Chapter 78: The Wind Sweeps and Spreads the Clouds
Translator: Strivon / Ash Editor: Geoffrey / Lancent
In the sky.
The way Ding Lingdang drove the flying shuttle was exactly the same as her personality. It was as rough as possible, it was as dominating as possible, and it was as tyrannical as possible.
She floored the Propulsion Glyph Array of the Scarlet Flame Battle Shuttle to its limits within only 0.1 seconds. The Scarlet Flame Battle Shuttle tore through the skies in a flash, reaching the speed of sound. It surged and charged, battering through the air completely freely.
Yet, this woman was still not satisfied. She piloted the Scarlet Flame Battle Shuttle to rush left and charge right in between the clouds, turning at incomparably exceedingly fast speeds. It seemed that Li Yao had placed himself amongst the raging waves and stormy seas; it was as if he was being yanked around fixed by an enormous maelstrom, when suddenly, a tide flung him several hundreds of meters in the air, then falling suddenly once more to the distant sea floor.
Li Yao was forced to embrace Ding Lingdang’s waist tightly. His face was a deathly white sheet. Had he not have prior car racing experience in his previous life, he probably would have vomited up even his bile long ago.
Ding Lingdang rode as fast as lightning for about three minutes before stopping. She turned around to look and raised her eyebrows in a bit of surprise. She laughed, saying, “Not bad there~ Out of ten people who ride my flying shuttle, nine of them would pass out on the spot.”
“P-p-people ride your flying shuttle often?” Li Yao had to take a few deep breaths in order to recover. He asked incredulously.
Ding Lingdang shrugged.
“At first, there were a few people. However, there hasn’t been many in the past few years. Every time I want to take people out of the kindness of my heart, everyone would avoid me like they’ve seen a ghost. How boring. Forget it. Let’s not talk about this stuff. Come on! I’ll show you something invigorating!”
She pressed a Glyph Array on the control panel and the cockpit door of the flying shuttle opened with a “Tsss”. A thick biting cold air danced madly in the narrow cockpit.
Li Yao was dumbstruck, then he gazed through the small crack to the outside. All around him was a boiling sea of clouds.
They’re several thousands up in the sky. What the hell was this woman up to?
Ding Lingdang chuckled and she actually stood atop her seat and spread open her arms. She walked swaying to the outside of the cockpit.
There were two small flame shaped wings on the two sides of the Scarlet Flame Battle Shuttle.The wings had a streamlined shape and were utterly narrow. Rather than saying they were wings, it might be better to say they were decorative bumps.
Ding Lingdang was standing on the left flame wing at this moment. She looked at Li Yao with squinted eyes that contained an expression of utter provocation.
Li Yao’s mind heated up. A unrestrainable craze surged forth wildly from the depths of his veins. With an unknown source of courage, he actually clung to the edge of the cockpit, crawled out swaying, and stood on the right flame wing.
“Didn’t you say you were going to treat me for food?”
Li Yao did not avoid Ding Lingdang’s eyes in the least. He used an even sharper expression as a counterattack.
Ding Lingdang bathed in the afterglow of the setting sun. She spoke with utter content, “The surrounding here is quite decent, right? Look at this sky. Look at this earth. Don’t you feel all your worries being flung to the back of your mind; your appetite will immediately open wide and you’ll be able to eat 10 roasted chickens right away?”
Li Yao was stunned. He gazed off to the horizon and was immediately moved by the several thousand meters high view.
Layers of clouds boiled like angry waves within the vast and boundless world, molding into divine-like shapes. Layers upon layers of red were painted under the blood-red illumination of the setting sun, condensing to a rouge-like color in the greatest depths and diluted to a peach-like color on the lightest surface.
Li Yao never knew that this world actually contained thousands upon thousands of different shades of red. Every shade of red was a core-shaking red that pulled one’s heartstrings.
This red cloud sea churned, changed, condensed, and dispersed endlessly along a whistling gale. And suddenly, from the thousands of different forms of red came sketches of gold lines. They were like gold fish leaping forth from the red sea, morphing out wings and soaring freely.
A gale of wind would occasionally rip tears into the sea of clouds. Looking below the tears, Li Yao could see all of Floating Spear City below his feet.
The city was like a giant turtle with its limbs spread out, lying unmoving on its belly. Needless to say about the flying shuttles and pedestrians, even the sky-scraping buildings turned into tiny toy building blocks.
It was like they left this mortal secular world and all that was left between the billowing and grand world was these two.
Their surroundings were extremely noisy. The wind tore endlessly against their eardrums, yet at the same time, things were extremely quiet; not even the least bit of noise from the secular world existed. All they could hear was the “Badum Badum” beating of each other’s hearts.
Looking above their heads at the transparent, bowl-like sky dome, one could see the cyan blue sky gradually fade away into a draping curtain of darkness. The stars in the entire sky were like raindrops sprinkled amongst the clouds.
Li Yao’s heart stirred. He somewhat understood why Ding Lingdang brought him here.
The secular mortal world becomes incomparably ridiculous in front of such a breathtaking spectacular sight, wiping their gargantuan worries into thin air.
Even if he had turned into a cripple, seeing this magnificent view in front of him would likely still restore his fighting spirit and reignite his confidence!
Under the final illumination of the setting sun, Li Yao’s face turned flush red and a smile came from the bottom of his heart.
“This restaurant is nice. Now, where are the roasted chickens?”
Ding Lingdang fished out an enormous military pack from the back of the Scarlet Flame Battle Shuttle and closed the cockpit cover with her long legs. She placed the greasy and dirty military pack directly on the rooftop of the flying shuttle worth several tens of millions.
She fished out one after another as if performing magic, wholes and wholes of wonderfully fragrant roasted chicken, chops and chops of braised pork joints, and links and links of blood sausages. There was even an entire trunk filled with high-energy and high-nutrient performance drinks.
Li Yao’s nose quivered and he took a deep breath. With eyes radiating with an energetic glow, he said, “It’s all Ghost Food and Drinks from the Underground Ghost Market?”
Ding Lingdang grinned widely, exposing two rows of snow-white teeth. She laughed while saying, “You just woke up from a long coma. According to common sense, you should eat light porridge and mild meals. Would something this greasy be fine?”
Of course it was fine.
A thunder cry rang out from Li Yao’s stomach. Without a word, he directly spread open his hand and grabbed a roasted chicken. A bite from the left. A bite from the right. A bite from the top. A bite from the bottom. He ate this 1.5-2 kg roasted chicken completely clean in just four bites. “Crack crack” A meat grinder-like sound rang out from his mouth. His cheeks bulged out enormously, but they returned to normal in a flash.
“This is what it means to be alive again!”
With a roasted chicken down his stomach, Li Yao’s face revealed a small trace of healthiness. He licked and licked the oil-drenched edges of his mouth, wishing for more. He stretched his hand once more towards a second roasted chicken.
This time, it was Ding Lingdang’s turn to be dumbstruck. She couldn’t have possibly foreseen that Li Yao, a patient who had just awakened from a deep coma, would eat so ferociously. She was stunned for a long time before she snorted lightly and tore into a roasted chicken with her hands without a trace of etiquette. Each of her hands held half of the chicken. She stared down Li Yao as she ferociously chewed in big mouthfuls.
At an altitude thousands of meters in the air, within the waves of boiling clouds, on top of a luxurious vehicle worth nearly 100 million credits, two people exchanged not a word. They carried out in gorging ravenously in an eating competition.
The two did not keep up even a trace of proper appearances. They were like two fearsome beasts that had hungered for ten days and ten nights. A beast rammed into the mountain and the sea of meat, shaking its cheeks and revealing its back molars. They ate like a locust plague, savagely sweeping everything clean. These two ate the entire military pack of greasy meaty food clean in under half an hour. Even the chest of performance drinks was drunk such that not even a drop remained. The two should have eaten about the same amount after some careful calculations.
Ding Lingdang held the military pack from its bottom, shook it forcefully a few times, and shook out the last blood sausage. She split the sausage into two halves to split with Li Yao to eat. They looked at each other and discovered that they both had made a mess of their faces. They could not hold back from grinning and laughing at the same time.
“You never left. Why?” Li Yao finally asked this puzzle he had hidden in his heart.
Ding Lingdang really didn’t have a proper appearance when she licked her fingers; she was still immersed in the seduction of the fine food. It took a long time before she burped and said, “I was just about to leave after waiting for three weeks. But on the day before I was going to leave, I saw a diagram of your brainwave activity… A Meditation Healer had used a secret technique to draw out the approximate shape of the depths of your neural field while you were in your coma.”
Ding Lingdang extended her wrist and out from a red micro processor jumped a hologram.
It was like the colors of the rainbow at first glance. Various shades of colors were packed together to form a tall cloud-piercing mountain peak and a deep abyssal valley. Some places even appeared to be like erupting volcanos, bursting with the numerous brilliant and varied colors of the rainbow.
“And this diagram here is of another patient in a deep coma. It’s a very typical brainwave activity diagram.” Ding Lingdang brought up a second hologram.
The colors of this diagram were much darker. It seemed that only two colors black and white existed in this world, causing the entire world to change incomparably dark. There were no mountain peaks or valleys. It was just like a deathly still flat desert without hardly a trace of life.
“These two diagrams are a bit different,” said Li Yao.
Ding Lingdang nodded her head.
“The doctor told me that it was because you had recently entered your coma that your neural field world was still relatively active. As days go by, as a long time passes, your neural field world will slowly turn to a deathly still desert… But I felt that something was off. The degree of activity of your neural field world is simply much more intense than a normal person’s by a hundredfold. And moreso, I felt something faintly familiar about it, so…”
She tapped a few times against a virtual keyboard projected by the crystal processor, bringing out a third brainwave activity diagram.
This diagram was the same as the first. It had seven bright colors of the rainbow, it was filled with life, and fiery sparks radiated all around.
“Look. What’s different between this diagram and the first?” Ding Lingdang stared straight at Li Yao’s eyes when she asked.
Li Yao carefully compared the two for a long time.
There were obviously a lot of differences between the fine details of the diagrams. But, their colors were both dazzling, their undulations were both intense, and they both revealed a bloody, brave aura that caused people’s spirits to be raised with a single glance, to be all fired up.
“This is also a diagram of my brainwave activity?”
Ding Lingdang shook her head and unraveled the riddle, “Nope, I pulled a few strings with the army to get this. It’s the brainwave activity diagram gathered from several seasoned soldiers of the army. And they gathered this brainwave activity when… these soldiers were situated in the most dangerous of battlefields. They were engaging in precipitous close combat, fighting against the Demon Beasts to the bloody end!”
Li Yao was stunned for a moment. He tried again to carefully examine the two brainwave activity diagrams to identify any differences; he was still unable to differentiate too much between the two.
He never thought his neural field activity would be this crazy while he was swallowing Ou Yezi’s memories. It was actually the same as blood-soaked soldiers engaging in close combat.
Or maybe it was due to this crazy brainwave activity that led to his spirit root to be torn and caused his Actualization Quotient to plummet.
Ding Lingdang spoke with eyes filled with admiration, “I knew it when I saw your brainwave activity diagram. Even though you had fallen into a coma, you still continued to engage endlessly in close combat within your mental world! So I changed my plans. I decided to wait one more month. And sure enough, I waited it out. So how goes it? What’s the next step you’re planning to take? Are you still going to enter in this year entrance exams?”
“Of course!”
Li Yao responded instantly. He squeezed his hand lightly into a fist, making the veins on the back of his hand gradually come into view. They were like dragons hibernating within his body totally coming to!