Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 234
A crystal tank carrying a Taiyi Lightning Railgun was ambushed by the demon beasts when it was marching. In a fluster, it fled to this place and resisted their scourge together with the soldiers in the barricade based on the defense rune array.
In front of them was an army of demon beasts which were coming at them like rising tides.
The most terrible nightmare had become reality for the soldiers.
Double-headed giant serpents as thick as a bucket were winking at them evilly with faces that seemed to be a mix of a human's and a snake's.
Beetles that were even larger than the crystal tanks were waving their sickle-like forelegs which were more than three meters long rapidly in the air.
Snails who had thorns all over their shells were charging. At the end of their necks, which were more than two meters long, were giant heads with two prolonged antennas where electric arcs were spluttering nonstop with cracking noises.
Although flying swords had minced countless demon beasts into pieces, still more were crowding forward as if they were endless.
The defense rune array was trembling under their strikes, like a dry leaf in the blowing autumn wind, which was ready to be ripped apart and obliterated at any moment.
"Pa!"
A loud noise echoed from a storm bolter, whose barrel had been seriously deformed because the rune arrays had been triggered for too many times in a row and the spiritual energy overloaded.
The owner of the storm bolter spat. He groped in his backpack with bloodshot eyes, only to find nothing usable.
"Ammo is running out!"
"Flying swords have all been launched!"
"The steadiness of the defense rune array is dropping fast. It will be compromised in three minutes!"
Bad news continuously found its way into the ears of the soldiers. The flames in their eyes were burning more crazily than ever, as they put on a never-to-look-back expression.
"Prepare your chainsword!"
The captain wiped the oily mud on his face and gnashed.
However, the beast tide in front of them was split by an invisible force.
An intimidating figure swam towards them neither too fast nor too slowly. He was still dozens of meters away, yet the demonic energy from him had crushed over and squeezed the defense rune array like imperceptible giant hands.
The defense rune array groaned. One rune after another was extinguished silently after briefly intensified brightness.
All the soldiers were grasped by hopelessness.
They felt that they were placed in an old, ragged submarine thousands of meters under the sea and could do nothing except to hear the sea devastating the shell of the submarine like a naughty kid squeezing an orange.
"A… demon general," someone mumbled desperately with a pale face.
Faced with ordinary demon beasts, or even low-level demon soldiers, perhaps they would still be able to defend the honor of the federal army for the last time with their chainsword.
However, when engaged with a demon general, all their efforts would be as meaningless as a mantis which was challenging a crystal tank.
This demon general looked like a hybrid of a human and a snake. The upper half of his body was the shape of a human, with scattering scales here and there. The lower half of his body was six narrow, long limbs. In the blurred mist, he looked like a giant spider.
"Ka!"
A purple ball the size of a date pit was spat out from the mouth of the demon general. It flew to the defense rune array slowly, and when it reached the end, thousands of dancing electric arcs were triggered which tore the defense rune array into pieces!
Right now, the only thing remaining between the barricade and the beast tide was fifty meters of distance, and—
"Swoosh!"
A crystal suit fell into the middle of the barricade and the beast like a meteorite.
Vague gold colors were flowing on the surface of the dark grey plate armor. Despite the seemingly shabby and crude appearance, scraps of scales could be found in the deepest layer of the plate armor with a careful look, which decorated the crystal suit with a constant halo.
"Chi!"
A huge amount of spiritual gas spouted out through the air paths of the crystal suit, forming a vivid, life-like, bright gold eagle over his head which shrieked to the sky with an air of invincibility.
"A Cultivator!"
"Our Cultivator is finally here!"
"So intimidating! Is it the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit? I recall that Mystic Skeleton Battlesuits are special crystal suits designed for low-level Cultivators. Why does he look so powerful?"
Awed by the crystal suit, the beast tide ebbed uncontrollably as if it had been crushed into pieces by a giant stone on the seashore.
The demon general narrowed his dirty eyes. The scales on his body were rattling, and his six limbs were shivering uneasily.
"Six-Armed Naga?"
Li Yao smiled in the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.
In the Battle of Verdant Tarn City, the hunting team including Li Yao and Zhao Tianchong had been engaged with a seriously wounded Six-Armed Naga.
That time, everybody had tried their best. Eventually, it was with the explosion of ten Hellfire-Lightnings that they managed to kill the demon beast, which nearly cost them their own lives.
The terror of a demon general had been carved in Li Yao's heart since then.
Li Yao had met another two demon generals back when he was in the Thunderous Sound Mountain. Still, they were not as impressive to him as the previous time.
After two years, he encountered a Six-Armed Naga for a second time. But this time, everything was different.
"Demon general? So what? Die now!"
Magnificent flames spurted out from the back of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit. More than fifty power rune arrays were activated at the same time. After minor adjustment of angles, the instantaneous speed of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was even higher than that of a super shuttle.
His battle saber, which had been redesigned with four marrow crystals embedded inside, was unsheathed. The eagle made of spiritual gas flew to the edge of the saber and wreathed it after a shriek, extending the aura of the saber to more than seven meters away.
"BOOM!"
"CRACK!"
A thunderstorm seemed to be echoing in the tip of the saber.
No more traps. No more tricks. His was the purest strength in the world.
Before the Six-Armed Naga was able to blink his eyes, Li Yao had slashed down at his throat with a saber enveloped by wind and thunder!
Chapter 343: Intensified Spiritual Blast! |
"Hiss!"
The Six-Armed Naga was an adult demon who was at the peak of his life. He had been enlightened by the master demons with the secret arts of the Blood Demon Sector. Now, he was almost a middle-level demon general with amazing combat ability.
Faced with Li Yao's world-shaking slash, his eyeballs almost bulged out. The two limbs in the above crossed two sabers in front of his chest, hoping to resist Li Yao's attack. The two limbs in the middle formed a demonic shield where electric arcs were spluttering with the defensive demonic equipment, which was his second defense line. The two short and small limbs in the bottom, which were just appendages to help stabilize him while he was crawling, now picked up two coldly shining daggers and stabbed at Li Yao's abdomen silently.
"BAM!"
The sabers crashed.
Both the humans and the demon beasts watching the fight heard an earsplitting explosion, as if someone had hammered them hard in the back of their head.
The Six-Armed Naga's sabers broke into pieces without any resistance. However, it did manage to block Li Yao's unstoppable saber briefly.
But the aura of wind and thunder on the edge of the saber was not stopped. It roared and charged forward at the neck of the Six-Armed Naga, tearing a twisted trace in the air.
The upper half of the Six-Armed Naga's body quickly folded backward like a switchblade. In the meantime, the demonic shield was raised.
The aura from Li Yao's saber rubbed against his demonic shield which seemed have been hit by lightning. Every scale on his body was standing up. He felt an overwhelming sense of pain all over his body.
The two poisoned daggers, which had been soaked in seven deadly poisons of the Blood Demon Sector that would melt the flesh and blood of human beings when they encountered the skin, hit the target precisely!
The Six-Armed Naga was overjoyed.
But the smile on the corner of his mouth was frozen to ice of horror before it was able to spread to his face.
The feedback from his daggers was very weird. He felt as if he had pierced into a cluster of fluffy cotton or a swirl that was too deep to measure.
The Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit in front of him blurred, twisted and popped up like smoke.
"A… shadow!"
The Six-Armed Naga felt dizzy. His tail was rattling and patting the ground uncontrollably while all the scales on it were shivering.
It was a sign that he was grasped by the utmost terror.
His two eyes narrowed into two slim lines, which were then filled with by a giant black figure.
The figure appeared in front of him abruptly, as if it had crawled out of thin air.
When he noticed it, the two hands of the black figure had opened and reached his abdomen where the human body and the snake body were connected.
"Intensified Spiritual Blast!"
Spiritual energy burst out from Li Yao's body.
The crazily expanding spiritual gas spurted out from the 64 spouts on the arms and the back of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit and formed two giant wings that were more than ten meters long behind him.
After a moment, the dark gold wings of spiritual gas turned into thousands of streaks of brightness and tangled his two arms, where they revolved and transformed the two arms into giant, invincible drills.
The drills pierced into the abdomen of the Six-Armed Naga as easily as two heated iron chopsticks stabbing a piece of tofu.
"EXPLODE!"
Li Yao roared so loudly that the corners of his mouth were nearly torn. The spiritual gas which was burning in the extreme state revolved hundreds of times inside the body of the Six-Armed Naga and crushed every organ inside to a pulp, before it exploded in the back of the demon beast where it swept out in the shape of a sector.
Looking from the front, there were only two holes the size of fingers in the abdomen of the Six-Armed Naga. But when looking from the back, its entire back had been blown into pieces, and all the organs inside the body were nothing but a mix of meat and blood now.
It was an unparalleled spiritual gas manipulation skill named Intensified Spiritual Blast, one of the brutalist martial arts of the Combat Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution which could only be wielded by Cultivators who were no lower than the peak of the Refinement Stage.
The Six-Armed Naga's eyes were still bulging wide. The toughness of its body sustained him from being killed immediately. But there was nothing else he could do other than watching Li Yao picking up the battle saber which was falling to the ground.
Then he saw tornadoes rising up from the tip of the saber.
That was the last thing he saw before he fell into the abyss of nothingness.
One second later, the high and mighty Six-Armed Naga from a moment ago turned into burning fireflies, fleeing, struggling, dispersing, and disappearing in the tornadoes raised up by Li Yao's battle saber, as if it had never been born before.
Through the ashes of the Six-Armed Naga, the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit walked forward slowly yet firmly. The ground was stomped into spider-net like cracks with his every footstep.
The beast tide was frozen like an ocean of minus a hundred degrees.
All the demon beasts were caught by a dead silence.
Even the antennas on the head of Electric Starry Snails were tightened to the extent that they were like two bones, unable to release any electricity at all.
As walking killing machines, the sole purpose of the low-level demon soldiers and the cannon-fodder demon beasts was to fight.
However, as living creatures, their instinct for survival had perceived how formidable the enemy was easily.
Purpose and instinct were pushing and pulling in their brains. Every demon beast had a confused expression on their face.
Li Yao didn't keep them in a dilemma for too long.
Above his head, four clusters of air suddenly twisted. From invisible swirls emerged four murderous steel demon beasts.
Triple-headed Heavy Six-barrel Vulcan Machine Guns, four of them. The shadowed tattoos on the barrels looked like the furs of a ferocious animal. The anti-gravity components and power rune arrays around them allowed them to float in the air and fire at the control of Li Yao's spiritual gas and telepathic thoughts with a full cover range of 360 degrees.
The expansion of the storage space inside the Cosmos Ring enabled Li Yao to carry four pieces of such simple yet violent magical equipment with a huge amount of ammunition.
By the delicate manipulation of spiritual gas at the peak of the Refinement Stage, he was able to control the four floating Vulcan Machine Guns as if they were his own limbs.
Hence a slaughter began.
Every Triple-headed Heavy Six-barrel Vulcan Machine Gun spurted out three torrents of bullets in different colors, which crushed the beast tide into pieces without any trouble.
Frost, flame, and acid.
At first, through thermal expansion and contraction, the defense and structure hardiness of the target would be undermined to minimum by the first two kinds of bullets. Then, the acid bullets would corrode the target to a deeper level. Not to mention the blast and explosion of the bullets which were themselves destructive enough.
It was the best long-range attack pattern that Li Yao had tested out on Tide Berserker.
Even the thick and solid shell of a crystal warship was not enough to withstand the salvo, let alone the flesh and blood of the low-level demon beasts.
Li Yao at present was no longer the rookie he had been in Verdant Tarn City two years ago.
Although he was not an expert in gun-fighting, the strength of the peak of the Refinement Stage still allowed him to maintain the ballistic trajectory of the floating Vulcan Machine Gun in a straight line despite the enormous recoil.
Almost all the bullets hit into the same point when they reached their destination.
Many demon beasts had been blown into pieces before they even had time to think.
A storm of blood rained upon the long street.
Three minutes later, there was not a single living demon beast anymore.
The soldiers of the federal army were all stunned.
They'd seen stronger Cultivators before. But this was the first time they saw such a cruel, brutal one.
"Where is the Taiyi Lightning Railgun?"
Li Yao retreated the Vulcan Machine Guns and walked back to the soldiers.
This area had been under the interference of the demonic fog. The signal of the Spiritual Nexus was intermittent.
According to the intelligence sent through the Spiritual Nexus half a minute ago, there was no large troops of demon beasts nearby.
However, the teleportation array of the demon clan one block away had started functioning. It was estimated that a large batch of demon beasts would be transmitted over in no time.
Therefore, it had to be destroyed before that!
Same as fortresses of the human beings, teleportation arrays of the demon clan had solid defense outside of them, too.
With Li Yao's current strength, it was hardly possible to destroy the teleportation array, even with the enhancement of the crystal suit.
Only by a critical attack of the Taiyi Lightning Railguns which equaled to the full-strength strike of a Core Formation Stage Cultivator would he be blessed with a chance to blow it into pieces.
"The crystal tank carrying the Taiyi Lightning Railgun was hit in the face by a giant fireball which burnt a big hole on it. There are backup components. But the maintenance job is too challenging. I'm the only Cultivator here and I'm just at the beginning phase of the Refinement Stage. The rest of the soldiers here are all ordinary people. Repairing such complicated magical equipment is beyond our ability."
The captain, whose face had been blackened by smoke, said hesitatingly, "I'm afraid we need a refiner to fix it up."
Li Yao smiled, "As it happens, I'm a refiner."
Amidst the shock and disbelief of all the soldiers, he strode inside the barricade and started studying the Taiyi Lightning Railgun.
It was a Taiyi III model.
This model was different from the one that he met on the crystal train. It was the latest model developed five years ago.
The most groundbreaking point about this new model was that it lightened and minimized all its components, which improved the mobility of the weaponry and enabled it to be deployed on ordinary crystal tanks while keeping the same firepower as the older ones.
Since the components in the magical equipment were smaller in size, they were much more delicate than those in Taiyi II which was often loaded on crystal trains and crystal warships.
Looking through the broken shell, many components were as thin as hair. It seemed extremely tricky to repair them.
"Is he truly a refiner?"
"He can't be. How on earth can there be such a brutal refiner who can kill a demon general in a second before blowing the demon beasts on the entire street into pieces?"
The soldiers were all whispering to each other.
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao took off his helmet.
Obviously, such a young face startled the soldiers once more.
Li Yao's eyes paused on the backup components of the Taiyi Lightning Railgun briefly, before he glanced around and looked for everything that he could make use of.
Then, he whistled and summoned Neltharion from the Cosmos Ring.
One of his telepathic thoughts was attached to Neltharion, when it rose up to the sky and observed the battleground silently and stealthily in the demonic fog.
