Although he found his Dao that “Every living thing in the world to understand and trust each other”, he had to be alive to realise this. There would only be Dao if one was alive. This was the root. If you lost the root, your Dao would not be realised.
Although it is said that the Dao pursuer should not be afraid of losing his life in the pursuit of Dao, that was if the Dao was right in front of them. If the Dao wasn’t acquired yet, the cultivator should treat his life preciously.
Although this group of cultivator youth had large amounts of spirit stones, Jiang Li didn’t have any intention of robbing or killing for the precious stones at the moment, although many Astral students would not have hesitated to do so. The Great Dream Heart Sutra he acquired was something of the cultivation civilization. Perhaps this was a yin and he would eventually need to suffer the guo of murdering someone. Killing a lot of cultivators might not be a good thing for him.
Now, he had subtly understood the cycle of yin guo. All things are born from a yin, even buddhas were of no exception and all things are ended with often unexpected guo. This completed the become, stay, break, empty cycle.
[TL Note: the four calamities in Buddhism]
Suddenly, he thought about the time when he first got the Great Dream Heart Sutra. The dried body in the sewer cursed: “You must eradicate all foreign demons or you will suffer immensely forever…”
Jiang Li’s heart sunk. He knew that this curse was not without effect, but that eradicating the ‘foreign demons’ was also impossible. He still had to try and break this curse.
“I won’t think about this first. I still need to get back to the base.” Jiang Li thought and prepared to hypnotise a bird to ride it back to the base. Although he had understood some of the true essence of air flow and could glide in the air, it would still be very tiring for him after some time.
In this region, there were also other birds that excelled at flying other than the fire god bird. After all, his hypnotic abilities in greater stasis were tens of times stronger than when he was in lesser stasis, and hypnotising almost any bird of his choice would not be difficult. His brain cells also improved quite a lot.
Just when he was searching for a bird to hypnotise, there was a sudden explosion in the sky. Something seemed to be flying over here. It didn’t sound like a living thing but a battleship. As expected, in the blink of an eye, a battle ship flew over and stopped.
This battleship was like a fish with dense scales.
“Astral Fish battleship!” Jiang Li immediately saw that this was the ship that belonged the Great River squad. But he didn’t know why it would appear here and block his path.
Could they be coming especially for him?
Last time, Jiang Tianhe couldn’t kill him due to school rules and only tested his ability but was reproached by his teacher. Although they lost their face, they still controlled themselves and left.
Jiang Li knew that these people were the centre of attention since a young age. They thought highly of themselves and were extremely arrogant. They wouldn’t be able to endure the humiliation and definitely would not let him go. Therefore, he was very careful in covering his tracks when he came out to do missions. However, he didn’t expect them to track him here so quickly.
Beep!
His computer alarm once again sounded as if it was being locked down by someone.
“Damn it, they must have a hacker who hacked my computer and located me through that. No wonder they could find my location.” Jiang Li was not a computer hacker but he knew some of the principles behind it.
Rumble! The ship flew up again on top of Jiang Li’s head. There was a beam forming at the bottom of the ship.
“Not good, weapons system? Energy cannon!” Jiang Li was shocked.
The Astral Fish battleship costed 4 billion. If it was started up every day, just the energy cost would be a huge sum. On top of that, there was still maintenance fees each month that also cost an astronomical amount. Many people could buy it but not afford to use and maintain it.
The weapons system aboard was even stronger. Those energy cannons could attack with an accuracy with margins of error in the millimeters, even when it was thousands of kilometers away. Its blast range was also huge, being able to completely demolish a mountain.
The things that intercontinental missiles could do 200 years ago were easily achievable by the modern battleships. However, each time the cannon fired, it required high density and concentrated energy. It was exorbitantly priced and would probably cost a few hundred million just for one blast. This was what high technology was built on: money.
In the sovereign era 200 years ago, once a war had started, the country’s economy would collapse before even fighting half a war.
Buzz… A thick beam of light shot down. In that instant, there was a deep bottomless hole on the earth. All the soil had evaporated. Jiang Li appeared 200 meters away from there and was not shot by the beam. The people on board the ship did not activate the large scale long range energy cannons, but instead used laser to spray shoot. After a round of spraying, the light beam stopped and the ground was completely swept clean. The battleship then descended.
The door opened and three people glided down. They all didn’t have mechas and just wore the school uniform with a strong sense of confidence.
The three that appeared were Jiang Tianhe, Huang Ye and another man who was also very strong.
“Jiang Li.” Jiang Tianhe saw Jiang Li immediately and said slowly: “Did you really think you could escape me?”
“Jiang Tianhe, the school rules allow students to fight empty handed but forbid all kinds of weaponry attacks. If you use guns, mechas or battleships to attack me, you will be sentenced! How dare you use a laser cannon to attack me just then!” Jiang Li knew he was locked down by this group of people. There was nowhere for him to escape to so he might as well fight it out.
“Really? The laser cannon was just to clean the ground so that the ship has a place to land.” Huang Ye sneered, her eyes were contemptuous: “Plus, each time we use the laser cannon, the energy cost is in the tens of millions. Do you think you deserve to die like that? You’re just a little brat. In our eyes, you’re worthless!”
Jiang Li didn’t let anger get the better of him and instead spoke calmly: “You attacked me just then, and it was a violation of the school rules. I have recorded it and uploaded it to the school website for live broadcasting. We’ll see then if you’ll be punished for that.”
“Really?” The man who hadn’t spoken before came up with a face full of scorn: “You think you can threaten us with your pitiful computer skills? Check and see if your clip has been uploaded then!”
Jiang Li’s face changed and hurried to open his computer and discovered that it had actually not been uploaded. His computer had been hacked and couldn’t even connect to the school internet.
“A little introduction here, this is hacker Li Nawei, a member of the Great River squad. He can infiltrate the computer of any student and acquire all his information, and even locate where he is. Jiang Li, your actions have been under our close surveillance.” Jiang Tianhe was very patient and spoke slowly: “But Huang Ye was right, you not worth dying from our energy cannon.”
“Don’t waste time with him and let me capture him!” Huang Ye was keen and took a step forward.
“No, I’ll do it personally this time.” Jiang Tianhe stopped Huang Ye. He moved slightly and there was a flow of air that circulated around his body. It spun rapidly and almost made him float in mid air.
Jiang Li’s eyes narrowed. He knew that Jiang Tianhe’s strength was well above what he thought it to be. Jiang Li couldn’t control the wind just by slightly moving the joints of his body. He could only vibrate his arm to create air waves and learn to glide like a bat.
Sho! Jiang Tianhe dashed over. Before he even arrived, the congenial chi arrived first. A visible air wall pushed towards him. It was like a glass wall that had been projected forward in lightning speed towards Jiang Li.
Jiang Li dashed and went into the depth of the forest. Jiang Tianhe had already arrived at where he just was. The air waves around him was like a tornado destroying everything within ten steps range. But Jiang Li’s speed wasn’t bad too. He had already disappeared the moment he dashed into the forest. This fazed Jiang Tianhe, who searched around and couldn’t find any traces of Jiang Li’s escape.
Jiang Li seemed to have disappeared out of nowhere.
“Li Nawei, search where Jiang Li is.” Jiang Tianhe ordered.
“He can’t have gotten far.” Li Nawei took out his computer and started searching, but his face gradually grew serious: “His signal has disappeared. This is impossible; it can’t have vanished even if he shut his computer down. I installed an automatic starting program in his computer. But now, it seems to have lost its effect!”
“Let’ go! Search on the ship, I don’t believe he can outrun a spaceship with his two measly legs?” Huang Ye was extremely angry.
Jiang Tianhe and company then boarded the ship once again, flying into the sky.
“Activate broad view!”
Beep! Inside the battleship, the big screen flickered as it started to search: “There are no humans within a 100 kilometer radius!’
“What?” Jiang Tianhe frowned: “He is already beyond 100 kilometers? It has only been a few seconds, how is this possible?”
“Expand the search!”
“No humans in 200 kilometers radius.”
“No humans in 300 kilometers radius.”
Jiang Tianhe shook his head: “He ran more than 300 kilometers in this instant? No! This is impossible; even our battleship isn’t that fast.”
“I cannot locate him; I don’t know where he went.” There was nothing Li Weina could do as well.
“Tianhe look, there is human!”
“Huang Ye opened the search on the battleship and suddenly rejoiced.
“400 kilometers radius, 7 humans discovered.” The screen displayed many information.
“This isn’t Jiang Li, it is other students, these students….” Jiang Tianhe looked as his eyes exploded with excitement: “Haha, they are aboriginals. They want to hunt down our students. There are also women. Not bad not bad, capture them all, I want them alive!”
“Battleship, attack in full speed!”
Rumble…. The huge ship flew into the sky for the distant.
At this moment, on the ground in the depth of the forest, an opaque stone appeared. A dimensional door opened and Jiang Li walked out. He had disappeared into his dimension just then. When he entered the dimension in the opaque stone and closed the dimensional doors, it was like he entered another world. All signals had been lost. Of course Jiang Tianhe couldn’t find him. This was the first time he entered his own dimension.
After he came out, Jiang Li waved his hand and the opaque stone fell into his hands. This stone could float by itself. Just then, when Jiang Li went into the depth of the dimension and he discovered many secrets. He felt that this opaque stone didn’t just have the simple ability of storing things.
ED Carolin Cao