For the Fire Ant King, the next half a minute was truly the longest thirty seconds of his life. After witnessing the guard being slain by the mica threads ruthlessly, he could not help but feel strange when the fatal weapons were cutting rapidly right next to his body at a speed more than five times the speed of sound. All the while, scorching metal scraps were spluttering out.
The Fire Ant King had never thought that his life would be in the hands of a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator one day, and such a young one!
What was more terrifying was the countenance of the young Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. Although he was cursing loudly and sweating hard, there was ecstasy deep inside his eyes that were in different colors. His lips curled up beyond his control. Excitement was leaking out of his every pore. Occasionally, he was even licking the corner of his mouth softly, as if he was not dismantling the most dreadful magical equipment but enjoying the most delicious meal in the world.
As the dismantling work went deeper and deeper, his facial expressions were more and more abundant. He went from frowning to depressed, from beaming with exhilaration to bursting into fury.
The Fire Ant King was not scared of death, but being pulled back and forth over the line of death was too much!
Half a minute later, Li Yao took a long breath in relief. All the mica threads gradually slowed down.
“Did you make it?”
The Fire Ant King kept his voice normal, trying not to make himself sound too anxious.
“I didn’t,” Li Yao said admiringly. “Jiang Shaoyang is indeed one of the best masters of refining in the federation right now. He has hidden the ‘Winter Thunder Runes’ below the Triple Gold Ring Runes and thereby created a minor trap. He even increased the sensitivity of the ‘Winter Thunder Runes’ by more than ten times. The slight vibration when I was manipulating the mica threads was detected by them, and the rune array was triggered. The entire magical equipment could have been detonated in half a second!
“Thankfully, I established a new circuit for the Winter Thunder Runes temporarily and gave a false feedback that the triggering signal had already been sent in the mainframe chips. Otherwise, the magical equipment would have exploded.
“Marvelous. It’s indeed marvelous. Jiang Shaoyang’s design and micro-carving techniques are the best I’ve seen. I assume that a lot of masters of refining in the Star Glory Federation were actually ‘killed’ by the trap when they tried to crack the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle. Hahahaha!”
“…If I may remind you, Fellow Cultivator, there are only 2 minutes and 42 seconds left now!”
Li Yao nodded and scratched his chin, deep in thought. “It is quite tricky now. Jin Xinyue did not just plant one array of the ‘Winter Thunder Runes’ in the depths of the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle; he was insane enough to deploy more than twenty of those arrays. Besides, nine of them were connected to each other in a synchronic way, like twenty alarms that are hanged on the same rope. If the robe is slightly touched, the alarms will ring at the same time!
“With my maximum hand speed, I can crack three arrays of the Winter Thunder Runes simultaneously at best. Twenty of them is beyond the limits for any refiner!”
Staring at the glittering magical equipment, Li Yao seemed to be absent-minded.
The thousands of components behind him were still like giants of living sand. They were condensing, collapsing, condensing again, and collapsing again.
Time went by one second after another. Li Yao was still at a loss after an entire minute and did not do any further cracking work.
The Fire Ant King observed the bouncing number on the light beam so hard that his eyeballs were nearly crawling into it!
Li Yao finally extended his hands and placed them on the top of the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle. He closed his eyes while his spiritual energy leaked into the magical equipment like water.
The Fire Ant King held his breath, worrying that his breath might be an interference for Li Yao.
But out of his expectation, Li Yao remained in the same posture and seemed to have no intention of cracking the magical equipment at all.
Behind him, countless components were being gathered and growing stubbornly again. This time, they persisted for more than half a minute. Like towers made of sand, they were more and more complicated and precise in structure until they turned into a piece of bizarre piece of magical equipment in the end.
However, right when the Fire Ant King was hopeful again, the magical equipment collapsed abruptly after a cracking sound!
At this moment, there was only half a minute to go before the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle was detonated!
“I can’t do it.”
Li Yao finally opened his eyes, with an expression that was beyond the description of any words on face. He said, half in frustration and half in excitement, “Jiang Shaoyang’s design is impeccable. This is truly a piece of magical equipment that cannot be cracked by brute force!
“I did not know that he had improved so much after only ten years. How I hope that I can have a face-to-face competition with him again using the same materials, the same requirements, and the same magical equipment!”
The Fire Ant King did not know what to say.
Behind Li Yao, most of the components had already been tossed away. Only several hundred of the simplest ones were stilling floating in midair sparsely. They were moving close to each other and biting each other, assembling a piece of magical equipment that was simple in structure and extremely hideous in appearance, to the point that it looked like garbage.
One of the components, pulling a long crystal wire behind it, was connected to one of the slots of his mini crystal processor under the manipulation of Li Yao’s telepathic thoughts.
Hum!
The garbage shook violently, as if it would fall apart at any moment.
The Fire Ant King panted and sweated hard.
More than ten light beams were unfolded in front of Li Yao again, each of which was brimming with shining control runes.
In that moment, his hands turned into ten streaks of brightness, piercing through and ripping apart all the light beams!
Nineteen seconds, eighteen seconds, seventeen seconds…
The number on the countdown light beam was still decreasing, slowly but surely, and the Fire Ant King was almost grasped by desperation.
Li Yao’s hands were moving faster and faster. At first, there was a vague scent of something being burnt. Then, all ten streaks of brightness were mixed with redness, with sparks spluttering right around them, as if countless crimson fireflies were all dancing crazily in midair!
The Fire Ant King was greatly appalled. He knew that it was a sign that the hands were being ignited in the air because of the high-speed friction.
It was like the ten fingers of the young Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator had turned into ten meteors that had broken into the atmosphere and were burning fast because of the friction!
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Crimson waves were appearing on all the light beams. All the spiritual stripes and data were twisted and deformed.
The Fire Ant King was even more dumbfounded. He did not expect that the hands of the young Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator could be so fast that even the spiritual waves that constituted the light beams had been jammed!
Nine seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds!
Pa! Pa! Pa!
The cloak of the Nether World Watch that Li Yao wore on upper half of his body was ripped into shreds starting from the sleeves, to the shoulders, and then to the chest!
It was because the cloak could not withstand the prolonged high-speed movement anymore. The fibers were all aging and breaking apart!
Six seconds, five seconds, four seconds!
Even the combat outfit that he wore close to his body, which could be extended to dozens of meters long and boasted a high durability and defense ability, was not able to hold on any longer. As if it were being cut by invisible blades, narrow cracks appeared on the outfit!
The last three seconds!
The ten streaks of brightness were condensed again and returned into ten fingers, except that they were now translucent and orange, as if they were ten iron bars that had been heated in a furnace!
Two seconds!
Li Yao bit his lips softly and turned on a brand-new light beam.
The Fire Ant King noticed that it was the control menu of a piece of certain magical equipment.
The last second!
The Fire Ant King’s heart was suddenly beating faster than ever. He remembered a lot of things in that moment.
The radiance of God Chaos, Elder Nether Spring’s scheme, the fate of the low-level demons, his own negligence and stupidity, the uncanny young Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators who jumped out of nowhere, and the future of Void Turmoil City that he had built from scratch.
His own death did not matter, but what about the future of Void Turmoil City?
How would the Blade of Chaos fare? What was the Elder Nether Spring’s ultimate plan? What was his so-called ‘the third life form’, gods that were above human beings and demons, exactly?
The Fire Ant King was finally dazed.
He realized that the second was longer than it should have been.
He looked at the light beam again, only to discover that the number on the light beam had been stopped on ‘1’ stably. It seemed to be pulled by an invisible chain and could not jump to ‘0’ no matter how close it was!
“You’ve made it? You have successfully cracked the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle?” The Fire Ant King mumbled with mixed feelings.
He was not sure whether he was alive or dead.
Maybe, it was just an illusion created by the last bit of his remaining soul?
“No. As I said, Jiang Shaoyang’s masterpiece is impeccable and cannot be cracked by brute force.” Li Yao blew at his fingers to extinguish a tiny flame on his thumb. “Maybe, if I had three days and three nights, I would be able to think hard and deal with the magical equipment, hoping to crack it by brute force.
“But it is impossible to finish the job in five minutes!”
The Fire Ant King frowned. “Then, how did you—”
“I did not crack the magical equipment by brute force; I merely crafted a new controller for it.”
Li Yao shook the mini crystal processor on his wrist that was connected to the pile of garbage. “The controller and the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle are now connected again, and the magical equipment was switched to the ‘remote control mode’. Naturally, the countdown stopped.”
The Fire Ant King was dumbfounded. “You crafted a new controller? Is it even possible?”
“Of course it is,” Li Yao explained patiently. “The fundamental things are always the same despite all apparent changes. No matter how the remote control is constructed exactly, the process is one in where spiritual waves of a certain frequency and certain attributes are sent to a certain reception chip of the Venomous Scorpion Bone Biting Shackle. Everything becomes simple from there. I can figure out the overall framework of the magical equipment by the leaking spiritual energy and redraw its structural design in my head. In the end, it is very convenient for me to locate the reception chip.
“After I locate the chip, according to the stripes on it, I calculate what attributes the spiritual waves it receives will have and how the spiritual waves will be vibrated.
“It goes without saying that, as soon as I grasp the attributes and the frequency of the spiritual waves, I will know the structure of the controller. The last step is the simplest one. I will only need to build a controller on my own and carve a few launchers with the mica threads to simulate the identical spiritual waves. Then, everything is done!”