Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1490
He had thought that with the mental devil as his trump card, he was at an advantageous position in the match against Long Yangjun. It never occurred to him that Long Yangjun did not do her best either, and her previous two ambushes were really just for fun.
However…
Long Yangjun also did not lie to him that however strong she was, there was still a gap between her and Blackstar the Great.
Li Yao estimated that Long Yangjun's maximal combat ability was above the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage at best, and she had not broken into the Divinity Branching Stage yet.
It was very likely that she had grasped part of the mysteries regarding the tenebrum energy, but she was not able to use it free at will yet.
Blackstar the Great, on the other hand, was doubtlessly an expert in the Divinity Branching Stage even though his strength had been discounted.
After people advanced into the Nascent Soul Stage, their combat ability would not increase infinitely like before. The advantages of higher levels were often the indescribable "senses", "vision", and "alarm".
The Divinity Branching Stage, as the name suggested, allowed the soul to be branched into dozens of parts, thereby significantly expanding the domain. The control over every inch of space inside the entire domain would be more than accurate. One would even be able to be absentminded. While a few branches of the soul were engaged in the fierce battle, another few branches could analyze the whole battle calmly from the perspective of an "observer".
It was exactly the case right now.
In terms of style, Long Yangjun seemed to be fully carrying out the bloody and aggressive arts in the chess game. Her every attack was as shocking as the launch of a cannon. Occasionally, the result was very satisfying too. She was able to break Wuying Qi's domain and chop a few metal tentacles off "Hellstar", sometimes even ripping apart a piece of arc-shaped armor.
Wuying Qi, on the other hand, seemed to be playing go. He expanded his domain without a sound and squeezed Long Yangjun's room of activity. Sometimes, the cluster of black fog that he seemed to have released casually and meaninglessly would play a vital role in a certain attack later.
After only half a second of collisions, Li Yao already sensed that Long Yangjun's air was shaking.
More and more crystals were corrupted by the black fog. Black nervures were spreading among the crystals quickly.
As the successor of the primeval civilizations, she certainly had extraordinary arts that were beyond her level.
However, Blackstar the Great was not a simple warrior who crushed the enemy with his sheer advantage in level either. He must have other more devastating moves that he hadn't performed yet, including "Blackhole's Heart", the legendary Colossus that only belonged to him!
"This is not going to work out."
Li Yao spat a mouthful of saliva that was mixed with blood and teeth. "Long Yangjun is going to lose!"
"Are you still concerned about her outcome at such a moment?"
The mental devil said in a hurry, "Such a decent Colossus has almost been wasted by you only half a year after it is upgraded. It just occurs to me that you are the bane of crystal suits and Colossi, aren't you? Anyway, enough talking. Just keep the Gold Vulture and hurry to retreat!"
"That we can't do."
Li Yao shook his head quickly without thinking. "Whatever happens, we cannot abandon friendship."
"Seriously?"
The mental devil shouted, "Just think who Long Yangjun is! You are honoring your friendship with her? Don't forget that she is possibly a supervillain who is on par with Blackstar the Great, if not higher. Chances are that she is planning a certain treacherous scheme in secret, and coming back to rescue you is all part of the scheme!"
"Then, it is all the more reason why I cannot abandon her at such a critical moment!"
Li Yao coughed and swallowed the blood that had flowed into his throat. He said firmly, "I believe that there are as many elements of a human being inside Long Yangjun as there are the elements of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan! She hasn't figured out which path she will walk on yet. Everything is possible. What she will become in the end depends on how the world treats her!
"She was brought to the outside world by me, and I will not let her be disappointed by the world outside. Trust me, as long as I move, edify, and transform her with my noble character constantly, she will certainly not disappoint this world!"
The mental devil: "… Really? Are you not sure that it will end the opposite way? But even if you want to do anything, what can you do? The Gold Vulture has been reduced to such conditions that it will collapse before it reaches their domains. You can't help them at all!"
"Says who?"
Grinning hideously, Li Yao closed and rubbed his hands, his fingerbones cracking, before he retrieved a hundred dosages of colorful strengthening drugs before him from his fistful of Cosmos Rings. "Don't forget that we still have one last… secret weapon!"
Slightly stunned, the mental devil realized something and gasped hard. "You are crazy. Absolutely no! That 'thing' is clearly still under test with a hundred flaws. It cannot be applied to a real battle at all!"
"I know."
Li Yao opened the bottom of a strengthening drug with his mouth brutally and swallowed it together with the glass pieces. He then gnashed his teeth and said, "But I'm going to fire it away anyway!"
"Nobody has ever done it before. We don't even know whether it's because nobody ever thought of it or because all the people who tried it before have died in the catastrophic consequences!"
The mental devil shrieked, "Besides, the Gold Vulture is missing one leg and two arms right now. The overall framework has been basically shattered. How can it withstand the recoil at all? After the barrage, I don't know what will happen to Wuying Qi's Colossus, but the Gold Vulture will certainly be wasted! This is the only Colossus we have, while Blackstar the Great, the queen, and the four Kurfürsten are all our enemies. In other words, we cannot find sufficient resources and legitimate factories to repair the severely damaged Colossus at all. Do you understand?"
"I understand it perfectly."
Li Yao chugged in dozens of dosages of strengthening drugs. His mouth was cut by the sharp pieces of the tempered glass, and blood was leaking out of his lips, chin, and chest, but he couldn't care less. "But I'm just going to fire at Blackstar the Great today!"
"Your body cannot take it either."
The mental devil declared, "Don't think that it is an awesome achievement to be the youngest expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage in the whole universe. The faster one's training is, the more side effects there will be, and the more severe the counterattack of spiritual energy is. You cannot take it however special your soul is!"
"You are quite right. All the reasons make sense too."
Li Yao injected the last few doses of strengthening drugs into his veins, and his veins immediately became as thick as dragons, almost ripping apart his flesh and skin. He roared crazily, "But the battle today is simply too humiliating. Nobody has ever reduced 'Vulture Li Yao' to such wretched conditions. How can I talk to other people in the future if I don't settle the score?
"Therefore, whatever the price is and however severe the consequences are, I am going to fire at the head of Blackstar the Great today!"
The mental devil: "Do you have to be so exaggerative? Many people have brutalized you before! Yan Xibei, Boss Bai, Xiao Xuance, Elder Nether Spring, Jin Tuyi, Lu Zui, and Long Yangjun. Then, there were Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan and Extraterrestrial Devil Lu Qingchen. So, it is not a big deal to be brutalized by Blackstar the Great right now but perfectly normal. I'm sure that you are already used to it, aren't you?"
Li Yao: "… Damn it. Do not hamstring me when I am making a soul-stirring speech! Do you know what the key is at all? The key is that Blackstar the Great's ultimate strength is certainly much more than what we have seen. But he must have concerns and therefore is unwilling to perform them.
"However, if his battle with Long Yangjun goes on and escalates, he will have to expose his strongest form and fight a life-and-death battle with us. By then, everything will be doomed!
"Our opportunity is to take advantage of his state of mind where he is unwilling to do his best and to force him to just swallow his ultimate strength so that he wouldn't be able to die together with us at all even if he wants to. That's the only way to turn the situation around today!"
It was another very persuasive reason.
The mental devil pondered for a long time and finally shut up.
"You understand it now, don't you?"
Li Yao chuckled weirdly, with blood spurting out of his mouth, nostrils, and ears, as if he had put on a crimson mask that made him unrecognizable. "Then just drag out our cannon already. I cannot wait to find out the answer to that question!"
The combat ability of a crystal suit could be increased by three to five times through the enhancement of an "Ares Extension".
If a Colossus was equipped with a gargantuan "Ares Extension", what a terrifying picture would it be?
Chapter 2337: Ultra-Galactic Cannon! |
When Li Yao made his brain boil like a volcano eruption and his vitality fully surge out with a hundred dosages of strengthening drugs as the catalysts, the battle between Long Yangjun and Wuying Qi in the deep ocean entered the most heated phase too.
Inside the domains of the two parties, the crystals and the black fog penetrated and entangled each other, like two ferocious beasts that had bitten each other's necks hard.
"Heavenly Crystal" and "Hellstar", the two Colossi, had both been locked onto by the enemy's domain, unable to move at all.
But flames of spiritual energy that were flowing out crazily were like the most violent undersea currents, resulting in hundreds of swirls in all directions. Even the undersea plateau was affected and had dense cracks although it was an intact piece in the beginning.
Around the pit where "Gold Vulture" collapsed, on the crags that were not so solid, countless gaps were expanding and extending too.
Li Yao took the opportunity to release the invisible saber aura to loosen the rocks and increase the gaps.
Very soon, a dull explosion echoed above his head, and the rocks around his head all collapsed, covering the Colossus tightly.
The sand and the mud soared too, and they dispersed like an undersea mushroom cloud, both blocking the eyesight of the two Colossi above his head and disrupting the senses of the two unparalleled experts.
Long Yangjun and Wuying Qi were both fully concentrated on each other. Neither of them expected that Li Yao's vitality would be so strong that he could still fight under such circumstances!
"Hehehehe. Old fart Blackstar, don't presume that 'Vulture Li Yao' really has nothing behind me!"
The veins over Li Yao's body had been expanded to the limits. In the next moment, his skin fell apart, but what was revealed from his opening wounds was not the bleeding muscles but an orange brilliance, as if his body were not made of flesh and blood but the purest, most passionate, and explosive energy!
Li Yao roared crazily and stood straight inside the cockpit, stretching out his arms and legs to the maximum. His fingers and toes were all straightened, and orange threads of spiritual energy darted out of his broken wounds to every unit on the Gold Vulture. The "nerve system" of the Colossus was immediately ten times more copious than before, and the information transmitted every second soared too!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The four Cosmos Rings that were attached to the shoulder blades and the pelvis of the Gold Vulture immediately glowed. In intense quakes, they spurted out abundant gigantic strengthening components.
As the spiritual energy and the telepathic thoughts spread out, the electric arcs in purple, blue, white, or red rose from the strengthening components like the veins of a living creature, before they stuck all the strengthening components to the plate armor of the Gold Vulture.
Having lost a leg, the Gold Vulture could only manage to stand on one of its knees with the assistance of its hands.
But it did not stop the Colossus from putting on layers of new gold armors and expanding significantly. It was so daunting that it looked like a gold giant that had crawled out of the depths of the ocean!
The Colossus' height of slightly more than thirty meters was not increased by much, but the width had been more than doubled. On each of the two shoulders, the most intimidating portable cannon had appeared, whose energy-focusing disc that collapsed inward helically stared at the battlefield above the head with fury and determination like two enormous eyes.
The gold feathers on the wings behind him had already been launched at Wuying Qi as flying swords. Even the bare skeleton had been shattered and strangled by "Hellstar". But right now, eight pairs of gold wings that were even more graceful and glamorous had grown out. At the ends of the wings were strings that looked like phoenix tails, emitting colorful brilliance under the dancing electric arcs.
The Gold Vulture had lost a leg, but the unprecedented "Ares Extension for the Colossus" had supportive components itself. Like the eight legs of an enormous spider, they pierced into the undersea rocks deeply, fixating the entire machine and melting it with the undersea ground.
What was most eye-catching was the thirty-six flying swords around the Colossus.
Each of the flying swords was more than thirty meters long, surrounded by the cracking electric arcs. Also, they were being stretched out under the effects of the rune arrays and the electromagnetic fields. Fifty meters, sixty meters, eighty meters, a hundred meters!
The flying swords that had been extended to a hundred meters long were carved with dense rune arrays on the surface without even one inch of blankness. But after careful observation, one would notice that the rune arrays were not just carved on the surface but leaked all the way to the core of the flying swords. "Delicate" did not even begin to describe it. At the core of every flying sword, there was also a "heart" made of marrow crystals, and Li Yao was insane enough to even carve attack rune arrays on those marrow crystals!
No, those "flying swords" were simply too long for flying at a high speed or changing directions. Also, their hardness had been seriously undermined because of the excessive rune arrays too. It was certainly not a suitable form for an acceptable flying sword.
They were not flying swords at all but rails and parts of a crystal cannon. The very purpose of producing them was to blow the cannon once, even if it meant that they would all be shattered into pieces!
The thirty-six rails made of marrow crystals were all gathered on the chest of the Gold Vulture, which had entered the berserker state, constituting an invincible super railgun!
Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi!
Li Yao's soul was burning furiously. His fury penetrated the combat suit, the crystal suit, the Colossus, and the strengthening components, dissecting the water around into surging tides in bright gold and crimson before it flowed all the way to the top.
The infinite energy contained inside the marrow crystals was ignited by Li Yao's fighting will too. The thirty-six rails became translucent at first and then almost disappeared, as if they could not withstand the overwhelming energy anymore and about to melt.
In the narrow, long space in the middle of the thirty-six rails, silver spots began to show up, both appearing like the countless glowing plankton that had been attracted by the magnetic field and the whole galaxy that had appeared before Li Yao out of nowhere!
Even Li Yao's own red and black eyes were stung by the brilliance of the galaxy. This was also the first time that he had increased the power of the strengthening components of the Colossus to such a destructive level without any concerns!
It was certainly not an easy task to devise an Ares Extension for a Colossus. Despite Li Linghai's generous support with the resources from the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum, Li Yao's progress had not been very well.
He could not resolve the issues of hardness and structure completeness when the gigantic strengthening components were moving on a large scale. To be more frank, even if he could indeed craft such an "Ares Extension" and cover it on a Colossus, the mobility of the Colossus would've been reduced to the minimum.
Once putting on the enormous Ares Extension, the Colossus would barely be able to move. Such a design was unacceptable in any case.
Li Yao thought for a long time but still failed to address the problem. Too many engineering and design obstacles were involved in it. Perhaps it required years of work of a team made of a hundred specialists before a satisfactory answer could be provided.
Li Yao, who had barged into the Imperium on his own, certainly did not have so much time and so many specialists. He came up with the creative idea that, since the Colossus' mobility was reduced to the minimum, making it barely able to move, he might as well give up the pursuit of mobility altogether and simply increase the factor of "firepower" to the highest, transforming the Colossus into a half-automatic, monolithic bastion. Would it work?
Of course, it was a rather absurd methodology.
So, Li Yao had never intended to put the so-called Ares Extension for Colossi into a real battle. It was just a cutting-edge study that was meant to accumulate experiment data and performance parameters for the production of the "real" special enhancing components of the Colossi in the future.
Even if he wanted to put the Ares Extension that was still being tested into practice, it was still impossible, because the time it took for the railgun to be prepared was too long. Unless it was bombarding a fixed target, his enemy would have either run off or come close and cut both him and his Colossus into pieces during such a long time of preparation!
However, all the obstacles had been cleared, and none of the problems was a problem anymore.
Long Yangjun had stalled Wuying Qi and bought Li Yao the precious time for a perfect preparation!
"Long Yangjun!"
Li Yao roared in the communication channel desperately, "Stop him! Whatever it takes, just stop him for another three seconds!"
