Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Before the first spark died out, the metal skull of the battle puppet had already been waved by Li Yao like a hammer and thrown into the chest of the second battle puppet, which immediately collapsed.

The second battle puppet was still active. It took two steps back and intended to run off, but Li Yao’s giant hands had grabbed its head in advance. As Li Yao exerted his strength suddenly, the upper half body of the puppet was pushed back into the wall nearby. After a boom, the scorching flames of spiritual energy blowing out of Li Yao’s palm demolished the head of the metal puppet.

At this time, the third battle puppet fell down.

The battle puppet was barraged by the Nepenthe believers a moment ago, but it had not entirely lost its combat ability yet.

Li Yao grabbed the pieces of its companions and tossed them over casually. In earsplitting sounds, they pierced through the computation chips in its head and the reactor in its chest, making it dim and collapse in weird wounds.

In only one second, three battle puppets were all wasted!

The Nepenthe believers had repressed their feelings and desires but had not entirely lost their thinking abilities. They were all astounded by Li Yao’s unbelievable attack.

“Change of plan. Pull the ‘super brainwave magnifier’ back. I’m going to modify it!” Li Yao shouted at the Nepenthe believers.

The Nepenthe believers looked at each other in bewilderment. Noticing the crystal suit on Li Yao’s body that far exceeded their imagination and the battlefield up ahead that was even more dangerous, they were hesitating whether or not to follow Li Yao’s order when weird waves suddenly spread over in midair and flowed into their brains like brooks.

It was Long Yangjun who was directly giving them an order through the reverberation of brainwaves.

The “Serenity Seraph” had a high prestige. Although she was never involved in specific affairs, the battle was too chaotic right now, and Grand Guardian Xu Zhicheng was unreachable on the battlefield. Naturally, they needed to follow the Serenity Seraph’s order.

Therefore, the giant excavator returned to the exact forsaken cave where it came from. Li Yao’s spiritual energy spread out quickly like tides, scanning every tool and every piece of maintenance magical equipment, as well as the backup materials piled in the corner.

Li Yao had seen several pieces of “brainwave enhancing magical equipment” of the same type in the Star Glory Federation. He had once discussed the maintenance and modification plans with “Solar Eclipse” Jiang Shaoyang.

While this particular brainwave magnifier was slightly different from the few devices that he had met before, the general structure and the basic mechanism were the same.

He drafted the most convenient modification plan in only five minutes.

“Brother Yao!”

All the Nepenthe believers were asked to defend the cave on the outside, but Li Jialing barged in and said, “Sister Long said that you needed my help?”

“Exactly. I’m going to modify this ‘super brainwave magnifier’. You can give me a hand.”

Li Yao retrieved the materials from his Cosmos Rings and placed them on the ground before he said casually, “It’s not a complicated job. All we need to do is to dismantle the messy enhancing coils that the Nepenthe believers added and then install a few anti-gravity units and defense units so that it may hover around my head slowly. Due to the limitation of time, it doesn’t matter how it looks as long as it works. In the next second, you will do exactly as I say, and don’t have any concerns. Do you understand?”

“Okay!”

Li Jialing nodded his head and ran to Li Yao’s side, but he seemed rather hesitant.

Li Yao glanced at Li Jialing and asked, “Anything else you want to say?”

“N-Nothing.”

Li Jialing hesitated for a moment, but he still couldn’t help but say, “Sister Long said that you were sick again and that it was hopeless and could not be saved this time.

“She also said that you tried to trick her for a long time outside, only to no avail, and you would probably try to trick me by asking me to help you! She asked me to widen my eyes and raise my wariness and not to be deceived by you and commit the follies together with you no matter how convincing and blood-boiling you sound!”

Li Yao blushed and coughed. Not stopping what he was doing, he simply said, “Don’t listen to her nonsense. She is not a good guy at all!”

“If Sister Long is not a good guy, why are you hanging around with her, Brother Yao?”

Staring at Li Yao for a long time, Li Jialing said with a worried tone, “Brother Yao, is what Sister Long said true? Are you really going to resist the entire Black Iron Group with such a body? Do you have any idea how badly wounded you are? You just survived Blackstar the Great’s hands ten days ago, alright? Few people can achieve that in the entire universe, and they have to pay a horrible price even if they do!”

“Wrong.”

Li Yao said casually, “It was Blackstar the Great who survived my hands. Do not be mistaken about that.”

Li Jialing grew rather anxious. “Is that going to help the situation at all? The key is that your body is really broken and riddled with holes, and your soul is a hundred times more wounded than your body! You cannot take another high-intensity battle. Besides, you will be faced with Blackstar the Great’s infinite hunting after the battle?

“I’m really confused. What are you doing this for?”

On one of his knees, Li Yao focused his attention on polishing and building the chips and components that he was going to use next. After a long silence, he said, “Have you ever heard a theory that says ‘with great power comes great responsibility’?”

“Huh?”

Li Jialing was dumbfounded, finding it impossible to believe his ears. “Brother Yao, seriously? Even if you can’t stop yourself from tricking me, you should know better than tricking me with such old-fashioned and boring words. What do you mean by ‘with great power comes great responsibility’? It is absolutely bulls*it. Is it a crime to be strong? Does it mean that you owe it to somebody else and have to sacrifice yourself for them? Why? I’m strong because I’ve trained hard and because of the prices I’ve paid. I deserve it! I like a free and enjoyable lifestyle. Is it not enough that I am not bullying other people or hurting any innocent? Is anyone justified to force me to shoulder the responsibility that does not belong to me?”

Li Yao smiled. “‘With great power comes great responsibility’ shouldn’t be understood in such a way. It is just a malicious distortion.

“Let me give you the simplest example. You are an ordinary person, with extremely limited strength and senses, and you are playing with the crystal processor in your home after a dinner. You have no idea that an evil crime is taking place three blocks away. For example… a girl less than ten years old is tormented by a few mean gangsters.

“You have no idea that it is happening at all, so you are not responsible for it at all, right?”

Slightly stunned, Li Jialing nodded his head.

“But what if you are a trainer in the Refinement Stage?”

Li Yao said, “Your eyes are keen enough for you to hear the feeble cries and chuckles. Will you open the window and take a look, or even go to search for the source of the screams and the laughter? If you don’t do anything, will you feel that you are sort of guilty when you see the girl’s broken body on the news the next day?”

Li Jialing was silent.

“If you are as strong as someone in the Building Foundation Stage—”

Li Yao said, “Then, you may be able to hear the screams and the obscenities clearly when you are sitting in your home, which makes you immediately understand what is going on three blocks away. Every scream and every laughter would be stabbing your head like iron needles. Are you sure that you can still play with your crystal processor in your home as if nothing were going on?

“Furthermore, if you are an expert in the Core Formation Stage, you can hear, see, and sense even more things besides the scream and the laughter, including the girl’s desperation, her running tears, and the stink that is leaking from the gangsters. Besides, you know clearly that you can stop the tragedy from happening by just moving your little finger and making the gangsters get the punishment they deserve. Do you think that you are responsible for that?

“One step further, you are an expert in the Nascent Soul Stage or the Divinity Transformation Stage. Then, your senses can easily spread to ten blocks away. You can perceive the pains and desperation of so many people, you can stop countless crimes that shouldn’t have happened, and you can help so many people escape from the swirl of fate. But of course, you can also idle by and watch those people to be insulted, damaged, and exploited, eventually stepping into their doom. Their every scream when they are hurt and destroyed will be etched into the deepest part of your brain. It can’t be helped. Your senses are too sharp for you to avoid those sounds!”

Li Jialing said in a shivering voice, “I can suppress my senses and stop the information from getting in!”

“Yes, you can, but you will only be deceiving yourself because you know clearly that countless evils are happening around you right now, and an innocent little girl is being bullied, and you could’ve stopped everything.”

Li Yao said, “Do you understand it now? For ordinary people, there is a middle ground between ‘kind’ and ‘evil’. Ordinary people can always live on freely without shouldering any responsibility as long as they manage themselves well.

“However, for the experts, especially for the ultimate experts standing on the summit, there is no middle ground at all. You will either save the little girl, punish the mean gangsters, and shoulder the damn responsibility henceforth, fighting for everyone being bullied in your perception to seek the peace of your conscience; or stand on the gangsters’ side, blowing whistles with your hands in your pocket while watching themtorture the little girl into bloody pieces. Such things happen countless times around you all the time, and you know it clearly.

“Do you get it now? Every ordinary person in the Great Iron Plants is a little girl being tortured by the mean gangsters. I can hear their cries and screams every second, I can smell their tears and blood. Such sounds and smells forever haunt me, and I know I can do something for them! I really can’t be untouched. I really can’t stop my eyes from seeing, my ears from hearing, and my blood from boiling, so that I can just walk away. I can’t do it!

“This is why with great power comes great responsibility. Nobody will force you to shoulder such a responsibility. I certainly won’t. It’s only your own ’empathy’ that will force you. Touch your chest and listen to your heart carefully. Is there the slightest ’empathy’ in the deepest part of your heart?”