Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Master!”

 While Ding Lingdang and Li Yao were talking, Jin Xinyue and Di Feiwen, the two commanders responsible for the deception troop, showed up together.

 The moment they saw Li Yao, Jin Xinyue could not help but exclaim in amazement.

 After she exiled herself due to the critical mistake that she almost committed in the ‘Dim Moon Plan’ four years ago and left the power center of the Star Glory Federation for Boneyard, Jin Xinyue had been partly monitoring and reeducating the remaining soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet and partly performing intelligence collection and strategic deception on the homeland of the Imperium with the captives. The burden on her shoulders was definitely not light. She had grown a lot during the experience, too.

 In the past, she was like a glamorous queen bee that was filled with aggression and intimidation. Everybody could tell after meeting her for the first time that she was a mysterious woman not to be messed with easily. She practically had the word ‘schemer’ engraved on her forehead.

 But right now, her sharpness was concealed, and she looked as plain as a harmless, inconspicuous sparrow. The pressure of the ‘queen bee’ was entirely gone.

 Li Yao, however, knew clearly that the fatal sting that had been smeared with venom must be lurking somewhere inside her heart. Otherwise, she could not have become the commander of the strategic plan that was of paramount importance to the federation!

 “My king!” Di Feiwen bowed to Li Yao deeply.

 The vice commander of the Black Wind Fleet had been enjoying himself on Boneyard in the past three and a half years. He was obviously fatter than before, and there was even redness on his cheeks, making him look more like a wealthy merchant who believed in making money than a commander of a regular army.

 He was wearing a wrinkled uniform of the federation army, yet the courtesy he performed was that of the subordinates of the Imperium of True Human Beings when they met their ‘Sector Master’. It was truly ridiculous. Together with the ‘my king’, Li Yao felt goosebumps all over his body, and all his hair was standing on end.

 Li Yao rubbed his arms and said, “General Di, would you please stop using such a nauseating title?”

 “That, I can’t. You are forever the Black Wind king and the common master of five Sectors for all the soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet,” Di Feiwen replied respectfully but without any concession. “By calling you ‘my king’ in respect, it means the complete submission of all the soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet for you and the Star Glory Federation, and it also means that we have never forgotten the dream to follow you back to the center of the cosmos to reclaim our ancestral land and rebuild our hometown. You wouldn’t be heartless enough to deprive us of such a small dream, would you?”

 Li Yao was rendered speechless. Touching his nose, he turned to Jin Xinyue and asked, “What’s the situation at the center of the cosmos right now? The messages you sent said that the Imperium won quite a few great battles during the three years and a half while I was in the Ancient Sages Sector.”

 “Exactly. At the very least, that’s what the reports sent from the homeland of the Imperium to the Black Wind Fleet said.”

 Jin Xinyue invited Li Yao and Ding Lingdang into the information processing center. The remote communication base that the Black Wind Fleet deployed on the orbit of the brown dwarf had long been pulled to this place, turning the ‘base of the Black Wind Fleet’ into the only node for the federation to collect the Imperium’s intelligence.

 “According to the latest reports, the Imperium has secured three decisive victories in the last year. They marched all the way back to the border a thousand years ago.

 “In other words, the Imperium of True Human Beings has basically ‘recovered’ all the territory of the old Star Ocean Republic. Its territory is now larger than ever before. The situation couldn’t look better on the surface!

 “But the Imperium did not anticipate that the war would go so well and that so much lost territory could be recovered in only a couple of years. The army and supply lines of the Imperium have been stretched to the maximum.”

 “The situation in the Imperium today is somewhat similar to the federation’s a couple years ago,” Di Feiwen added. “They both suffer from indigestion because they have gulped too fast. It will take a long time for the Imperium to reabsorb the recently recovered territory and people into the economic, political, and military system of the Imperium.”

 Li Yao nodded. It was a matter of course.

 Three to five years might not even be enough to sort through every issue of one habitable planet with a large population. It was needless to mention the work for dozens of Sectors.

 It was easy to defeat the local guards of the Covenant Alliance and to reclaim the lost territory on the surface. But turning the people who had been brainwashed by the Covenant Alliance’s Path of Ultimate Benevolence into people of the Imperium and awakening their pride and dignity as human beings would be much more difficult.

 As he expected, Jin Xinyue said, “The situation that the Imperium is faced with is even more complicated than what we were faced with before.

 “In the past, when those Sectors were ruled by the Covenant Alliance, the Covenant Alliance established temples on every habitable planet to brainwash the people. Countless people were transformed into cold, heartless tools for production and war. They were even more inhuman than the people of the Imperium.

 “Before the Covenant Alliance retreated, they also took away almost all the resources and destroyed the mother lodes, the forests, and the farmlands that they could not take, leaving planets scarred and riddled with holes and people who had been seriously brainwashed and were deeply hostile to the Imperium.

 “It is quite a headache to combine the resources of the planets so that they can contribute to the next phase of the war, or at least not add to the burden of the Imperium.

 “Naturally, the Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium are not the most kindhearted people in the world. When it is necessary, they will not hesitate to annihilate a whole planet of people who have been brainwashed. But we are not talking about one planet but dozens of them. They must consider the implications of their actions. Besides, the population is a very important ‘resource’. Who should be appointed to reconstruct those planets if all of them are killed?

 “If they recovered so many planets for the salvation of the civilization of mankind only to kill all the people later, the morale of the army of the Imperium would be greatly struck despite their brutality and extremity.”

 Li Yao nodded and said, “Got it. It seems that the Imperium is in quite a predicament, right?”

 “Yes, exactly!” Di Feiwen said. “Those recently recovered Sectors were the traditional territory of the Star Ocean Imperium and the Imperium of True Human Beings a thousand years ago. They were the prosperous areas in the old days. Now that the Imperium has taken them back, there is no way that they will be abandoned.

 “However, if the Imperium is to continue their march, they will enter the remote worlds where the Alliance of the Holy Covenant rose at the beginning. Those places are the central territory for the Covenant Alliance.

 “In the war during the past thousand years, the central territory of the Covenant Alliance has never been invaded. So, the Imperium does not know the first thing about the environment there. Star maps, sailing routes, resource distribution… They have nothing.

 “It is not hard to imagine what a great headache it will be to fight in the unfamiliar, harsh environment against such an inhuman foe like the Covenant Alliance. With the Imperium’s state of ‘indigestion’ right now, it will be difficult to break through the central territory of the Covenant Alliance.”

 “Besides,” Jin Xinyue said, “we have to take the characteristics of the Imperium into consideration. The so-called ‘army of the Imperium’ is not a complete whole but a coalition army made of the emperor, the aristocrats, the Sector Masters, and the warlords. Each of them has their own plans for the interests of their own group.

 “Right now, they have taken back the most prosperous areas of old. Too busy fighting each other over the trophies, are any of them willing to enter the central area of the Covenant Alliance that is unknown and more dangerous than anywhere else?”

 “Therefore,” Di Feiwen said, “our conclusion is that the Imperium’s overwhelming strategic counterattack that has lasted almost seven years has achieved results far better than expected. It is now about to come to an end.

 “At least in the next ten to twenty years, the strategic aim of the Imperium will be to divide the trophies rationally and in order, and to reestablish government and consolidate the frontline on the recently recovered planets to prepare for the expedition into the central territory of the Covenant Alliance.

 “In other words, the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance will enter a ‘strategic stalemate’ phase again. As long as the Covenant Alliance does not counterattack on a large scale, a brief ceasefire will last for the next couple of years.”

 After pondering for a moment, Li Yao said, “This is not good news for the federation.”

 “No, it is not.” Jin Xinyue smiled bitterly. “Once the two parties enter the ‘strategic stalemate’, where the Imperium cannot break into the Covenant Alliance’s central territory and the recently-crushed Covenant Alliance is unlikely to attack voluntarily, it is possible that the Imperium will shift its covetous eyes and additional energy on the edge of the cosmos.”

 “I understand the personality of the warlords and the aristocrats very well,” Di Feiwen said. “When they are dividing the trophies, anything can be used as a bargaining chip. For example, the Black Wind Fleet that has nothing to do with all this at all.

 “It must be noted that the five Sectors including the Black Wind Sector, the Purple Fire Sector and the others have returned to the control of the Imperium during the strategic attack. So, the arrangement of the few worlds have now become a subtle problem. If they are allotted to a certain warlord or an aristocrat, what do you think the warlord or the aristocrat will think of the Black Wind Fleet, my king?”

Li Yao did not think at all. He immediately replied, “One world cannot have two masters. If I were a brutal, ruthless aristocrat of the Imperium who had just exchanged my hard-earned military credits for the Black Wind Sector, I would definitely view the Black Wind Fleet as a thorn in my eyes that I must eradicate whatever the cost might be.

 “After all, in a world where the strong prey on the weak and the winner is the king, it is the most reasonable logic to attack before you are attacked. If I were merciful at this moment, the Black Wind Fleet would certainly come back and try to take back the Black Wind Sector after they accumulated enough strength at the edge of the cosmos!

 “On the other hand, since I was bold enough to swallow the Black Wind Sector while knowing of the existence of the Black Wind Fleet, my own capability must be no worse than the Black Wind Fleet’s. Therefore, I should be confident that I can swallow the Black Wind Sector without worrying about the retribution of the Black Wind Fleet!”