Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Lingfeng suddenly raised his voice and declared in an oppressing way, “My fellow Cultivator whose name I do not know but who is as pitiful as me, although you have been covering yourself up, I have already figured out your identity and your situation from the traces you left behind!”

Li Yao was slightly dazed. “Have you?”

“First of all, raising an assassin, assaulter, and saboteur in the Divinity Transformation Stage in secret while hiding it from everybody else, and having a Colossus that is not registered in any database in the Imperium—Even taking the entire Imperium into account, the forces with such capabilities can only be the four Kurfürst families and the few warlords of the coalition fleets who rose recently. Your origins can be beyond the few forces!”

Li Lingfeng said resolutely and unquestionably, “However, with such a remarkable background and amazing capabilities, you have been used by the force behind you as a secret agent to carry out such a mission that is bordering on suicide. It appears to me that your life in your force can’t be too comfortable. It is possible that you are hated, envied, and ostracized too. Somebody might even have hoped to kill you through me, didn’t they?

“Otherwise, I can’t think of a reason why a high and mighty expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage would come to ruin ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ at such great risks. There are no benefits in it for you in person, and it is 99% likely that you would be killed!

“It’s just like right now, had Li Linghai not arrived all of a sudden, you would’ve been killed by me a long time ago!

“As an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, you should be able to calculate the gains and losses in the blink of an eye. How could you have done such things rashly? It is utterly unreasonable!”

Li Yao’s pupils enlarged and constricted, and the veins on his face were visible now and then too. He said slowly, “Fellow Cultivator Li, should I compliment you for your wisdom that is finally back online and showing the computational and deduction abilities of the Divinity Transformation Stage?”

Li Lingfeng sneered, “Eliminating all the unreasonable and illogical choices, my speculation is the only possible truth. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain your arrival and what you did at all!”

After a long silence, Li Yao finally heaved a sigh and said, “It may be the truth, but so what? Everybody in the universe has their restraints. Even if you are as strong as a god, it is impossible for you to do whatever you want! The Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures and various sources that someone in the Divinity Transformation Stage consumes every day are astronomical. The seemingly powerful Colossus also requires an enormous industrial system for maintenance. There are also issues of fuel, ammunition, and replacement of weapons… Without the support of a family, what can I do by myself and my Colossus?

“Therefore, although I know I’ll be hanging by a thread if I take the mission to sabotage your territory in the Martial Meritocrats Sector on my own, although I know that the fake identity of ‘Cultivator’ definitely cannot fool everyone in the entire Imperium, although I know that there is a good chance that I will be killed by you, or be hated by you who are at a higher level in the Divinity Transformation Stage than me for the rest of my life even if I am not, although I know that the entire Li family will consider me as prey should the incident be exposed and I will very likely end as a sacrifice in the private deals, although I know clearly that it is a scheme of someone in my force to kill me indirectly—I know everything clearly, but so what? So what?

“You’re quite right. I’m just a tool, the sharpest saber. However sharp the saber is, it cannot decide whose hands it will be grabbed in and what it will slash!”

As he approached the end, blood was glistening in Li Yao’s eyes, and his voice was filled with anger and resentment!

Li Lingfeng observed him quietly for a while before he suddenly chuckled. “It seems that I was not wrong at all. We truly share the same unfortunate life. It seems that I should not loathe you but the force behind you—the guys who went through all the trouble to destroy my lifelong work, the slaughter stream platform and the Heavenly Eye Group, and who intended to destroy you by the way too!”

The blood inside Li Yao’s eyes was shining as he said gloomily, “Yes. Maybe those guys wanted us to kill each other in a battle, which would’ve been a stone that killed two birds!”

Blinking his eyes, Li Lingfeng put on an even more sunny smile. He said, “We’ve been fighting and chatting for a long time, but I don’t seem to have learned my fellow Cultivator’s name yet.”

Pondering for a moment, Li Yao said, “Call me ‘Vulture Li Yao’.”

Li Lingfeng glanced at Li Jialing, and there was even more certainty in his eyes.

Li Yao narrowed his eyes, and with hostility beaming out again, he said, “Why have your senses been locked onto Li Jialing? You want to tell if I gave you a false name through his indirect reactions?”

“I have no doubt that you gave me a false name.”

Li Lingfeng chuckled. “However, judging from the reactions of my little nephew, you gave me the same pseudo name as you gave to him, which more or less proved your sincerity.”

Li Yao glanced at Li Jialing and mumbled, “I’m feeling more and more that I underestimated you yesterday. I thought that you were just a random guy in a noble family who had more ambitions than talents. But as it turns out, as the dangerous moment of life and death, your wisdom is soaring like a volcano eruption. Even such a top-secret, that ‘Vulture Li Yao’ is a false name, has been seen through you immediately. How impressive!

“Enough talking. Now that we have more or less learned each other’s cards, what exactly do you want, Fellow Cultivator Li?”

“Vulture Li Yao, Fellow Cultivator Li, right? Don’t be so vigilant. You may find it hard to believe, but I really don’t mean any harm to you right now—nor am I qualified to. I just hope that we can warm each other up and give each other a hand.”

Opening his hands, Li Lingfeng said frankly, “You know it better than anybody else that the quest of ‘Dying Light’ has been completely messed up, ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ has been demolished, and the Heavenly Eye Group is hopeless. Whatever influences that I have built in the past decades are possible to fall apart. It is impossible for the big shots of my family to continue trusting and supporting me like before.

“All in all, I am poorer than any moment in the past hundred years, and it is barely possible for me to make a comeback on my own.

“Why would I refuse the friendship of another expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage under such circumstances? And it is one with such a powerful Colossus, no less!”

“Friendship?”

Li Yao sneered, “What will I get?”

“Same, the friendship of an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage!”

Li Lingfeng smiled. “Although I do not have anything right now, my core troops haven’t suffered any damage. They are still cleaning up the mess in the Martial Meritocrats Sector, unaware of what is going on here. The wretched Sand Primitive Sector has been screwed up by the hundreds of years of destructive experiments. It is barely possible for us to send signals out.

“The bottom line is, as long as you help us survive the crisis right now, I’m absolutely confident to rise again. By then, if you really want to change your fate, I believe you wouldn’t mind receiving some selfless help from ‘the real controller of the Li family’, would you?

“The alliance of two experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage is enough to make the universe tremble. How does it sound? Do you want to show up in the most glamorous seat in the Imperium openly and claim the power and glory that belong to you?”

Li Yao’s eyelids bounced violently, and he ground his teeth like a grater. In an even more hoarse voice, he said, “That’s all? You want to fool me into selling my life to you with such weightless bulls*it?”

“Of course. That’s all about the future. Right now, what matters most is my dear sister and Her Grace of the Imperium.”

Li Lingfeng sniffed the air; his nose tip quivering nonstop. “She has already entered the thunderstorm and is searching for us in the middle of the pouring rain and the thunder. It is a pity that the magnetic field here is too chaotic. She can’t lock onto our coordinates for the time being, but it won’t be long before she does. How about it? I don’t believe that you are not interested in the queen.”

Li Yao said, somewhat unnaturally, “Why would I be interested in the queen?”

With a “you can’t fool me” look on his face, Li Lingfeng said, “Stop pretending, Fellow Cultivator Li. We have been communicating well and genuinely. Now that a great enemy is underway, is there any need to hide at all? If you and the force behind you are not interested in the queen, how on earth could you have learned so many secrets?”

Li Yao was dazed for a while, and the defense on his face gradually loosened as he said, “Alright. I admit that the major forces in the Imperium are all greatly interested in the queen. After all, as you said just now, she has gradually revealed her ambitions, and she poses a threat to many different people, doesn’t she?

“Who can argue with that? My sister is turning more and more unpredictable, immeasurable, and even horrible after only a hundred years.”

Li Lingfeng sighed and said, “Pushing her to the throne of ‘queen’ was perhaps the gravest mistake that the Li family made in the past hundred years. But who could have foreseen that she would grow into something like this?

“All in all, she has got everything she needs, and she is about to bare the most aggressive tusks. At such a critical moment, she absolutely will not allow any unexpected factor to disrupt her plan. The three of us have to be killed here!

“If we continue brutalizing each other, we will only be killed by her one after another. There’s no chance of winning at all.

“However, if we can join our hands, with two experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage and Li Jialing, a ‘perfect experiment subject’ that Wuying Lan and I carefully refined, we will not entirely be on the losing side!

“It must be noted that Li Jialing’s existence has always been her biggest secret. Even the ‘Deep Sea Fleet’, the secret troop that she founded on her own, will not be allowed to learn the truth.

“Besides, she couldn’t have guessed that we would join hands. She thought that the two of you had escaped into the deepest part of the thunderstorm. So, she would certainly come here to hunt on her own without bringing any help.

“This is our best opportunity!”

Li Jialing had been listening in silence all the time. He finally couldn’t help anymore, and so, he asked, “You want us to kill her together?”

Li Lingfeng chuckled. “I didn’t say that she must be killed. I know that you might be unable to make up your mind for that. However, getting her under control, talking to her, and making some deals with her, or asking her to tell the truth of your origins—Do you find that acceptable?”

“Rest assured. Your uncle wouldn’t bear to kill your mother.”

Li Yao said to the young man coldly, “He still wants to control the forces deep inside the royal palace with your living mother. Or to put it more frankly, he wants to swallow the forces that your mother accumulated in secret in the past hundred years to realize his own ambitions. Do you understand?”