Chapter 10: Possessed by a Ghost
Translator: Strivon / Ash Editor: Geoffrey / Lancent
The high speed crystal train rushed across. With a “Pwa”, like the shattering of an egg, the old man was rammed head on! He disintegrated in a millisecond! Limbs and bones snapped and disintegrated under the bombardment of a torrential surge of essence energy. He was annihilated all the way down to the cellular level, vanishing from the face of the planet!
All Li Yao saw was a bright flash of red and the mysterious old man disappeared completely!
He let out a somewhat helpless sigh from within his heart.
Having grown up in the Artifact Graveyard, which had a terrifying environment filled with danger, encountering dead bodies was nothing out of the ordinary for him. Furthermore, he personally experienced countless deaths in his uncanny dreams, and so when it came to the issue of death, Li Yao was not the ordinary kind of person who would react with terror or unwell feelings.
Nevertheless, in the end, this was still a living being and having this life fade away in front of him in this miserable manner left his heart feeling somewhat strange.
“This old man was probably a cultivator who fell into madness, going insane. This is the only reason why someone would do something this crazy,” Li Yao thought to himself inwardly.
The crystal train was not affected at all by this minor mishap and maintained its high speed, moving along. It went away, never to return, disappearing quickly into the horizon.
Li Yao knew what would happen. There would be security guards on the train who would surely notify the local police department of this matter. There was also the military; they would rush here with large numbers of their military police.
He was a scavenger who collected scraps in the Artifact Graveyard. It can be said that his actions bordered on the edge of the law. As always, Li Yao would abstain from dealing with the military police in order not to stir up any trouble. He straightened his clothes, sped up his footsteps, and passed through the culvert.
Yet, he was unaware that in a separate plane that was invisible to him, a transparent crystal human form, looking like an exact carbon copy of the mysterious old man, appeared in the exact same place where the mysterious old man was standing on the bridge’s rail line. The old man looked somewhat puzzled as he sized up his surroundings. Finally, the old man eyes flashed, locking into a state of irradiating anger.
The transparent crystal figure suddenly shattered into a myriad of traceless and incorporeal fragments, refracting and shining bright in the moonlight like thousands upon thousands of gorgeous butterflies using their wings to soar. Without any warning, they silently entered inside Li Yao’s body!
“It’s cold!”
Li Yao felt a bone-chilling ghastly wind. He seemed to be hearing something murmur an absolutely ancient and mysterious language quietly near his ear. It was an unspeakable terror; a unmentionable horror. He involuntarily gave a shiverish shake.
Bizarre — this is really too bizarre. Some of his hair stood on its end, and his blood ran cold. He straightened his school uniform and simply started running.
According to logic, when a person begins to run, their four limbs would move and their body would generate heat. But no matter how much Li Yao ran, no matter how much he increased his sprint to the extreme tornado-like limit, to the point of puking, the bone-chilling coldness in his soul followed without end like a shadow following the body. It was as if there were maggots in the bones of his feet, swallowing him inch by inch.
He staggered home and threw himself through the house door. By that time, his entire self had already frozen into an ice cube. But if one were to look at his exterior appearance, they would actually find his face flushed red, his brows beaded with sweat, and his entire body surrounded by a white mist of steam vapor rising in the air. It was a unspeakable strangeness!
“Small Black, Small Black, I think I got sick. Quickly help me to my bed and then find the anti-fever medicinal artifact from the medicine box!” Li Yao spoke with a slurred speech. Bursts of darkness appeared in his vision. The top and the bottom of his eyelids were battling endlessly. He was unable to wait for the Blackwing sword to fly over. His legs had weakened, and he had already fallen on the floor. He gave a wheeze and was completely passed out.
It was like he had sunk in a deep swamp. His five senses were stripped to practically nothing. He was unceasingly in an absolute darkness. **. **. It was never-ending.
Eventually, right before he was about to go mad, right before he was going to pray to the hundreds of millions of gods in this infinite world for them to simply put an end to it all, his whole body loosened and the darkness retreated like the receding tides. He breathed fresh air once again — and the air he breathed was a hundred fold fresher than any he had ever breathed!
“What kind of place is this?” Li Yao observed his surroundings, feeling somewhat bewildered.
He knew subconsciously that he had fallen into a dangerous and fearsome “nightmare.” However, this nightmare was different than when he went over to the ”uncanny dream.” This dream world was extremely clear, containing strong elements from an ancient era.
He was standing above an incomparably vast military ground. In all directions were countless numbers of gigantic weapons and bronze statue artifacts towering tall, reaching through the clouds. They encompassed this enormous field of over a hundred acres. And this ground surprisingly lay on the peak of a floating mountain in the sky.
Below at the edge was an unforgettable sight, the rolling of large waves in a giant black sea!
The masculine odor of blood and stinky sweat of smoky figures assailed and bombarded Li Yao’s nostrils, nearly killing him from the stench. In his surrounding were several thousands of muscular humanoids with well developed limbs, bright bursting muscles, and fierce faces. Each of these buff humanoids carried a hammer that looked to weigh over a thousand pounds upon their shoulders. They spared no energy, engaging in drills.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Several thousand-pound hammers smashed simultaneously against the floor, causing the base of the entire floating mountain to tremble and shake.
At this moment, Li Yao was in a state of shock. He discovered that he had unexpectedly become one of these nine-feet tall burly giants. Even his looks had changed entirely. He touched his chin with his hand and felt beard stubble that was like iron needles!
He was grasping in his hand the same type of iron hammer, the size of a tree. Its coiled-rope grip had rubbed, breaking into his palm and soaking in his blood.
At the front of this military ground was a giant that was twice as large as all the other giants. It was simply not of human race, a “Titan.” It glared as it opened its large copper-bell eyes and shouted like a thunderstorm, “You 3527 useless pieces of sh*t, you have already been officially admitted under the ‘Hundred Smelting Guild’ and have become the lowest level workers of the Hundred Smelting Guild. This is the result of the cumulative efforts of your forefathers, a good fortune created from three generations of cultivation. We, the Hundred Smelting Sect, are the greatest and most powerful crafting guild within this ‘Grand Foreworld’. Our guild is strict. Even if you have the smallest and most rudimentary job in this guild, you too must put forth your life in cultivating!”
“As low-grade workers, each day, each of you must carry 3000 pounds of water, chop down 50 trees, and travel to the ‘Abyssal Sea’ below to hunt at least 10 Thornridge Sharks. This shall be your food!”
“However, the absolute most important thing is… you must cultivate in the Hundred Smelting Guild’s foundation techniques, the <>. After you all have finished listening to me, you useless shits. Everyday, you must swing down your iron hammers 10,000 times, and each swing cannot be lacking. When you are able to hammer out a deep hole within this pure-orichalcum-smelted floor, then you will be promoted to a ‘Metal-Forge Worker’ and be able to cultivate techniques of higher quality!”
“Cultivate! Cultivate! Give me your life for cultivation! Ou Yeming, what are you standing around like a retard for? Why aren’t you cultivating?”
Li Yao still hadn’t understood what was going on when he discovered that the entire group of humanoids were observing him with eyes of extreme pity. His heart immediately froze. A whirlwind filled with ferocity and malice lunged over from ahead. It was the enormous Titan coming from over a hundred meters away. In a blink of an eye, the Titan used a skill to appear right in front of him. The Titan towered above and glared ferociously at Li Yao.
“Ou Yeming, yesterday you were babbling nonsense at dinner. You were also the one saying some crazy talk about absolutely becoming the Hundred Smelting Guild’s Guildleader in the future. Whats wrong? You don’t feel that the <> is too rudimentary, that it’s not suitable for you, the ‘Future Guildleader’, to cultivate? Alright then. Today, I will let you experience for a bit how formidable the One-Hundred-and-Eight-Hands Chaos-Gale Hammer Technique can be! DIE!”
The Titan’s pair of hands spread opened. Black smoke condensed in the palms of his hands and transformed into giant hammer that was larger than Li Yao’s skull. It danced, producing a strong wind; and it struck, smashing through Li Yao’s head. Li Yao still had not process what was going on. All he felt was that he grew a pair of wings as he soared through the air, and his head felt like it had grown 10 times in size. He shrieked endlessly in his heart, “What’s wrong with this f*cker?!”