Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Seeing that Li Yao was about to reach the blonde woman, the muscular man, whose face had half collapsed, showed amazing vitality and managed to stand up. He even broke a branch nearby and charged at Li Yao, sweeping everything in his way.

His skin was overflowing with an inhuman metallic gloss, making him look like a lump of lumpy iron. When he punched, the air was filled with the sound of rushing wind.

Li Yao's direction and speed remained unchanged. However, he suddenly leaned forward and kicked the iron fists of the bald, muscular man with his right hand on the ground. After a series of hurried and dull noises, dazzling sparks were bursting out between their fists and feet.

"Asshole!"

The bald muscular man finally roared in fury.

Li Yao, on the other hand, did not seem to be in the middle of an intense battle. Instead, he seemed to have just finished a two-hour hot bath and was in the middle of a Thai massage. As the bald muscular man bombarded him with his iron fists, every acupoint on his body was opened.

BAM!

Another dull sound echoed. Li Yao withdrew half of his strength and did not burst out until he kicked the bald man. Not only did he kick the bald man three to five meters away, he also flew close to the ground toward the blonde woman like a bat.

Blocked by the bald man and the crow girl, the gold-haired woman was drawing on the ground. The complicated rune array was almost completed, too.

She took off her wide-brimmed sun hat. Her coat was flapping in the air, too, revealing the tattoos that extended from her arms to her neck and from her neck to her eyebrows. They were countless zigzagging, tadpole-like words. As far as Li Yao knew, they did not belong to any ancient language family on Earth. Instead, they seemed to be variations of a certain cuneiform script.

Her hair and eyes were originally as dazzling as the sun, but at this moment, they had completely faded away, becoming as bleak as an albino's. A series of strange syllables came from the depths of her throat. It was somewhat similar to Zhao Kai's "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

As the spells were flying, the wedge-shaped tattoos on her body were glittering together with the runes on the ground.

Not good!

Sensing the great threat, Li Yao stomped on the ground and accelerated again, turning into a streak of brightness.

But miserable croaks were echoing in the sky. A few stinky objects darted at him and exploded right in front of him.

It was a crow.

Not all the crows and sparrows were fakes. In the thousands of illusions, more than ten real crows and sparrows crashed into Li Yao under the control of the crow girl.

Li Yao's maximum speed was as high as that of a jet airliner. Therefore, the consequences of the crows and sparrows hitting him were as miserable as those of birds hitting an airliner.

Although Li Yao's body had been strengthened, he was still slowed down by half a second when the crow hit the sparrow.

In the half second, countless weeds and vines grew out of the ground and tied up his ankles like iron wires, digging into his skin and flesh. The more he struggled, the tighter they tied him up. Li Yao was not able to free himself for a moment. His high-speed sprinting posture was disrupted by the crows and the vines, and he fell to the ground.

By the time he blew away the feathers, freed himself from the vines, and regained his balance, the white-haired woman had already completed the entire process of casting the spell.

She seemed to have been seriously ill. All her vitality had been drained by the pattern below her feet. Her flesh and blood, which had been plump and full, withered at a visible speed, making her look like a skeleton. All that was left was a pair of bright eyes that were staring at Li Yao.

She had already closed her mouth, but the weird curse was still echoing in Li Yao's brain, sharper and louder.

The sound irritated Li Yao. His blood was boiling, as if somebody had set his internal organs on fire and rubbed his cells at a high speed. His mitochondria lost control and released all the heat.

"Damn it. I've been fooled!"

Alarm bells were ringing inside Li Yao's brain. "What kind of superpower is this? Using a certain high-frequency ripple to make my cells lose control, tampering with the command for the mitochondria to generate energy, causing the temperature of my cells to continuously rise, causing my body to spontaneously combust, burning me alive?"

"Is this a superpower or… magic?"

BOOM!

The word 'magical' had only just appeared in Li Yao's mind when his internal organs and skin started burning furiously. His entire body turned into a large, bright fireball. In the next moment, the scene and his memories became fragmented and blurred. All he could see was Zhang Daniu screaming and raising his hands as he was taken away by the three superpowered people, or rather, the 'magician'.

The mist around him gradually thinned. He found himself in a familiar neighborhood again. He could hear the sirens of fire trucks and ambulances. Then, he knew nothing.

…

Li Yao had a brand-new dream.

It was a strange dream that was completely different from the evil-looking woman who was wearing a T-rex gun and had thin arms and legs.

He was in a city. Maybe it was Jiangnan City, or maybe it was the city where he had lived in his previous life. He seemed to be running away from something in a hurry. The city was empty. There was no one except him, but the roads and the streets were changing randomly like a maze that was alive.

Not far behind him, an enormous silver ball that looked like a balloon was floating in midair and chasing after him unhurriedly.

Li Yao ran and ran. He wanted to run out of the scanning range of the silver ball, but no matter how fast he was or how tricky his route was, every time he turned around, he would see the silver ball following him.

On a closer look, he discovered that there was a silver-white thread on the back of his head that was either a blood vessel or a nerve. The thread dragged all the way to the bottom of the silver ball.

As it turned out, the silver ball was not chasing after him, but he was guiding it forward.

An indescribable sense of powerlessness surged out of Li Yao's heart. He stared blankly at the silver ball.

The shell of the silver ball was glittering like an uneven mirror. His reflection in the mirror was broken and twisted. He did not look like himself at all.

Then again, who was he exactly and what should he look like?

"Who am I?

"Am I Li Yao?

"What is the so-called 'Li Yao'? Where am I from? Where am I going? What is my destiny?

…

Li Yao shuddered. When he woke up from the cold bed, he found himself wrapped in an airtight plastic membrane. There was also a zip in front of him that pulled the plastic membrane all the way to his head.

"What is this? Why did you put me inside? It hurts. It's stuffy. It tickles!"

Li Yao pondered and tried to recall what had happened when he was in the coma. Finally, he understood. "This is a body bag, right?"

Li Yao was immediately back to himself. He felt that he was an over-baked sweet potato whose shell had been completely carbonized into a black lump. Thankfully, it was still moist and sweet inside and could still be saved.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

While he was thinking, his heart started beating again. The blood that flowed to his body seemed to contain marvelous recovery drugs that could accelerate the division of cells, the regeneration of flesh and blood, and the healing of wounds. He even felt that he had been cleansed and reborn.

Yes, it was amazing. Li Yao seemed to be able to 'see' that the mitochondria factories inside all the cells inside his body were functioning normally again and providing stable and powerful energy for the cells to regrow. The broken nerves, veins, and muscle fibers were reconnected in a way beyond the range of human beings.

His braincells seemed to have experienced a 'comprehensive upgrade' because of the burning flames. He had awakened more mysterious abilities and could even record what happened to him when he was in a coma.

It seemed that the three super experts had kidnapped Zhang Daniu after they set him on fire and turned him into a giant fireball. Maybe because they were pressed for time, the mist barrier that they had set up was dispersing and about to be discovered, or maybe because they were very confident in the 'magic' of the white-haired girl. In short, they did not attack Li Yao, who was burning furiously. Well, since he was already in such a state, there was no need to attack him at all.

Afterward, the other party disappeared, and the fog dissipated. Naturally, Li Yao was discovered by the firefighters and the masses. Although he didn't understand how the fire on the fifth floor had implicated the bystanders on the ground, he was still extinguished by the firefighters who had done their duty. He was sent to the ambulance, to the emergency room of the hospital, uh, okay, directly to the morgue.

"That's magic, right? That must be magic, right?"

Li Yao asked himself, "Anyways, there shouldn't be such a technique in the world of 40,000 Years of Cultivation. Although it takes a long time to perform and requires all kinds of complicated materials, once it is done, it can lock onto the target's body without the need to aim and start burning from the depths of the internal organs and cells. It is indeed an unpredictable and unpredictable technique.

"But how is it possible?

"Why is there something as unscientific as 'magic' in this world?

"Of course, as a 'Cultivator Hero' who has come back from the dead, I don't seem to have the qualifications to berate magic for being unscientific. However, sigh, it's just that, first, it was cultivation, then it was magic. Who the hell knows how many inconceivable powers still exist in this world, how many mysterious and unfathomable lives… What kind of world is this?"

While thinking, Li Yao tried his best to recover his body functions.

Right then, he heard light footsteps outside the morgue.

It was not a doctor but a bunch of well-trained warriors or assassins who had perfect control over their muscles and balance!