Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

by <unknown>

  Spiders, mantises, locusts, scorpions, mosquitoes, flies, centipedes, butterflies, dragonflies… It was almost as if a dozen mechanic worms that had been enlarged hundreds of times had flown into the sky unhurriedly.

  They were not in a hurry to attack the Fist King fiercely but simply hamstringing and harassing him from nearby like annoying flies and mosquitoes, creating the best opportunities for the regular Immortal Cultivator players to attack.

  Under the interference of the weird Exo team, the Fist King's previous invincibility was entirely gone. He was not able to defend himself, and the problems of the enormous body size and the sluggish movement were exposed to the maximum extent.

  Even more critically, the Fist King was running out of spiritual energy.

  The Fist King is done for!

  Deep inside 'Great Iron City', Li Yao had already protected Han Te and Liu Li. He also established a protective layer of spiritual energy that felt like a mattress to resist the blasts and shocks each greater than the last.

  Sensing the air of the ever-emerging experts on the battlefield and the defense line of the Immortal Cultivators further away, Li Yao secretly sighed.

  However capable the Fist King was, he had been playing inside the Immortal Cultivators' hands. How could it possibly blow up the world that had been sealed?

  Whatever he was, he could not avoid the boundary of the basic law of energy. To drive the giant Great Iron City to conduct such violent fighting, inestimable spiritual energy needed to be consumed every second.

  It was already his limits to march there from the periphery of Liberty City against the barrage of thousands of demons.

  Even the last block of fuel inside 'Great Iron City' must have been burnt up by his crazy fighting will.

  Li Yao could obviously sense his fury, regret, embarrassment, and confusion.

  Such intense emotions made Li Yao start to wonder again. Was the Fist King a 'he' or an 'it'?

  "I'm sorry."

  Right then, Li Yao suddenly heard the Fist King's poignant voice from every corner around.

  "This world is too strong. I'm lost. Even you have been involved in this."

  Li Yao thought of something. He knew that the Fist King was not speaking to the two little fellows but obviously to him.

  With everything coming to this point, there was no need for Li Yao to keep everything a secret anymore. He said in a hurry, "Wait a moment. I'm still confused about a lot of things."

  "What you do not understand, I do not understand, either, but it is not important anymore," the Fist King said. "Just find a way to escape. I know that you are probably capable of escaping with your abilities."

  "What are you going to do?" Li Yao said in a hurry. "Where there is life…"

  Before he finished his sentence, he had already sensed that the world was shaking, and the wind was blowing.

  The Fist King had concentrated whatever was left of his spiritual energy on the anti-gravity rune arrays and the power rune arrays on his chassis. As flames of light surged out like torrents, he rose into the sky and flew higher and higher, charging at the Heavenly Rails and Manjusaka!

  On the ground, the dust raised had swept across Liberty City.

  All the sinners in the Land of Sins looked up at the sky from the dust, staring at the Fist King, who was charging at the firmament.

  "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky—what the f*ck are you exactly?"

  The Fist King burst into laughter. His chainswords, sabers, and axes hummed and released brilliance that could tear apart the sky in thunderous roars.

  In great shock, countless Immortal Cultivator players hurried to move forward to block him.

  The bizarre squad of insect-like Exos changed their attitude, too, and launched the most aggressive attacks at the Fist King.

  However, the Fist King's body was simply too enormous. Even though they could rip off the enormous components and even cut the Fist King's mechanical tentacles one after another, leaving more than a hundred giant fireballs on the Fist King's body, they could not stop the Fist King from launching one final attack.

  'Fist King' Lei Zonglie turned his entire body into a giant fist while he broke through the atmosphere beyond the clouds and punched the City in the Sky in the most devastating way.

  "Argh!" the Fist King roared. "Nobody can mount the high horse above my head. Fall now, Manjusaka!"

  Chapter 2019: My Own Kind! |

  Observed from the scarred, bleeding, uneven Land of Sins, the Fist King seemed to have surpassed the skyline beyond Manjusaka, the City in the Sky.

  At this moment, time seemed to freeze. All the sinners, be they attackers or defenders, stared at the sky, dumbfounded.

  For hundreds of years, not a single sinner had ever broken through the firmament by force, much less contaminating the supreme, flawless, and impeccable Manjusaka with their filthy, hideous body.

  Furious flames were burning between the throat and abdomen of all the sinners. They suddenly had an uncontrollable urge.

  Even the thugs and bandits on the leader of Liberty City's side were deeply awed by the dominance of the Fist King. They couldn't help but shout in their hearts, Break it! Break the sky! Break into Manjusaka!

  However…

  After time was frozen for only half a second, hundreds of crimson pillars of light darted out of the Heavenly Rails and Manjusaka, which interweaved into an enormous dragnet and completely enshrouded the Fist King.

  The destructive web of mystic rays seemed to be extremely tensile. Although they were deeply embedded into the Fist King's iron body, it did not completely stop the Fist King's momentum as he continued soaring.

  It inevitably gave everybody on the ground an illusion. They thought that as long as the Fist King persisted longer, he would have an opportunity to touch the legendary Manjusaka and leave the sinners' mark of filth and blood on the sacred, glorious city's shell.

  However, the moment such a thought popped up in the sinners' hearts, the brightness of the light web was suddenly raised to a higher level, dissecting the Fist King into pieces and transforming him into a dazzling fireball.

  Like all the unparalleled, disobedient bandits who had been bold enough to challenge the sky in the past hundreds of years, 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie was suppressed by the firmament!

  The fireball raged, as if the will of discontent and fury was still charging into the sky. But it could not resist the blockage of the sky and the restraint of the gravity after all, and it fell helplessly.

  The crowned fist perished after all.

  …

  Grievous sighs and bellows echoed on the ground.

  Inside Manjusaka, however, there was nothing but casual laughter and reserved applause. The honorable guests from afar congratulated and complimented the owner of the place for the enjoyable play that he had arranged meticulously.

  "Not as strong as I thought!" Wuying Lan smiled and raised his glass to the many honorable guests. He then turned around and spoke to Luo Tiansheng in a low voice. "It turns out to be more fancy than capable and has been suppressed so easily. It was really a false alarm."

  "This is the fatal shortcoming of the spiritual puppets with automatic learning and upgrading functions," Luo Tiansheng said. "The direction of their self-motivated evolution is highly uncontrollable, and they are often mired in very rudimental traps. For example, it was absolutely unnecessary for the Fist King to modify his real body into such a gargantuan and clumsy machine. Perhaps, according to his mind logic, size equals strength.

  "Generally speaking, his performance is rather remarkable, considering that he has been developing in the Land of Sins entirely on his own. If he is delivered to our laboratory for further study and debugging, he may present an even more shocking performance."

  "Yes. He did look flamboyant enough." Wuying Lan smiled. "The audience has shown strong feedback, especially about the final picture where he charged at Manjusaka. It was truly audacious of him. Perhaps we should produce more gargantuan puppets and m
onsters of the same type and come up with some silly, blood-boiling slogans for them. Only in such a way can the players, tourists, and viewers enjoy themselves.

  "For now, ask the Madmen Squad to enter the debris, find his core crystal processor, and bring it back to the City in the Sky. Then, move on to the cleaning procedure."

  …

  When the burning gigantic remnant crashed heavily, the flames almost covered half of Liberty City.

  The Exo squad that looked like mechanical insects descended slowly. Most of the members patrolled around the Fist King's remnants that were as enormous as a mountain and stayed on alert.

  Two Exos who looked like a mantis and a spider respectively crawled into the fireball that was still exploding.

  Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

  The structural design of 'Great Iron City' appeared before their eyes quickly, allowing them to lock onto the shattered control center very quickly.

  As they expected, in the middle of the fire and smoke of the control center, a crystal processor core that was smaller than an apple and looked like a diamond was hovering and emitting a daunting aura.

  Seeing that the two insect-like Exos had shown up, the crystal processor core bounced unpredictably and tried to flee to a deeper part of the debris.

  "This is it."

  "Ha. Still wants to run? I feel like laughing whenever I see such things struggling before their death."

  The Immortal Cultivator wearing the mantis suit grinned hideously and opened his hand. The electric arcs that flowed at the center of his palm were condensed into a powerful electric field and absorbed the crystal processor core.

  The crystal processor core rolled quickly in midair, trying to resist, but it was already too weak to resist the hauling force anymore.

  Thunder suddenly rumbled inside the head of the Immortal Cultivator in the mantis suit. His pupils suddenly constricted to the limits!

  Something was wrong!

  Communication!

  Their communication to Manjusaka… No, even their communication with their companions outside of the debris was completely cut off by intense interference at some point!

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

  It was the sound of tracks rolling over debris.

  The elite Exo of the Madmen Squad suddenly saw the most unbelievable scene.

  A heavy and clumsy tracked spiritual puppet crawled out of the twisted space deep inside the debris.

  What's this?

  Extremely shocked, the mantis-like Exo suddenly doubted his eyes.

  How could a spiritual puppet have been kept intact after falling from the top of the atmosphere?

  Before he figured out the answer to the question, he felt a sting in the back of his head and an itch at the center of his eyebrows.

  Then, he saw a bloodstained dart or flying sword showing up before his eyes abruptly.

  In his confusion, he realized that the thing seemed to have drilled through his head before digging out of the center of his eyebrows.

  He wanted to scream, but he was unable to utter a single sound. He managed to turn his eyes to look for his teammate, only to discover that the crystal suit of his companion had been taken off at some point. The man's physical body was cut in half evenly and thrown into two corners dozens of meters from each other.

  How is this possible?

  Before his self-awareness completely sank into darkness, the mantis-like Exo moaned in confusion while staring at the eccentric star at the front of the tracked spiritual puppet in a daze.

  …

  The mind circuits were reconnected.

  The database was copied and condensed again.

  From the fundamental architecture to operational logics, infinite algorithms were colliding and assembling, building a golden, glittering plaza from the void.

  The Fist King was rebooted.

  Scanning his environment quickly, he found that he was in the middle of a sealed space. Intense explosions and quakes were echoing from above.

  His core crystal processor was connected to three small ancillary crystal processors, which were embedded into a skinny artificial body.

  Judging from the different materials of the hands and feet, it should be a piece of garbage that had been hastily jumbled together.

  However, the connection and assembly were unexpectedly comfortable. They were done even somewhat more brilliantly than what he could have done on his own. No. Much more brilliantly.

  He slowly warmed his fingers up. The iron limbs turned out to be as smooth as silk and cheese. The assembly was truly incredible.

  He sensed the two objects that were constantly releasing infrared rays from the cold mud. They were the two human beings who had enjoyed dinner with him the previous night.

  There was also a tracked spiritual puppet, which was his own kind.

  "Master Fist King is awake!" Han Te and Liu Li both exclaimed in joy.

  "What is this place?" The Fist King tried to control the new broadcast rune arrays. "You saved me?"

  "This is a certain abandoned underground sewer in Liberty City," Li Yao said. With everything coming to this point, there was no need to hide anything anymore. "I saved you and made a new body for you on the way. There are no handy tools and materials in this place, so I had to make do with random garbage. Don't feel offended."

  "This body is made of random garbage?" The Fist King was silent for a moment. Continuing to warm up the brand-new limbs, he punched aggressively time and time again and said, "However, the interface of my core crystal processor should be incompatible with other crystal processors. How did you resolve the problem?"

  "Well. Is that really a problem?" Li Yao did not know how to explain it. "They can be connected via a random converter that I roughly made."

  The Fist King seemed unused to the real Li Yao's way of talking. After another daze, he continued asking, "How long have I been dormant? What is the situation outside?"

  "About two to three hours," Li Yao said. "As for outside, it is quite lively at this moment. Now that 'Fist King' Lei Zonglie and the previous leader of Liberty City have both been killed, Liberty City has become an unowned Elysian World. Whoever has the biggest fist will become the new master of Liberty City. At the very least, that is what the thugs and bandits think and what they are doing right now.

  "They are now engaged in the fiercest fight. Those weird fellows who claim to be assassins and mercenaries from the Valley of Thorns are also wasting no time instigating more trouble. The situation has gone completely out of control. I imagine that the chaos will not stop until half of them are dead.

  "With the chaos up there, we can take a brief rest here while nobody cares about us and figure out what to do next.

  "However, first things first. I want to know who you are exactly. Or rather, are you a human being at all?"

  Han Te and Liu Li were both greatly surprised and looked at the Fist King in astonishment.

  The Fist King, however, nodded frankly after considering for a moment. "Of course, I am not a human being. I am your own kind, an artificial intelligence."

  "What?" Han Te and Liu Li both exclaimed in shock and glanced between Li Yao and the Fist King in suspicion.

  Chapter 2020: The Fist King's Story |

  "That explains a lot."

  Li Yao knew that the Fist King must have misunderstood something.

  It did make sense on second thought. The false identity that he had fabricated happened to be the Fist King's real secret. No wonder the Fist King had mistaken him for his own kind under such coincidences.

  After thinking for a moment, Li Yao said, "Neither of us are in our best state right now. The dangerous environment we are in also requires us to work together frankly. So, I'll just tell you the truth. I am not an artificial intelligence but an incomplete soul, or a spectral Cultivator of sorts."

  While he was talking, Li Yao was amused. "In other words, I am a ghost who pretends to be a spiritual puppet, whereas you are a spiritual puppet pretending to be
a ghost. The two of us are indeed quite similar."

  It was rather funny when he thought about it. The spiritual puppet named 'Fist King' was so advanced that its intelligence was at least on par with the 'Ultra Spirits'.

  Not long ago, Li Yao had been fighting the 'Ultra Spirits' that were under the command of the extraterrestrial devils in the Star Glory Federation. Little did he expect that he would be honest with an 'Ultra Spirit' so soon and even probably work together with the creature?

  Li Yao was somewhat at a loss, wondering whether he should hate, fear, or bond with the Ultra Spirit named Fist King.

  "How is that possible?" the Fist King said solemnly. "In the past decades, I have examined countless spiritual puppets, including the models that can automatically learn and upgrade like myself. I have also encountered thousands of ghosts and scrutinized the mysteries of their remaining souls. You may fool other people, but you certainly cannot deceive me. The soul form that you have simulated is obviously slightly different from that of normal human beings. You should be an artificial intelligence several levels higher than me. How can you be a human being?"

  "…Ha?"

  "The first time we met each other, I only vaguely felt that something was wrong," the Fist King said. "But when you took action again in the battlefield, I was absolutely assured of my finding. Otherwise, how could I have invited you to enter the heart of 'Great Iron City'? However, I still underestimated you at that time and did not know that you were so advanced and would even save me in the end."

  Li Yao's soul was almost sweating. "I-is it possible that you are mistaken?"

  After a brief silence, the Fist King said, "The soul that you have simulated is much more arcane and complicated than the limits of my calculation. I have never met someone of my own kind like you before. Perhaps most human beings will be fooled by you, but my conclusion can't be wrong. Whatever you are exactly, you and I are both well clear that you are not a pure human being, right?"

  Question marks popped up inside Li Yao's soul. "Am I really clear?"