Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!
Thousands of electric arcs condensed on the sabers of the five Exos and slashed toward Li Yao while Duanmu Ming's icy fists punched at his chest!
The ice broke apart and produced a translucent wall around Li Yao!
However, the next moment, the electric arcs were swallowed, reversed, and thrown back at the five Exos by the intense vibration of spiritual energy, briefly stalling their crystal suits!
The shell around Li Yao exploded together with the wall of ice. The vesicles of acids hidden below the shell burst out clusters of fog that were enough to corrode the crystal wires. The fog spread to every corner of the cave!
The spear-like bone tail rushed out and pierced at Duanmu Ming's forehead like a bolt of lightning. Although the tip had not reached him yet, the coldness had already penetrated into Duanmu Ming's brain!
Duanmu Ming was utterly frightened. He did not expect that the capability of 'Han Tuhu' would suddenly soar. Being hit by five lightning sabers without being injured at all was not something that someone in the Core Formation Stage could achieve!
"You are not—"
Before the words 'Han Tuhu' left his mouth, the bone tail hit between his eyebrows precisely!
Duanmu Ming's spine seemed to disappear for a moment. His head snapped back to such an extent that it was almost folded, trying to make the bone tail slide over the facial cover.
However, the bone tail exploded right in front of his face. The dazzling electric arcs and flare made all the crystal cameras on Duanmu Ming's facial cover lose effect, turning him into a blind man for a second!
Swoosh!
Li Yao took the opportunity to dash behind Duanmu Ming. He constricted his body size and used Duanmu Ming's enormous crystal suit as cover.
The five trusted subordinates that Duanmu Ming had trained were not weak. Very soon, they were freed from the interference of the electric arcs and locked onto Li Yao again, but the flying swords and the bullets all lost their target when they were launched.
Duanmu Ming was standing in between them and Li Yao. The 'Friend-or-Foe Identification System' locked their weapons because they could not attack Li Yao by piercing through Duanmu Ming.
The cave was too narrow for them to bypass Duanmu Ming and perform the attack, too.
BOOM!
An earsplitting explosion burst out behind Duanmu Ming, who seemed to have been kicked brutally right in the back. With intense exhaust flames spurting out of his bottom, he was blown toward his five subordinates, waving his hands and legs crazily. The six of them were crashed into a mess.
In such a narrow cave, their heavy crystal suit became a burden for them. Having no armor on his body, Li Yao was as agile as a cat when he dashed through the gaps between them!
Shua! Shua!
Li Yao snapped dozens of mini crystal processors into the gaps of the crystal suits of two Exos. After a while of cracking noises, they were immediately constrained by thousands of electric arcs, which broke the crystal wires and malfunctioned their crystal suit. They were all trembling violently as if they were having a seizure.
Picking up one of them in each hand, Li Yao threw the two of them out of the cave. The Exos who weighed several tons with their heavy crystal suits seemed to be nothing in his hands!
As he expected, when the first Exo was thrown out, dozens of flying swords and mystic rays darted through him while he screamed miserably.
When the second Exo was thrown out, however, Li Yao turned into a streak of brightness and hid below the Exo!
Duanmu Ming's subordinates that were waiting outside in ambush hesitated after their first attack accidentally hit one of their own. Therefore, when the second Exo was tossed out, they could not help but spend another half a second scanning who it was. After determining that he was still one of their own, they immediately stopped the attack.
When they detected Li Yao's existence through thermal sensors half a second later, it was already too late!
Li Yao kicked the back of the second Exo heavily toward the ten or so trusted subordinates who were waiting at the entrance of the cave.
With a huge boom, the crystal bomb that he had placed on the back of the Exo exploded brutally.
The crystal bomb, however, was actually planted around the super compressed crystal reactor on the back of the Exo. The explosion triggered a chain reaction, and an enormous fireball swallowed the entrance of the cave as if the Exo had detonated himself.
Li Yao sneered and snapped his fingers. The airspace thirty meters around him was twisting, and swirls too deep to be measured were appearing. From every swirl, a Six-barreled Vulcan Machine Cannon appeared!
The thirty-six cannons were raining upon the cave with fire crazily like a mobile fortress!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Almost half of the entire forest of rocks was destroyed. Dust was soaring into the sky like hundreds of yellow dragons, lurking in the five square kilometers nearby.
Before the sky was entirely occupied by the dust and the smoke, Li Yao observed the surroundings.
There were few federal soldiers nearby. Even the four crystal warships carved with 'Dragon Horse' were docked dozens of kilometers away.
It further proved his judgement. Even if Duanmu Ming was the commander of the Dragon Horse Legion, it was unlikely that he had dragged most of the regular soldiers into his cause. Only a few of them were actually diehards who refused to abandon Elder Nether Spring when their doom was drawing near.
However, Li Yao could not directly go find the regular soldiers of the Dragon Horse Legion, either.
That was because, to most of them, Vulture Li Yao was already dead, and for some of them, Vulture Li Yao had turned into Blood Devil Li Yao!
How could he convince other people without solid evidence?
Duanmu Ming had to be conspiring with Guo Chunfeng and had spread out an impregnable dragnet in the federal army and the Secret Sword Bureau, which would not be easy to breach.
"You want evidence? That's easy!"
Faced with the perilous situation, Li Yao was not in the least frustrated or frightened. Instead, he was full of eagerness and excitement. The pores all over his body were opening and spurting out the hottest fighting will!
He seemed to be back to twenty years ago in the magical equipment graveyard, where he dealt with hundreds of ferocious, muscular scavengers as a thin, weak young man!
The next second, he put away the Vulcan Cannons and released Neltharion and Black Wing. Setting Neltharion into its stealth mode, he flew it to an altitude of a thousand meters to monitor the situation. In the meantime, he manipulated Black Wing to rush to the south at the highest speed!
Then, Li Yao locked all the pores on his body. He secretly summoned his spiritual energy and reduced his heartbeat, breathing, and pulse to the minimum. He even adjusted his body temperature to exactly that of the environment!
Covered by the overwhelming dust and smoke, Li Yao put on yet another optical camouflage cloth. He lurked in the depths of the debris that used to be the forest of rocks like a chameleon.
He was only dozens of meters away from Duanmu Ming.
Huala!
Duanmu Ming rushed out from the underground. He drew his sword and looked around, only to find nothing but crushed rocks and the billowing smoke.
The crystal processor detected that an intense spiritual wave was rushing south at a high speed. The target must have escaped.
BOOM!
Duanmu Ming, who was both embarrassed and infuriated, slashed at a shivering stone pillar next to him, blowing it into pieces. He then activated his secret communication channel.
"Commander Liao, the target is flying to your defense area. Note that he is not Han Tuhu. He is at least three times as strong as Han Tuhu. At least!
"Block the entire defense area in the name of searching for spies of the demon race. Do not let even a lizard through!"
"Zhang, I am Duanmu. We are in trouble…"
Duanmu Ming sent seven messages to the outside world in a row, reaching out to seven middle-level and high-level officers in the federal army.
He was addressing some of them by their post, some by their family name, and still some by their given names.
Through the officers, he was spreading out a giant net on the Grand Desolate Plateau.
It was a shame that Duanmu Ming was not aware that the guy whom he was dying to capture was lurking right beside him and even listening to his every word through the reception arrays hidden deep inside the ears.
Li Yao intentionally said Child of the Nether World because he wanted to alarm his enemy so that Duanmu Ming would contact his co-conspirators in a panic without thorough consideration.
Just then, when Li Yao lunged at Duanmu Ming and attacked his helmet with the boil tail, it had not meant to destroy his crystal cameras but compromise the defense rune arrays on his facial cover. That way, Li Yao had been able to stick a spiritual wave interceptor that he had refined himself to Duanmu Ming's crystal processor without him knowing anything when Li Yao dashed behind him later.
The spiritual wave interceptor had the comprehensive functions of eavesdropping, localizing, and tracing. Not only could it record all the signals that Duanmu Ming sent and received, it was also able to trace the spiritual waves and locate the coordinates of the other side of the communication channel.
Excellent!
Li Yao whistled in his heart deep inside the dust.
The seven messages that Duanmu Ming had sent out helped him to determine seven coordinates. Three of the speakers had identical voiceprints to three suspects of the Children of the Nether World that they had analyzed earlier. Their identities had now been confirmed.
There was no telling whom the other four speakers were, but their voiceprints and their coordinates had been recorded by Li Yao, which would be undeniable proof in the near future!
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Duanmu Ming sent out an eighth message. This time, it took a particularly long time for the spiritual waves to transmit, as if he was trying to connect with somewhere extremely distant.
Eccentric colors were flashing in Li Yao's eyes. On the ultra-thin lens embedded on the top of his iris, endless data was pouring down like a waterfall. The signal was traced to the south of the Giant Blade Pass and somewhere in the heartland of the Star Glory Federation.
It was… the capital city!
Duanmu Ming was speaking to someone in the capital city through the secret channel!
"We are in trouble!"
After five seconds of waiting, the communication was finally established, but the other party did not say anything. The only thing that could be heard was the vague sound of breathing.
"The guy is not Han Tuhu," Duanmu Ming said in a hurry. "He is at least three times as strong as Han Tuhu. It is very possible that he is in the Nascent Soul Stage. Right now, he has escaped from me and is fleeing south!"
Li Yao analyzed the conversation attentively. Due to the limitation of the size of the tracer, he was not able to embed too many functions into it. It would take a much longer time to locate the precise coordinates of the other speaker.
Say something. Say something more! Li Yao thought to himself. I still need… another thirty seconds!