new artificial body every few days.
Gradually, all the artificial bodies in storage were seriously worn. He had to repair and maintain them on his own and reused the old artificial bodies.
Then, an accident happened.
When Yan Xinjian entered the secret training room, in order to experiment on new techniques, he had brought a few mice.
After hundreds of years, there were already hundreds of mice.
With Yan Xinjian's Cultivation, even though he had become a spectral Cultivator, it was not likely that he overlooked the beasts.
Li Yao estimated that he was too lonely below the ground and simply kept the mice as pets, except that he controlled the total number of them.
But it was not within Yan Xinjian's expectation that some mice escaped his attention and broke the crucial components on an artificial body.
The damage was very inconspicuous. Yan Xinjian was not a refiner and did not notice it during the maintenance.
When he did high-intensity training with said artificial body, a serious accident happened.
The outcome was quite miserable. Yan Xinjian's soul was split apart and could not sustain the basic form of a spectral Cultivator. He had to possess something immediately, or he would be gone forever!
The objects of possession had to be a living creature.
Yan Xinjian went through all the trouble and developed such a sordid skill named the Dream Breaking Arts, but there was no time for him to wait for a human being on the ground to arrive.
Right now, the only living creatures inside the secret training room were… the mice!
It was not difficult to take over the mice's bodies. A mouse's brain was simple in structure and had barely any soul power. There would be barely any resistance.
However, since the brains of the mice were too simple, they could not accommodate Yan Xinjian's soul, which was tremendous in size.
It was like stuffing an elephant into a rat hole. The mission was simply impossible.
Yan Xinjian was truly a genius of training. Before his soul entire dispersed, he came up with a solution. He dissected his enormous soul into hundreds of parts with a secret art, each of which took over the body of one mouse!
From the ancient times to this day, 'possession' had always been a dangerous endeavor. One moment of carelessness, and the host might devour the intruder's soul instead, just like Ou Yezi, who tried to take over Li Yao's body before.
Splitting one's soul into hundreds of parts each possessing a mouse was an insane attempt that nobody had ever even thought of before.
Nobody knew what the consequences would be.
But Yan Xinjian had no other choice.
Therefore, he said, "I have a lot of mice."
How crazy, desperate, and ironic his final words were!
…
The hundreds of mice I saw were indeed Yan Xinjian. Inside every mouse's brain is part of Yan Xinjian's remaining soul!
Yan Xinjian had made it. His life continued in hundreds of mice in such a weird way.
But he had failed, too, because he did not know any techniques for the training of animals.
Chapter 767: Five Hundred Remaining Souls |
Although animals and plants could all turn into creatures of wisdom, there were many prerequisites.
Some of them were manually made, such as demons. Their brain cells and bodies underwent world-shaking evolutions within several hundred years. After being filtered harshly, one in ten thousand might become powerful biological weapons.
Some other creatures might have lived on rough foreign planets that boasted special radiations and mother lodes. Against all the odds, the wisdom of the natives was triggered, and they became intelligent.
Before Yan Xinjian entered the secret training room, he had calculated everything. But he did not expect that he would be forced to enter the bodies of mice one day.
Therefore, although he had prepared a lot of techniques for training as a spectral Cultivator, he did not have any training methods for animals.
As a result, although he successfully possessed the mice, he did not have any idea how he could carry out his training with the mice's bodies.
The
training log that followed clearly showed how tense, how crazy, and how desperate Yan Xinjian was after he turned into the mice.
The super genius thought of every method possible, trying to transform the training methods of humans so that mice could train with them, too.
However, his brains were now no larger than peanuts. How many sparks of wisdom could he trigger even if he used his every single brain cell?
Besides, there was something that Yan Xinjian did not think of.
When a person's self-awareness was divided into five hundred parts, would every independent part of self-awareness equal to the person himself?
In the world of Cultivators, notions such as 'clone' and 'real body' were not new. However, were the clone and the real body the same person?
What was more devastating was that, before Yan Xinjian possessed the mice, he had already been showing signs of schizophrenia. There were almost five different personalities inside his brain at the same time.
As his soul was divided into five hundred parts, the different personalities flew into the bodies of different mice along with the scraps of his soul.
The different personalities that used to cram in the same body finally appeared in the secret training room, controlling independent entities!
Every group of mice represented one of Yan Xinjian's personalities. They believed that they were the real Yan Xinjian and the other mice were simply Yan Xinjian's 'doggedness', 'irrelevant thoughts', and 'mental obstacles'.
Since the others were mental obstacles, it was best that they were removed.
Therefore, a civil war broke out!
The details of the war were not recorded in the training log, but Li Yao could infer the situation of the war with the chapters written in different tones.
Those mice transformed scraps of magical equipment into 'armor' and 'flying swords' and built their own 'cities' and 'houses' with whatever techniques they remembered. They attacked each other every day.
During the hundred years, the Yan Xinjians were fighting incessantly inside the training room. The reason was that they could only kill the bodies of the other mice but not the remaining souls lurking inside the victims' brains.
Whenever a mouse was killed, the remaining soul inside its brain would simply float away and look for a new mouse to possess.
After all, mice were extremely fertile. Without control, they could flourish into thousands of members in several years from two to three in the beginning.
There was abundant food and no predators inside the secret training room. The number of the mice had been growing exponentially.
If they had not killed a lot of their companions in the 'civil war', the place would have been overflowing with mice a long time ago.
However, that was all decades ago.
Since decades ago, the updates of the training log had become intermittent. Sometimes, there were no new chapters for years.
Even if something new was added, it was usual very simple. Even the word order was sometimes wrong. The training log seemed to be written by a three-year-old who had only just learned the language.
The mice were retrograding.
Although Yan Xinjian did not find an appropriate training method for the mice, he managed to maintain his techniques and consciousness for decades. But the passage of time was not something that he could resist.
The longevity of the mice was short in the first place. Also, because of the gory battles, most of the mice could not live for one and a half years.
Sometimes, when part of Yan Xinjian's remaining soul just took over the body of a mouse, it was immediately slain by others.
The process of possession consumed soul power, too. After every possession, Yan Xinjian's remaining soul decreased slightly. Countless feelings, memories, and thoughts were mottled and crumbling, eventually leaving him like black and white butterflies.
After countless possessions, his memories and self-awareness were finally gone. What was left was the last big of his determination like the struggling sparks in an amber.
There had been no updates on the training log since ten years ago. Not a single new word had been added.
It seemed that the Yan Xinjians had already forgotten how to control the crystal processor.
No, they were not Yan Xinjian; they were just a bunch of pathetic mice that carried Yan Xinjian's different personalities.
That was Yan Xinjian's story, which had come to an end.
Retrograding was like a snow slide. There was no way to stop it.
If Li Yao had not come, maybe in another three to five years, the last bit of Yan Xinjian's will inside the mice's brains would have totally vanished.
By then, they would have become normal mice and continued living inside the secret training room for the next hundred or thousand years, until all the resources ran out and the air-cleaning and water-cleaning rune arrays broke.
Or maybe, before the last bit Yan Xinjian's soul vanished, the mice would all have gone mad and killed each other brutally, until Yan Xinjian's last self was killed by himself.
Li Yao took a long breath with mixed feelings.
He thought for a long time and yet did not know what to comment on what he had read. But an old saying popped up inside his head.
If you had seen the day coming, would you have done what you did?
Li Yao was silent. He imagined how sad and desperate Yan Xinjian had been when he decided to tear his soul apart into five hundred pieces and throw them into the bodies of mice.
Li Yao also thought, when part of Yan Xinjian's remaining soul invaded the body of a mouse and yet could not find a suitable training method, he had fought hard against other 'clones' while resisting the irresistible retrogradation of his brain. When his memories faded away like fallen flowers, had he remembered how ambitious he had been hundreds years earlier, when he was promoted to the vice commander of the coalition fleet of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City although he was born a poor boy?
Had he remembered his life before he discovered the treasures below the surface of Spider Den, the time when he cuddled his wife and complained about his work while his wife combed his hair and comforted him?
Alright. Let's not think that much yet. I'd better figure out how to get out of this place first. Otherwise, there is a good chance that I will become the second Yan Xinjian!
Li Yao shuddered and shook his head, throwing aside the miserable image of him ending up as the mice behind him. He then searched for the methods to open the door of the training room.
Very soon, he found the answer in one chapter of the training log.
The mice were not lying to him. The door of the training room had been installed with barriers both on the inside and on the outside. If one wished to open the door from inside, they had to practice the Dream Breaking Arts to the sixth level and condense their spiritual energy into a unique 'key' with the special methods!
Odd. Why can the door only be opened with the Dream Breaking Arts? What is the purpose of such a design?
Li Yao pondered for a moment. Then he slapped his head and realized that it was a silly question.
Of course, the Dream Breaking Arts was the only key to the door. It was all part of the possession plan!
A hundred years after Yan Xinjian became a spectral Cultivator, his soul power gradually diminished, and possession was his only choice.
However, even if somebody on the ground found his message and entered the secret training room, they might not necessarily listen to his commands.
Those on Spider Den were all cunning, brutal bandits. Would they behave nice and simply practice the Dream Breaking Arts when he asked them to?
It was impossible. The newcomers would definitely be suspicious about him.
Besides, even if they were interested in the skill, they did not have to practice it in this place. They could always empty the room out and find a safe place outside where they were protected by trusted people. They could always study the art later.
; At that time, Yan Xinjian was in the form of a spectral Cultivator. His capability was no higher than the peak of the Core Formation Stage. The newcomers might even have been stronger than. He would not have any solution even they did not obey him.
That was why Yan Xinjian designed a door that could only be opened via the Dream Breaking Arts.
As long as a newcomer entered the secret training room, the door would be automatically closed and would not be opened again until they practiced the Dream Breaking Arts.
At that time, Yan Xinjian would pretend that he was weak and feeble and say things like 'Young man, I can see that you are talented, and your body is very strong and surrounded by a halo of extraordinariness. I have been dead for years and cannot practice the Dream Breaking Arts. The hope for us to get out is all on you.' or other similar crap.
The newcomer would not have any options. If they did not intend to die of old age inside the training room, they could only behave nicely and practice the Dream Breaking Arts.
As for the Dream Breaking Arts, except for the minor flaws between the fourth level and the fifth level, it was indeed a powerful technique.
The more the newcomer practiced, the less suspicious they would get and the more they would believe that Yan Xinjian was passing the knowledge on to them sincerely.
In order to open the gate sooner, the newcomer would definitely train hard. When the first four levels were grasped, their suspicions should already be entirely gone, and they would focus their attention on the destiny of the sixth level.
Then, when they experienced a brain storm in the middle of the fourth level and the fifth level, Yan Xinjian would attack the newcomer all of a sudden and try to possess their body!
What a marvelous scheme!
Li Yao could not help but wonder what he would have done if the last accident had not happened to Yan Xinjian and he were still alive as a spectral Cultivator right now.
He was afraid that he would have had to practice the Dream Breaking Arts anyways even though he knew that there might be tricks in it, before he figured out a way to fight against Yan Xinjian's wisdom.
Thankfully, Yan Xinjian has been dead for decades. There are only a bunch of mice left. There's no way that they can take over my body!
