Chapter 7 of 10

Chapter 7

16 min read3,980 words

People say that food is the heaven of the people. Showing affection by buying gifts for a girlfriend comes at a cost. Yun Luo calculated that he had 169 yuan left for living expenses, and there were still twelve days until An Chuyu returned on August 1st. Dreaming of a big meal was just that—a dream.

Fortunately, there were two boxes of instant noodles at home, so Yun Luo wouldn't go hungry. The picky eater who used to refuse meals without meat was long gone. As long as he could eat his fill, Yun Luo was easy to please and content with a simple life.

Swallowing the light of the stars not only provided the terrifying energy needed for the Nine Heavens Star Sword Qi cultivation but also nourished and refined Yun Luo's flesh, blood, tendons, and bones. This meant that without deliberately exercising, Yun Luo would naturally develop a well-defined physique and six-pack abs, and the strength to lift a tripod would no longer be a dream.

Those nine movements, nine hand seals, and nine true words were the fundamental techniques of the Nine Heavens Star Sword Qi. After reaching the third level, Yun Luo would be able to absorb the light of the stars continuously day and night.

...

Yun Luo was a man of few words. He turned on his computer, logged into his email, and accepted the translation work. With a speed dozens of times faster than before, he completed half a month's worth of work and sent the translated documents to various email addresses.

Yun Luo took on translation jobs through a Taobao online store, using Alipay for transactions, which everyone found reliable. He no longer did ordinary French translations; now he took on specialized French-to-Chinese translations in various fields, and sometimes academic paper translations, which were rich in professional terms and commanded high prices.

In his bedroom, the most numerous books were French reference books, thick enough to be used as weapons.

Yun Luo was very interested in the ancient Chinese characters, such as oracle bone script, large seal script, and small seal script. Learning a culture from a completely different world was greatly beneficial to his cultivation. Mindset was a real thing, and Yun Luo planned to read Daoist scriptures, Buddhist texts, the Four Books, and the Five Classics to cultivate his character and nature, which was the way of the strong.

Speaking of which, Yun Luo also had a professional level 8 certificate in English, with a British accent, though his depth of study was far less than that of French, which had become his second native language.

He had little interest in the cultures of other countries, only being passionate about the ancient history and mythology of China. The magic of Chinese characters also left him in awe. In the post-apocalyptic world, he knew dozens of languages and scripts, but none were as mysterious as Chinese, specifically oracle bone script.

...

Yun Luo liked to eat his dinner to the fullest to get through the long night. After searching the kitchen, he found a bag of rice. He knew how to use the rice cooker and cooked a full pot of white rice.

Not skilled at cooking, Yun Luo found a small bag of pickled vegetables and a block of frozen fatty pork in the fridge. Yun Luo, who was now much more skilled, chopped the fatty pork into small pieces with a knife.

He heated the pan on high heat, added the small pieces of fatty pork, and slowly rendered the fat. When most of the fat had been rendered, he added the pickled vegetables and a splash of yellow wine, stirring with a spatula. Then he simmered the dish on low heat, allowing the pickled vegetables to absorb the pork fat and yellow wine, releasing a fragrant aroma.

Yun Luo served the pickled vegetables with fatty pork into a soup bowl and waited for the rice cooker to finish.

This dish was salty and fragrant, very suitable for eating with rice. It was simple to make, requiring no consideration of heat or seasoning. Yun Luo had learned it from watching An Qingju once.

Waiting quietly, Yun Luo felt no boredom. When the rice cooker beeped, he served the rice. With the pickled vegetables and fatty pork and a glass of cold water, Yun Luo ate a pot of rice that could have fed ten people, yet his stomach didn't bulge at all. Most of the food was absorbed as energy by the Nine Heavens Star Sword Qi, with the rest providing nutrition to his body.

After eating, Yun Luo washed up and went to bed...

He was a man of few words in matters of love, not calling his girlfriend every day. An Chuyu understood that she shouldn't be too controlling, but if you thought she would let Yun Luo have a month of freedom, that was impossible!

An Chuyu had a sister named An Qingju and a best friend named Yan Chenyu, who could keep an eye on their boyfriends.

...

A top-tier special agent of the National Security Bureau and a fourth-level evolved being, Liu Xun's dinner was a boxed meal with three meat dishes and one vegetable, eaten in a deserted alley with two unattractive men. This made Liu Xun hate the awakened one endlessly.

For three days, Liu Xun had to lead his team to search, and only then could he apply to the higher-ups of the Evolved Beings to leave. Ah, just thinking about it made Liu Xun furious. It wasn't that he hadn't found awakened ones before; they were usually caught in a few moves.

And that Yun Luo, daring to anger this girl, this matter was far from over. His girlfriend was fierce, but could she be as fierce as me? Humph!

Awakened ones are human, and anything could happen. Perhaps that guy had already left the university district, or perhaps he was hiding, pretending nothing had happened. Most awakened ones couldn't control their powers and would use them uncontrollably, generating true force and mental force fluctuations that could be detected by third-level energy detectors.

Actually, the death of the Double-Tailed Scorpion and the removal of its core was likely a clue. It was normal for the awakened one to be captured by a mysterious evolved being. However, Liu Xun's investigation of the permanent residents of the university district found no one missing mysteriously.

The Evolved Beings' side had not identified the evolved being who killed the Double-Tailed Scorpion. The organization's evolved beings could not reconstruct the murderer's powers from the deceased, but they had recorded a type of true force fluctuation.

Each evolved being's mental and true force had a unique frequency. When Yun Luo controlled the Double-Tailed Scorpion, he left a very subtle trace of true force, which was detected by the advanced energy science instruments of the Evolved Beings. Hangzhou City, being the capital of Jiangnan Province, naturally had a powerful scientific force in the National Security Bureau.

The terror of the scientific religion sometimes exceeded human imagination, even for him, who had experienced the post-apocalyptic world. He had used countless technological products in the post-apocalyptic world but only knew how to use them. For example, he carried an AI brain, but if it broke, he wouldn't know how to fix it, only learning a few things related to himself.

At least, among the recorded evolved beings on Earth, none had the destructive power of the nuclear bomb that exploded in Japan.

...

It was nearly midnight, the moon high in the sky. He slowly opened his eyes, came to the glass window, and pulled back the blue-purple curtains. The clear and pure starlight shone in, and he sensed that there were no evolved beings within a kilometer.

The nine movements, nine hand seals, and nine true words made his body emit a light similar to the stars, assimilating and absorbing the boundless starlight from the night sky. After being refined by the Nine Heavens Star Sword Qi, it became a pure true force.

The mental force in his mind also drew a thread of starlight from the Nine Heavens Star Sword Qi to strengthen itself. The 365 acupoints and 108 meridians, forming the celestial star map, shone brightly, refining his flesh, blood, tendons, and bones. The 206 bones were polished by the true force, and the bone marrow in his spine was condensed to a crystalline state.

His blood became purer and redder, his tendons more elastic and transparent, and his skin tougher and whiter.

Pain, like a tidal wave, surged over him, but he remained indifferent.

The surging true force and pure mental force, carrying the loneliness and madness of the stars for countless years, impacted the second level of the Nine Heavens Star Sword Qi. One by one, strange acupoints were opened, and one by one, mysterious meridians were connected. Amid the thunderous explosions, he heard a family in the distance playing a beautiful song.

"Amid the ancient sandalwood, the scriptures are chanted slowly. The brocade robe is burned, and the coarse sleeves are wide. In the forest, the lute plays a gentle tune, and the mountains understand my joys and sorrows. Tears fall like rain, and I realize the past cannot be cut off."

He heard the sound of his blood flowing, the sound of his heart beating, the sound of his bones rubbing, and the sound of the true force and mental force roaring and raging in anger. It was a silent and peaceful song, and he smiled warmly, the world frozen in that moment.

"Falling petals, you drift in beauty. The fragrance of flowers stirs memories of the past. I am willing to become a duckweed, lying in the heart of the lake. I will only accompany you, rippling through the years..."

As the music reached his ears and then faded away, he clasped his hands together, his fingers moving to form the Supreme Prison Lotus Seal. The night sky had never been so clear and bright. The stars, billions of miles away, seemed within reach, like the sighs of countless years of cold indifference.

He suddenly opened his eyes, and all obstacles, all confusion, and all fear were shattered!

A starlight sword condensed, three feet and three inches long, controlled by his will. The ancient sword body stretched to three feet and nine inches, with no guard, the handle shaped like a straight bamboo shoot, with bamboo root patterns, and the tip a three-edged blade with blood grooves. The sword body was long and narrow, like a rapier, with an extremely fierce tip.

This starlight sword was the supreme weapon that had allowed him to dominate the post-apocalyptic world, slaughtering in all directions.

Countless stars and starlight, from the night sky, seemed to lose their light as a full moon appeared, then quickly returned to brightness, as if it were a fleeting moment.

The starlight sword devoured countless starlights, refining its body, becoming deeper and emitting a faint starlight.

...

Liu Xun sat on the stainless steel railing of the rooftop of a nineteen-story building, 3,000 meters away from Yun Luo. Her long, slender, and white legs swung playfully, her head slightly tilted, her deep burgundy hair dancing in the night breeze. She counted the stars one by one, as if she were a little girl in her mother's arms.

Yuan Lai's white lion wandered nearby like a wandering ghost, and twenty-one National Security Bureau agents were silently searching for the awakened one in various parts of the university district. Liu Xun, being a high-ranking leader, could issue orders and thus had the leisure to count stars.

"So boring. That post-apocalyptic novel from year 237 was quite good. I wonder if that pig has updated it." Liu Xun took out her red phone, clicked on the bookmarked novel, but found that Yun Luo had not posted a new chapter.

Not wanting a beautiful and delicate girl, what else could he be but a pig-headed fool? Humph! Thinking that Yun Luo had a fierce girlfriend who was probably very jealous, she wouldn't blame her for being ruthless!

Liu Xun's delicate fingers sent a text message to Yun Luo's number, one that would make him regret it.

---