Ten thousand meters below the ground, inside a training room of a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, five hundred aggressive mice were wearing armor and holding flying swords, yelling and shouting angrily.
The scene was both weird and funny. Li Yao did not know what to do for a moment.
Of the hundreds of mice here, even the strongest were merely equal to the Cultivators in the Refinement Stage Cultivators. Li Yao would not have been scared even if the mice were sprinting forward and attacking him together.
However, the mutation of the mice probably had a lot to do with Yan Xinjian’s training room. Li Yao did not intend to execute all the mice without knowing what had happened here.
Li Yao raised his alert and observed them.
Seeing that the door behind Li Yao was closed again, the mice were all jumping up and down while they shouted angrily.
The mice that were emitting orange colors, which made them appear to be burning, were the most outraged. They waved ‘needles’ and made gestures to point the weapons forward, while they bellowed, “Open the door. Open the door! I am the best expert of the Flying Star Sector. If you don’t open the door, I will crush you into pieces instantly!”
The mice that were emitting green colors were gentler. They twisted and said with an alluring voice, “You came to this place because you saw my notes? Wonderful. Come on and inherit my knowledge and the unparalleled techniques… However, open the door first. It’s too dark here. Too choking!”
The mice that were emitting crimson colors, which were twisting like weird flames ,drooled while they stared at Li Yao maliciously. They squeaked, “What a healthy body! Offer it to me. Possession! I’m going to possess your body!”
The mice that were emitting blue colors, in the meantime, held their head in their hands and said lethargically, “It’s hopeless! It’s hopeless! He cannot open the door! He can’t! We are going to be locked here for another five hundred years!”
The mice that were emitting black colors were grasped by desperation. They craned their necks and burst into creepy laughter. “It’s useless. We can’t run out. Even if we get out of here, where can we run to? It’s too large. It’s too dark. There’s nowhere to run to. Nowhere to run to!”
Another several mice that were emitting gentle white colors were leaning against the wall. They mumbled to themselves, “Xiao Yu, Xiao Yu, I shouldn’t have killed you. I miss you so much, Xiao Yu…”
The hundreds of mice in different appearances baffled Li Yao. He had a weird feeling that they were not mice but human beings with real emotions and feelings.
Li Yao could not help but ask, “Who are you?”
The mice fell silent for a moment. Then they started shouting at the same time, simmering, on the tip of their feet, with their tails straightened.
“I am Yan Xinjian, the best expert of the Flying Star Sector!”
“I am the supreme space pirate Yan Xinjian!”
“I am Yan Xinjian, the vice commander of the coalition fleet of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City!”
“I am Yan Xinjian!”
“I am Yan Xinjian!”
All the mice were yelling. Li Yao noticed that the mice whose ‘robes’ and ‘armor’ were more glamorous had higher Cultivation and clearer tones.
In the meantime, the mice that had little clothing on their body were only shouting fuzzily. Their voices were little more than a normal mouse’s cry, except it could rise and fall in pitch, and they tried to utter ‘Yan Xinjian’.
However, were these mice all Yan Xinjian?
Li Yao could not figure out what had happened.
When he decided to risk entering Yan Xinjian’s training room, he had been prepared to have a huge fight with Yan Xinjian’s remaining soul. He would not have been surprised to see any abrupt changes, but he had never thought that he would be faced with so many mice.
Li Yao tried to hold back his laughter and said, “There are so many of you here. Which of you is Yan Xinjian exactly?”
His words raised a riot among the mice. All of them craned their necks and jumped crazily, while they shouted, “I am Yan Xinjian. I am the real Yan Xinjian. They are all frauds. They are all my clones!”
While they were arguing, they started to fight among themselves!
The mice emitting orange colors were the largest in number. They waved their needles and triggered sword auras the size of one’s finger, while they pierced and slashed the other mice. They shouted, “I am Yan Xinjian, the best expert of the Flying Star Sector. You are all my clones. You are all fakes. Only I am true! I’m going to swallow all of you! All of you!”
The mice emitting green colors confronted the red mice. “Damn. You are just my clones and part of my desire. I am the real Yan Xinjian!
“I am not just the best expert of the Flying Star Sector. I am also going to unite the entire Flying Star Sector and become the king of it. Just behave and become one with me!”
The mice that where emitting white colors cried nearby and shouted, “I am Yan Xinjian. I am the original Yan Xinjian. I am the real Yan Xinjian! I don’t want to be the best expert of the Flying Star Sector. I don’t want to be the king of the Flying Star Sector. I just want Xiao Yu to be alive again. I just want Xiao Yu to be alive! It’s all your fault! You killed Xiao Yu!”
The red mice and the green mice stopped fighting and stabbed their needles at the white mice. “It’s your fault! It’s your fault! If you did not think of the bi*ch at the critical moment and disrupt my thoughts, would I have become mentally deranged, would my breakthrough have failed, and would I have ended up like this?”
The mice that were emitting dense black colors and wreathed in desperation were sitting in the middle of the chaos. They gazed at the ceiling and smiled dumbly, while they murmured, “It’s hopeless. It’s hopeless. It’s too vast. It’s too dark. There’s no way to get out. There’s no way to get out.”
The mice in different colors all claimed that they were the real Yan Xinjian. The more they talked, they angrier they became. The more they argued, the higher their voices got. In the end, all of them were fighting against each other.
Their needle-like flying swords were flying crazily everywhere. Spiritual energy the size of fingernails was bursting out like bombs. The mice were not horsing around at all but were fighting a life-and-death battle that was even crueler than the fight against the Lustful Rock Spiders.
Very soon, dead bodies of the mice were lying everywhere on the ground.
However, before each mouse was stabbed through and killed on the spot, a tiny wave would spread of their brain and go to the depths of the training room.
Li Yao could see now that the mice were holding ‘flying swords’ and wearing armor not because they were trying to resist the intruders but because they had been in a constant internal strife for hundreds of years.
The mice were so devoted to their fight that they completely ignored Li Yao.
Li Yao’s curiosity was aroused. He explored the training room and those brainwaves.
Yan Xinjian’s secret training room was in a shape of a ball. It was surrounded by a shell of indestructible shell made of super alloys and divided into three levels.
The top level was the living area, but it was now full of tiny buildings that looked both like a honeycomb and a palace.
They were the bureaus of the mice. Countless mice were crawling in and out of the buildings. Li Yao felt that his head was dizzy just looking at them.
The brainwaves returned to the buildings. Very soon, a new mouse crawled out of the buildings, with the brightness of wisdom in their eyes, while they waved and danced crazily as if they were drunk.
Possession?
The souls of the dead mice return to this place and occupies the body of another mouse.
Li Yao thought of something and realized that the jibber-jabber of the mice might not have been complete nonsense.
Behind the buildings were enormous iron cages in which more mice were locked.
They were all normal mice, animals without the slightest wisdom.
The entire living area has been modified into a kingdom of mice. Yan Xinjian is probably already dead.
Li Yao realized that, whether Yan Xinjian was good or evil, he must have the aura and demeanor of a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. If he were alive, there was no way that he would allow those mice to blemish his training room.
But Li Yao did not relax and entered the middle level carefully.
The second level took up the most area of the training room. It was the warehouse of materials.
A Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator need to consume astronomical crystals and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures in order to break into the Divinity Transformation Stage. The resources that Yan Xinjian had collected and looted on Spider Den five hundred years ago were all stored here for his usage during the breakthrough.
Hiss!
So many Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures were glittering right in front of Li Yao’s face like a spectacular thicket of coral. Li Yao was fascinated by the brilliance and gasped, his heart almost jumping out of his throat.
Although he was a refiner, he had never seen such abundant treasures before!
A third of the materials here were available neither in the Heaven’s Origin Sector or in the Flying Star Sector. Even in Ou Yezi’s memory pieces, they were only briefly mentioned but never really showed up!
Yan Xinjian indeed went through a lot of trouble to break into the Divinity Transformation Stage. The entirety of Spider Den must’ve been exploited by him!
No. Spider Den alone could not boast such a large quantity of exotic treasures. Right. They must be from the underground fortress!
How could the underground fortress left by the Star Ocean Imperium really be empty?
Even though the traps and the magical equipment were damaged during the ten thousand years, Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures would not decay so easily!
Five hundred years ago, Yan Xinjian was the first to enter the underground fortress. He must have moved all the valuable Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures from the underground fortress to this place!
That was why Bai Xinghe found no valuable items when he entered the underground fortress again five hundred years later!
But as it turned out, I am the one to take all the advantage now!
Li Yao swallowed hard. Flames were almost spurting out of his nostrils.
His training methods were different from normal. Forming the core for him was as difficult as breaking into the Nascent Soul Stage for other Cultivators.
Before, he did not have enough resources and opportunities. He had been wandering around the Core Formation Stage but could not find a way to get in. Although the superlative height of the Building Foundation Stage granted him the combat ability above the peak of the Core Formation Stage, he was not really in the peak of the Core Formation Stage after all!
With so many Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures in this place, he was definitely going to soar into sky!
However, there were traces of gnawing on many Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. Li Yao pondered for a moment and realized that it must have been the mice.
What is the relationship between the mice and Yan Xinjian exactly?
Li Yao considered carefully while he explored the warehouse of materials. When he reached the southwest corner of the warehouse, his heart, eyes, and brain froze almost simultaneously.
A man was gazing at him in the darkness with his eyes wide open!