Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 161
More students grinned hideously while warming themselves up.
Beads of sweat appeared on Li Yao's forehead, and his back was cold, too. He cursed the instructor silently.
'What a petty man this so-called chief instructor is!
'I was simply staring at him for a few seconds longer than the rest. There was no need to put me in the line of fire like this!'
He glanced at Mao Feng, and found Mao Feng looking at him, too.
Mao Feng patted his shoulder, in a malicious smile, and whispered, "Congratulations, Li Yao. You've attracted my attention. My eyes will be on you in the next three months."
Before Li Yao had a chance to reply, Mao Feng suddenly roared, his beard lifting upwards as if two battle blades, "Everyone, gather in the testing field and get your capability measured first!
"The training camp will provide you with a tailor-made training plan based on your capability and fighting style and arrange different instructors for you accordingly.
"Remember, in the three-month training, there will be an elimination test at the end of each month.
"50 people will be left after the first month.
"20 after the second.
"At the end of the third month, a competition among the remaining 20 will take place and no more than 10 winners will make it to the end before receiving their 'Thunder Exo' badges.
"For those who get the badge, after you enter into the Building Foundation Stage, you will be able to be instructed in the Inner Camp by Lei Tingwei who's in the Core Formation Stage!
"What are you waiting for? The testing field is 50 kilometers away. Get your asses moving now!"
Mao Feng jumped onto the skeleton-like shuttle, throwing dust everywhere after a burst of spirit energy.
He screamed while driving the shuttle,
"Faster! Faster! You're all Cultivators yet you can't outrun a shuttle? Those who fail to reach the testing field within half an hour will be eliminated immediately."
In the smoke, the students gazed at each other in confusion. Suddenly, someone dashed forward. Almost simultaneously, various colorful spirit energies burst out from everybody as they started chasing the shuttle like lightning.
And thus, the competition began!
Rushing 50 kilometers in a desert under the boiling sun at a speed close to a shuttle, even the high level Cultivators felt tired and were sweating over.
But they were all men of determination. Pushed by their desire for victory, they stood straight with an indifferent look, showing no weakness at all.
The testing field had a coverage of couple of square kilometers and boasted state-of-the-art magical equipment for testing. Twenty students were allowed to take a test at the same time.
Beside the testing field were a hundred giant dark iron boxes with murderous runes carved on the surface that brought a strong sense of blood.
"Crystal suits!"
"Not training suits. They are real crystal suits!"
"Although they're models from 100 years ago, they're still authentic battlesuits that were worn in battlefields and wielded to kill monsters before!"
"Using real battlesuits at the beginning test, the Thunder Training Camp is really rich. It deserves its name as one of the four top training camps. This trip is definitely worth all the trouble!"
Many students were delighted.
Most of them had received preliminary crystal suits training before. But what they'd worn during training were simple testing crystal suits, which had a huge difference from the real ones.
Seeing the grandeur scene where 100 crystal suits lined up in a row, everyone was passionate and ready for a fight.
Mao Feng roared, "According to your profile, the Thunder Training Camp has prepared a suitable crystal suit for each one of you. You may find your own crystal suit by the names floating above the boxes.
"Remember, this is going to be your last chance to use your name in the Thunder Training Camp. Later, you will be ranked according to your capability from 1 to 100, and your rank will be the only reference to you in the coming three months.
"001 stands for the strongest!
"100 represents the lousiest, weakest, and worst!
"Devote every last bit of your strength into the training if you don't want to be '100'!
"Those of you who have zero experience don't need to worry. These crystal suits have been adjusted and have its sensitivity reduced to 30%, which means the difficulty of using them is only 30% of the difficulty of normal ones. It is the easiest mode designed for beginners.
"If you find yourself unable to rein the crystal suit under the 30% sensitivity, get your ass out of here quickly, because it means you have no talent for using crystal suits whatsoever. I don't want to train losers!
"Alright, that's about enough. Those who have worn crystal suits before come up first. The rest of you, find an empty place and try to get familiar with your suit. There are tutorials in the crystal processor. Warm yourselves up a little."
Hearing that, all the students jumped joyously towards the crystal suit that had their name on it.
Other than Li Yao, the other 99 students had all handled a crystal suit before, more or less.
Even the students most unfamiliar with crystal suits had done perfectly accurate simulations in professional simulators before.
Unlike them, for Li Yao, who had grown up in the magical equipment graveyard, his life was nothing but training and fighting. He had never even played any of the popular crystal suits games, let alone perfectly accurate simulations.
After he went to college, he spent all of his time and energy on refining and combat training.
Even if he had spare time, he would use it to learn about the forging and maintenance of crystal suits.
He knew absolutely nothing about how to wear a crystal suit.
Li Yao was thrilled, like a young man who was going to be on his first secret date with his lover. He swallowed to ease his dry throat and walked towards his suit box.
Sliding his fingers over the coarse runes, he felt a deep breath in the box, as if a dormant monster was waking up.
The breath echoed in Li Yao's brain and resonated with its vibration wave, making him unable to control himself.
The uneven runes put on a crimson color as if soaked in blood.
With a cracking sound, the panel on one side of the box split.
An intense, animalistic scent of death crashed into Li Yao's face like a giant hammer. He shivered.
Although it was a 100-year-old ancient crystal suit, it had reaped the lives of thousands of demon beasts, which endowed it with a bitter cold air completely different from new crystal suits.
When the box was opened, Li Yao even seemed to hear the desperate screams of the demon beasts.
Inside the box, supported by an anti-gravity rune array, a two-meter tall crystal suit was floating in the air.
The suit appeared light and agile, covered by scales made of a special alloy that looked like a grey rock.
The arms of the suit were long enough to reach the knees. Both hands were in the shape of a viper's head.
Four teeth-shaped blades were folded on the back of the hands, lurking in the darkness, deadly.
All in all, this crystal suit felt like a serpent that was hiding in the crevice of a rock and ready for its victim.
"Seven-step Rock Snake!"
Li Yao gasped. An awfully dangerous name occurred to him.
Chapter 231: Crystal Suit First Experience |
"The Seven-Step Rock Snake is a mid-size crystal suit jointly manufactured by the Dipper Society and Star Nebula University. It is 2.07 meters tall and has a total weight of 3.88 ton. It's an armor with a composite structure of demon beast materials and ultra-high-strength alloy, while scales from seven different serpent-type demon beasts covered its vital areas. The ends of its arms have vibro-blades in the shape of snake fangs, which are forged using the heaven and earth material called 'Howling Rock'. When the Howling Rock is waved, it can produce piercing howls that can turn into a spiritual attack and directly harm the soul of demon beasts!
"This crystal suit pays equal attention to both strength and agility and is a perfect fit for those Exos who have a certain power and pursue speed and agility. It's an exact match with my latest data.
"The Thunder Training Camp's reputation is truly well deserved. Even the test-type crystal suit is prepared so thoughtfully!"
Li Yao licked his lips as his eyes radiated with a greedy look. Holding his breath, he lightly caressed the 'Seven-Step Rock Snake' crystal suit!
As the crystal processor began to boot up, the Seven-Step Rock Snake's super-compressed crystal cell reactor also began to operate, thereby releasing a tremendous, powerful spiritual energy and awakening the sleeping array glyphs one after another.
A substantive killing intent was gushing out from every groove of this ultimate weapon which gathered into a ghastly reddish aura, just like proliferating ripples, giving it an even more grim and appalling look.
BEEP!
Above the completely enclosed Seven-Step Rock Snake's helmet, a radiating glyph in the form of a coiling snake was engraved.
The system test was complete!
Li Yao lightly tapped on the activation glyph on the Seven-Step Rock Snake, following which, a slight buzzing of the suit starting up resounded before the ghastly aura lingering around the battle suit was sucked inside. The suit gradually opened up like a blooming Crab Claw Chrysanthemum; revealing a human-shape recess.
Wherein was complex array glyphs outlined by overflowing resplendent lights as well as interlacing crystal fibers; it was incomparably mysterious and wonderful to boot.
A massive telepathic thought uninterruptedly poured into Li Yao neural field from the crystal processor of the Seven-Step Rock Snake.
It was the information relating to the Seven-Step Rock Armor as well as the basic operating tutorial.
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao walked into the suit box and stood close to the Seven-Step Rock Snake.
"Seven-Step Rock Snake, start!"
The petal-like suit components closed one by one; they fit together rather perfectly.
Driven by the array glyphs, the spiritual energy quickly circulated in its entire body as Li Yao and the crystal suit merged into a whole; the crystal fibers and Li Yao's meridians fused together, forming perfect connections.
BOOM
Li Yao's soul felt a burst of an inexplicable wave.
As if his consciousness was leaving his body and reached a whole new state!
The feeling of piloting a crystal suit was completely different from wearing a heavy-armor.
There was not even the slightest bit of burden or restraint. It was like possessing a new body, one that had numerous new, powerful organs.
The fully enclosed helmet had six crystal eyes around it, giving him a 360 degree, omnidirectional vision. Two of which, one in the front and one in the back, were long-range crystal eyes; such long-range vision allowed Li Yao to clearly see the texture of a rock two hundred meters away. In the center was a thermographic crystal eye; observing through which gave him a colorful and magnificent view.
This kind of sensation was truly uncomfortable.
A human's visual nerves and brain had long been accustomed to observing the world in a certain way.
The instant the entire world from multiple angles on multiple screens surged into his brain, the first reaction of Li Yao was that of dizziness; he felt the urge to vomit.
Having closed his eyes, everything went dark, whereas his hearing and other senses were amplified.
He could even hear his breath, the gravel rubbing against each other, his heartbeat, the spiritual energy flowing between the crystal fibers, the rocks getting crushed by the crystal suit, as well as the dust drifting in the wind.
These sounds were intermixed with the buzzing sound made by hundreds of array glyphs operating simultaneously.
Rumor had it that a veteran Exo could distinguish the condition of every array glyphs from these sounds.
But when Li Yao came to hear them, it was like bees dancing in the air; it was a chaotic cacophony.
Meanwhile, his skin became extra sensitive. It was like tens of thousands of feathers were tickling him at the same time; making him quiver continuously.
In such a situation, Li Yao straightened up his neck and stood still for half-a-minute as he slowly adjusted to the extremely sharp five senses.
However, new, complex information flooded his brain.
The information included the operating condition of 655 crucial array glyphs, the spiritual energy output of the reactor, the meticulous details of various magical equipment, as well as, humidity, temperature, pressure, wind speed, wind direction, the distance between the various targets in the surroundings, the subsequent best line of attack...
Li Yao felt as if his brain was going to explode.
Taking two long, deep breaths, Li Yao raised his arm to look carefully, disregarding the information flooding his brain. He slowly moved his fingers with a gasp of praise.
The snakelike palm of Seven-Step Rock Armor moved exactly the same.
Li Yao calmed himself down a bit.
"Apart from the amplified five senses, I also need to deal with a large amount of information. It seems, piloting the crystal suit isn't particularly difficult. Let's try taking two steps!"
Just as the thought of "walking" flashed in his mind, his leg muscles immediately tightened up before Li Yao's whole body rushed out as if someone had ruthlessly kicked his ass, as if someone had pulled an invisible thread wrapped around his leg hard.
"What the hell!" Li Yao screamed.
The instant he rushed out, further pieces of information flooded his mind; the quantity of information swarming his brain was ten times than before. All the information gathered into an agglomeration and flooded his brain in the blink of an eye!
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
The propulsion array glyphs engraved on the limbs and the back of the Seven-Step Rock Snake sprayed jets of dazzling flares as the reactor burst forth with a powerful spiritual energy, exerting a strong propulsion on him from various angles.
Li Yao was moving like he was dead-drunk, he tumbled left and right, waved his hands and stamped his feet in the most ludicrous ways, arousing bursts of exclamations and ridicule.
After almost brushing against two nearby crystal suits, Li Yao somehow turned himself around. Realizing that he was going to crash into his suit box, he exerted strength in his legs desperately and leaped high into the air as if a super firework had exploded underneath his ass, and heavily slammed down thereafter with a loud slam. Tossing around seven or eight times, he fell backward with his legs and arms stuck up in the air.
"It's too hard to control!
"This is the basic beginner mode...with sensitivity lowered to 30%...yet it is so difficult!
"If it was the normal mode, just a flash of thought would send the crystal suit flying three hundred to five hundred meters away. Then how would I pilot this thing!"
Li Yao was deeply shocked.
He recalled the theory which he had learned a few days ago.
The relation between the cultivator and his crystal suit was like the relation between a general and his war horse in the ancient times.
In the ancient cold weapon era, a general, no matter how stocky build and imposing manner he had, how great physical strength and courage he had, if fighting on foot, it would be impossible to defeat a hundred to two hundred enemy soldiers.
However, this very same general, once on a horse, would have the speed, power, and momentum of waving over a hundred pound heavy weapon elevated to the extreme by relying on the momentum of the horse.
Not to mention a hundred to two hundred soldiers, even if he were up against a thousand, he could charge at them seven to eight times and finally could withdraw with very few injuries.
A good warhorse could greatly increase the fighting power of a general!
The better the war horse, the more violent nature it had and the better the riding skill a general needed to have to subdue it and ride it!
The same was true for the crystal suit!
A powerful crystal suit was no different than a proud and violent horse; it was extremely difficult to pilot it.
But once you could successfully control it, your battle force would increase exponentially!
Li Yao's performance was an example of an unsuccessful attempt at taming a savage horse and was subsequently flung by this savage horse.
"It doesn't make sense!
"This crystal suit's sensitivity is locked at 30% so that a beginner can control it. And certainly, the increase in battle force will be lowest; it can only elevate my battle force to around 180%.
"Even the basic mode is so hard to control, let alone the high-level mode when the sensitivity is increased to 200% and battle force is increased by 500%!
"This is not alright. I will be unable to pilot Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit with this kind of performance!
"One more time! I can do it!"
Li Yao didn't believe in hearsay. Clenching his teeth, he once again started to control the crystal suit.
"First, I need to be gentle, slow, and steady, stand up bit by bit..."
When Li Yao was busy learning how to stand and walk, the first ten students were already whirring across the field.
Running, dodging, jumping, flying, attacking, sprinting, storming!
These trainees all had a certain amount of experience in piloting the crystal suit. In addition, it was the basic beginner mode. They didn't face any obstruction at all, their maneuvers were completely fluid and they didn't even take half-a-minute to complete the test.
Their magnificent maneuvers and wonderful performances garnered secret praises even from the Chief Instructor Mao Feng and the several instructors watching.
SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH
The huge hologram floating above the testing site displayed the overall test score of the trainees.
Impressively, Yuan Yeshi had topped the ranking with a score of 88 out of 100; it was a pretty good score.
