Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 258
"Vulture, you are a refiner. Can you tell what they're working on? A camp? An altar?" Hong Tong asked in a low voice.
Li Yao narrowed his eyes. Hundreds of similar buildings popped up in his head. He compared each of them with the one in front of his eyes, only to get no match, until in the end, he suddenly realized something and said confidently, "It is neither a camp nor an altar. It is a pile driver, or a drill, if you will."
"A pile driver? Drill?" Hong Tong was somewhat confused.
"Correct."
Li Yao added, "The giant pillar in the middle should be some sort of magical equipment that can drill deep into the ground by vibration and revolution. Generally speaking, it is often used when a mother lode has yet to be detected.
"But according to our files, of the dozens of kinds of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures in Mystic Glacier, Nine-holed Stones and Soul Melting Crystals are the only two that are worthy of collecting. It is the same for the Blood Demon Sector.
"Also, their way of advancement is different from that of Cultivators, and they do not have the concept of Building Foundation at all, which means Soul-melting Crystals are completely useless for them!
"If they are collecting the Nine-holed Stones, the most convenient way would be to make use of the tunnels of the ancient mine thousands of years ago. Re-prospecting and rebuilding a tunnel? It is too difficult. Also, it is highly unnecessary.
"Therefore, my conclusion is that there is something much more precious than Nine-holed Stones and Soul Melting Crystals buried under the valley!"
While Li Yao was talking, the drilling machine in the valley suddenly started glowing. The giant pillar in its middle started revolving rapidly while it dug into the underground.
"What are these scumbags doing? Don't they know that frigorific cyclones are everywhere under the surface of Mystic Glacier? What if some of them are triggered by the drilling?" Hong Tong gnashed his teeth. "This team of demons outnumbers us, but none of them are very strong. Whatever they're doing, let's just catch them unprepared and take them down. Fifteen demons are a lot of contribution points. Their belongings will all be ours. How about it?"
"Let's do it!"
"Kill those lousy bastards! They are just some ten demons. Team Blue Bronze used to slay more than twenty demons without any trouble!"
All the teammates, including Li Yao, were rubbing their hands, too eager to make a move.
But 'Shell' Leng Ziming was more cautious. He said, "Do we need to send the message to the Heaven's Origin Sector and ask another Star Team to reinforce us? Not that I think we can't beat them. I'm just worrying that some of them might be able to run away and cause trouble in the future."
Hong Tong shook his head and said, "No. To send the message back, we will have to return to the Star Shuttle. This place is hundreds of kilometers from our star shuttle. By the time we go there and come back, these scumbags will probably have already dug out what they need from the underground. Besides, we will be more likely to expose ourselves. The risks are too high."
Leng Ziming thought for a while and nodded his head.
"Fair enough. Let's do it."
"Good!"
Hong Tong's voice suddenly turned extremely calm. "Last minute check. Yan Zi will take out the guard on the left; Shell will deal with the one on the right. Dummy will launch mental interference to reduce the alertness of the demons to the minimum.
"Vulture and Lingdang, be prepared. Later, I will establish a channel in front of you where there is zero gravity, so that your speed will be boosted!
"Then, carry out Plan 19. Free fire and kill everything you see!"
"Understood!"
"Understood!"
"Understood!"
The five teammates dispersed silently. A giant animal had opened its bloody mouth, ready to enjoy the delicious food.
The demons in the valley were fully focused on the drilling machine, not having the slightest idea that the wings of death had passed by their heads.
Mental interference from 'Dummy' Ba Weiqi further strengthened their illusion that the mission was about to be completed.
Last ten seconds.
'Shell' Leng Ziming was in position. His telepathic thoughts had locked onto a demon guard 735 meters away who had disguised himself as a rock.
Yan Yangtian had turned utterly invisible. She snuck to the back of the other guard.
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang had checked all their power rune arrays and attack magical equipment. Their spiritual energy was rejoicing, flooding out of the pores on their skin at any time.
"Five, four, three, two, one!"
In one corner of the ridge, a scarlet star blinked. A bullet which had been carved with sophisticated runes all over its body, covering the more than seven hundred meters silently and speedily, pierced through the demonic shield of the guard and into his head without any trouble.
Yan Yangtian appeared out of thin air. The other demon guard was completely suppressed by her spiritual energy, while she severed the spine of the guard with a glittering sharp knife and stabbed his heart with another.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The other four Cultivators all opened fire. More than a hundred flying swords dashed down into the valley.
"Now is the time!" Hong Tong roared and raised his hands up abruptly.
On the mountain path before Li Yao and Ding Lingdang, countless rocks were rolling while producing cracking noises. Some pebbles were even floating in the air.
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang immediately activated their spiritual energy to the maximum. Dazzling brilliance burst out from their crystal suits, while the power rune arrays were all screaming. They stomped on the ground, causing earsplitting thunder to echo through the valley, and rushed down.
On the path where there was zero gravity, their speed was brought up to an unimaginable level. They reached the foot of the mountain before everyone was able to realize what was going on, like two burning blades.
"Pa! Pa! Pa!"
Flowers of blood were blossoming among the demons who were now in utter chaos.
'Shell' Leng Ziming, after taking care of the guard, had aimed at the commander-like demon in the group.
Although the bullet didn't kill him, the crowd was thrown into greater confusion.
A hundred meters to the demons.
For Cultivators, the distance was like the width of a hair.
Li Yao extended his telepathic thoughts and summoned four floating Vulcan Machine Guns which knitted a net of flame and death in front of him.
In the meantime, he unsheathed the Boiled Blood Wind Slashing Saber. The blood aura piercing out of the saber almost reached nine meters away. He wielded the saber, raising a hurricane of destruction.
The demons in the range of his attack all lifted their weapons to block his saber. But the arm of one of the demon generals was shot by the sniper just now, which made his reaction slower than it should have been. His giant head flew up to the sky, his shocked face frozen in the cold hair.
First blood, secured!
For the other demons, although they were not hit by the body of the saber, the aura of the blood had penetrated through their demonic shield into their body weirdly.
The demons that were relatively weaker immediately started bleeding.
Li Yao's soul was connected to his saber in a mysterious way. He recognized the weakness of the demons easily. Sneering, he charged at the demon whose bleeding was fastest and slashed down at his head!
In the meantime, Ding Lingdang had rushed into the crowd of the demons with her three serpents of fire.
She was already at the middle level of the Building Foundation Stage. With the enhancement of the Crimson Phantom Battlesuit tailor-made for her by Li Yao, her strength was even greater than that of many high-level demon generals. Besides, she had inherited the ancient Cultivation art 'Nonacolored Fire'. Therefore, she was fighting against five demon generals at the same time, single-handedly.
By the time Yan Yangtian, Hong Tong, and Ba Weiqi reached the battleground, Li Yao and Ding Lingdang had slain three demon generals, while another three demon generals were in a state of extreme weakness due to critical blood loss.
As the saying goes, fortune always favors the bold. The victory here was already guaranteed!
Hong Tong did not expect that Li Yao would be so tough in his first battle in the Occult Orbs. He was planning to let Li Yao and Ding Lingdang disrupt the formation of the demons first, so that the three of them could clean up the remaining demons together. As it turned out, Li Yao and Ding Lingdang had almost wiped out all the demons on their own. He was overjoyed and shouted, "Well done, Li Yao! Don't kill all of them! Leave someone alive!"
Silver-blood demons were as intelligent as human beings. The two parties could understand each other. Cultivators of the Heaven's Origin Sector had a lot of secret arts to interrogate the demons. 'Dummy' Ba Weiqi of Team Blue Bronze was an expert in this aspect.
The few demons who were still resisting knew that they were destined to lose. After looking at each other, one of the demons whose fur was more glamourous than others' gritted his teeth and crumbled something round in his hand while brutality was burning in his eyes.
"BOOM!"
The drilling machine suddenly started working dozens of times faster. A weird, teeth-twisting noise broke out in the depths of the underground!
Chapter 378: Deadly Fog |
As if thousands of thunder shocks were bursting out under the ground, the earth was shaking violently. The drilling machine that the demon clan built up rose up a little bit at first, before it was pulled down and exploded in cracking noises.
Then, a cluster of high-pressure fog erupted from the hole and broke out in the sky into thousands of pieces of ice.
"Not good. A frigorific cyclone!"
Hong Tong's voice was somewhat hoarse.
They did not know that the demons were drilling in this place just to get a frigorific cyclone out.
They'd witnessed the power of frigorific cyclones with their own eyes the other day. A battleground of more than ten square kilometers could be entirely frozen by one of them. It was extremely tricky for Building Foundation Stage Cultivators such as themselves to cope with them.
The question now was how big the incoming frigorific cyclone would be.
Li Yao's pupils constricted violently as he thought of something. He said in a hurry, "It's not simple as that. It's impossible that the demons came such a long way here just to pick up a cluster of frigorific cyclone!"
Before he was able to finish his sentence, the frigorific cyclone seemed to have woken up from a prolonged dream. It cycled through various forms in the sky, before it twisted and condensed into a cerulean cloud of ice dozens of meters in diameter with bright blue streaks.
Although its size was smaller than they had imagined, its temperature was much lower. Everyone's crystal suit was beeping with warnings even though they were all dozens of meters away, strongly suggesting that they get out of there as soon as possible.
The blue streaks stared at everyone like long, narrow eyes.
They were all grasped by fear.
"It's a Devastating Icy Revenant! One with such a tremendous size!" Yan Yangtian murmured to herself.
Everyone's hearts were frozen like an ice tube.
Devastating Icy Revenants were the last bit of the fighting will of the deceased combined with the energy leaked from the frigorific cyclones that could only come into being after hundreds of years.
Li Yao and his teammates had run into several Devastating Icy Revenants yesterday in the underground tunnels, which were like translucent hairtails. Even the largest of them was only the length of an arm.
But this Devastating Icy Revenant was hundreds of times larger, which seemed to be capable of devouring all of them at the same time.
It appeared that someone strong must've participated in the war on the ancient battleground and left an intense sense of slaughtering at the last moment of their life. By accident, his mental power infiltrated into the main conduit of the frigorific cyclones and, after thousands of years of melting, created such a gargantuan Devastating Icy Revenant.
The demons might've discovered it dozens of years ago. Now that the conditions were just right, they were planning to dig it out and save it for their use. But Team Blue Bronze had appeared out of nowhere and disrupted their plan. Having no other choice, they were forced to release the Devastating Icy Revenant earlier, hoping to die together with their opponents.
All the demons that were still alive were dancing in wild joy upon seeing the appearance of the Devastating Icy Revenant, while they shouted with twisted faces, "Embrace me, Pantheon of Demons!"
"Hooo!"
Like puffing cheeks, the Devastating Icy Revenant expanded suddenly, before it suddenly shrank and blew out a stream of ice that was visible to everyone. The demons, standing in the middle of the stream of ice, were immediately solidified into transparent sculptures in their dancing postures. The limbs of two demons who were moving too quickly dropped down the moment of the solidification. But the fracture was neat and clean like mirror, without the slightest hint of blood.
The natural instinct of Devastating Icy Revenants was to freeze everything they saw, especially the living creatures.
After freezing all the remaining demons, the cerulean cloud of ice drifted to Team Blue Bronze without pause.
"Let me!"
Ding Lingdang stepped forward and crossed her arms. The fire serpents were twisted into a helix and thrown at the Devastating Icy Revenant.
Like boiling oil pouring into snow, cracking noises burst out inside the cloud of ice.
The bright blue streaks twitched violently, as if thousands of eyes which were squinting out of sharp pain.
Then, five blue ice balls were ejected from the Devastating Icy Revenant.
"Watch out!"
Li Yao reacted quickly enough to push Ding Lingdang away. The two of them rolled on the ground, and five thick ice spears were standing in the exact place where Ding Lingdang had been standing.
Had Li Yao not taken action promptly, Ding Lingdang would've definitely been injured by the ice spears, if not frozen by them.
The Devastating Icy Revenant, on the other hand, chewed the fire serpents before freezing them, and continued drifting at Team Blue Bronze.
"Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!"
Four flowers of flame blossomed on the right side of the Devastating Icy Revenant, which were soon turned into frosty flowers.
They were the incendiary bullets that 'Shell' Leng Ziming shot out!
A hissing sound like that of gas leaking out could be heard from the inside of the Devastating Icy Revenant. It seemed to be in great pain. Suddenly, four ice cones darted out to where the bullets had come from, leaving four vague traces of ice in the air.
A moment later, clusters of ice grew out on the ridge where Leng Ziming had been hiding.
"Shell!" Hong Tong shouted.
"I'm fine. The plate armor of the right leg has been damaged with a performance reduction of 52%. Moving on to the second shooting position."
Leng Ziming's voice was as calm as ever.
"Alright, cover us in the second shooting position. Let's fall back!"
The appearance of this super-large Devastating Icy Revenant was beyond everyone's expectations. Now that neither the long-range point of attack nor the melee one had any solution to deal with it, Hong Tong immediately made the call to retreat to the Heaven's Origin Sector as soon as possible.
His manipulation of gravity couldn't be more useful at this moment. He lifted up giant stones and placed them between Team Blue Bronze and the Devastating Icy Revenant, while he lowered the gravity around them to one third of the standard gravity.
All members of Team Blue Bronze covered each other up with furious firepower according to the retreat plans that they'd practiced during training.
Yet, the Devastating Icy Revenant was staying close behind them. Floating in the sky like a cloud, it was astonishingly fast, and since it was so high, it was very easy to locate their route.
Now and then, it would spit out clusters of high-pressure ice fog like arrows so powerful that as soon as they touched one corner of the plate armor, the whole part of the plate armor would immediately be frozen and lose all functionality.
Everyone activated their power rune arrays and sprinted across the ice-covered world. After taking several turns through ridges and caves, they finally managed to get rid of the Devastating Icy Revenant.
"Let's go back to the star shuttle!" Hong Tong said hurriedly. Sweat was appearing on their forehead, which was instantly frozen into ice drops. The spiritual stamps of flame on their bodies were barely of any use now.
However, when they finally reached the valley where their star shuttle was hidden and were ready to board it, an arrow of ice darted close from the sky and froze the star shuttle into a giant ice block!
The Devastating Icy Revenant that they thought they'd escaped from was eyeing them in the sky among other ordinary clouds.
Everyone's faces were drawn and couldn't look more awful.
To shatter the void in such a star shuttle would be like committing suicide; the components of the star shuttle were, most likely, seriously damaged by the frost and their hardiness greatly undermined. And that was assuming the star shuttle could be unfrozen at all.
Their only hope was ruined. There was no help in Mystic Glacier that they could count on to cope with the Devastating Icy Revenant.
Even if the Heaven's Origin Sector sent out a second star shuttle, the Devastating Icy Revenant could destroy it easily.
There was but silence in the communication channel, as if it had been frozen by the Devastating Icy Revenant, too.
Shortly after, Li Yao's voice struggled in the channel, like flickering embers in the darkest cave.
"Let's go back!
"The demon generals that we encountered just now were weaker than us. They should be scared of the Devastating Icy Revenant as much as we are. It's not like they were trying to kill themselves here.
