Chapter 116 – Florida Man Robs Astronauts' Graves to Eat Their Bones
Without the nuisance, Leo leisurely collected the plants and the headless corpses into his spatial rings, taking them as a souvenir for Cat. He also didn't forget to pick up their spatial rings and weapons.
Among the loot, Leo loved the talismans the most. He stuffed them in his pant pockets, planning to experiment on them later.
Wu Buyi also helped Leo gather their clothes and armor. While he was at it, he picked up one of the yellow talismans on the ground. He inspected it.
"I-Isn't this the infamous Immortal Killing Talismans of the Situ Clan?!"
"What's that?"
Leo raised his head and looked at Wu Buyi. He then patted an identical talisman on the ground, patted the dirt off, and put it in his mouth. He chewed the paper as if he was a goat.
DING
<Your lifespan has increased by 3,000 years.>
It was worth degrading oneself into a goat. Leo loved seeing big numbers.
Wu Buyi blankly stared at Leo. He thought he got used to the weirdo, but he underestimated Leo's Floridaness. He thought that his master only ate precious herbs and monster's meat as food, but he didn't expect the guy to eat the talismans.
Each talisman was worth a city! How could he eat it so casually!?
"Umm, my lord. T-That talisman's worth is at least a billion spirit stones. A-Are you sure you want to keep eating those? Why don't you keep some for emergencies? They're very useful in group fights. If we could deploy one or two of those talismans, we can deter even a hundred quasi-immortal cultivators with ease."
Leo didn't listen to Wu Buyi. He picked another talisman from a pile of dirt. Then, he created a stream of water, soaking the paper. When it was wet and clean enough, Leo crumbled it into a small ball and swallowed it.
The paper ball went down his throat easily. Instantly, the cancer cells in his stomach devoured the foreign object and converted its residual energy into life force.
DING
<Your lifespan has increased by 3,000 years.>
After mastering the trick, Leo pulled out more talismans from his pocket and poured more water on them.
Looking at his master, Wu Buyi sweated profusely. His heart ached as he watched billions of spirit stones enter Leo's belly for no reason. His pupils gradually dimmed, and he began smiling even though he was in pain.
"Ah, I don't get it anymore. What is cultivation? What is life?" Wu Buyi looked at the ceiling and deeply sighed.
PHOOSH
While the two men were busy handling the aftermath, the troublemaker finally exited the spaceship. Gao Yan activated the sealed gate, and a section of the spaceship was open.
Gao Yan, carrying the lightsaber staff, walked down the stairs and gazed at the elders. When he saw Leo and Wu Buyi, he wryly smiled.
"M-Master. E-Elder Florida Man?"
Wu Buyi turned around and glared at his disciple. He stomped toward the boy and smacked the back of his head.
"You idiot! You worried us! Do you know how hard it is to track you? You could have been killed by other cultivators in the same realm!"
"I'm sorry!" Gao Yan covered his head and squatted, preventing himself from getting another hit.
Wu Buyi proceeded to bonk Gao Yan's head several more times to vent his anger. Gao Yan confusedly cried and ran around the spaceship while Wu Buyi sprinted after the boy to hit him some more. The comedic duo ran around the spaceship thrice before Gao Yan got penta-bonked, having five bumps on top of his head.
While the master and disciple messed around, Leo took this opportunity to enter the spaceship, using the gate that Gao Yan had come out of. Taxi also followed after his boss.
When Leo and Taxi entered the ship, Flora stopped following Gao Yan and followed after them. She was worried that they might get trapped in there if they didn't understand the ship's mechanism.
Betraying Thora's expectation, Leo ordered Taxi to wait in the air pressure chamber. When the gate behind them was closed, the man remained calm as if he had done this before.
"This takes me back," Leo muttered. He gazed at the interior in nostalgia.
"Smash?" Taxi looked back and forth, getting nervous.
"Relax. This is a method to get inside the ship. It's a standard procedure even if we aren't in space."
"Smash?"
Taxi tilted his head, unable to comprehend the situation. He'd rather destroy obstacles instead of waiting for a complicated door to open.
Thora was also surprised but for another reason. Other than fellow lightning element spirits like her, nobody should have learned about this spaceship and its functions. When she noticed that Leo knew about the chamber, her interest was piqued.
The lightning element dao avatar hovered in front of Leo, trying to communicate with him.
Unfortunately, Leo could only see her moving mouth and her transparent body. Her words didn't reach him.
Noticing that Leo couldn't hear her, Thora came up with an idea. She used her Qi to write on the wall. As the dust was thick, she successfully wrote the words in Chinese.
Leo paused to read the words. It looked foreign to him, but his brain comprehended them instantly as the purchased linguistic skill was at work. He waited for Thora to finish.
"Who…am I? Meh, kiddo. I am the last Floridian."
Thora kept writing.
'How do you know about the room's function?'
"Isn't that obvious? Even if I'm not an astronaut, I just know how it works. I watched sci-fi movies, you know?"
'Sai…Fai?'
WHOOSH
The inner door was opened, and Leo proceeded forward. Taxi and Thora quickly followed after Leo.
Walking further, Leo encountered something strange. After leaving the air-pressured room, Leo found a corridor. In front of him, there was a sign and the ship's map, showing his current location.
The map was easy to read. However, what shocked Leo was its language.
Everything was written in English.
An abandoned alien spaceship in a cultivation world had English?!
Something was not right about this place. Leo frowned and gazed at Thora.
"Why is English here? Who was the captain of this ship? Predator? Alien? Darth Vader? Skywalker?"
Thora smirked. She picked a section of a dusty wall and wrote.
'The spirit queen told me that her master had already passed away. She became the new owner of this place.'
"Spirit queen? Someone from your species?"
'What's sa-pee-shie?'
Leo scratched his head. He almost got a vital intelligence, but Thora seemed clueless. He retried and rephrased his words.
"Okay. Change of questions. Do you know where this ship came from?"
Thora clapped her hands and puffed her chest. She wrote big words.
'Milky Road!'
Milky?
Milky Road?
Milky Way Galaxy?
Leo's pupils dilated. He had a sick hypothesis in his mind, and he needed confirmation. Leo probed Thora again.
"Be specific. Which star? Which star system? Is it Earth from Solar System?"
'I don't know.'
Leo smacked his lips in pity as he couldn't confirm the alien spaceship's origin yet. Still, learning that it might be from the same galaxy as Earth, Leo was excited. He had a feeling that he might find other survivors or the descendants of Earthlings in one of the mystic realms in the future.
For now, Leo was curious about the spaceship. He wondered if it contained any artifact that was similar to his ring.
Leo rechecked the sign and the map. As he could read the description and the language, he found where he needed to go.
The first destination – The Bridge!
Without hesitation, Leo guided Taxi to head deeper into the ship. Thora also trailed after them as she was curious about what Leo would do in there.
A few minutes later, Leo, Taxi, and Thora reached a gate, which separated them from the hallway and the bridge. Leo looked around and noticed the dim light of a console in front of the door.
Leo swiped the dust away and looked at the monitor. There was an image of a hand on it.
"Handprint? Sure."
He put his right hand on it.
Thora giggled. She didn't believe that it would work as the console only acknowledged the realm's owner, her, and the spirit queen.
BEEP
The dim monitor brightened in green. Then, the gate was unsealed.
'Huh? Hold up! HOW?!' Thora was speechless.
Leo snickered and waltzed into the bridge. As soon as he entered, he found a tragic scene.
On the bridge, seven dried human skeletons in tight spacesuits still sat on their seats. Another dead body was on the floor, behind the center console. All skeletons were pitch black.
"Ah, never mind. I guess I won't find other humans here."
Leo was slightly disappointed. He thought he might find someone with the same language instead of local cultivators.
Still, the spacesuit looked neat. Leo stripped one of them and fluttered the suit a few times. He didn't notice that the owner of the clothes turned to dust when Leo moved it.
CRACK
Unfortunately, the suit seemed to be too old. It fell apart and crumbled to pieces.
"…"
Leo's disappointment was immeasurable, and his day was ruined. He thought he could wear some cool-looking spacesuit to flex the locals, but it was wishful thinking.
As their suits had no value, Leo turned his attention to the black skeletons. He wondered if he could use them as alchemy ingredients.
But again, as soon as Leo tried to pick them up, they turned into dust like the first corpse.
Realizing that he got nothing but dust, Leo gave up disrespecting the dead. He turned his attention to the ship's consoles next.
"Say, ghost. Can I still pilot this thing?"
Thora sneered and wrote on the ground.
'You wish! Without the spirit queen's blessing, this thing won't budge!'
"Are you sure?"
Leo noticed a few switches on a side console. They also came with labels "Engine 1", "Engine 2", "Engine 3", and so on.
Treating it as a game, Leo flipped them up, switching them on.
RUMBLE
BOOM
Something exploded and caused a tremor. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the light inside the ship was turned off.
"Whoops."
Leo bonked his head. Knowing that he had done something wrong, he stopped fiddling with a sophisticated console. After all, he couldn't even fly a plane.
'You idiot!'
Thora was enraged. She ditched Leo and flew toward the engine room, checking if the soul stone still had enough energy to generate air and purify water for the plants.
Leo also turned around and headed out. He also wondered if something exploded, and this spaceship might be on fire.
However, as soon as Leo turned around, the black dust of the black skeletons merged, forming a humanoid silhouette of a strange creature.
Leo stopped his feet as he sensed the cold stare behind him. He turned around and saw a humanoid monster, who was covered in black dust.
The dust monster had no eye or face. It simply confronted Leo and gathered more black dust around itself.
Looking at the monster, Leo was reminded of the monsters in the alien ship that he came from. He wondered if this strange creature was the byproduct of an inhuman experiment.
"What are you? Can you still talk?"
The dust monster didn't reply. It focused on gathering black dust and condensing them into a new set of skeletons.
WIGGLE
It succeeded. Its silhouette transformed into a complete human skeleton. Then, it fell to the ground as it had no ligament.
Leo gazed at the skeleton. He pulled out a tree branch from his spatial ring and poked it.
"Hey, dude. Are you still alive?"
CLATTER
The skull clattered its jaw, trying to tell Leo something. Leo also leaned closer, hoping to hear its words.
"Smash."
"…"
Leo rolled his eyes. He glanced to the left and found Taxi, who also leaned closer to the skeleton.
"Can you shut up for a second?"
"…Smash XD"
Leo shook his head and looked at the black skeleton once again. As if poking with a stick wasn't enough, he lifted it up.
The skeleton didn't turn into dust this time. Instead, Leo saw a glint of its smile even though it had no skin.
CLATTER
Its jaws clattered as if it was laughing at him. Then, the black bones melted and attached to Leo's skin.
Leo raised his eyebrows at first. A second later, he frowned.
He realized its intention now.
"Oh, boy. I guess I'm not the only one with evolved cancer cells. You, too, eh?"
The entire skeleton was a unified consciousness of undying cancer cells of the corpses. They had been waiting to devour or take over another host.
Unfortunately, they picked Leo instead of a local cultivator.
"Sorry to say this to you, but you're outnumbered, damn parasites."
Leo closed his eyes and deeply inhaled, allowing the skeleton to enter his body through his skin.
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