Chapter 444.1 - The Dangers Of Profit

Huo Yuhao was evidently a little excited. He chuckled and said, “It’s done, third senior brother. Just wait and see – this time, the Sun Moon Empire will definitely feel the pain in their bones.”

Xu Sanshi laughed and said, “I like that. Don’t worry, everyone’s in position. Go and take a rest.”

“Yes,” Huo Yuhao retrieved two Milk Bottles and crossed his legs as he sat down. He absorbed the soul power within those Milk Bottles as he activated his Mysterious Heaven Technique at the same time so that he could replenish what he had expended from before.

Wang Dong’er’s figure suddenly appeared in his mind in that instant. How fantastic would it have been if Dong’er was here! With Dong’er around, we could use the Haodong power together, and that would help me recover a lot faster than using these Milk Bottles.

Huo Yuhao’s heart began to throb painfully when he thought about Wang Dong’er, and his excitement from before dropped a little.

However, Huo Yuhao was a high-level soul master, and he was very aware of the effect inner demons had on cultivation. He quickly dispelled his thoughts and returned to calmness.

Huo Yuhao’s recovery abilities were very formidable. He leveraged his tremendous life energy and recovered most of his physical strength and spiritual power after a few moments.

Huo Yuhao opened his eyes, and two cold lightning streaks seemed to flash across the night sky. Huo Yuhao nodded at Xu Sanshi, who was protecting him beside him, and said, “Alright, that’s good enough. I’m going, third senior brother.”

“Alright. I’ll back you up. Let’s go!” Xu Sanshi chuckled, and he surged into the air with Huo Yuhao at the same time. However, Huo Yuhao was flying towards the Sun Moon Empire, while Xu Sanshi went straight up into the sky.

Huo Yuhao was back in the air, and he flew to about one thousand meters high. He returned to the edge of the Sun Moon Empire’s aerial surveillance soul tools before he stopped, and retrieved a strange-looking soul tool from his pocket.

This soul tool looked like a metal box. It wasn’t very big, and it was about half a meter long, thirty centimeters wide, and twenty centimeters thick.

This metal box’s structure seemed a little crude, but one could tell upon closer inspection that the crudeness and roughness was actually caused by uncountable fine patterns aggregated together. There were many demonic patterns etched into the box.

Huo Yuhao made several quick presses on its surface, and faint soul power undulated from the box. In the next moment, a single metal line protruded from its front and quickly stretched out to almost two meters long. The metal line’s tip suddenly opened, and transformed into circle after circle of metal threads. The whole thing looked extremely strange.

Huo Yuhao infused his soul power into the box, and swiftly pressed a few more lines. The protruding metal threads glowed with circles of silver light as formless waves rippled outwards discreetly.

“Teacher Xuan, I hope your toy works!” Huo Yuhao muttered to himself amusedly.

High up in the sky over the horizon.

There was a high altitude aerial surveillance tool that had many auxiliary attachments opened to help it hover in midair. The metal piece that was about the size of a palm at its tip suddenly lit up as whirlpool-like circles of light quickly appeared on top of it. That light was very strange, and gentle undulations emanated from its surface.

The lights suddenly became stronger, and lit up the area above this high altitude aerial surveillance soul tool.

“Bam!” A crisp sound could be heard, and wave after wave of electricity was released from that metal piece, which quickly surged inside the high altitude surveillance soul tool.

The high altitude aerial surveillance soul tool was originally operating stably, but it suddenly began to tremble violently as the light on top of it became even more intense.

The same situation happened to every single high altitude aerial surveillance soul tool within hundreds of kilometers around. It seemed as if they were all malfunctioning.

Inside the Sun Moon Empire’s camp on the Ming Dou Mountain Range.

“What? The high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools are malfunctioning? We’ve lost communication?”

They were camped in a depression within the mountain, and they even bored a cave into the mountain for safety purposes. They were located not far behind the Ming Dou Mountain Range’s tallest peak, and they were specifically responsible for controlling all the surveillance soul tools in the area. This place could be called the Sun Moon Empire’s intelligence headquarters in the Ming Dou Mountain Range, and a Class 9 soul engineer was personally in charge of it.

This Class 9 soul engineer was the Mad Bull Douluo, Wang Yiheng, who was also the commander of the Evil Tyrant Soul Engineer Legion.

He was deployed here impromptu. The Evil Tyrant Legion had switched guard duties with the legion that was originally stationed here for one simple reason – the Evil Tyrant Legion’s soul engineers were the quickest, and they were the most skilled and adept at reacting to all kinds of situations.

Wang Yiheng’s face turned black as he listened to that soul engineer’s report.

Just several minutes ago, across several dozens of kilometers of the sky in front of the Ming Dou Mountain Range’s main peak, they lost contact with more than twenty high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools.

This situation was unprecedented.

If they lost contact with a single high altitude aerial surveillance soul tool, one could still say that the soul tool had malfunctioned by itself. However, losing contact with so many at the same time – what did that mean? Somebody had done something to them!

Even Titled Douluo had trouble unleashing their abilities at an altitude of three thousand meters. There might be reason to believe that someone had incapacitated a single high altitude aerial surveillance soul tool without being discovered, but incapacitating tens of those things at once? Could it be that tens of Titled Douluo who were adept at concealing themselves had made a move at the same time? How was that possible? Not even the entire continent had so many Titled Douluo who were good at concealing their tracks!

“Has the patrol legion been activated?”

“They have been deployed, sir.”

“I’m afraid they won’t have enough manpower. Pass down my order – deploy the Evil Tyrant Legion’s Dagger Section, and they have to do everything they can to capture their enemies should they run into any. If they discover our high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools, they have to snatch them back. If we really can’t take them back, we can’t let them end up in the hands of the Star Luo Empire even if they’re broken.”

“Yes.”

Orders quickly came out from the intelligence headquarters.

Wang Yiheng paced up and down inside his cave, and his expression was as black as could be. His back was drenched with sweat after pacing a few rounds.

The Sun Moon Empire’s high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools were immature, but they still represented the Sun Moon Empire’s highest standard of surveillance soul tools! If the Star Luo Empire managed to obtain and decipher those things, then he would have committed an unforgivable sin…

“No, I have to go.” Wang Yiheng continued contemplating, but he wasn’t assured enough, and immediately rushed out of the cave. He activated his Class 9 flying-type soul tool and rose into the sky like a beam of light. He activated his communication soul tools at the same time so that he could receive intelligence from their intelligence arm in real time.

It was no wonder that Wang Yiheng couldn’t figure out what was going on. The Sun Moon Empire had been very good at locking down the Star Luo Empire’s surveillance capabilities over this period of time, and the Star Luo Empire had been suppressed to the point where they couldn’t resist at all.

High altitude aerial surveillance soul tools were more than three thousand meters in the sky. They were about two meters in diameter, and seemed quite bulky. But that size was barely anything in the boundless horizons of the sky, and it wasn’t even as large as a dust particle when viewed from afar. Looking for one was already difficult, let alone finding more than twenty across several hundred kilometers of the sky.

What was more frightening was that his enemies could mess things up at the same time – that was just an unimaginable situation.

The Sun Moon Empire had only made a little more than one hundred such high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools, and this was the product of their latest research discoveries. They still needed to continue refining them afterwards, but all that refinement had to be based on the original foundations. Loss of even a single one was a terrible loss. Without discussing other things, the materials used to craft these soul tools so that they could continuously operate at high altitudes meant these were top-grade materials used for crafting soul tools. They had just lost more than twenty at once – wouldn’t the Sun Moon Empire’s emperor Xu Tianran go insane?

Huo Yuhao was still hovering in midair, and the smile on his face became increasingly radiant. A small screen appeared on that metal box of his, and its display clearly showed that more than twenty green dots of light were flying in his direction. Furthermore, they were moving at an altitude of three thousand meters.

“Very nice. Not even the Sun Moon Empire can possibly discover that I’ve stolen those things. Heh, let me capture them.”

Huo Yuhao quickly surged into the sky, and began to fly towards an altitude of three thousand meters. At this point, those high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools were flying towards him at speeds as fast as they could reach. The Sun Moon Empire’s aerial surveillance soul tools were completely useless at three thousand meters, and his location wasn’t close to the Ming Dou Mountain Range. How could he be detected at that altitude?

The metal pieces and the metal box with a metal thread that was more than two meters long were all newly-developed creations by the master of the Tang Sect’s Soul Tool Hall, Xuan Ziwen.

Furthermore, Xuan Ziwen had custom-made those items for Huo Yuhao after he had brought that super-high aerial surveillance soul tool back the other time.

This was a Class 8 soul tool, and it was the best possible one that Xuan Ziwen could make – it was known as a long-range soul controller.

Xuan Ziwen had initially crafted this soul tool to remotely control his own aerial surveillance soul tools from a distance. The Sun Moon Empire was already very familiar with this technology, but Xuan Ziwen made the effects of their long-range soul controllers even better, so that they could be used at even greater distances for remote control purposes.

The Sun Moon Empire’s aerial surveillance soul tools were controlled using similar mechanisms and attachments, but their receiving ends were installed inside them, while the metal piece that Huo Yuhao had used previously was installed on the outside.

Xuan Ziwen had made this thing after having an epiphany. He had quickly found loopholes in the high altitude aerial surveillance soul tool after giving it a simple inspection. This was one of the Illustrious Virtue Hall’s most important research directions back when he was still there, and thus he knew a lot about them due to his position as their chief researcher.

Therefore, he gave the long-range soul controller that he had created to Huo Yuhao after refining it. He added some unique and special formation arrays meant for controlling purposes on the metal piece – these formation arrays could generate intense jolts of energy that destroyed the control units within the soul tool, and the metal piece would hack into the soul tool at the same time and gain control over the entire control system of the high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools. They could then be remotely controlled by the metal box in Huo Yuhao’s hands from a long distance away.

There were many complicated theories involved, and even Huo Yuhao wasn’t very adept in this respect even though he was a Class 7 soul engineer.

Of course, his long-range soul controller could only control high altitude aerial surveillance soul tools after he had refined it. His soul tool couldn’t control other kinds of soul tools.