Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Huala!

While everybody was staring at him in astonishment, the crystal suit on Li Yao suddenly quaked at a high frequency and broke apart.

“Ah!”

Somebody exclaimed in shock, thinking that the crystal suit that had been assembled roughly with too complicated a structure finally could not withstand the overwhelming blast of spiritual energy from Li Yao and completely collapsed.

However, after all the units and components dispersed, they were still attracted by the spiritual energy and electric arcs released by Li Yao. Hovering slowly and glittering five meters around him, they looked like dazzling stars.

In such a way, Li Yao was able to get a closer look at the tiny problems when the components were assembled and connected from inside to outside.

Li Yao, who was under the cover of the crystal suit, was beyond everyone’s expectation. He did not turn into a muscular man more than three meters tall but was surrounded by deep red spiritual energy and bluish electric arcs, as if he had released the energy into a second layer of muscles and veins. It was an unusual view when one’s control over the spiritual energy reached the highest extent!

“Is… Is he a refiner or an ace Exo?”

A lot of refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet, just like Ye Qingyun, swallowed hard.

They were no stranger to what Li Yao was doing right now. He was a “test pilot”!

For normal refiners, if they meant to test a brand-new crystal suit, they had to invite the experienced Exos as special test pilots.

The production of crystal suits and the use of crystal suits were two vastly different fields after all. Nobody had the courage to be a test pilot without dozens of years of experience in fighting.

Out of everyone’s expectation, Li Yao took care of all the work singlehandedly, which both astounded them and raised their envy. If they could test their crystal suits themselves, they would be able to sense the problems and flaws in the crystal suits from the perspective of the user, and their adjustments and modifications would definitely be more accurate and subtle.

Shua!

In their whispers of admiration, the thousands of components around Li Yao were attracted to him again and assembled into a complete crystal suit. After brief adjustments, it split apart and blossomed, before it was constricted again. Repeating the process for five times, Li Yao finally finished the preliminary adjustment. He restored the crystal suit to the original form and crawled out of it.

“Have you noticed the mysteries of this crystal suit?”

Li Yao said to Li Jialing with a smile, “This is for you. But it has to be delivered to a furnace for repetitive polishing and whetting before it is completely done.”

“It is for me?”

Li Jialing had long been fascinated by the crystal suit and was almost drooling. His eyes were shining so brilliantly that they were almost burning holes on the surface of the crystal suit. He mumbled, “What a beautiful transformative crystal suit!”

“Exactly. I have named such a transformative crystal suit ‘Demonic Crab’!”

Li Yao was quite satisfied with the crystal suit that he had created through crazy modifications too.

Generally speaking, he agreed with the mainstream ideas in the circle of refiners and did not appreciate the design of “transformative crystal suits”.

In order to achieve the purpose of changing the shape of the crystal suit to adapt to the body size of the berserkers, a lot of connection units and redundant components had to be added into the crystal suit, which would significantly increase the difficulty of maintenance and lower the battlefield survival abilities. The gains certainly could not outweigh the losses.

Those people might as well carry a large crystal suit and a small one for their uses!

When Li Yao just embarked on the path of a refiner, he had been focused on the ideas of “grassroots” and attached more importance to the sturdiness, simple maintenance, and universality of the magical equipment than to the pure increase of theoretical performance. Naturally, he despised the transformative crystal suits.

However, as he advanced into the Divinity Transformation Stage, he had new understandings about the production of the magical equipment.

There were no “grassroots” magical equipment or “elites” magical equipment in the world. There was even no difference between “low-level magical equipment” and “advanced magical equipment”. There was only the magical equipment that was “suitable” and the magical equipment that was not.

Any magical equipment had its advantages and shortcomings. The most critical thing was to carry out the maximal advantages of a piece of magical equipment and try to cover the shortcomings as much as possible according to the environment and the features of the user.

Transformative crystal suits indeed entailed a lot of serious deficiencies, but—

Firstly, the user of the crystal suit was Li Jialing, who had almost exactly the same methodology of training as Wuying Lan. They were both monsters who received abundant surgical procedures and who could, and needed to, expand their bodies crazily in a battle to change into terrifying beings that felt like primeval beasts.

Li Yao engaged in a battle with Wuying Lan before. To this moment, he still remembered the oppressive killing intent.

According to Li Lingfeng, Li Jialing was an “experimental subject” that was even more perfect than Wuying Lan.

Then, he would be the most standard berserker, and it was a rigid demand to “transform” in a battle for him.

Secondly, and more importantly, Li Jialing was not fighting alone right now but had the technical support of such a master of refining as Li Yao. The repair and maintenance were not going to be a problem at all.

Then, a transformative crystal suit would be the most “suitable” choice right now.

Right now, Li Yao already couldn’t see the differences between the grassroots and the elites, the ancient refining arts and the modern ones, the Imperium’s technologies and the federation’s, etc. Magical equipment was magical equipment after all. It was a tool that mankind had invented to address a certain specific problem. There was nothing mysterious and unchangeable about them.

He was approaching the essence of magical equipment.

Having picked a crystal suit for Li Jialing, Li Yao still needed to choose one for himself.

After all, he could not go on a killing spree in the Mystic Skeleton Blood Wing all the time. He did not intend to keep it a secret from the “rebels” of the Deep Sea Fleet, and it was impossible for him to keep it a secret too. However, it would seem too flagrant to walk on the street in the capital in the Mystic Skeleton Blood Wing.

Li Yao had long selected his target in the many crystal suits that were in a myriad of appearances but equally awesome and intimidating.

The crystal suit that he focused his eyes on was round and somewhat clumsy. There was also a weird protrusion on the back, which looked like a giant turtle shell.

Under the contrast of the many glamorous, high-level crystal suits, this particular crystal suit looked rather plain, if not overshadowed.

But when the refiners of the Deep Sea Fleet saw that Li Yao laid his eyes on the crystal suit, they were all whispering to each other.

“This crystal suit is very impressive!”

His eyes glowing, Li Yao said to Ye Qingyun with ecstasy, having discovered a real treasure. “The crystal suits here are all crafted by masters. Any of them will suffice. However, this crystal suit is natural and flawless from design to production. The designs of the crystal reactor and the power rune arrays on the crystal suit are particularly eye-catching. I have never seen such a weird asymmetrical nine-star distribution before. It seems random and unreasonable at first look, but if you think about it more carefully, such a disordered distribution can carry out the performance of the crystal suit in small-scale turning to the best.

“The heavy crystal suit that seems clumsy and heavy, after applying the power system of the asymmetrical nine-star distribution, will have an agility even higher than the scouting crystal suits on the battlefield. It will be like a smoke and a ghost. The enemy will be greatly surprised.

“The master who designed this crystal suit must be a top-tier expert in the power system!

“However…

“Although the designs are very advanced and the overall production has no problem at all, bordering on perfection, something seems to be missing during the final polishing and assembly. An error of around 0.3 threads can be found in a lot of the joints and gaps on the plate armor.

“Such errors are totally acceptable for a regular crystal suit.

“However, on such an impeccable crystal suit, the errors are like the slight flaws on a piece of white jade. It is quite a pity.

“It appears that this refiner is good at theories but not adept at practical operations. His hands are not steady enough to completely realize the perfect designs in his head.

“But that’s alright. After my adjustment, another ten percent of the potentials of the crystal suit should be able to be exploited!”

After Li Yao finished, he heard nothing but silence in the warehouse of crystal suits.

Including Ye Qingyun, everybody looked at him weirdly, with hesitation written all over their faces.

Li Yao was slightly dazed. Then he realized that they were not looking at him but behind his shoulders, with eyes that were filled with reverence and pity.

He turned around, only to discover an old man with fluffy hair and an unusual appearance. His body seemed to have been tied up by a dark golden fishing net, and that was the only reason why he could manage to stand or move.

Li Yao’s eyes fell on the old man’s hands.

The old man’s hands that were as smooth as jade at the beginning were now also full of devastating scars. There were so many red marks that his every finger had been cut into a dozen blocks. They were only jumbled together with a dense layer of golden threads under the support of very tiny metal bones. He was only able to move his fingers when the metal gears and bearings rolled.

Despite the support of the golden threads and the mechanical external skeleton, the old man’s hands were still shivering and even briefly cramping now and then.

Such a pair of hands was evidently not suitable for refining.

Thinking quickly, Li Yao immediately guessed everything from the complicated look on everyone’s face and the unique design of the power system on the crystal suit.

“Master Jin.”

Li Yao bowed to Master Jin Tianzong deeply. “Forgive me. Is this your work?”

“Fellow Cultivator Li, your expertise is so remarkable. I don’t deserve to be called a ‘master’ by you at all. Let’s just call each other fellow Cultivators.”

Jin Tianzong, the master of refiner and specialist of power systems whose hands had been disabled, turned out to be a person who was completely devoted to the world of magical equipment. Not bothered by Li Yao’s comments on his work a moment ago at all, he stepped forward and asked, with a pair of eyes as sharp as blades, “How did you solve the problem of the adjustment of the power output in the crystal reactor on your ‘three-phase transformative crystal suit’ when it is changed to different phases? If you don’t solve the problem, even if the crystal suit is transformed into a super large one, the crystal reactor will be exactly the same as before. Wouldn’t that be like a small horse pulling a huge cart? Is there any point in it at all?”