Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

When Li Yao said out ‘not me’, bellows that sounded like primeval beasts that were waking up echoed inside Li Yao’s body. A surging tide seemed to have broken the dam and raged on the land. The air around him changed drastically in only half a second!

The three crystal cameras on Cheng Xuansu’s left face were so red that they were almost exploding. Without any hesitation, she aimed the mini storm bolter at Li Yao and opened fire six times in a row!

The mini storm bolter had been crazily modified by the refiners of the Internal Affairs Division. Together with Cheng Xuansu’s marvelous technique, six explosive bullets that had been embedded with the pieces of marrow crystals almost rushed out simultaneously. Five of them darted toward Li Yao’s forehead, heart, abdomen, and knees, and the last one took a turn and sprinted toward Cui Lingfeng like lightning!

The moment the bullets blew out of the barrel, Cheng Xuansu threw away the gun and retreated. She crossed her hands and then opened them like a blossoming lotus flower. Streaks of brightness flowed out of her fingers and turned into a crystal suit, covering her body layer by layer!

“Take them down!” Cheng Xuansu shrieked.

Like a most precise killing machine, she made every right decision.

However… it did not help at all.

Li Yao’s body suddenly blurred, as if invisible gels had been unleashed from every pore on his body and formed a soft shield right in front of him, stagnating the five explosive bullets that were attacking himself. As for the last bullet that was launched toward Cui Lingfeng, he simply grabbed it with his hands!

Boom!

The explosive bullet was highly sensitive. It exploded brutally into dark red fireballs the moment it met a hindrance, but Li Yao was still holding it inside his hands as if his hands were on fire!

The four heavily-armed officers of the secret police lunged at Li Yao, shouting, from every direction.

But before they stretched out their arms, Li Yao’s right hand that as clenching the fireball already pressed into the breastplate of the first officer hard.

All the damage entailed in the explosive bullet turned into beam of particles that were like drizzles and tore apart the super high-intensity breastplate more than easily. The chest of the officer was blown into pieces!

Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa!

Li Yao waved his left hand. The other five bullets that had been frozen in midair were suddenly reversed and hit the second officer.

The five bullets were not imposed with powerful pressure by Li Yao. Also, the officer had enough time to open up his spiritual shield. Therefore, he was not greatly hurt.

However, his eyesight and the sensation rune arrays of his crystal suit were disrupted by the sparks raised by the explosion. During the moment of dazzling brilliance, a super tensile crystal thread that was ninety percent thinner than a hair crawled into the crystal suit through the gap between his helmet and his breastplate. It breached his jaw and nostrils, penetrated into his brain, and churned brutally in a helical form after it was filled with spiritual energy. The brain of the second officer was immediately wrecked!

The crystal thread was exactly the ‘localization antenna’ that the real Professor Luo De crafted in order to trace Tang Xiaoxing.

But for a monster of Li Yao’s level, a tiny antenna could also be an unparalleled dead weapon that could kill an expert easily!

It was not until this moment that Li Yao began summoning the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit. His back was still utterly undefended.

The third officer crashed at him like an angry rhino. The dagger in his hand that was cracking with electric arcs also looked like the horn of a rhino!

But he still did not have the opportunity to reach within half a meter from Li Yao.

When the guy was still one meter away, Li Yao halted the iron-armed rhino that weighed more than five tons together with his crystal suit in midair through a remote manipulation technique.

Then, he opened his fingers, and the crystal suit on the secret police exploded into tiny and broken pieces that were flying randomly in the air.

In the end, he moved his hand back and pushed it forward. The officer of the secret police was immediately blown hundreds of meters away as if he had been hit brutally by a super high-speed crystal train that happened to be invisible. After a deafening explosion, he crashed into a meat pie on the rusted wall of the cabin.

From the moment Cheng Xuansu pulled the trigger, to the three super experts of the secret police were killed miserably, it took less than five seconds.

Cheng Xuansu’s crystal suit had been donned.

But she did not put on the helmet and the facial cover. Her pale face that was barely recognizable was displayed to Li Yao and Cui Lingfeng clearly.

Li Yao’s crystal suit was donned, too.

Although it was just a regular Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, in such a dark and creepy environment, it was as dreadful as if it had been possessed by a hundred thousand ghosts living in the deepest depths of hell!

The fourth officer did not move at all to this moment.

It could clearly be heard that cracking noises were echoing from inside his crystal suit, as if countless components inside had collapsed all of a sudden, stopping the crystal suit from moving or being dismantled. It seemed to have turned into an iron coffin in which the officer was tightly confined!

It took only 0.1 seconds for Cheng Xuansu to realize that she was absolutely no match for Li Yao.

No. She did not need to think at all. The moment she smelt the dominating aura leaking out of the gaps of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit, she could already make the conclusion with her natural instincts for survival, like when a grazer was faced with a predator!

Her heart, stomach, and abdomen were all constricting violently. Her every shivering cell was shouting the same thing, “Run!”

Thus, Cheng Xuansu ran without any hesitation.

When Li Yao killed the first officer in the most casual way, she had already made the right conclusion. When Li Yao stabbed the crystal thread into the second officer, she had activated the power rune arrays of her crystal suit to the maximum although she had not entirely put it on yet. When Li Yao dismantled the crystal suit of the third officer and blew him away, she had traveled a hundred meters away instantly. But when Li Yao controlled the fourth officer as mysteriously as a phantom, Cheng Xuansu took out a translucent round ball from a pocket on her waist and smashed it on the ground hard.

In cracking noises, Cheng Xuansu was covered by electric arcs, which condensed into a bluish ball more than two meters in diameter and enshrouded her tightly.

Under the cover of the electric arcs, Cheng Xuansu gazed at Cui Lingfeng in a trance and laughed miserably. “So, this is the truth. Everything has been under Uncle Cui’s arrangement. You were suspicious of me and set up a trap in order to trick me into taking the bite and confessing everything on my own.”

Shivering, she extended her hand and covered her left face, taking off the bionic materials that accommodated the three crimson crystal cameras and revealing the heavily-wounded skin as well as the empty left eye.

Bloody tears slowly flowed out of the depths of the eye socket that was devoid of an eyeball.

Cui Lingfeng’s face blanched as he shouted, “Xuansu, no!”

Li Yao realized what Cheng Xuansu was doing, too.

However, his attack was blocked by the electric arcs around Cheng Xuansu, which were a defense rune array of a very high level. Even Li Yao could not break it in only one second.

But one second was more than enough for Cheng Xuansu to draw another storm bolter and aim it at her temple.

“Uncle Cui, as I said… I’ve had enough of such days. I’m not going to run again. Never!”

Before Li Yao ripped the defense of the electric arcs apart, she had already pulled the trigger and blown up all the organs above her neck. Her every brain cell was burnt into ashes in the middle of the electric arcs and fire.

With such a fierce death, it was absolutely impossible for her to turn into a spectral Cultivator.

The forsaken station regained its dead silence.

Except for the intense stink of blood that had been added to the blowing wind of rust, it was almost exactly the same as ten minutes ago.

In silence, Li Yao and Cui Lingfeng stared at the four dead bodies lying on the ground and the officer of the secret police who was kneeling nearby. Then, they looked at each other with complicated feelings.

Cui Lingfeng grunted and fell to the ground. Pressing his chest hard, he did not have the ecstasy of surviving a disaster at all. Instead, he was filled with fatigue and lethargy. Even his previous deep and thoughtful eyes had become dirty.

Judging from his conversation with Cheng Xuansu, Li Yao speculated that he must have been in a close relation with Cheng Xuansu.

Cheng Xuansu had addressed him as ‘Uncle Cui’. He must have raised her and treated her like his own daughter since her childhood.

It did make sense. If they were not so intimate with each other, how would he have been at ease when appointing her as the head of the secret police and his most trusted subordinate?

Cheng Xuansu’s betrayal and suicide were a heavy blow for Cui Lingfeng. At this moment, he did not look like the revered Speaker of the Star Ocean Republic, just a random, dying old man who had lost all hope.

“Well…”

Li Yao would not bother to change his face if he were faced with a whole legion of muscular, bloodthirsty soldiers. However, he found it quite awkward to deal with an old man who was so sorrowful that his heart might be dead.

Glancing at him, Cui Lingfeng smiled miserably like a ghost, as if he had seen through everything and lost the momentum to fight on. “Hehe. Hehehe. When the mantis is hunting the cicada, the sparrow is waiting behind to get them both. Xuansu, Zhengyang, and their lot made such thorough plans, but they did not know that they were being played by you the whole time! You’re from the federation, aren’t you? Do you work in the Dim Moon Squad for Jin Xinyue?”

“About that…” Li Yao would rather admit that not only was he from the federation, he was also the legendary dominator the three Sectors! However, intermittent voices were echoing in the communication channel. Long Yangjun and her companions had marched, pouring fuel on the fire of the situation that was already chaotic enough!

Pondering for a long moment, Li Yao removed his Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit and said, “Make no mistake, Speaker Cui. Of course, I am not the real Professor Luo De, but I am not a citizen of the New Federation, either, and I do not work for Jin Xinyue.”

It’s more like Jin Xinyue works for me, Li Yao thought to himself.

“Not from the federation?” Li Yao’s words were like a super cardiotonic for Cui Lingfeng that turned him from monochrome into multi-colored.

Rolling his eyes quickly, he seemed to be calculating crazily in his head. A moment later, he mumbled, “Of course. You can’t be from the federation, and you are even less likely to be Jin Xinyue’s subordinate. For the Star Glory Federation, I am too annoying an old man who clings to the name of the ‘Star Ocean Republic’. Taking me down through the Immortal Cultivators, cleaning all the Immortal Cultivators on Firefly as saviors, and then taking over Firefly, that is the best approach for them!”

Even Cui Lingfeng could not figure out the chaotic situation despite his computational ability of the Nascent Soul Stage. The Speaker of the Star Ocean Republic eyed Li Yao up and down for a long time and asked in disbelief, “You’re not from the federation, and you’re certainly not on the Imperium’s side. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have stopped the Immortal Cultivators. Who are you exactly?”