Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

li yao smiled and simply said, “thank you, fellow cultivator ye, but let’s not rush into picking the crystal suits yet. i want to take a look at the furnaces and the maintenance platform of this place. i wonder, am i free to use the furnaces here?”

ye qingyun said, “of course. since you are going to adjust and modify crystal suits, i assume you will need small furnaces? the deep sea fleet has all kinds of refining facilities. the configuration of the small furnaces is as good as that of the few major crystal suit centers of the imperium. i don’t know which university and which school fellow cultivator li comes from, but i’m sure that you know the facilities of the few major crystal suit centers very well, right?”

after a brief daze, li yao said, “i really don’t know much about the facilities in the major crystal suit centers. i would appreciate it if i can have the opportunity to read the user manuals. i do not have any lineage or come from any school. i am sort of a… self-taught talent.”

user manuals? self-taught talent?

not that ye qingyun meant to laugh at li yao, but his words were simply too hilarious. ye qingyun slightly bowed to cover the mockery on his face and said, “… very well. then, i’m sure that fellow cultivator li’s ‘self-taught’ skills in refining will be a great eye-opener for all of us. this way, please.”

li jialing secretly dragged li yao’s sleeve from behind.

he had seen personally how violent and brutal li yao was during combat, and he thought li yao was a professional battle-type cultivator who only had a shallow understanding of the maintenance of crystal suits and colossi.

leaving jin tianzong aside, he had heard a thing or two about the name ye qingyun before. the man was one of the rising stars in the circle of refiners and certainly not to be underestimated.

the young man was not worried that li yao would embarrass himself, but that li yao would go on a rampage and kill all of the refiners after his embarrassment.

after all, his big brother who popped out of nowhere had killed thousands of refiners in “manjusaka, the city in the sky”. he was almost a “bane of refiners”!

li yao, however, did not bother to care about anything else. he simply walked to a chamber deep inside the maintenance workshop.

the maintenance workshop was mainly for the maintenance and modification of single battle magical equipment, particularly armed shuttles and crystal suits. most of the components were inputted from outside and polished, melded, assembled, and modified here. it was unnecessary to perform the complicated purification procedures starting from the raw minerals.

therefore, the furnaces here were mostly quite small and boasted very strong shaping abilities. they were mainly used to fashion the small components that were no larger than fists.

the laboratories outside were for the use of common refiners. almost a hundred furnaces had been established next to each other, presenting a rather splendid scene.

the laboratories inside were for the specialists of higher levels such as ye qingyun and jin tianzong. there were only nine furnaces in total, but they were all precise in structure, powerful in performance, and produced by renowned manufacturers. the hues on their shells that looked like rainbows alone were indicative enough of their extraordinariness.

naturally, it was highly tricky to control the excellent furnaces and to harness the flames that could melt superalloys by changing the temperature from minus a hundred degrees to thousands of degrees.

one moment of carelessness, and the violent spiritual energy inside the furnace might burst backward and burn the internal organs of the refiner into ashes. it was certainly not a joke.

therefore, when the elite refiners of the deep sea fleet, including ye qingyun, saw that li yao really sat down at the center of the nine furnaces, held jade chips, and read the user manuals and operation instructions of the furnaces wholeheartedly, they were so stunned that they did not come back to themselves until a long time later.

is this guy… really a refiner?

everybody had the same confusion.

the nine ultimate furnaces were all presented by the most famous magical equipment manufacturers in the imperium. the most classic operation interfaces were adopted, and their operations were the fundamentals and the common sense that must be learned in any refining academies in the imperium!

although the nine ultimate furnaces had a lot of sophisticated, advanced functions compared to the common furnaces, why did the guy spend so much time studying the simplest launch menu? it almost seemed that he had not touched furnaces of such a model before!

when they thought of the guy’s curiosity and eagerness when he just entered the maintenance workshop, like a bumpkin who had just gone into the city, everybody couldn’t help but feel greatly suspicious of his expertise.

even jin tianzong and li linghai were also observing li yao’s actions through the surveillance camera at a corner of the chamber.

“if i may ask, your grace…”

jin tianzong was silent for a moment before he continued, “where exactly did you find this ‘master vulture li yao’?”

li linghai smiled. unpredictable light beamed out of her almost transparent eyes, but she did not give an answer.

ten minutes later, li yao finally finished browsing through the user manuals of the nine furnaces and gained a deep understanding of the architecture of the nine furnaces.

he rose up abruptly, with excitement shooting out of his eyes.

“fellow cultivator li—”

ye qingyun asked patiently, “have you picked your ‘favorite’ furnace?”

he stressed “favorite” in obvious mockery.

“not yet. just wait a moment.”

li yao walked to the furnace closest to him. opening his arms and embracing the furnace, he stuck his face and ear to it and groped on the surface of the furnace with both hands while he said, “i need to further communicate with the furnace and pick a furnace that gets along with me.”

“one that gets along with you?”

behind ye qingyun, some of the refiners already couldn’t hold back their laughter.

ye qingyun was having a hard time withholding his own laughter too. his face blushing, he shook his head quickly, as if he was regretting the waste of his time.

jin tianzong, who was still staying next to the colossus, however, was shocked. solemnly, he played back the picture where li yao rubbed the furnace. enlarging and slowing down the picture, he finally managed to see that li yao’s fingers were shivering at an amazingly high speed in two clusters of grey mists although they seemed to be rubbing the furnace slowly.

the high-speed shivers of the fingers even affected the surface of the furnace, causing the illusion that it had turned from solid into liquid, with ripples spreading out!

“this… this is…”

jin tianzong was greatly surprised. “what kind of technique is this?”

while observing li yao’s movement, li linghai glimpsed at jin tianzong’s face and asked with great interest, “even you have never seen such a technique before, master jin?”

“it looks like the ‘snap and listen’ skill in the refining arts, which can sense the structure, gaps, and inner stress of a piece of magical equipment by the quakes of fingers. it does not belong to any single school. many schools have similar skills. it is not very surprising.”

jin tianzong said, “however, normal ‘snap and listen’ is only suitable for the small and delicate magical equipment because it is hard to penetrate the force into the thick and solid magical equipment and to receive the feedback of the waves.

“this ‘vulture li yao’, however, is playing the move on such a piece of huge and clumsy magical equipment like a furnace. is he trying to sink the subtle force through the solid shell of a furnace?

“is he simply being pretentious, or is he—”

how pretentious!

in the chamber, many refiners had already lost their patience and were secretly complaining in their hearts. ye qingyun was also frowning gravely. he asked, “fellow cultivator li, have you picked one?”

li yao heard none of it. the nine furnaces here represented the best technologies in refining in the imperium of true human beings. now that he had the opportunity, he would certainly study them well. why would he bother the humming flies nearby?

after embracing the nine furnaces one by one, li yao finally pointed at the seventh furnace with a smile. “yes. i want this one!”

“oh?”

ye qingyun discovered that the furnace that li yao chose happened to be the one that he had been using. he couldn’t help but sneer, “fellow cultivator li, you have picked this one after such a long time of selection. is there anything special about it?”

“actually, the fact that the nine furnaces are placed in this advanced chamber suggests that they all have excellent performance. any random one of them would have sufficed if they were just manufactured. after all, i am just crafting some components for temporary uses. there is no need to be picky, right?”

li yao explained unhurriedly, “however, it is obvious that the nine furnaces have been used for a long time. if not enough attention is paid during refining, there are bound to be a lot of flaws, just like the magical equipment that is not well-maintained will be rusty.”

everybody whispered to each other after hearing what he said. the refiners behind ye qingyun demanded angrily, “are you implying that we did not pay enough attention during refining and caused ‘flaws’ to the furnaces?”

“well, it is perhaps not because of the lack of attention. some habitual movements will inevitably lead to corrosions.”

li yao opened his hands and said, “furnaces are not treasures. they are bound to be corroded after they are used.”

“fellow cultivator li!”

ye qingyun raised his voice as he asked, “would you like to enlighten us by pointing out the ‘flaws’ for us?”

“take this one for example.”

li yao did not beat around the bush, and he did not even have any emotional fluctuations, because he was a teacher who was teaching a bunch of kindergartners. no matter how noisy and fussy the kindergartens were, there was no need to be angry with them, and all that needed to be done was to point out their shortages and deficiencies.

“the fellow cultivator who often uses this furnace prefers to join acids into reactions when he etches chips and special curved-surface components. however, he does not pay enough attention to cleaning after his work. or to be more exact, he overlooks the cleaning of the gas ports and other details, which leads to the tiny traces of corrosion inside the gas ports.

“for this particular fellow cultivator, the corrosion is naturally still tolerable. it is some sort of ‘regular corrosion’. when the time comes, he only needs to change new gas ports.

“but for me, the furnace is… slightly uncomfortable.

“and this one. well, this furnace is very impressive. the fellow cultivator who often controls this furnace must boast very impressive heritages of the spiritual energy of the fire class. it is perhaps a family skill or something, which makes him particularly good at high-temperature purifications.

“after all, just because you are good at dealing with high temperatures does not mean you have to keep the temperature at the highest point all the time. the consequence of the inability to control the temperature is that the components produced are often too ‘heated’ with an exceptionally high faulty rate, right? also, this furnace is filled with the air of smoke too, and it feels like an impatient man. how can the really qualified components be produced in it?”