“Ten or eight years?!” Yang Hao exclaimed in disbelief. “You old devil, you always come up with such lousy ideas. Ten or eight years may mean nothing to you, a thousand-year-old turtle, but what about my youth? I’d lose all my best years!”
“Dear apprentice,” Heng Yuanzi tried his best to appear like a wise and virtuous monk, “cultivation is inherently a tedious and arduous endeavor. Only through years of diligent practice under dim lamps, enduring storms and hardships, can one finally see the rainbow. As people often say, sweetness follows bitterness. Without enduring extreme hardship, how can one become extraordinary? Just like a mute eating bitter melon, one can sense the bitterness but cannot express it…”
“Enough!” Yang Hao interrupted Heng Yuanzi. “I refuse to endure so much hardship. I still want to charm all the beautiful girls in the world. I…”
“What did you say?!” Shi Mingya had been confused all along, until she finally understood that part. “You want to charm… what did you say?”
Yang Hao suddenly realized that Shi Mingya couldn’t hear Heng Yuanzi at all. Everything had become a chaotic mess. He hurriedly tried to comfort the pouting and upset Shi Mingya, silently cursing his luck. If he had known it would come to this, he shouldn’t have agreed to take this woman under his wing.
Just as Yang Hao was in a flustered state, X13 finally retrieved another important piece of information from the database: “Actually, there’s another way to get gold without mining.”
“What way?” Yang Hao and Heng Yuanzi asked in unison. This was truly timely news. If they could find gold quickly, Yang Hao could create the core pill and achieve a breakthrough in his cultivation, which was a shared wish between master and apprentice.
However, X13 started to play coy, beginning from the beginning: “On the planet Suimi, due to the scarcity of species, there hasn’t formed a complete biological system. The dominant species here is a creature called the golden-armored beetle…”
“Golden-armored beetle?” Yang Hao murmured, and his sensitivity ability immediately activated, making him sense the presence of this creature within several kilometers around.
“The golden-armored beetle is a large creature. Normally, it feeds on mineral-rich soil. Inside these beetles, there’s a system similar to a mining machine that can consume all other components of the minerals as nutrition, leaving behind only pure gold,” X13 explained mechanically.
“So they’re like living alchemy machines?” Yang Hao was astonished.
“Exactly,” X13 spun around in the air and suggested, “why don’t you go kill a few golden-armored beetles? Once you get the gold, I can immediately make a pill furnace. Controlled by my computer program, it would only take a dozen minutes to complete the pill furnace.”
“There’s no need to rush,” Yang Hao said nonchalantly while walking in the direction his sensitivity ability pointed. “As long as we get the gold, we can take our time making the pill furnace.”
“But…” X13 hesitated.
“My dear apprentice,” Heng Yuanzi timely interrupted X13, as if sensing something. “With your abilities, you can defeat as many golden-armored beetles as you want, right?”
“Of course,” Yang Hao had just scored with a girl and wanted to show off in front of Shi Mingya. He immediately summoned his five flying swords and charged aggressively toward where the beetles were supposed to be.
However, when he arrived, he found nothing but endless blue land with no sign of any insects.
“Where are the little bugs? Why can’t I see any?” Yang Hao asked X13.
X13’s voice sounded strange: “They are here, just not surfaced yet. They only appear when startled.”
“Then I’ll give them a scare!” Yang Hao winked at Shi Mingya, waved his five flying swords, and used the technique Purple Qi from the East, which he had just learned, shooting it toward the blue land.
With a loud explosion, the flat ground indeed blew up into a large crater.
Yang Hao was quite proud of the current power of his flying swords. However, before he could start boasting to Shi Mingya, he suddenly felt the earth shaking violently. The ground beneath his feet trembled fiercely, and one deafening roar after another came from deep underground.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?” Yang Hao staggered and barely managed to keep his balance.
X13’s voice was almost crying: “It’s coming out. The golden-armored beetle has been startled and is coming out.”
Yang Hao didn’t need the robot to explain further. He could already see it. The previously smooth ground, which resembled a sandy beach, suddenly cracked open widely. From this large fissure, a huge monster slowly crawled out.
This monster looked like a common ladybug, round and plump, with a shell on its back like armor. However, this creature was over a meter tall and five meters wide. Even with dozens of people, they couldn’t fully encircle it.
What made Yang Hao even more stunned was that this beetle was not only as large as a small hill but also shimmered with golden light, as if its outer shell were forged from pure gold.
“This is the golden-armored beetle?” Yang Hao shouted in despair. “Can this even be called a bug?”
“This one is actually small,” X13 explained. “According to the data, golden-armored beetles can grow as tall as two stories. Their entire bodies are covered with armor that is impervious to blades and bullets. They have practically no natural enemies. Even human particle cannons find it difficult to eliminate them.”
“Damn your data!!!” Yang Hao was almost furious. He had been so confident, assuming these armored beetles were nothing but small insects the size of his finger. He never expected them to be this massive. “If their armor is impenetrable, how am I supposed to extract the gold?”
“Apprentice… see if you can chip off a piece of its armor…” Heng Yuanzi was also somewhat stunned and finally suggested an idea after a long pause.
“Me? Chip it off?” Yang Hao stared blankly ahead. The beetle was clearly enraged by his earlier disturbance. It twisted its neck, swinging its large pincers on its head threateningly, looking ferocious and menacing. Such a monster, let alone attacking it, even getting close could result in being crushed to death.
Yang Hao turned around and ran away immediately, pulling Shi Mingya with him in a frantic sprint: “I’m not going to throw my life away. I’ve just started to enjoy a bit of a good life. It’s just not worth getting eaten by a bug.”
“Stupid apprentice! Stop right there!” Heng Yuanzi was practically exasperated, frustrated that his apprentice couldn’t see reason. “If you want to cultivate, you must first create a pill furnace. To make a pill furnace, you need gold. This is a great opportunity. Why won’t you seize it now?”
X13, unusually aligned with Heng Yuanzi, added: “I have a way for you to get the gold without killing the beetle or chipping off its shell.”
After struggling with his thoughts, Yang Hao was finally persuaded by the two. Gritting his teeth, he stopped again and turned back. The beetle had been chasing him all along, but seeing Yang Hao no longer fleeing, it halted as well, raising its neck high, seemingly gathering strength.
“Be… be careful,” Shi Mingya, being a woman, was naturally terrified of bugs. After giving Yang Hao a quick warning, she hastily retreated far away.
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