Response

Old Cultivator Hao felt a sense of familiarity toward Li Shiming. After a while, that familiarity made him think of the cultivator who had bought Talisman Paper.

Although Li Shiming and the cultivator from that day were different in both height and build, the Cultivation World had far too many methods for changing one's figure. Once suspicion took root, he came up with this method to test him.

If that cultivator was Li Shiming, then Li Shiming was a true newcomer, and the Secret Manual he had bought had not been meant as bait for setting a trap.

In such a short time, no cultivator could learn a Spell from a Secret Manual that lacked true intent, even if that Spell was the lowest-grade Body Lightening Art.

Old Cultivator Hao felt he had sensed wrongly. In his view, the cultivator from that day had likely truly been a powerful cultivator in disguise.

"Fellow Daoist Li's Body Lightening Art is executed extremely well. You must have had some opportunity. It seems I have no advice to offer!" he said with a smile.

Li Shiming, however, noticed the change in Old Cultivator Hao's expression, especially the look of surprise when he cast Body Lightening Art.

Body Lightening Art was not some particularly difficult Spell. For Old Cultivator Hao to show surprise, there was only one possibility: Old Cultivator Hao had been thinking about something else at the time.

Thinking back to the faint malice Old Cultivator Hao had shown when they first met, along with the probe just now, Li Shiming had a bad feeling.

Until the gathering ended, Old Cultivator Hao remained like a nail driven into his heart. Even though Old Cultivator Hao's later expressions showed little sign of falsehood, he still felt worried.

Old Cultivator Hao was a Qi Refining Stage 6 cultivator. According to the information Gu Jia had mentioned, that made him the strongest existence among the Rogue Cultivators near Central Capital.

Old Cultivator Hao was the head of the Hao family, and there were four other Qi Refining Cultivators in the family.

Forget Old Cultivator Hao; if any Hao Family Cultivator truly wanted to deal with Li Shiming, Li Shiming would not have the slightest ability to fight back.

Although Li Shiming had killed two Hao Family Cultivators at Qi Refining Stage 3 and Stage 4, that had relied on the advantage of striking first, as well as keeping his distance.

If a cultivator came to assassinate him, he could not guarantee that IBMz15 would be able to detect the cultivator's arrival in advance through his five senses. A cultivator's methods were not something mundane experts could compare to.

With thoughts weighing on him, he returned home. This gathering had not been without gains.

From a cultivator who wanted to curry favor with him, he obtained a map. It was a map of the distribution of forces within Central Capital's range, showing the specific locations of each faction.

Among them, the five Cultivation Families and the Cave Dwellings of several cultivators whose strength had reached Mid-Stage Qi Refining were all listed.

The purpose of this kind of map being circulated among cultivators was to avoid these cultivator forces.

"Looks like I need a surveillance tool!" Li Shiming murmured in the study.

When it came to surveillance tools, the first thing he thought of was a Drone.

IBMz15 contained Drone Design Blueprints, from military versions to civilian versions. The university he had originally belonged to had taken on military assignments and was a highly classified unit, so the military data inside IBMz15 had an extremely high confidentiality level.

However, with his current level of control over IBMz15, all the data was open to him.

When he looked at the technical reserves required for a Drone, he could not help lowering his head helplessly.

A Drone required power technology, navigation technology, communications technology, flight control technology, and chip technology. He could handle the brushless motors and Batteries for the power technology.

The software side of the navigation technology, communications technology, flight control technology, and chip technology was also not a problem, but the chips themselves were not something he could currently solve.

He could only consider it after he had accumulated more technical reserves. What he needed was a surveillance tool he could make right now.

Of course, the best choice would be to set up a Defense Formation, but a Defense Formation was still too far beyond him.

Putting aside how many Spirit Stones it would take to buy a Defense Formation, even if he could really produce that many Spirit Stones, who would sell him a Defense Formation?

As far as he knew, Defense Formations were not something ordinary Rogue Cultivators could make. At the very least, none of the weak Rogue Cultivators near Central Capital were that kind of cultivator.

The only one who could obtain a Defense Formation was Gu Jia, but if Li Shiming could truly take out enough Spirit Stones to buy a Defense Formation, he feared he would have to face Gu Jia's covetous gaze.

Although Gu Jia seemed to care greatly for Li Shiming, that was built on his optimism about Li Shiming's future.

If Li Shiming carried benefits that exceeded Gu Jia's expectations, he believed Gu Jia would strike at him without the slightest hesitation.

Li Shiming sent his consciousness into the Server Room Space. All this time, he had never considered touching the maintenance tool cabinet, because if IBMz15 ever developed a problem, he would need the equipment inside that cabinet to repair it.

But after possessing IBMz15 for roughly Three Months, he discovered that IBMz15 seemed to have undergone some kind of strengthening during the transmigration process.

His consciousness could perform Micron-level observation and operation, and he could sense that every part of IBMz15 had not changed in the slightest compared to Three Months ago.

Take the many fans of IBMz15 as an example. These fans used brushless ball-bearing fans, with an ordinary service life of three to five years.

Of course, in actual use, the real lifespan of fans mostly exceeded five years, and most fans could even still be used after more than ten years.

But whether it was the service life or the actual lifespan, wear on the fans was inevitable.

Three Months was absolutely enough time to discover traces of wear inside the fans, yet all of IBMz15's fans remained in their original state, without the slightest trace of wear.

In addition, hard drives were also consumable parts, with a service life of roughly six years. Likewise, after Three Months of use, the hard drives had not produced even a single bad sector.

It was not just these two things. Every component of the entire IBMz15 was the same.

One had to know that this was the conclusion Li Shiming had reached through Micron-level observation. At least on the Micron-level, IBMz15 was completely unchanged from Three Months ago.

This discovery made him think of the tool cabinet. He looked at the equipment inside it: three-phase power meters, power distribution monitors, UPS detection modules, Battery inspection units, temperature and humidity sensors, leak detection equipment, network equipment testing devices, and so on.

From among them, he selected the Fiber Fusion Splicer, which should be useless. That was not to say there was absolutely no possibility of using this equipment in the future.

A Fiber Fusion Splicer was a device that used a high-voltage arc to melt the end faces of two optical fibers while using a high-precision motion mechanism to advance them smoothly, fusing the two optical fibers into one. His Micron-level manipulation could perform the work of a Fiber Fusion Splicer.

He chose the Fiber Fusion Splicer also because this machine had an LCD screen, several industrial-grade chips, a communications system, a wireless system, and so on.

With usable chips, he thought again of the Drone. After dismantling the Fiber Fusion Splicer, the internal hardware for a Drone would be more or less complete.

He did not even need to make the brushless motors himself. The server's spare fans could be modified into brushless motors.

Because of the external pressure, he began a new bout of busyness.