by <unknown>
"Got it. It's about the monotonous flavor."
Li Yao nodded his head quickly. "It would've been better even if he made you noodles with soybean paste and spiced eggs, right?"
"Yes, exactly!"
Liu Li nodded her head; her big, diamond-like eyes flashing. "Grandpa Yao, you do get me. However delicious a food is, you can't have it for a year in a row! I brought it up to Master Fist King rather implicitly before, but he said that he was changing every day and even every meal. The hardness of the noodles, the ratios of flour, the types of the potatoes, the manufacturers of the eggs, and the cooking methods of the soup. After half a month of training, the noodles he cooked already entailed ninety-one variations, and even the flavors of the potatoes had fifteen distinctive levels. He even asked me in expectations whether or not I could taste all of them.
"My… My tongue was almost numb. How could I taste them?"
Hardly had the girl concluded her sentence when her wrist crystal processor buzzed and a communication request cut in.
The name that Liu Li had noted for the guy was—Egg Fiend!
The girl was entirely frozen after she saw it. Shuddering, she turned on the communication. As expected, the Fist King's inhuman, metal face occupied the light beam.
"Miss Liu Li, where have you gone to?"
The Fist King said casually, "Come back for dinner. I have prepared a… big surprise for you!"
Shua!
Liu Li's face was immediately as pale as paper. She paused the communication without even raising any excuse. Covering the wrist crystal processor, she asked Li Yao for help, "Grandpa Yao, I'm doomed. Judging from Master Fist King's tone, he must've buried at least twelve eggs below the potato noodles. No, no, no. From the flash frequency of his artificial eyes, it may be fifteen!"
"Well, transfer the communication to my crystal processor. Let me talk to the Fist King."
Li Yao clicked on the transfer and connection function on his wrist crystal processor, forwarding the Fist King's communication to him and restoring the call. He said with a smile, "Fist King, nice to meet you. Liu Li is in my place. Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I called her over for some sort of a farewell get-together. Hahahaha!"
The Fist King was silent for a long time. His metal face darkened. "… Fine, got it."
"One other thing—"
Li Yao scratched his head. "Please excuse me. During the past half month, I've been rather busy. I needed to take care of Xiaoming and Wenwen's issues as well as my own training. I also had to negotiate with Zuo Tianying, Li Wuji, and other people for deals. In the meantime, I was obliged to learn the operation pattern and central resources of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, the environment and the structure of the Seven Seas Grand Market, etc. There was really no time for me to run maintenance and upgrade for you. Are you… Are you and your core chips okay?"
"I'm fine."
The Fist King couldn't help but touch his skull, which was yet another redundant movement. "I'm feeling better than ever. It's like a mysterious gate in the deepest part of my database has been opened, from which exuberant computational ability is gushing out every day, filling me with burning, unstoppable strength.
"It seems that Liu Li has really absorbed your knowledge. She has done an even better job in maintenance than you did. I didn't feel as better when you maintained me in person before."
"Really?"
Li Yao was rather skeptical. "That is to say, you do not have any complaints about Liu Li?"
"Of course not!"
The Fist King said, "Why do you ask? Right, ask her to come back early after the dinner. This place is crowded by space pirates after all. Many of them have regained freedom after being identified and trained. Who knows if they will cause more trouble? It's not safe!"
"Well, aren't you overthinking?"
Li Yao was amused. "Everybody knows Liu Li's relationship with you and me. Who can possibly be bold enough to touch her?"
"Perhaps I am overthinking, but since I promised to protect her according to the deal we made, I will consider every detail in every aspect and prevent her from being harmed at all. Even the lowest odds of hazard must be exterminated in cradles."
The Fist King said solemnly, "I am a machine of honesty and integrity. Please rest assured of that."
"Of course I am assured!"
Li Yao did not know what to say next. He could only change the topic rather unnaturally. "Right, I was told that you've picked up a new hobby recently, and you like to cook noodles for other people? Hahahaha. When will I have the privilege to appreciate your culinary craftsmanship?"
On the light beam, the Fist King's artificial eyes constricted to the size of needle tips, and the crystal processors hummed and ran at a high speed for a long time, before he finally said coldly, "I haven't, and I don't. Please don't ask such meaningless questions. It's a waste of my precious time and computational ability."
"Huh?"
Li Yao was completely confused. "What do you mean by 'meaningless'? It was Liu Li who told me that you recently grew a thing for cooking noodles. She also said that your skills were not half bad!"
"Liu Li is Liu Li, and other people are other people."
The Fist King continued indifferently, "Liu Li is my personal caretaker. Keeping her body healthy and her mood good is beneficial for the improvement of my combat ability and will make me realize the goal of becoming the strongest in the universe sooner. That's why I've been taking care of her daily meals in person. Other people can't help me realize my goal. Why would I cook for them?"
Stunned for a long time, Li Yao said, "That still doesn't sound right. At the very least, I'm different from other people. I am an excellent refiner, and I am a technician of battle puppets, crystal suits, and even Colossi. It was me who taught Liu Li her skills and who changed your new body for you at the beginning!
"I can also help you maintain and build up your body so that you can become 'the strongest in the universe' sooner. So, isn't it only natural and reasonable for you to cook a bowl of perfect noodles for me so that I will be delighted and modify your body devotedly?"
The Fist King was dumbfounded; his artificial eyes enlarging.
Li Yao laughed. "Look, my logic is flawless. You have nothing to say for yourself, don't you?"
The Fist King was still silent, but his crystal processors were squeaking and smoking.
"Hey, hey, hey, Fist King, you are not caught in some sort of logic trap or data loop, aren't you?"
Li Yao's face changed greatly as he said, "Fist King, activate the cooling rune arrays and cool down the crystal processors! Fist King, Fist King!"
Rigidly, the Fist King heard none of it. His iron skull was shuddering nonstop, until the crystal processors made a dull noise in the end, and black smoke popped up from the gaps of the plate. All the lights on his body dimmed.
His crystal processors were burnt up, and he was paralyzed.
The light beam went black, and the communication came to an unexpected end.
"Not good!"
Li Yao rushed out. "The Fist King has burnt himself up. Let's go and save him!"
Hardly had he started running when he felt that something was not right. Looking back, he found that Liu Li was still where she was at, as calm as before, not anxious at all.
"Liu Li, what's going on?"
Li Yao was rather dazed. "The Fist King doesn't look right. Why are you not nervous at all?"
"That's alright, Grandpa Yao. Master Fist King has been doing it a lot. He burnt up his clones every now and then."
Liu Li said, "Rest assured. It was on purpose, or even faked."
"What?"
Li Yao was truly baffled. "He pretended that the crystal processors were burnt up… It's almost like faking death, right? Why?"
"That's why I said that I must've done something wrong and broke Master Fist King's head."
Liu Li said concernedly, "I feel that Master Fist King is getting weirder and weirder recently. Whenever he
encounters a question he cannot answer, or a thing he doesn't want to face, he will intentionally burn up his brain, or put up some smoke, pretending that he has crashed, as a way to evade the difficulties.
"At first, I thought it was real and was scared out of my wits before I found out that he was faking it. I was both angry and amused. What was that about? He was supposed to be such an awesome bandit from the Land of Sins, but whenever he ran into a problem, he was like a kid covering his head in the quilt."
Frowning, Li Yao thought for a long time.
"In that case—"
Li Yao said, "Liu Li, since you don't like the Fist King, have you considered switching to a different job? I can ask someone else to be the Fist King's personal maintainer."
"I never said that I don't like Master Fist King!"
Liu Li jumped to her feet, slightly blushing. She pointed her index fingers at each other while she said in a low voice, "While the Fist King can be immature sometimes and has the bad habits of cooking noodles for other people every day and pretending to crash, he-he is still a very nice guy other than that!
"Besides, even the few bad habits might've been caused by my fault. In that case, it is all the more reason why I can't abandon Master Fist King. I must keep on learning maintenance techniques and improving myself to be the most excellent maintainer so that I can fix the problems in Master Fist King's head that were caused by me.
"All in all, I'll certainly be responsible for Master Fist King!"
The girl from the Land of Sins who had the eyes of diamonds waved her tiny fists and said firmly.
Chapter 2505: The Strange Space |
That night, Li Yao and his friends had a little farewell dinner at the Blue Sky Market that was made of various kinds of cans. It was not just for Li Yao, but also for each other.
Because of the changing situation in the frontline, the command center of the coalition army of the four Kurfürst families issued the latest order, asking the "National Protection Army" to move out in advance and block an important sailing route of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.
Therefore, Li Yao and Boss Bai's Fleet would both set off tomorrow to their respective battlefield.
Although the food was only a myriad of cans, they still had quite a good time. Also, halfway through the dinner, the Fist King was here too, with a whole vacuum bottle of noodles with potatoes and eggs.
In the end, against his inhuman, cold, heartless eyes, the vacuum bottle of noodles was seized and divided by Li Yao and Boss Bai.
The Fist King was so angry that he seemed to be breaking down again.
The minor episode did not affect the farewell atmosphere. None of them slept that night and simply discussed the upcoming battle and the drastic changes that were to happen at the center of the cosmos in the near future.
It was not until the east of the artificial sky was dyed red that Li Yao finally enjoyed himself. He boarded on a super tiny starship commonly known as the shuttle with Li Jialing and slowly departed from the port.
When they left, the "Coalition Fleet of Pyromaniacs", under the disguise of "National Protection Army", was also ready to go. The super starships modified and strengthened by Li Yao, Boss Bai, the Fist King, Xiaoming, and Wenwen took off, leaving colorful exhaust flames behind them that congregated into brilliant torrents.
Right now, the name of the fleet was only known to the few people in the Blue Sky Market and probably a few other people in the Star Glory Federation at the edge of the cosmos.
However, it was without a question that the fleet would rise unstoppably at the center of the cosmos in the near future and set the entire Pangu universe on the glamorous flames.
Li Yao, on the other hand, would also announce his grand entrance on a different battlefield in another identity that would astound the world!
"Good luck to you."
When the shuttle was about to depart, Boss Bai's blessing came from the communication channel. "Li Yao, you are short of nothing except for luck sometimes. I hope that everything will go well this time."
"Of course."
Li Yao grinned and replied, "We are the people who will break out of the Pangu universe and rage against billions of stars. Is the Imperium anything worth mentioning at all?"
…
Half a month later, in a desolate space zone not far away from the "Seven Seas Grand Market", the headquarters of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, countless remnants of starships had congregated into an overwhelming torrent of garbage, like a universal highway made of broken stones.
It was an invisible sailing route in space—the shortest distance from one perfect jump point to the next.
Although a super-remote space jump could theoretically bring a starship from any point of the universe to another one, such space jumps had a high demand on the precision of the space jump units on the starships and the physical and mental fitness of the passengers. They also needed to consume astronomical fuel.
Sometimes, it was not even a problem of the cost of the fuel, but certain high-purity, extremely-precious special hybrid fuel that had to be injected into the space jump devices in order to activate a super-remote space jump across hundreds of Sectors.
Such special fuel, as well as the ingredients it was made of, namely the rarely-seen marrow crystals and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, was mostly monopolized by the nobles and the military. Only the advanced warships were qualified to use it.
For the general business starships and carriers, they could not afford such expensive fuel, and the weak bodies of the passengers often could not bear the damage when they were dissected into the four-dimensional state for too long.
Therefore, they could only jump from one Sector to a neighboring Sector and gradually reach their destination in the way of "leap-frogging".
When they performed the short-distance jumps, in order to preserve the fuel, they had to find the places that were least stable in the three-dimensional world and easiest to create wormholes in the Sector. Such places were exactly the jump points marked on the space map.
The shortest route between two jump points was not necessarily a straight line.
Making use of the gravitational force of the planets or even stars so that the vehicles would be thrown out again and again as if it were on a slingshot, would significantly boost its speed.
In the meantime, there were a lot of terrifying areas among the jump points that were savaged by space storms and broken meteoroids. The garbage and remnants caused by wars and other activities of human beings might deal a fatal blow on the business starships too.
To make use of the gravitational force of the stars and the planets and to avoid the dangerous areas, the sailing routes among the jump points turned into zigzagging curves. Only the most experienced captains could stick to the sailing route accurately, reaching a perfect compromise among time, safety, and fuel consumption.
The campaigns between the four families and the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, on the other hand, were often fought around the sailing routes too.
In the past three months, the branch fleets of the two parties already had a thousand brief yet cruel conflicts on various sailing routes. Countless starships had been destroyed, the ordinary people and the Immortal Cultivators on them buried in the cold vacuum alike. The precious cargoes had also been reduced into garbage, scattered on the sailing route as lackluster road signs, exactly like the debris floating on the sailing route ahead.
After three months of fierce battles, the sailing routes around the Seven Seas Grand Market were almost half blocked.
But on the remaining half sailing routes, the number of business teams had been more than doubled, showing abnormal prosperity.
It couldn't be helped. However fierce the battle was, life had to go on. As the headquarters of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, the "Seven Seas Space Zone" where the Seven Seas Grand Market was located was originally one of the most convenient business and logisti
cs centers with the most abundant and stable wormholes at the edge of the Imperium. It shared a lot of similar features with the capital of the Imperium.
The goods from countless Sectors and resource planets had to be transferred in the Seven Seas Space Zone in order to be sent to the worlds that were in dire need of them.
Such goods were either the fertilizers that were demanded in farming, or the central filtering units in the water or air cleaning system, or a certain special medicine to kill some type of plague… All in all, they were the indispensable items for many worlds, resource planets, and space towns.
Without those goods, the whole town, planet, or world would be caught in a crisis. Therefore, no matter how fierce the battle was going on, people had to risk passing through the battle area and making purchases in the Seven Seas Grand Market.
At this moment, there was exactly such a fleet made of more than ten ragged, half-armed business starships that were sailing on the sailing route, which was full of debris, carefully.
A lot of the debris still had an extremely high temperature. Some of the units deep inside the debris were even having intense reactions. Now and then, colorful light balls were bursting out, staring at the small fleet like an abnormal skull.
The debris was a result of a fierce battle not a long time ago.
It suggested that the sailing route was very likely to be a perilous battlefield. The fleets of the four families, the fleets of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, or the ferocious space pirates… All kinds of tigers and wolves were lurking in the dark space, ready to lunge out and bite the prey.
Many thoughtful eyes were even watching the tiny business team closely right now. It was only because they appeared too shabby that the predators were reluctant to waste fuel and ammunitions to rob them.
Such an understanding made the business team even more panicked and cautious.
