1976 Incoming Bandits!
The tough bandits barely hid their intent to attack the Village of Peace.
When the wolves of the Bloody Worlds wanted to swallow the swine of the Desolate Worlds, they did not need to do it stealthily.
The Village of Peace had reaped a lot of assets from the Bliss Ceremony, but there was no delight among the villagers. Everybody was sparing no effort strengthening the village, transforming it into an impenetrable iron fortress.
Even so, they were not given the slightest sense of security and could only shudder in fear behind the armored walls.
Except for the few members of the exploration team, almost everybody stayed back in the village.
Li Yao, Han Te, and Liu Li, however, were not among them.
Twenty kilometers to the east of the great lake, below an uninhabited mountain made of bizarre-shaped rocks, Han Te and Liu Li looked at a tiny cave earnestly.
Li Yao stood behind them, as casual as ever.
Boom!
A light noise echoed inside the cave. Even the quake was rather weak. The smoke popping out was as thin as the clouds. Nobody could have noticed the explosion if they did not watch out for it carefully.
Han Te and Liu Li were both somewhat surprised, not expecting the crystal bomb modified by ‘Grandpa Yao’ carefully to be so weak.
“Put on your heatproof suit and go inside to check,” Li Yao said, unaffected.
Han Te put on three layers of heatproof suits. Squeezing through the grass outside of the cave, he already sensed overwhelming heat surging out like magma before he reached the entrance of the cave.
When he looked inside, he saw nothing but orange and red. The cave that was only two meters deep had been turned into a bottomless hole by the crystal bomb. Also, the rocks on the wall had entirely melted and were dripping like thick glue.
Han Te extended his left hand into the cave for a moment, only to feel that his arm was about to boil. By the time he retracted his arm, two layers of heatproof suits had been burnt and melted together and were almost stuck to his hand!
“The more impressive the sound and visual effects are, the more energy the crystal bomb will have wasted. Only by focusing all the energy on the same spot can you unleash the highest damage,” Li Yao said solemnly. He was not entirely satisfied about the power of the crystal bomb.
However, because the time was too limited, and he did not have handy tools or enough knowledge about the new rune arrays of the Imperium of True Human Beings, it was acceptable to have achieved such a result.
Han Te picked up a dead rabbit that had a long tail with an iron stick and extended it into the cave. Very soon, the stench of meat burning hit his nostrils. When the body was moved out again, it had already been turned into dark charcoal, and the iron stick was too hot to be held.
The two little fellows looked at each other in bewilderment, gaining a deeper understanding about the unbelievable formidability of ‘Grandpa Yao’.
“Right,” Li Yao suddenly said, “a few days ago, I asked you to investigate the factions in the village and to figure out who’s usually close to Zhao Lie, what the internal structure of the iron-shelled ships is, and how you will deal with emergencies… Have you found out the answers?”
“Yes, we have.” Han Te nodded. Throwing both the iron stick and the black charcoal into the cave, he sat cross-legged and asked, “Are you still suspicious that something is wrong with Zhao Lie, Grandpa Yao?”
“Even if there was nothing wrong with Zhao Lie in the beginning,” Li Yao said unhurriedly, “he has left the Village of Peace and disappeared. If I were a bandit of Double Dragons Valley who planned to attack the Village of Peace, I would certainly capture him and interrogate him to get inside information on the Village of Peace!”
On the seventh night after the Bliss Ceremony…
Although everybody had lived in panic for seven days, there was no ease of wariness in the Village of Peace at all. Even Han Te and Liu Li were still accompanying Li Yao in Warehouse No. 3 to perform bizarre, insane modifications on the magical equipment that had fallen from the sky.
The compartments of the multipurpose mechanical arms on the two sides of Li Yao’s body had been completely opened. Four foldable, flexible mechanical arms, each having seven ‘fingers’ in total, stretched out. The twenty-eight ‘fingers’ performed dazzling movements in a cluster of silver mist. There was even no telling what kind of components were hidden inside the mist. The only thing that could be seen was the iron scraps flying out of the mist, some of which were even burning furiously in red and green sparks.
After a crack, another mechanical arm could not withstand Li Yao’s powerful soul anymore and broke at the joint. His smooth and fluent movements were immediately disrupted.
The magical equipment component being crafted fell to the ground in a dull noise.
Liu Li hurried to bring a new mechanical arm to Li Yao, but the dissatisfaction in Li Yao’s heart was not cleared.
Such an iron shell was too vulnerable.
Or rather, his soul was too powerful for any normal iron to bear.
Even if super alloys that had been well-tempered had enough hardness and tenacity, it was destined that their ‘trafficability’ and ‘sense of reverberation’ with the soul and the spiritual energy would not be very good due to their molecular form and atomic structure. It was extremely easy to have the feeling of being encumbered.
Human beings were carbon-based life forms. Only a fleshly body was the best carrier for the soul and spiritual energy.
Li Yao craved the strong body that he had been born with again. He dreamed of melding with his fleshly body perfectly as soon as possible so that he could really enter the ultimate level of the Divinity Transformation Stage!
However, right now, the trickiest problems of the Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, the compressed food, and the high-purity crystals had not been resolved.
What fell from the sky on the Desolate Worlds were low-quality food and crystals that contained tremendous impurities. They were somewhat effective for the low-level trainers, but for an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage such as himself, he would not be full however much food he took.
There were perhaps food, medicine, and crystals of higher purities in the Bloody Worlds and the Elysian Worlds, but storage and shipping were the greater problem.
Through the two little fellows, Li Yao learned that Cosmos Rings were barely heard of in the Land of Sins. A lot of magical equipment that was much more precious than the Cosmos Ring had been seen, but the Cosmos Ring was just a groundless tale.
Any one of them was enough to trigger the head-to-head clashes among hundreds of experts between two major cities in the Elysian Worlds.
Li Yao realized that it was probably because the Immortal Cultivators intentionally collected all the Cosmos Rings in order to better control the Land of Sins. Such magical equipment was indeed the best ancillary tool to sneak in and secretly sabotage. If the resistance organization of Cultivators got a few of them, they would certainly be able to cause even greater trouble.
Without Cosmos Rings, even if he could gather abundant assets, how could he ship them to the satellite beyond the atmosphere where his fleshly body was hidden?
The capacity of Neltharion was only part of the problem. What was even more troublesome was that the angels, or the Immortal Cultivators, had imposed the strictest blockage on the entire sky of the planet through the Heavenly Rails and the City in the Sky.
Li Yao was confident that he could break through the siege with Neltharion in the stealth state. But if he carried tons of assets, even a blind person would notice that somebody was running away from the planet.
After considering for a long time, Li Yao had decided that he still needed to get a piece of high-molecular layer-by-layer scanning magical equipment in order to open his own Cosmos Rings.
While Li Yao was pondering, his soul suddenly quaked. “Somebody is here!”
When Li Yao took the two little fellows to board the deck through the stairs, the great lake was still peaceful without any wave under the dark night sky.
Although the iron-shelled boats of the Village of Peace were ablaze with lights, and a lot of villagers were standing by next to the turrets and the shooting holes, it was late night after all. Everybody was somewhat sleepy after staying alert for such a long time.
On the horizon, vague mist was spreading over the lake. There was no telling what was going on near the shore at all.
Li Yao, however, boosted his soul and thudded the shell heavily through the five bogie wheels and the tracks.
Bam!
A deafening noise echoed, as if the entire boat had turned into a bell. The overwhelming toll pierced through everybody’s ears and brain, waking up thousands of villagers and driving away their sleepiness.
“Enemy incoming!”
It was not until this moment that desperate roars and alarms each higher than the last came from the sentry posts at the highest part of the masts.
The entire village was simmering. The clicking sounds of bullets being locked and loaded and the humming of the chainswords and the vibration sabers were echoing everywhere, mixed with roars of shock and anger. Hundreds of boots that had been embedded with iron plates stomped on the deck and every panicked heart!
Crouching on the gunwale, Han Te and Liu Li set up the high-performance telescopes that Li Yao specially made for them. Li Yao adjusted the array of thirty-six crystal cameras that had just been installed on his iron head. They saw the invaders that ripped apart the mist and the water and charged at the Village of Peace like a beast tide at the same time.
They were not members of the Black Water Gang but the sinners that were spared during the Bliss Ceremony!
The sinners somehow found thousands of shuttles and charged at the village while roaring nonstop.
They lowered the shuttles to a very low altitude, raising huge waves on the surface of the lake as if they were dragging long tails behind them. In such a way, they were boosted by the air currents, and their speed was accelerated to the maximum.
A lot of other sinners did not have shuttles, but they were also sailing forward at an amazing speed on tiny boats.
They were like combinations of sea monsters and headless flies, and they could not have looked crazier and more hideous!
“Those *ssholes. We spared their lives out of kindness, and yet they are bold enough to come back to the Village of Peace to be killed!”
Han Te’s face contorted in anger. He felt regretful for his master’s mercy that day and could not help but wonder if Zhao Lie was right after all and they should have annihilated all the enemies.
“No,” Li Yao said solemnly. “Look at their shuttles more carefully.”
Han Te was slightly dazed. Thanks to the telescope that Li Yao had crafted carefully, he was able to clearly see every detail on the incoming tanks despite the dark night. Bulging his eyes, he observed for a long time and suddenly exclaimed, “Those—those sinners have been tied up by iron chains to the armed shuttles!”