Star Gate

Within Li Hao’s new lodgings.

Having an entire building to himself was such a fine arrangement. The closest neighboring structure was several hundred meters away. No one had chosen the buildings around him. The young man took out a sewing needle—the Flaming Phoenix Spear.

It quickly reverted back to its spear form, but remained dull and inert. Li Hao frowned at the lifeless origin weapon. It’d really sealed itself off! The Flaming Phoenix Spear continued to be unmoving when he took out a mysterious power stone. Manager Yu had said that Hou Xiaochen was the only one who could activate it again after it sealed itself away.

Now this was troublesome. Was he supposed to tell the man that I want to comprehend and fight your will and aura, so can you activate it for me?

Hou Xiaochen would probably kill him on the spot!

“Why did you seal yourself away?” Li Hao murmured to himself. He fished out a sword from his boots, one that wasn’t too long. When he knocked it on the spear, the latter seemed to tremble.

“It’s not like I’m going to hack you into two,” sighed the young man. “You’re Director Hou’s weapon, would I dare? I just want to activate you to take a look at the phoenix. What’d you go and do this for?”

Clank clank clank!

The little sword tapped on the spear with sounds of metallic impact. The Flaming Phoenix Spear was still dull and inert.

Li Hao pulled a long face and mumbled, “I hear that the Flaming Phoenix Spear is an exceedingly high level origin weapon. My Stellaris slashed through the Shadow Snake Sword and ate its soul. I wonder if it can break the Flaming Phoenix Spear? Probably not, right? This is supposed to be a sky level origin weapon and extremely terrifying.”

The Flaming Phoenix Spear seemed to shudder.

“Forget it,” Li Hao sighed once more. “If I can’t activate it, I’ll hack at it a few times for fun and then return it. No one will believe I did it if it’s broken. I don’t have the strength to break the Flaming Phoenix Spear, so it must’ve been a fake!”

“......” A streak of fiery-red appeared on the spear when Li Hao raised the little sword!

The young man’s eyes brightened and he laughed, “Impressive!”

This really was impressive! The Flaming Phoenix Spear understood human speech—or rather, it could decipher the intent behind the words.

The soul of an origin weapon! When Li Hao saw the Shadow Snake Sword, there’d been a shadow of a snake within the sword. The shadow seemed to have understood Li Hao’s actions when he raised his sword to cut it down. In that moment, at least, the young man had seen fear.

Since the Flaming Phoenix Spear had sealed itself away when he dripped blood onto it, Li Hao guessed that the weapon might be aware! It could listen and perceive.

His little experiment demonstrated that it did indeed understand, but the results still shocked the young man. A weapon could understand humans? What was he supposed to make of that? If the souls of weapons were the souls that he was familiar with... then were weapons alive?

Incredible!

And why were there shadows of monster spirits in all of them? The fiery phoenix, the shadow snake, and a thunder monster in Violet Moon’s Armor of the Thunder God... What was all that?

A kind of aura? Or will?

Li Hao didn’t understand. Or had monster spirits been used to create these weapons? He suddenly thought of the possibly dead Panther. If he’d refined the little black dog into a weapon, would that impart a dog shadow to the weapon?

My poor Panth. You ate so many good things from me and died, just like that! Li Hao sighed. But that dog was smart, so it was possible that it was still alive. Perhaps it’d just run away. After all, Yuan Shuo had wanted to eat it all the time when it was with Li Hao. Maybe the dog had been scared off.

How had he suddenly thought of Panther when he was working with the Flaming Phoenix Spear?

The young man looked at the fiery origin weapon. He picked it up and suddenly stabbed forward with an explosive sound. Just the spear itself was made of such durable materials that one jab broke the void.

Fire energy dissipated through the air and brought with it a searing sensation. This was a powerful weapon stronger than the little sword! Granted, the little sword was in a sealed state. It should still be stronger—why else would the Flaming Phoenix Spear be afraid of it?

The young man stood silently with a spear in hand. He seemed to turn into Hou Xiaochen as he emulated the man, trying to sense certain things. However, he shook his head after a while and put down the spear. There was nothing to be gleaned if it wasn’t activated. The only thing he could play with was a vague sense of killing intent.

Southern Fist said that activating the weapon may let me sense Hou Xiaochen’s will and aura... At the very least, some of it should linger from when he killed Red Hair a while ago...

What kind of aura would the director’s aura be? Was he still a martial master? If he wasn’t and was just a supernatural above Nova, would he still be able to deploy his aura?

A spear aura? Mysterious power stones were highly valuable. It would be quite a loss if he obtained nothing after feeding one to the Flaming Phoenix Spear.

Li Hao looked at the floor after gently stomping his foot. He nodded with satisfaction at what he found. The houses here were more than they seemed. Hou Xiaochen must have used public resources for his own purposes and built this base with supernatural abilities. The young man had discovered yesterday that the floor tiles here were much more durable than ones he’d encountered anywhere else.

He’d smashed a Dominator into the ground during his fights yesterday. If it’d been ordinary tiles, he would’ve driven the man more than ten meters deep. Here, he’d only managed one meter. The same went for this house, it looked to have been built by a wood supernatural.

It was very durable, nice.

“Can you demonstrate Hou Xiaochen’s will and aura?” Li Hao looked at the spear in his hand again. “How about letting me see a thing or two?”

The Flaming Phoenix Spear remained quiet.

Sighing, the young man raised Stellaris. “Then let’s try hacking at you. Maybe I can bring it out of you!”

The weapon still remained quiet.

Li Hao raised a brow, summoned his sword aura, and swung his sword...

The spear vanished before his blow could connect and reappeared several meters out, floating in the air.

“Is it a good thing for a weapon to have a soul?” a merry Li Hao chortled with appreciation. A weapon with a soul could protect its master, but it could also turn on its master! This wasn’t necessarily a good trait!

“So it looks like you can’t run off. Is this all you can manage? Will you fight me if I feed you a mysterious power stone? I’ll feed you more if it’s a good fight, or I’ll smash you with Stellaris if it’s not!

“Ordinary sword auras may not be able to break you, but I know a special one. The Sever Self Stroke, or should it be called the Eternal Sword?”

His sword aura erupted! Li Hao called upon the stroke of his memories, the one that would pierce through the firmament!

The Flaming Phoenix Spear had just been hovering in the air—it trembled violently and vanished without a trace. Li Hao’s eyes widened with dismay. Had it run off? Fuck! I’m doomed if it’s run away, Hou Xiaochen’s gonna kill me!

The young man rushed out of the room and jerked with surprise to see the spear clatter to the ground. It couldn’t seem to stray too far from Li Hao, possibly restrained by the drop of blood from earlier. That limited its range of movement.

How interesting!

The Flaming Phoenix Spear was still trembling when Li Hao picked it up. His last move had truly frightened the phoenix. The combination of the Eternal Sword and Stellaris terrified it.

“Keep running!” Li Hao laughed. “It looks like you’ve got quite a bit of knowledge for an antique. You know my ancestor’s move—do you think I can smash you to pieces?”

The spear trembled once, as if replying to Li Hao. It did think so!

“Flaming Phoenix Spear, were you really a phoenix before?” The young man looked intently at it. “Did phoenixes really exist? Did all of those monsters exist in the ancient civilization, the dragons, phoenixes, and others?”

The spear trembled a single time once more, as if responding that yes, they had existed.

“Then, were you strong before?” Li Hao stroked his chin.

A single tremble.

Li Hao surmised that one tremble meant yes. So the weapon thought itself as very strong?

“Are you stronger than my Stellaris?”

“......” The Flaming Phoenix Spear shook twice.

Li Hao was overjoyed! Hot damn, this thing really can reply to people and it thinks that Stellaris is stronger! Does this mean... that it can reactivate if I don’t feed it? I don’t have to waste a mysterious power stone?

This was all that was on the young man’s mind at the moment. He didn’t think he needed to doubt that Stellaris was stronger than the origin weapon, his ancestor must have been incredibly strong! Just the sword aura alone was terrifying. The Flaming Phoenix Spear didn’t give him the same feeling.

“Who is stronger—me or Director Hou?” Li Hao didn’t receive a response to this answer. It likely didn’t know how to answer.

“Am I stronger than Director Hou?”

The spear shook twice—negative. There was no hesitation, an obvious sign that it thought Li Hao was thinking too much.

“Is Director Hou a martial master?”

The Flaming Phoenix Spear didn’t move. Li Hao frowned, what did that mean?

“Does the director walk the path of energy?”

One shake, two shake...

Negative!

The path of energy was the path of the supernatural, Li Hao had learned of this from the Silver Armor. This might’ve been what the supernatural domain was called in the ancient civilization. The Flaming Phoenix Spear might not understand the term of ‘supernatural’.

This wasn’t a surety, either.

Li Hao’s frown deepened. Not a supernatural? Then the director really was a martial master. A supernatural turned martial master! As for the possibility of purely martial dao... Li Hao dismissed the idea after some consideration. If the director had taken that path, he shouldn’t be so blinding that it hurt to look at.

Martial masters were self-contained! They would never be blinding to the eye. Director Hou might not have completed his conversion, so he gave off a supernatural feeling. That was why he and the others in the conference room were so uncomfortable to be near. Martial masters would not exude this kind of sensation.

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