by <unknown>
"Kill him! Kill him!"
Li Yao's heart seemed to have fallen into a bottomless hole. He finally understood that it was a neatly concocted trap meant to capture him!
At least five Immortal Cultivators in the Nascent Soul Stage were lurking nearby. There was even a monster in the Divinity Transformation Stage.
"Leave me alone. Just go away!" Li Yao bellowed at the debris, but a streak of brightness soared up into the sky stubbornly and flew toward him.
It was Ding Lingdang!
Her crystal suit was riddled with holes, and her hair had become frizzy because of the burning fire. Her face was partly red and partly black, but her eyes were as brilliant and resolute as before.
"Let's go together!" Ding Lingdang shouted loudly. She held Li Yao's hands, and the two of them broke out of the siege together.
At the same moment, the debris nearby suddenly exploded, revealing more than ten small crystal warships, which rose to the sky. Their crystal cannons formed an impregnable net and blocked Li Yao and Ding Lingdang's path of escape!
BOOM!
One cannonball rushed toward them. Threatened by the hundreds of streaks of auras near him, Li Yao could not dodge the attack.
But Ding Lingdang pushed him away heavily!
Ding Lingdang took the blow of the crystal cannon in his place. Under the thousands of surging electric arcs, her crystal suit was battered into pieces, flying in the air like butterflies!
"Ahhh!" Li Yao roared. Spiritual energy mixed with blood spurted out of every pore all over his body. He slashed his saber and forced away three Immortal Cultivators. Then, having no time to bother about the two flying swords which had stabbed into his stomach, he was going to run to Ding Lingdang, but a fickle, unpredictable flying sword just appeared out of thin air within a breath and pierced into his left eye brutally!
Hiss!
Li Yao's left eyeball exploded. Excruciating pain grabbed his entire head like an octopus, making him suffer and unable to think.
Blood and tears flowed out of his left eye, where the flying sword remained. Before his soul fell into nothingness, the picture of Ding Lingdang being tied up by thousands of electric arcs had been etched into his heart and gave him the greatest fright.
In a voice not humanly possible, Li Yao roared, "I cannot accept such a future!
"I… am too weak!
"Stronger. I must continue training and get stronger! The superlative height of the Core Formation Stage is far from enough to compete with the Imperium of True Human Beings!
"Hehehehe. Strength. I need more strength! Whatever the methods are, and no matter how high the price is, I must get… new strength!"
…
Li Yao suddenly woke up from his dream.
He jerked up from his bed like a lobster that had been tossed into a burning pan alive.
His left eye was still hurting badly, and his clothes had been soaked in sweat. His heart was beating so fast that he could almost see it through his chest.
His mouth was dry, and he could not utter a word for a long time.
His left eye hurt more and more badly, and the world in it was bloody, too. He touched it with his hand and noticed that there were blood and tears in his palm.
Li Yao was dazed for a long time. He activated the selfie function of his crystal processor.
Himself on the light beam looked both familiar and strange. His face was pale and covered in sweat. There was barely any color in his right eye, but eerie, bloody streaks were rippling in his left eye. They were flowing slowly like ghosts and flames as if they were alive.
It was more than ten seconds later when the bloody streaks in his left eye gradually faded away. He recovered and slowly recalled where he was.
"Hu…" Li Yao took a long breath in relief and wiped off his cold sweat exhaustedly.
The Ice God Project had been underway for only three months. They had not returned to the Heaven's Origin Sector yet. He was in his special training room in Flying Star University.
Everything that had happened was just a nightmare.
Maybe because he was too concerned about the Heaven's Origin Sector, maybe because he was too worried about the capability of the Blood Demon Sector and the Imperium of True Human Beings, and maybe because his soul had not recovered from the self-detonation of the star child, he had been having uncanny dreams even since he woke up from the coma.
Li Yao was no stranger to uncanny dreams. Ever since he remembered things, he had often dreamed that he was in a place named 'Earth'. After he absorbed Ou Yezi's memory pieces, he had often learned the ancient refining skills from forty thousand years ago in his dreams, too.
But those two kinds of dreams were totally different from the bloody dreams that he had been having recently.
The new dreams were crueler, bloodier, and darker. They were almost exclusively pictures where the Heaven's Origin Sector was destroyed, his family and friends in the Heaven's Origin Sector were killed, and the entire universe was conquered by the Imperium of True Human Beings.
With Li Yao's Cultivation today, he had the ability to control his braincells and influence his dream to some degree.
However, the new dreams were like parasites. He simply could not get rid of them. If anything, they were only getting worse.
In the beginning, he would only have the dreams when he was in the deep sleep state.
Later, he was having the dreams even when he was sleeping normally for an hour or two.
To this day, even though he was not sleeping but merely taking a nap because of the fatigue after crazy training, he could not help but find himself in the uncanny dreams experiencing the horrifying doom of the Heaven's Origin Sector.
Just now, he had just finished a set of deep squats in an environment of fifty times the standard gravity. He had been taking a break but somehow fell asleep without him knowing.
"Maybe my soul has indeed not recovered yet, and I was too exhausted."
Li Yao rubbed his left eye softly and mumbled to himself.
However, determination suddenly beamed out of his left eye, as he gritted his teeth and said, "Nothing can be achieved without exhaustion. Just because they are dreams doesn't mean that they will not come true one day!
"No. My training speed is too low. When can I ever form the Nascent Soul if things go on like this?
"I have to find new strength one way or another…"
Chapter 822: Li Yao's Changes |
Li Yao sat cross-legged, deep in thought. He did not seem aware that subtle blood red brightness was spreading deep inside his left eye when he was meditating.
Two eyes in different colors, one black and the other crimson, made him exceptionally weird and mysterious.
Li Yao sat absolutely still for three hours. Then, his left eye constricted violently, and he vomited a mouthful of black blood.
Having no time to clean the stain, he triggered an empty light beam with his crystal processor. His telepathic thoughts flooded out into golden threads and quickly interweaved into complicated drafts.
His inspiration soaring like a volcanic eruption, he drew one sophisticated draft after another unstoppably. In less than half a day, almost a thousand 3D structural designs had been stored.
Li Yao reached out to Mo Xuan and Si Koulie through the Spiritual Nexus.
Si Koulie was the best expert in the refinement of starships of the Flying Star Sector, while Mo Xuan was a walking super crystal processor. They made the strongest refining team together. Right now, they were both on Ice King supervising the Ice God Project.
Ice King was very far away. The super space jump array left by the Star Ocean Imperium caused a lot of interference, too. It was not until Li Yao waited for three minutes that their fuzzy image appeared on the light beam.
"I need to build a special starship, no matter what the cost is!" Li Yao demanded firmly while he sent the designs that he had just drawn to them.
"Li Yao, why?
"Didn't we agree that 'Sparkle'
would be the first starship to be teleported and that we would produce eleven multipurpose exploration starships by copying the structure of Sparkle? The twelve starships would be the first echelon of the communication between the two Sectors.
"Right now, 'Heavenly Phantom' is being modified on a large scale, too. When the 'highway' between the two Sectors is established, Heavenly Phantom will be teleported to the Heaven's Origin Sector as the real flagship.
"When the firepower of Heavenly Phantom, it will certainly suppress the Blood Demon Sector.
"What other starships do you still want to build?"
The two of them read Li Yao's structural designs suspiciously.
"I want to build a starship that solely belongs to myself. I will be the only passenger on the starship!"
Li Yao rubbed his left temple and explained, "I'm feeling that my current speed of training is too low. If things remain unchanged, when can I expect to advance into the Nascent Soul Stage?
"Therefore, I would like to take a minor risk.
"Look at my drafts. It is not a simple starship that I'm devising but a very special training room!
"When the 'cosmic slingshot' ejects us brutally, our bodies and souls will enter a higher dimension after we shatter the void. I believe that it will be the best training period for me!
"Yes, that's right. I'm going to train myself in the four-dimensional space and try to advance into the Nascent Soul Stage!"
Mo Xuan and Si Koulie were dumbfounded. They eyed Li Yao as if he were lunatic. Although they were so far away from each other, Professor Mo Xuan was even thinking about extending his hand out of the light beam to touch Li Yao's forehead and see if he was feverish.
After reading Li Yao's structural designs for a long time, Professor Mo Xuan frowned and said, "Li Yao, your designs are quite creative. The flowchart of spiritual energy and the distribution of tubes are different from your usual style—they are more brutal and straightforward—but are you sure you are willing to take the risk?
"Li Yao, it's only been eight years since we got to the Flying Star Sector. You haven't even reached your thirty yet.
"Eight years might be a long time for an ordinary person, but for a Cultivator in the Core Formation Stage, it is just the blink of an eye. You've only spent several years in the Core Formation Stage, and the core that you formed is a very unstable 'superlative core'.
"There is a long life ahead of you. Are you certain that you want to try breaking into the Nascent Soul Stage in such a risky way so prematurely?"
"I am." Li Yao narrowed his eyes and said coldly, "I can wait, but the Heaven's Origin Sector can't. I must gain access to even more strength as quickly as possible!
"Anyways, I've made up my mind. On the way back to the Heaven's Origin Sector, I will pilot a starship alone and try to break into the Nascent Soul Stage in the special starship!
"I'm hoping that I can be part of the Ice God Project from now on and build the new starship together with you!"
Mo Xuan stared at him for a long time through the light beam, not knowing what was on Li Yao's mind at all.
However, for a Cultivator, once they had made up their mind, they would not change their decision easily.
The persistence was their belief. Other people may argue with them, but if they were determined, the third-party would not say any more because too much interjection would be dismissing the Cultivator's belief.
Besides, Li Yao was the real controller of the Glorious Sunlight Group. It was perfectly reasonable that he wanted to build a tiny starship with a slice of the resources of his own corporation.
Mo Xuan tilted his head and thought for a while. He felt that Li Yao did have a point, but he was still uneasy for some reason. In the end, he could not help but nod under Li Yao's scorching gaze. "Alright. We will spend part of the computational ability on your special starship starting from today."
…
Hiu! Hiu! Hiu!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Inside the small training room, it sounded like more than ten super shuttles were rushing at the supersonic speed at the same time or hundreds of crystal bombs were exploding.
The walls and the floor were all made of Red Obsidian, whose hardness was five times higher than that of the diamonds. But right now, it was full of bumps and dents like the muddy road after a rain, with interconnecting ravines and gaps everywhere.
What was louder than the rushing sounds and the explosions was the music played inside Li Yao's body. It fluctuate between high-pitched, low-pitched, and creepy. Gloomy winds seemed to be passing by, and ghosts were crying, making those who heard it scared and full of goosebumps.
"Stop! Stop! I give up. I give up!"
Wu Mayan was wearing a crystal suit inside and an Ares Extension outside. Yet, he was running here and there under the threat of Li Yao, who was wearing nothing except for a mustard-seed suit. He raised his hands to surrender and screamed, "Master. Let me catch my breath. Catch my breath…"
Emotionlessly, Li Yao's lips curled into an indifferent smile, and he said coldly, "It's only been five minutes, and you are already asking for a break. Is that really my first disciple's performance?"
"It is not the fighting with you that overwhelms me but the music played by your core!"
Wu Mayan opened his helmet and said, "Master, I know that your superlative core is extremely unstable and that you keep it revolving at a speed all the time to make sure that it is steady. You also make use of the noises of the core and transform them into the background music that is sort of a mental attack.
"I also know that you've selected twenty-three pieces of music from the millions of soundtracks of the Flying Star Sector to express your state of mind when you are angry, thrilled, calm, concerned, or certain of your victory. By the cooperation of the music and your state of mind, not only will you increase your own combat ability, you will also be able to suppress the enemy's soul!
"Wow. I'm truly impressed by such marvelous techniques, Master. There is nothing but admiration that I can give to you.
"However, Master, when you choose your background music, could you pick the less horrifying pieces?"
Li Yao scratched his nose. "Did I pick the horrifying ones?"
"You did!"
Wu Mayan counted his fingers and said, "I'll leave the few tunes in the beginning aside. The later few are already terrifying enough, aren't they? You can tell from their names. 'Bloody Chihiro', 'Incoming Ghosts', 'Devils Above', 'The Soul-Resting Song of Hell'…
"Honestly speaking, Master, when such background music is played, it is usually the time when the villains in a movie show up!"
Li Yao grinned and licked his lips. "Is that so? I think that they are good. Pleasant enough for me."
Wu Mayan hesitated for a while and continued. "Also, I'm told that Master is now building a brand-new starship for a breakthrough in the four-dimensional space?
"Master, if I may, is it not a bit too hasty?
"You haven't reached your thirties yet, and your capability is already in the top-tier of the Flying Star Sector. It is already a miracle of miracles! I don't think good luck will be with somebody forever. Right now, it seems unnecessary to risk advancing into a higher level.
"In my opinion, you can stay in the superlative height of the Core Formation Stage for ten to twenty years first, and you can try to break into the Nascent Soul Stage when your Cultivation is stable enou—"
Before Wu Mayan was able to complete his remark, he suddenly felt that a blowing wind was coming at him. Hardly had he had chance to react when his throat was grasped by an overwhelming strength!
Hiss… Hiss…
A freezing iron needle seemed to have been pierced into every pore on Wu Mayan's body. His spiritual gas had been completely locked, and he was not able to fight back at all!
His right hand behind his back, Li Yao grabbed his disciple's throat with just his left hand for more than half a minute. He stared at the young man emotionlessly while his discipl
e was kicking crazily with tears and sweat flooding out. In the end, he pulled Wu Mayan to his face and said to him softly, one word after another, "You don't know what you are doing. Are you qualified to interfere with how your master trains himself?
"Why don't you spend the spare time thinking about how to make yourself stronger?
"Remember, I don't like a disciple with soft bones. If you cannot keep up with me… maybe I will beat you to death by accident someday."
Li Yao tossed Wu Mayan, who was about to pass out, to the ground as if he were a piece of garbage. Without paying attention to him anymore, Li Yao started his own training.
"Cough cough. Cough cough cough cough cough cough!"
Wu Mayan crouched on the ground like a roasted shrimp. His face was red, and there was the deep, purple mark of hand on his neck.
He coughed so hard that he was almost throwing up his internal organs. His lips shivered for a long time, but he failed to come up with anything.
When he looked at master with fear, Wu Mayan was even more shocked.
Are—are you kidding me? Master's capability is even higher. He is doing such crazy training in sixty times the standard gravity?
What—what drugs has he been taking the past several months?
Chapter 823: Return to the Heaven's Origin Sector! |
Li Yao's weird changes scared Wu Mayan, who went to discuss the issue with Xie Anan after considering for a long time.
Xie Anan felt that her master had been acting weird recently, too. He was not as patient as he used to be, and he scorned, if not scolded, her when she failed even one of her refining tasks.
The two of them chatted for a long time at night and were both worried. They decided to observe him in secret for a long time, and if their master remained as weird as right now, they would report the issue to the seniors such as Mo Xuan and Si Koulie so that they could all work on it together.
However, what was odd was that, ever since he lost control of himself and nearly suffocated Wu Mayan, Li Yao seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened. He returned to the determined, outspoken, and straightforward man again. His attitude toward his disciples changed greatly, too. He became as careful and easygoing as the past and never reproached them again.
