Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Huangpu Shiyi was hooked by Li Yao’s words. When he was young, he had been as arrogant and flamboyant as Li Yao. He had only learned to be more or less prudent after the suffering caused by his hands being destroyed and the vicissitudes of his life that followed.

But deep in his bones, he was definitely still a proud man!

Furious flames were surging in Huangpu Shiyi’s eyes, as he remarked, “For so many days, I’ve never revealed my real capability to you. It was wrong of me to trigger your thought of challenging me! You want me to call you master? Good boy. I like your self-confidence. But I don’t know whether or not you are capable enough for that!”

Li Yao rolled his eyes and said, “About me being your master, that’s just an idea. How about this. You and I will bring out ten techniques respectively tomorrow, and we will compete with them as stakes!”

Huangpu Shiyi narrowed his eyes, “Stakes?”

Li Yao licked his lips and said, “Yes. I know you never taught me the real essence of crystal bomb crafting. Also, as the most distinguished person in the Huangpu family thirty years ago, you must have many personal understandings about the refinement of melee magical equipment! You will pick ten techniques from those two fields and save them in a jade chip.

“Of course, I will bring out ten of my techniques and save them in the jade chip, too. Tomorrow, we will hand over the two jade chips to someone else, say, Black Stone or White Dew, as the stakes for our competition!

“Don’t look at me as if I am taking advantage of you.

“We are both clear that, although you seem to have been teaching me over these days, we are, in fact, exchanging our techniques. The techniques that you have gotten from me are more valuable!

“But I don’t care. Do you know why? Because there are more advanced techniques in my brain than I can count!

“You should know that I was born in the remote area of the sea of stars, and I was taught by a strange master. Also, I experienced some other fortuitous incidents and received the heritage of a lot of other techniques, too.

“It’s a shame that, when I was seventeen, I was engaged in a fight for a half tin of fresh air. I lost control and killed the five persons of the family. After the old fart discovered this, he immediately made up his mind to kill me without offering me a chance of explanation. Hehe. Thankfully, I’d been long prepared for that. By the martial arts that I practiced secretly, I slayed the old fart in a counterattack!

“However, without the help from the old fart, I was not able to comprehend the too sophisticated techniques with my wisdom and could only learn them by heart.

“Damn. If I had seen that coming, I wouldn’t have killed the old fart so easily. I would’ve definitely minced him into pieces and sprayed his ashes in the air!”

Li Yao gnashed his teeth with a twisted face.

Huangpu Shiyi sniffed to himself as he listened to Li Yao. If you killed someone on the spot in a fight, it might be because you lost control. But you killed the entire family? That was totally intended murder! You are indeed cruel. No wonder the legendary strange master tried to eliminate him. He must’ve seen through the boy’s personality!

However, the strange master must’ve been a pure refiner. He was no match for Li Yao, only relying on the aggressive magical equipment he had. As a result, he was the one who got killed!

As for Li Yao, without the enlightenment of a tutor, of course, he found it hard to study the more advanced techniques. He must’ve participated in the Skyhill Sword Seminar in order to gain fame and attract more attention so that someone else would be willing to give him a hand and help him crack the techniques.

At this moment, the question that had been baffling Huangpu Shiyi was finally solved. He realized that Li Yao had only provided so many techniques generously because there were even advanced techniques inside his brain that the guy couldn’t grasp by himself and had to study together with another expert.

Wasn’t Huangpu Shiyi a super expert himself?

Huangpu Shiyi gulped. His face beamed with delight as he said, “What techniques do you have?”

Li Yao pondered for a moment and replied, “There are three ancient formulas to calculate the Daoist Mammoth Algorithm. They are all at least one third faster than the popular methods nowadays. But the three formulas are all broken; I cannot finish all the calculations by myself.

“There’s another technique that could transform the Green Cloud Purple Glow Array into seven variations. The strength of the array will be improved by four times at best! But there are two critical points about the technique that I haven’t entirely figured out yet.

“I have dozens of other techniques just like them. After studying for five years, I have made zero progress. I could only reach the conclusion that the wisdom of myself is not enough and that I’m in dire need of someone else’s input.

“But, naturally, I don’t want to share my knowledge with any random refiner. I have two conditions.

“Firstly, they must be both good at theories and practical work. Secondly, they must provide an equal number of techniques for me!

“Only idiots would give away the techniques in their heads for free. Even if I cannot make anything out of the techniques, if I don’t get enough benefits from them, I would rather keep them rotting in my brain than let somebody else take advantage of me!

“The reason I’ve been hesitating to be your disciple is that your hands are completely useless. There’s no way that you can train with me for a long time with them.

“However, I didn’t know that you had a secret art of hand transplantation. It’s no problem anymore, then. If you had told me about such a secret art sooner, I might’ve agreed to be your disciple long ago!

“How about it? From the techniques that I talked about just now, I’ll select ten and save them in the jade chip. Black Stone and White Dew will look after the jade chip. You are free to examine it beforehand, but I guarantee that there won’t be anything wrong with the techniques.

“Then, we will have a real competition. If you win, I will be your disciple without further ado. The ten techniques will be my tuition fee.

“If I win, you don’t have to call me your master. What I demand is that you give me your ten techniques, and that we be equal partners in the Temple of Immortals!”

Huangpu Shiyi’s eyes were flickering. The techniques that Li Yao provided these days were already captivating enough. He didn’t expect that there were many more even more advanced techniques inside his brain.

As a frantic refiner, he found absolutely no reason to turn down the offer.

Huangpu Shiyi grinned and replied, “So, you are still planning to take advantage of me. You are not willing to be my disciple, and you want to take away my techniques! However, your chance of winning is slim. If you unfortunately fail, you won’t go back on your words, will you?”

Weird brilliance shined in Li Yao’s eyes. One of the scalpels suddenly vanished and circled around his fingertip.

Blood immediately spurted out.

Li Yao moved his fingers and quickly drew a complicated rune in the midair with his blood as ink.

While he drew, he said solemnly, “I swear by the blood of my fingertip that I, Li Yao, will have a fight in the arts of refining with Huangpu Shiyi tomorrow, and if I fail, I will kneel down and respect Huangpu Shiyi as my master immediately! Should the oath be broken, my mind shall be haunted for all eternity, my hands shall be shaking forever, and I shall never refine a piece of qualified magical equipment for the rest of my life!

“Blood Oath, now!”

Li Yao finished the last stroke and opened his mouth. The blood rune in the midair immediately turned into a red streak and dashed into his mouth.

Li Yao tremored for a moment. There was hint of blood in his eyes.

The faces of Huangpu Shiyi, Black Stone, and White Dew all blanched.

A ‘Blood Oath’ was a general method of vowing for all Cultivators.

It was not as effective as recorded in ancient classics, which stated that what the oath taker swore would definitely come back to them when they broke their vow.

A Blood Oath was, in fact, more of a psychological phenomenon. For example, although Li Yao had made such a terrifying oath, his hands would not necessarily tremble all day when he broke it. But the idea would stay in his mind nonetheless. When he thought about it occasionally during his refining, his hands might indeed shake and thus reduce the success rate of the refining a little bit.

The thought might haunt him for a year and a half, or maybe several years. No one could tell how long they would be bothered by their vow-breaking memories.

Huangpu Shiyi believed that, if he were in Li Yao’s shoes, he wouldn’t bear to see any drop of the success rate of his refining, even if it was as small as one percent.

The foolish boy meant what he said!

Huangpu Shiyi was almost touched hearing Li Yao making such an irreversible oath.

In the eyes of the regular Cultivators, they might find Li Yao’s arrogance in the beginning intolerable.

But for Huangpu Shiyi, an Immortal Cultivator, it was nothing unusual.

Selfishness was the greatest virtue among Immortal Cultivators. Cruel competition was everywhere in the Temple of Immortals, too. There was not the slightest warmth between masters and disciples.

Many disciples were loyal and dutiful when they hadn’t learned their masters’ knowledge. They only hated that they couldn’t be a dog barking for their masters.

However, when their wings grew strong and their masters somehow wound up in trouble, it would be considered very nice of them to only ditch their masters immediately.

The more considerate disciples even concocted plans in secret and killed their masters without alarming anyone. Their masters’ belongings would all be theirs in such a way!

Huangpu Shiyi would never dare recruit such disciples.

It was also the reason he didn’t have any acolytes or assistants even though he had been in the Temple of Immortals for twenty years.

His hands were too useless. He was afraid that, if his disciple became too strong someday, they might have second thoughts.

But things were different about this silly boy, Li Yao. The fact that he was bragging about himself openly suggested that he had no other plans. If the guy were onto something else, he wouldn’t have been so arrogant and tried to piss him off at all!

It seemed a better option to recruit an arrogant yet simple-minded boy as his disciple than to recruit a hypocrite whom he had to be wary of all day. Besides, there were so many techniques inside his brain. After he got Huangpu Xiaoya’s hands, his capability would definitely soar with Li Yao’s helpful techniques. Chances were that he might even be able to march into the high level of the Core Formation Stage and became a renowned Core Formation Stage Refiner!

By that time, he would be appreciated by everyone in the Temple of Immortals. Who should he be scared of then?

Thinking about that, Huangpu Shiyi laughed. “Great! Great! Great! I crushed the Skyhill Sword Seminar thirty years ago, the only one that I ever participated in, without meeting any trouble whatsoever. The matches were even getting boring for me as I proceeded.

“This year, I interrupted your Skyhill Sword Seminar. It’s only reasonable that I make up for that.

“Then, tomorrow at this time, the two of us will have a special Skyhill Sword Seminar in the sea of stars!

“It will decide whether I, the dominator of the Skyhill Sword Seminar thirty years ago, or you, the most brilliant star in the Skyhill Sword Seminar thirty years later who outshone all the other contestants, are the real King of Skyhill Sword Seminar!”

“It’s a deal then! This time tomorrow, a Skyhill Sword Seminar in space!”

Li Yao took a long breath and walked up to Huangpu Xiaoya. He drew a line on her elbow with the pommel of the scalpel and smiled at her vaguely. “I’ll keep these hands of yours for another day.”

Huangpu Xiaoya was already exhausted. She gazed at him, not even having the strength to curse anymore.