by <unknown>
For the entire civilization of mankind including the federation, the Imperium, and the Covenant Alliance, it was already the best they could do to resist the infiltration and the infiltration of the experts in the Nascent Soul Stage right now.
As for those in the Divinity Transformation Stage, they were the most powerful and influential celebrities of a country. How many of them were fond of acting stealthily like a thief?
Building a defense system that could resist the experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage was like building a dam that could resist a once-in-a-million-year flood. The technological problems were one thing, but the cost alone was enough to bankrupt any sponsor.
The weapons that could resist Colossi were Colossi. By the same logic, those who could cope with someone in the Divinity Transformation Stage were experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage, too.
It was absolutely impossible to resist them with a cold, rigid defense system.
Besides, neither Wuying Lan, the owner of Manjusaka, nor Li Lingfeng, one of the four 'Kurfürsten' of the Imperium in the future behind Wuying Lan, was good at prophecies.
They thought that everything was under their control. It had never occurred to them that an unexpected Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivator had snuck into their heart.
The defense system that could catch a Nascent Soul Stage expert was already of the highest level. Li Yao was more and more curious about their destination.
The floating disk sank to the bottommost floor of the beehive prison. Gliding forward along a pathway for three minutes and passing countless branches that looked like a maze, it finally came to a stop.
The six guards in the Core Formation Stage loosened all the shackles on the green-haired gorilla. One of them fell to one knee and shot the back of the green-haired gorilla's head with a gun-like inoculator. Then, the six of them all retreated into the darkness on one side of the pathway.
The green-haired gorilla's even breath became heavy again. Roars were echoing from his chest, and his eyeballs were shivering more and more violently, showing signs that he could wake up at any moment.
The floating disc slightly shivered before it sank again, sending the green-haired gorilla and Neltharion into an ivory chamber. The pathway up above slowly closed.
The walls and the floor of the secret chamber were all emitting gloomy glows, giving the feeling that there was nowhere to hide. Except for the surveillance cameras in the eight corners, there were no adornments in the room. But at the center of the secret chamber, a seemingly slim and weak young man was crouching.
"What's going on here?"
Li Yao could not have been more befuddled, wondering if it was a new test.
But he could not sense any air of an unparalleled fiend from the young man who was holding his arms.
The mental devil suddenly sent a very feeble message to Li Yao. "Attention. There's an expert here!"
Then, instead of waiting for Li Yao to reply, it controlled Neltharion to enter the absolute stealth state, floating in midair without moving at all.
Li Yao's heart palpitated. He also sensed that the wall that they were faced with should be tempered glass that was transparent one way. Although they could not see the other side of the 'wall', those on the other side could see the young man and the green-haired gorilla clearly.
On the other side of the 'wall', there were two clusters of very powerful life energy, one of which was very likely to be completely beyond Li Yao!
You've got to be kidding me. I have run into Divinity Transformation Stage experts from the Imperium so quickly? And not just any of them, but one in the high level or even the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage?
Li Yao secret gnashed his teeth.
Damn it. I haven't even gone on a killing spree and enjoyed myself with the combat ability of the Divinity Transformation Stage before meeting such experts. Am I terribly lucky or unlucky?
However, it did make sense on second thought. Manjusaka was an important place, and an epic quest was underway. It would not seem right if the place was not supervised by a few experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage.
Thankfully, the enemy was in the daylight, and he was in the darkness. Unaware of his existence, the enemy would not intentionally release their telepathic thoughts to search every inch of the space. There was still room for Neltharion to hide.
Li Yao and the mental devil did not dare move at all. They simply hid in a corner dutifully and observed the mysterious young man who was crouching at the center of the secret chamber.
During his observation, Li Yao had more and more questions.
It was a rather handsome young man who could not have been older than eighteen. He should be at the most vigorous and unrestrained age.
But the look of vague sorrow and desperation on his face made him seem like an old man that had lived a hundred and eighty years and only wished to die sooner now that he was faced with an illness that he could absolutely not resist.
His weary eyes seemed to be saying, The greatest sorrow is hopelessness
He was wearing a large surgery gown. While his skin was as smooth as jade and perfectly flawless, Li Yao discovered many pinky traces all over his body.
Li Yao was no stranger to such pinky marks, which were the unique signs when the skin and the muscles were healed after they were severely torn apart.
The pinky marks that covered the young man indicated that he had been ripped into shreds like a ragged doll not long ago, before he was jumbled and repaired again through some foul technology.
With the medical and biochemical technology today, even 'death' was not something that someone who was kept in a prison could get if they wanted.
But all that was not what baffled Li Yao most.
The young man was likely yet another test subject of Manjusaka. Li Yao would not be surprised however cruelly the Immortal Cultivators tortured him.
What did surprise him was that Li Yao vaguely felt that the young man looked… somewhat familiar.
The familiarity bordered on intimacy, as if he had lived with the young man for a long time a long, long time ago. Just a quick look at the face made him grow subtly fond of the young man.
"The face… I must've seen the face somewhere before, or someone who carried some of his features."
But Li Yao could not figure out who it could have been at all.
"But isn't it too creepy? I was born and raised in the Star Glory Federation, which is billions of lightyears away from here. I also hibernated for a hundred years in total. The young man here looks no older than twenty, and he is from the Imperium of True Human Beings at the center of the cosmos. How on earth could I possibly be related to him?
"However… Hey, does he look familiar to you?"
"He does," the mental devil replied. It shared the same memories as Li Yao. Naturally, Li Yao's acquaintances were its acquaintances. "But it's impossible. Did we accidentally see him in the Land of Sins before, and he was captured just now and delivered here?"
"No. Certainly not." Thinking for a moment, Li Yao was even more sure of his conclusion. "It's a mottled memory from a long, long time ago. He is like… an old friend."
Seeing that the hideous and terrifying green-haired gorilla had been sent into the room and showed signs of waking, the young man finally stood up.
His eyes were like a frozen pond, with no ripples spreading out at all.
"Who could it be?" Li Yao continued thinking hard. "Even if I've never seen him, I must've seen someone very similar to him before. Perhaps it is not about the similarity of their faces but their unique vibe, the feeling of losing all hope. I saw it from somebody else a long, long time ago, and I saw it a lot!"
The green-haired gorilla was finally completely awakened.
The waking drugs that the guards had injected into his body were probably mixed with tremendous excitants to simulate his brutality. The moment he caught the scent of a human, he immediately pricked all the green hair on his body, tur
ning from an enormous gorilla into a gigantic hedgehog.
There was no fear on the mysterious young man's face at all. He simply smiled bitterly and opened his arms at the green-haired gorilla, as if he were braced for whatever might become of him.
"Aooo!"
The green-haired gorilla, however, was completely infuriated by the mysterious young man's casualness. With a roar, he opened his giant hands, ejected the sharp claws, and slapped at the mysterious young man brutally!
Chapter 2067: Secret Weapon for the Only Target! |
The mysterious young man did not dodge at all but took the slap. The force was so immense that he seemed to have been hit by a high-speed crystal train. With a deafening explosion, the left half of his body completely broke apart, and he was also blown into the air and did not smash into the wall heavily until he had rotated almost five times, leaving a shocking, bloody mark on the wall!
When the blood darted out and spread in the air, the brutality of the green-haired gorilla was further stimulated. Putting his fingers into his mouth and sucking for a while, he grinned and lunged at the broken young man again, stabbing the sharp claws deeply into the young man's chest and waving him back and forth like a sack!
Even the most coldhearted person would feel that their blood was freezing and vomit hard if they ever saw the scene.
It was not a test at all but the purest brutalization!
But from the beginning to the end, no matter how the green-haired gorilla vented his violence and cruelty, the mysterious young man did not say a word. Even when his entire face was scratched and messed up, his eyes that were as clear as water and haunted by vague sorrow did not change at all.
He seemed capable of closing his nerves, and the physical pain had nothing to do with him at all. Besides the vague sorrow and desperation inside his eyes, Li Yao even somehow sensed the feeling of… boredom.
Li Yao did not act rashly.
It was partly because an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage who was far stronger than him was monitoring everything from the next door and partly because Li Yao did not believe that the Immortal Cultivators went through so much effort to arrange the test just to watch the green-haired gorilla rip someone apart.
There was definitely something more to the mysterious young man. He did not need to take action, at least not yet.
Very soon, Li Yao noticed an anomaly.
If the prisoner were just a common young man, the green-haired gorilla's first brutal slap would have been enough to kill him, and the dazzling and ruthless attacks that followed would have torn him into shreds.
But the mysterious young man's body appeared to be unbelievably sturdy. After being ravaged by such a ferocious beast for five minutes, he was only suffering from some bruises and some broken bones.
It was almost like when someone who was hit in the front by a crystal cannon only vomited some blood instead of getting killed immediately. Could it be normal?
Also, despite the green-haired gorilla's stormy attacks, the mysterious young man's wounds were actually healing weirdly at a visible rate.
It could clearly be seen that tensile granulation tissues were growing crazily around the white bones and the devastating wounds, which entangled with each other and constituted newer, thicker, and stronger tendons and muscles.
You—You've got to be kidding me. It is the basic mechanism of training to be torn, broken, and reborn and become stronger.
Li Yao secretly clicked his tongue.
Is the boy not being tortured at all but practicing a certain weird art, one that will make him stronger if he is beaten harder?
Li Yao had practiced similar techniques in his early years. At that time, it was Ding Lingdang who had assisted him in training. The two of them even had chemistry and fell in love during the fighting!
The mysterious young man's 'art of being beaten', on the other hand, was much harder than Li Yao's training years ago and almost bordered on appalling!
Chances are that the boy is much stronger than the green-haired gorilla. So many vigilant Immortal Cultivator guards and the thorough defense just now are not meant to deal with the green-haired gorilla but this kid! But when he was crouching on the floor just now, even I did not sense any strength from his body at all. This is truly… horrifying!
But why is he not counterattack at all? He also acts like his life is too boring for him to live. Is it because he is well aware of his destiny as a test subject, or is it because…
Shua!
Li Yao's memories expanded and extended like a gold, splendid, and sophisticated palace.
The memory pieces of the past in every day turned into locked rooms, which were opened one by one to search for every face that he had seen in them.
Li Yao was pretty sure that he must have seen the vague sorrow on the young man's face before. He had to find out the face!
However, ninety-nine percent of his computational ability was now dedicated to the control of Neltharion to keep the stealth state at the highest level. After all, an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage even tougher than him was right next door. If he did not try his best, he would be discovered by the guy in no time.
He only had one percent of his computational ability spare to search the memory pieces of the past. It would take several minutes.
What are the Immortal Cultivators up to exactly?
Looking at the mysterious young ball being thrown by the green-haired gorilla like a ragged doll but simply not counterattacking at all, even closing his eyes in the end, Li Yao could not have been more confused about what this damn test was!
In the control room next to the test room, against the tempered glass that was transparent on one side, Wuying Lan—the master of Manjusaka, the helmsman of the Heavenly Eye Group, and a secondary member of the royal family—was standing next to Li Lingfeng, the future leader of the Li family, one of the four Kurfürst families. They were observing everything in the test room calmly.
"He is still unwilling to attack?" Li Lingfeng observed casually. "He obviously has massive strength. Just now, he killed four highly brutal mutated beasts without even batting an eye. He took down the skeleton lizards, the nightmare monsters you produced recently, as easily as tearing apart geckos. But right now… he refuses to attack?"
"It can't be helped. The refinement today is still very successful," Wuying Lan said respectfully but somewhat helplessly. "We have applied the most mature and cutting-edge strengthening and modification technology that we grasped in the past hundred years to him. In terms of the sturdiness of his body, he is even better than me in certain parameters.
"There is nothing wrong with his combat ability at all. You saw just now with your own eyes how he tore the skeleton lizards as easily as paper, but the will to fight cannot be controlled or changed easily.
"Well, maybe I shouldn't put it that way. In fact, there are a lot of ways to hypnotize his brain and transform him into a pure slaughter machine—the most dreadful one. However…"
"Yes. You can't do it because I told you not to. I do not need a slaughter machine whose brain is blank, no matter how powerful it is." Li Lingfeng glanced at Wuying Lan emotionlessly. "I have made it clear since the very beginning that I need him to perform ruthless slaughters and to become the most standard, most excellent, and strongest Immortal Cultivator by his own will!
"What I need is a living man with a soul, not a puppet and a moron that only has a shell!"
"Then, I'm afraid that it will take some more time." Pointing at his temples, Wuying Lan said in a low voice, "You know where his problem lies. The haunting shackles are still restraining his soul tightly. Nobody knows when they can be cracked.
"Ninety-nine percent of his brain and soul are waiting to be explored by us after all. It is just like foretelling when a vegetative patient in a deep coma will wake up. Nobody can say that for sure.
"Maybe he will think everything through in a second. Maybe he won't think it through for the rest of his life.
>
"All in all, there is nothing we can do if he does not want to kill anyone.
"Test Subject 11453 is already the most hideous, brutal, and inhuman one here, but it is a human after all! Li Jialing must've sensed that his opponent is a human, not a mutated beast. That's why he does not counterattack at all, right?"
"Hehe. That boy…" Frowning, Li Lingfeng stared at the bleeding, broken Li Jialing inside the test room thoughtfully and mumbled, "He is truly stubborn. As expected of—"
He stopped his remark in time.
"Lord Li, there is something that I've been meaning to say, but I don't know if it is appropriate," said Wuying Lan carefully.
Li Lingfeng retreated his aggressive eyes and smiled. "Can there be anything inappropriate between the two of us?"
"In that case, you must forgive my recklessness, my lord, but I've been confused by something for a long time." Trying to find suitable words, Wuying Lan said, "It is true that the test subject codenamed 'Li Jialing' has been refined into a perfect slaughter machine. The project is a success by itself.
"However, counting all the resources and costs that we have invested into the project, it does not seem to be a fair deal.
"A war cannot be won by a slaughter machine or a single expert after all. If the same resources were dedicated to other projects, a thousand slaughter machines and ten thousand of the most powerful mutated beasts may have been produced. They would have been absolutely loyal and would have carried out all kinds of tasks dutifully.
"Li Jialing, on the other hand, has serious issues with his fighting will. It is even safe to say that he is an unstable weapon. I wonder, why are you continuing such an enormous investment in him?
"Well, please don't misunderstand, my lord. I'm only asking the question because it is directly concerned with his coming refinement. So…"
"I did not misunderstand you, but the answer to the question is not something you should know."
After pondering for a moment, Li Lingfeng said, "Let me put it this way. He is indeed a secret weapon, but he has been specifically designed to deal with a single person. If the battle that I anticipate does happen in the end, he will play a much more important role than a great army!
