Chapter 469: The Weakest
"I'm totally recovered now!"
Li Yao jumped up from his sickbed. Within several breaths, the thick medication drugs around his body had been absorbed by his skin. His body was clean and comfortable, his skin as smooth as jade.
It had been an entire month since they had broken out of the Dim Flame Belt. After gathering enough supplies in the Angry Serpent Domain, they continued marching toward the Thousand Sail Space Zone.
When they had learned that it was Li Yao who had repaired the spiritual shield crazily in the space swirl, the entire Exo Society had been shocked.
Li Yao was considered a big hero and a great contributor. He received the best treatment and spent an hour each day on rehabilitation procedures in the med bay. After absorbing abundant expensive medication drugs for a month, he had finally recovered from his wounds!
Right now, Li Yao felt refreshed and energetic. His body was still thin, and his skin somewhat pale. But they had been made so on purpose.
With the sharp senses, Li Yao discovered that the total length of his nerve fibers was five times that of a Refinement Stage Cultivator and more fifty times that of an ordinary fighter!
Veins and nerves constituted an interweaving water system inside his body. Surging spiritual energy was flooding in them.
Li Yao had no doubt that he could attack with the strength of a Cultivator in the high level of the Building Foundation Stage effortlessly. When he burned his life and soul, he was even able to reach the peak of the Building Foundation Stage and stay there briefly!
Besides, the residue of the Flowing Brightness Crystals hadn't been fully digested yet. A lot of them had been blown apart by the force of the True Fusion. They were turning into microconstituents and nourishing his body cells every second, making him feel stronger each minute!
Li Yao believed that it wouldn't be long before he fully absorbed the Flowing Brightness Crystals. By then, not just reaching the peak of the Building Foundation Stage, it was even possible that he could break into the Core Formation Stage!
A year ago, I was just an insignificant Refinement Stage Cultivator. Never did I expect that I would be so close to the Core Formation Stage only one year later! The arrangement of fate is indeed marvelous.
The speed of my advancement has reached the limits. It couldn't be any faster.
Next, I will have to study the skills and abilities that befit my current level. Without sufficient skills, I can't perform at 100% of my combat ability despite my level!
During the struggle against the space swirl of the True Fusion, I came to a vague, mysterious understanding which might be able to inspire me to create a brand-new skill. However, I need to reflect on it more carefully. The space swirl is too deep and abstruse, after all. I won't be able to fully comprehend it in a short period of time!
Li Yao thought of his future plans and was ready to leave the med bay, when a sinewy and short young man barged in. The intruder was apparently less than twenty and looked rather boyish. To fake his matureness, he had specially kept a moustache around his lips, which was quite hilarious.
"Brother Yao!"
The young man was quite respectful toward Li Yao, if not obsequious.
"Zhao Nuo, you want me to sharpen your blade again?"
Li Yao smiled.
The sinewy young man was named Zhao Nuo. He belonged to the 'Tiger Killer Camp' of the Great Horn Exo Society.
Different from common Exo Societies, the Great Horn Exo Society had been established by avengers whose families had been destroyed by space pirates, and it had adopted a lot of homeless orphans when it was carrying out its missions.
The orphans were raised up and educated in the Great Horn Exo Society. The experts of the Society taught them methods of training. When they grew up, many of them joined the Great Horn Exo Society as official members.
It was also one of the reasons the Great Horn Exo Society could be so united during their two months of hunting in such a long, tedious journey.
If it were another Exo Society, the members might've had second thoughts. Some of them had joined the Society to gain more life experience, while some of them were merely there for money. Of course, they wouldn't have been so persistent about the space pirates.
The orphans had been grouped into 'Tiger Killer Camp', inspired by the idiom 'a new-born calf is fearless of a tiger'. They were considered the reserves of the Great Horn Exo Society.
At the real critical moment, all the members of the Tiger Killer Camp above the age of 16 would join the fight, too. Over the past two months of fierce battles, many of them had shed their blood in the sea of stars just like the official members of the Society had.
After the starship left the Angry Dragon Domain, the route in the front had become peaceful. They had also passed by a lot of space towns and world fragments where they had received enormous supplies. Therefore, the maintenance work of the starship was getting easier and easier.
The refiners in the Society had shifted their attention onto the maintenance of crystal suits.
Right now, they were still short of hands. The first to be maintained were naturally the crystal suits and magical equipment of the official members of the Society.
As for the young warriors of the Tiger Killer Camp, they would have to deal with it and wait in line nicely.
Magical equipment was equivalent to a Cultivator's own life. Some young men in the Tiger Killer Camp had almost reached adulthood and boasted extraordinary abilities. They'd been taught and polished by the bloody battles over the past two months, too. But right now, they could only watch other people whose crystal suits had been repaired doing their daily training, while they had no other choice but to slash their broken swords and sabers. Naturally, they were all eager to get their equipment back in working order.
Before, in light of Li Yao's heavy wounds, Xiong Tao didn't assign any maintenance tasks for him and simply asked him to rest.
As a training maniac, the last thing Li Yao needed was a rest. He met Zhao Nuo by accident when they were in the same med bay.
Zhao Nuo knew that he was an excellent refiner and inquired whether or not he could repair personal magical equipment.
Li Yao definitely wouldn't say no. Maintaining a crystal suit was a big job that required large, professional workshops. But as for regular magical equipment, he could repair anything with nothing but a refining furnace due to his amazing skills.
Less than half a day later, Li Yao had burnished and sharpened Zhao Nuo's battle saber. Not only was it now as good as a new one, Li Yao had also carved two rune arrays of the thunder class according to Zhao Nuo's specialties and thus significantly increased the damage of the saber. Zhao Nuo was so excited that he was almost drooling.
News quickly spread; the entire Tiger Killer Camp was excited. All the young warriors brought their magical equipment to Li Yao for maintenance. Li Yao seemed to have become the designated refiner of the Tiger Killer Camp. Also, his valiant deeds of jumping into a boiling cooling pool and keeping the normal functions of the generator on his own had earned the sincerest respect of the young men.
Zhao Nuo scratched his scruffy moustache and grinned. "No. Uncle Captain asked me to find you. He said that he has something important to discuss with you and wants to meet you in the No. 1 training room."
There was admiration in his eyes when he said the words 'Uncle Captain'.
Li Yao was dazed for a moment, not having the first clue why Lei Dalu wanted to talk to him.
During the one month of his treatment, Lei Dalu had visited him a couple of times and ordered a huge amount of medication drugs for his recovery despite the shortage of funding of the Society. Li Yao was quite moved.
However, he always felt that his captain was hippie and glib and that the guy looked like a monkey wearing a hat when he sat on the captain's seat.
Although many Core Formation Stage Cultivators and Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators were free-willed fellows who despised social conventions, Lei Dalu's style and character still barely befitted a Cultivator of such a high level.
"There's a question that I've been meaning to ask for a long time. As I can see, the members of the Tiger Killer Camp are definitely not the most obedient young men. Take you, Zhao Nuo, for example. Usually, you are always trying to challenge those who are said to be better than yourself. But why do you admire your captain so much? Although he is a Core Formation Stage Cultivator, he is merely in the beginning level. I don't think his capability is very impressive in the world of Cultivators, which is crammed with experts, is it?"
Li Yao scratched his head, having finally asked the question that had been bothering him.
"What, you've never heard about it before, Brother Yao?"
Zhao Nuo's eyes were shining as he replied excitedly, "You're right. In regard of capability, Uncle Captain is definitely not among the best ones. Or, if we are being completely honest, it's not exaggerating to say that he is the weakest Core Formation Stage Cultivator in the entire Flying Star Sector!
"Besides, his spiritual root was wounded before, which resulted in the stagnation of his Cultivation. It's unlikely that he would ever enter the middle level of the Core Formation Stage in his entire life.
"To be more exact, for any Core Formation Stage Cultivator, their capability will be higher than Uncle Captain's the moment they formed their core!
"However, if you know how Uncle Captain's spiritual root got wounded, you will admire him as much as I do!
"Twenty years, no, about thirty years ago, Uncle Captain was still young back then. Actually, he was one of the youngest Core Formation Stage Cultivators of the Flying Star Sector. Young, promising, and needless to say, handsome!
"The six sects and all the crystal suit centers of Heavenly Saints City were desperate to hire him. His future was nothing but bright. Everybody said that he was very likely to advance into the Nascent Soul Stage within the next thirty years and thus become the youngest Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator of the Flying Star Sector!
"However, half a month after he just formed his core, he was engaged with a bunch of assaulting space pirates by accident when he was passing by a space town.
"At the time, he was with a pack of ordinary people gaining more understanding of life and consolidating his core. Therefore, he was not accompanied by any other Cultivators.
"But on the space pirates' side, there was a Core Formation Stage Cultivator, more than ten Cultivators in the peak of the Building Foundation Stage, hundreds of other fighters, together with a crystal warship!
"With Uncle Captain's Cultivation, it was not a problem at all to either hide or run away quietly.
"However, in order to protect the small town which had a population of several thousand, Uncle Captain charged at a crystal warship and a fully-armed space pirate gang with himself, his crystal suit, his saber, and nothing else!
"The final outcome was that Uncle Captain went on a killing spree on the starship and slaughtered his way in and out for almost ten times. The leader of the space pirates was executed by him in one attack. He delayed the enemies for an entire day and night until the reinforcements arrived and annihilated the rest of the space pirates!
"Uncle Captain was seriously wounded during the battle and was almost disabled. It took him years before he gradually recovered.
"But an unhealable crack appeared on his spiritual root. His Cultivation has been suppressed to the beginning level of the Core Formation Stage forever. He degenerated from a rising new star to 'the weakest Core Formation Stage Cultivator of the Flying Star Sector'!
"It sounds foolish, does it not?
"Uncle Captain has always been such a fool over the past thirty years. Just like this time, he waged a total war against Storm Prison and hunted them for more than two months just for a bag of rice.
"However, it was because of the follies that he made and the survivors that he saved from the space pirates that so many people gathered under his banner and finally created the Great Horn Exo Society!
"Several orphans from the very space town that Uncle Captain wasted his spiritual root on joined the Great Horn Exo Society and are now the pillars of it!
"For our captain, it is absolutely not a big deal that he is the weakest Core Formation Stage Cultivator of the Flying Star Sector. We would still adore him even if he was the weakest Refinement Stage Cultivator!"