Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

"Fine, dear… 'deity', not that I'm dissatisfied with your abilities…"

Taking a deep breath, Lei Chenghu rubbed his nose tiredly and said, "But we're really in the middle of a crisis. Other than making other people comfortable and living a longer life, do you have any techniques that are more… direct?"

"Yes."

Li Yao thought carefully for a moment and said, "Now, I'm ten times more sensitive to vitality fields and brainwaves than I was in the past. I can easily see through someone else's vitality field and even interfere with their brainwaves by invading their cerebral nerves.

"It's like how a great expert of crystal processors can hack someone else's crystal processor, change the data in it, transmit information, or paralyze it with a virus.

"Of course, the human brain is a hundred times more complicated than crystal processors. The experts whose souls are powerful and determined have dozens of firewalls around their brains, and it's impossible for me to get in their heads.

"However, it's possible for me to influence the general experts and the ordinary people. The simplest way is to invade their optical and auditory nerves so that they will see and hear things that do not exist.."

Lei Chenghu was still frowning. "Like a group of dancing butterflies? How can that help us?"

"More than butterflies!"

Li Yao blinked his eyes and looked at Lei Chenghu. Suddenly, glittering gold threads that were invisible to ordinary people spread out of Li Yao's head and stretched out to Lei Chenghu, tying up his head.

Lei Chenghu's eyes turned weird, and he suddenly jumped as if a scorpion had just bitten him.

"What are you doing?" He rumbled in fury.

Few people had ever seen Lei Chenghu so anxious when he usually kept calm in the greatest emergencies. They were all shocked.

"Hiss!"

Lei Chenghu was an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage anyway, and his soul was one of the strongest ones in the Imperium. In his fury, his flames of spiritual energy burst out and banished Li Yao's brainwaves, forcing Li Yao to cry and hold his left eye.

When he opened his hand, his left eye was as red as blood as if someone had just punched it.

Lei Chenghu, on the other hand, was pale, as if he had been frightened.

"Did you invade Lei Chenghu's optical nerves?"

Long Yangjun realized what had happened. "What illusions did you project to his retina to make him so frightened? It can't be butterflies, can it?"

"Not butterflies or caterpillars, nor scorpions or centipedes."

Li Yao rubbed his red and swollen eye and smiled as he added, "It's just a countdown."

"A countdown before a man's eyes that appears out of nowhere and cannot be rid of?"

Long Yangjun mumbled, "It does sound scary!"

"But I'm still too weak. I only succeeded because I attacked General Lei Chenghu when he was unprepared and when he was too tired from work."

Li Yao opened his hands and said, "The moment General Lei Chenghu realized it and raised his wariness, my invasion collapsed, and even my own soul was hurt."

"But few people in the universe are as strong as General Lei Chenghu."

Long Yangjun said, deep in thought, "The secondary experts and the ordinary people will barely be able to resist your invasion.

"Imagine that an ordinary person suddenly sees a glittering countdown that follows him wherever he goes. He can even see it in the darkness when he closes his eyes and sleeps.

"In the meantime, he hears your nasty voice all the time. Wow. I think that this ordinary person will only end in two ways. He will either go crazy or worship you as a god."

"I think so too."

Li Yao smiled bitterly. "It's not until today that I've finally realized what the deities in the ancient times are about. When they reached a certain level where they could influence other people with their vitality fields, it was very easy for them to find their believers and create a nonexistent heaven!"

Silently, everybody was deep in thought.

As the smartest people in the Imperium of True Human Beings, they certainly knew that combat ability was not all that mattered in a battle and that this massively-manipulative technique was critical.

"Come to think of it, it's possible that Wuying Qi had influenced everyone without them realizing it like Li Yao did before he became Blackstar the Great that dominated the universe!"

Looking at Lei Chenghu, Li Linghai said, deep in thought, "General Lei Chenghu, we used to worship Blackstar the Great, but was it a genuine feeling from our hearts, or were we deceived by Wuying Qi's vitality field without us realizing it?"

Briefly stunned, Lei Chenghu became even more gloomy.

"That's right. This technique would be the most marvelous weapon for an ambitious schemer."

Li Yao paused for a moment and said unconcernedly, "But for me, it's of little use. I've never planned to become a supreme god, which would be too tiresome a job. I only want to be free and happy, and I want everybody in the world to be the same.

"On the other hand, the connection between cerebral nerves is bidirectional. When my virtual cerebral nerves invade someone else's brain, our brains will be connected. The things they see, hear, and think will be transmitted to me. I can even communicate with him through telepathy.

"It means that if I can enter someone's head, I can see what he sees and hear what he hears even if he's thousands of kilometers away. I can even talk to him remotely without any communication magic equipment.

"Of course, it's just a theoretical possibility. After all, I've only just awakened the ability, and I need more tests to figure out the success rate of 'vision sharing' and 'mind communication'."

"What a person sees and hears thousands of kilometers away can be known by Brother Yao simultaneously?"

Li Jialing was shocked. "It's almost like the ancient tales where the experts can see and hear things far away."

"That's right. I estimate that those techniques in ancient tales are quite similar to mine."

Li Yao said, "Even if your eyes are as keen as the most advanced telescope, how can you see what's behind a high wall through the blockage?

"Ears are even less reliable. If you want to hear a sound thousands of kilometers away, there will be too many interferences and noises. How can you filter them and decode the sound that you want?

"So, you cannot see and hear things far away with your eyes and ears. Instead, you see and hear them indirectly by sharing someone else's vision and hearing.

"It's nothing marvelous. Both sounds and pictures will be turned into biophysical signals when they enter the brain, and the signals are being sent to the outside world as brainwaves every second. They're like the ripples of a lake that is never tranquil, except that the ripples are too feeble for us to detect.

"But on the other hand, as long as I can sense the ripples, I'll be able to infer the pictures that caused them. It's as simple as that."

"Really? So simple?"

Li Jialing thought for a moment and shut up.

"So, it's possible for you to see and hear everything that someone in the Covenant Alliance can?"

Lei Chenghu immediately realized the military application of this technique. "For example, you can see what the counselors and guards around those Ultimate Benevolence Masters see? No, you can simply enter the head of an Ultimate Benevolence Master and see what he sees?"

"How's it possible?"

Li Yao exclaimed, "Firstly, the five or six Ultimate Benevolence Masters of the Covenant Alliance must be experts in mental techniques, and they must be protecting their heads more meticulously than you did, General Lei. It's possible that they might launch a counterattack and absorb everything in my brain, turning me into their puppet, if I am to invade their brain recklessly!

"Secondly, we have no idea where those bloody Ultimate Benevolence Masters are hiding at all. The universe is too vast a place for me to search. It must be noted that by extending my brainwaves, my soul will be essentially out of my body, and it's exhausting. Think about the difficulties and risks to search for several Ultimate Benevolence Masters dozens of Sectors away across the universe! Chances are that my soul will be blown apart by a space storm, leaving my empty shell at the bottom of the Gold Crystal Pyramid!"

Pondering for a moment, Lei Chenghu asked, "Then, what kind of people of the Covenant Alliance can you get in touch with?"

"The sunspots."

Li Yao said, "Now, the Thick Soil Sector is a place where a lot of people of the Covenant Alliance have gathered. There must be a lot of 'sunspots' that Wuying Qi 3.0 mentioned in there. Those people are the easiest for me to find out and approach. I'll take them as platforms while I search for the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, figure out the Covenant Alliance's plan of attack, try to decapitate the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, and even raise a storm within the Covenant Alliance!"