Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

1953 Fatal Shortcomings of the Unparalleled Arts

On the black shell of the spiritual puppet that had been sealed in the gloomy world for hundreds of years, dark red fire was dancing. Together with the pieces of the Thunder Salamanders that were still floating in midair behind, they constituted a nightmarish picture.

Before Li Yao, the two little fellows held each other and shuddered.

Turning the tracks in squeaky noises, Li Yao shifted his attention to the two little fellows again.

Right now, he was full of curiosity about the arts they demonstrated.

Sensing the coldness released by the crimson crystal cameras, Han Te shivered. He gritted his teeth and stood before Liu Li, struggling to say, “S—Senior…”

“Show me the arced lightning that you activated when you resisted the Thunder Salamanders again,” Li Yao said casually.

Han Te was slightly dazed and looked at Liu Li in bewilderment. Encouraged by the girl, he slowly straightened his right arm and bellowed. Electric light leaked out of his pores and quickly extended out of his arm, forming long, narrow arcs that were similar to swords and sabers.

“What a delicate model of spiritual energy!”

Li Yao’s eyes beamed with interest. He had seen a similar technique to construct swords and sabers with the power of thunder from Despot, Elder Nether Spring’s great warrior in the Blood Demon Sector.

Despot was a super warrior that Elder Nether Spring had carefully refined after embedding more than a hundred crystals into him. His capability had been close to the Nascent Soul Stage.

The combat ability that the young man showed just now was in the Refinement Stage at best. Naturally, it was incomparable to Despot’s. However, the models of spiritual energy that he constructed were even more finely-made than Despot’s with ten times more variations.

After pondering for a moment, Li Yao said, “If my guess is correct, you used to be far stronger than right now, didn’t you?”

Han Te was shocked. “How—how do you know, senior? Yes. I advanced into the seventh level of the Lightning Triangle three years ago, and I was ten times stronger than I am today. Even if I came across a Thunder Juggernaut, I would have the capability to compete with it in an open fight!

“It is a shame that the veins and nerves on the right half of my body have been blocked since three years ago, although there are no obvious signs of mental derangement. My capability has plummeted, too, and I am almost a useless man right now…”

Grabbing Han Te’s shoulder, Liu Li craned her head and emboldened herself to ask, “Senior, since your eyes are keen enough to see my senior brother’s past capability, is there any way you can help him? My senior brother was truly awesome at that time. Not only was he the best expert among the young people in the Village of Peace, you couldn’t have found anyone stronger than him in the hundreds of square kilometers around. Everybody said that he was a genius and that he would eventually go to Manjusaka, the City in the Sky!

“But as it turned out, like other geniuses in the past, he suffered the same misfortune and became a ‘disrupted genius’. The last three years have been really difficult for him. Please give him a hand, senior!”

“Disrupted genius? The same misfortune?” Li Yao chewed on the girl’s words. Leaving aside ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, he asked, “What, do you have a lot of ‘disrupted geniuses’ like him?”

“There are too many.” Han Te opened his hands. Pretending that he did not care about it, he bit his lips and said, “Life is rough in the Land of Sins. Radiation and ferocious beasts are everywhere. The training resources are highly insufficient, too. It is impossible for us to train in peace. Therefore, it is only natural that all kinds of accidents can happen.

“I have heard of almost twenty unfortunate fellows from the few villages in the several square kilometers around alone. They were all known as geniuses in the past, but their Cultivation plummeted for uncanny reasons. I am one of the luckier ones, having kept my life. Some of them went mentally deranged or died on the spot. Some even had abnormal mutations and turned into terrible monsters!”

“You said just now that your master was also ‘an old grandpa from the sky’,” Li Yao said. “I assume that he taught you the ‘Lightning Strangle’, didn’t he?”

“Of course it was him, but I also practiced some other arts in secret and combined almost ten of them to increase the power of the Lightning Strangle. How else could we survive in the Land of Sins?”

“From what I’ve heard just now, you master is ill, too,” Li Yao said. “Is his condition serious?”

Han Te looked at Liu Li and nodded. “Yes, senior. My master is indeed suffering from a serious and weird disease. Even without an attack, his Cultivation is much lower than before. When he has an attack, his blood will almost stagnate, his hands and legs will be strengthless, and he can barely get out of his bed.

“We entered the heavily-polluted radiation area at great risk this time because we want to find something valuable in the unexplored places so that we can earn enough money to treat my master’s illness.”

“Got it.”

The crystal cameras on the front of Li Yao’s body flashed again. Dozens of streaks of redness flooded out again, forming the devastating crimson flashes again, which penetrated through the right half of Han Te’s body like a storm.

Thousands of electric arcs burst out of Han Te’s body and knocked him to the ground quickly. He writhed on the ground in agony while screaming hard.

“Senior brother!”

Liu Li did not expect that Li Yao would launch a fatal attack without any warning. Too shocked, she stopped before Han Te without thinking and held her head hard with both hands.

Li Yao immediately sensed that an invisible superstorm was condensing inside her brain quickly.

The girl angrily demanded, “Senior, in any case, we are the ones who woke you up. There’s no reason for you to return the favor in such a way, is there?”

Li Yao smiled and casually said, “I do not know the random techniques that you senior brother has been practicing besides the Lighting Strangle, but the main art that he trains himself with seems to be focusing on the stimulation of the mitochondria inside the cells to change the form of the mitochondria, thereby allowing the mitochondria to unleash several dozen times more energy instantly.

“Meanwhile, the art has caused the mutation of part of the cells inside his body, allowing him to evolve with an effect similar to the release of electricity in an ‘electric eel’. It is only with the cooperation of his mitochondria and his electro-discharge cells that he is able to trigger arced lightning and combine them into various forms of attack.

“Theoretically speaking, it is indeed a rather dominating art, which is much more efficient and aggressive than the traditional usages of the spiritual energy of the thunder class. No wonder he was confident in competing with a Thunder Juggernaut in his prime.

“The problem is that the art has a serious shortcoming. When the structure of the mitochondria is changed and it is repeatedly stimulated, the mitochondria release a material similar to ‘creatine’. However, the art does not take it into consideration—or maybe it has, but there is simply no way to address it—the problem of the waste discharged by the mitochondria.

“Although the waste from the seriously-stimulated mitochondria is little to none during every training session, it inevitably builds up in all the channels inside your senior brother’s body where spiritual energy flows because it cannot be discharged out of the body. Thus, it piles up in the veins, nerves, and muscle fibers.

“It’s just like an embolism for the ordinary people, which can kill the victims immediately when it gets serious. Is it strange at all that his Cultivation plunged?”

Liu Li was dazed at what she heard. Her mouth was opened wider and wider.

Looking at Li Yao’s shell that was riddled with holes and his hideous appearance with utmost admiration, the girl almost cried out. “Senior…”

“Don’t be anxious. Let me finish. There’s still hope for your senior brother,” Li Yao said confidently and casually. “Although the Lightning Strangle has serious shortcomings, your senior brother couldn’t have practiced it for many years considering his young age. However, as he said just now, he also picked up a lot of other random arts, didn’t he? The technique with fatal shortcomings alone clogged his veins, nerves, and spiritual root, and the other messy, mediocre arts only made the situation worse. That’s why he had an acute attack this time.

“It is certainly not a good thing that his veins, nerves, and muscle fibers are all clogged at such a young age, but since he is still very young, the waste released from his mitochondria is not too much yet. Therefore, there is still a chance to save him.

“Hey, my little friend, how do you feel right now?”

Han Te stopped yelling and screaming at some point and sat up in a trance. Looking at the thick, stinky fluids that flowed out of the holes caused by the red flashes, he laughed like an idiot, his head going completely blank.

Liu Li pushed him several times. He summoned his spiritual energy in silence, and blue electric arcs almost five meters tall surged out of his palm. Countless fish seemed to be swimming merrily on the ceiling, illuminating the entire underground space splendidly.

“My—my Cultivation seems to have been partly restored.” The young man gawked at the ceiling. Perhaps because of the stimulation of the electric arcs, hot tears flowed out of his eyes. “Strength… My strength is coming back!”

Holding the thousands of electric arcs inside his palm, he waved his fist hard and jumped up in ecstasy.

But as it turned out, he was unable to control the powerful strength, and he bumped into the ceiling, bringing down half of the ceiling. He grimaced and squatted on the ground, holding and rubbing his head.

“Senior brother!” Liu Li was amused. She then stared at Li Yao full of appreciation and stammered, “Senior, we—we don’t know how we can thank you…”

“It’s no big deal.” Li Yao smiled casually. Looking at the young man squatting on the ground like a monkey, he remembered his past self again.

The feeling alone was enough for him to give the guy a hand. “Your senior brother’s strength has always been stored inside his body and never left. It’s just that it is blocked by the waste released by the mitochondria. Now that I have temporarily dredged his nerves, veins, and internal organs and sent some of the waste out, the circulation of his spiritual energy has become smooth again. Naturally, his strength is back.

“However, too much waste is stuck inside his body to be dredged in one time. I estimate that I will have to dredge and guide him every day for ten to fifteen days in order to completely eliminate the waste inside his body.

“Also, this does not fix the root of the problem. If he continues practicing Lightning Strangle, which has fatal shortcomings, the waste from his mitochondria will still be generated, and his body will become clogged again in the future.”