Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

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Jin Xinyue bit her lips so hard that she looked like an infuriated little fox.

Ding Lingdang gazed at the little fox for a long time. Then she coughed and burst into laughter. “Jin Xinyue, you liar!”

Wu Mayan’s voice echoed inside the communication channel. “Masteress, what do we do now? We only have ten percent of our storage of crystals and ammunition left!”

“What else can we do? I’ll cover the retreat for you. Fall back to the No. 8 star fortress right now!”

Solo adventures in two worlds for a hundred years could completely change one person. For example, even someone like Ding Lingdang had learned to run away when the situation was not good!

…

Thousands of kilometers away from the Draconic Phoenix, on the flank of the Burning Prairie Fleet, there was an unattractive maintenance starship.

On the maintenance starship, Jin Xinyue paced in anxiety. Now and then, she would raise her head to read the light beam abruptly. She did not look half as confident as she had in the video that she had sent to Ding Lingdang.

The starship appeared to be one for maintenance, but it was in fact Silver Moon, the comprehensive command starship of the Dim Moon Fund, which was the second largest secret intelligence agency in the federation, where highly confidential missions were carried out. It boasted a very high ability in information collection and analysis on the battlefield.

By analyzing and combining the images captured by the probe cameras floating in space and the friendly troops, Jin Xinyue was able to grasp the general picture of the whole battle.

In this great gamble, the dice had been thrown, but the winner had not yet been decided.

On the Black Wind Fleet’s side, they had been aware of the wormhole bomb in advance, but they simply lured the main-force warships in to launch an assault with Black Swirl as the bait.

Burning Prairie Fleet, on the other hand, considered itself bait, too, and led the charge in the vanguard unstoppably, attracting most of the firepower of Black Swirl and at least five Colossi.

Flagship versus flagship!

Both parties regarded their flagships as bait and began a most powerful dialogue between flagships, which was rather rare for a space battle. But Black Swirl was obviously of a higher level than Burning Prairie, and a larger number of Colossi were about to break into Burning Prairie.

“Fishbone…” Jin Xinyue mumbled to herself. Her flashing eyes glanced at a corner of the light beam that depicted part of the space where there was a starship remnant ragged and riddled with holes.

There was an enormous opening on both sides of the starship, implying that it must have been pierced through by certain mystic rays in the shape of blades. The crew members inside seemed to have been killed by high temperature and radiation. Losing control and momentum, the remnant drifted like a meteoroid.

The fierce battle had lasted more than twenty-four hours. Remnants of starships large and small were everywhere on the battlefield. In the vacuum of the space that was devoid of gravity and friction, they would not stay where they were dutifully but fly randomly like a chaotic meteoroid shower. They were only ‘sliding slowly’ when they were compared with the starships around that were moving at a high speed. In terms of absolute speed, those remnants were almost all rushing as fast as lightning!

The carrier that pretended to be a piece of debris was ‘Fishbone’. The real wormhole bomb had been loaded on it.

With the battle coming to this point, every mystic ray and every bullet of spiritual energy was highly precious. Generally speaking, nobody would want to waste them on the remains.

Besides, right now, everyone’s attention had been attracted by the grand flagship-versus-flagship duel between Black Swirl and Burning Prairie. All the mobile forces both on the federation’s side and the Imperium were reinforcing the center of the battle. Nobody noticed the flank, which was relatively cold and empty. This enormous starship remnant even occasionally adjusted the direction unnaturally, as if it were still struggling before death, when it slid toward the sailing route of Black Swirl, shaking.

“We will enter the radius of destruction in ten minutes and twenty-two seconds!”

It was the ten minutes that would decide the fate of the federation and even the entire sea of stars.

If Fishbone, which pretended to be a broken starship, could successfully deceive all the starships and crystal suits of the Imperium and cut into the sailing route of Black Swirl, it was very likely that Black Swirl would be blown up and the federation would secure the final victory.

On the other hand, if Fishbone was discovered and destroyed halfway, Burning Prairie, as the bait of the federation’s side, was absolutely incapable of resisting the bombardment of Black Swirl and the damage caused by the five Colossi after they broke in. It would be obliterated within an hour.

If the flagship on their side was knocked down and the enemy’s space gate was turned on successfully, the federal army would completely collapse!

But right now, there was little that Jin Xinyue could do.

She could neither ask Fishbone to activate the spiritual shield nor send more starships and crystal suits to protect Fishbone because Fishbone’s biggest protection right now was the camouflage of debris. Turning on the spiritual shield, accelerating to the maximum speed all of a sudden, or receiving the protection of tremendous starships and crystal suits would only make the Black Wind Fleet notice the anomaly within a moment, and Fishbone would end up exactly like Moth.

“Entering the radius of destruction in nine minutes and fifteen seconds!”

Jin Xinyue felt that every second was as long as a whole year, and her heart was beating a hundred times per second.

Fishbone’s sneak-in had been quite smooth so far.

The battlefield was filled with simmering magma, with volcanic eruptions happening everyone. Everyone was pouring their firepower upon where the firepower was densest. Nobody noticed that an inconspicuous Fishbone was slowly marching toward Black Swirl.

“Entering the radius of destruction in eight minutes and five seconds!”

“God bless demons, god bless the federation. God bless demons, god bless the federation. God bless demons, god bless the federation!”

Jin Xinyue could not bear watching the agitating pictures anymore. She simply closed her eyes and prayed silently to herself.

She had made a disastrous mistake. All she wanted was an opportunity to make up for it.

After special modification, the number of crew members that Fishbone required had been reduced to the minimum. All of them were old demons almost two hundred years old, who were born in the age of the Pantheon of Demons and used to be the enemy of the Old Federation.

Those old demons, like Jin Xinyue, could not forget the past glory of the demon race. They found the human heroes of the era of the Old Federation disagreeable, too.

Now, they were planning to ‘seek revenge’ in a way that had never been seen before, which was to become the greatest heroes in the war that would mark the rise of the New Federation!

In another eight minutes—no, in another seven minutes—everything would be fine. Absolutely nothing could ever stop it…

Jin Xinyue thought so.

But when she heard the exclamations of the demon warriors around and opened her eyes to look at the light beam again, she realized that the gods did not hear her prayer at all and that they had played the most cruel joke on her, on the demons, and on the New Federation.

A Colossus of the Imperium and more than ten crystal suits affiliated to it happened to appear on the course of Fishbone.

This Colossus must have been deployed to block the Big Bai Fleet near the star beacon troops. Now that the Black Wind Fleet’s defensive battle formation had unfolded and the Big Bai Fleet had shattered, the space gate was already safe and secure. So, the Colossus was instructed to return to the central battlefield, preparing to join the siege to destroy the main force of the Burning Prairie Fleet. It happened to choose the route on the flank of the battlefield and run into Fishbone.

Everything was doomed.

Although no loopholes could be detected at a long distance, the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators who piloted the Colossi all had the keenest senses, which was enough for them to notice the anomaly of the ‘debris’ when they passed Fishbone.

This place was still far away from Black Swirl. Detonating it now would be meaningless. Destroying one or two Colossi of the Imperium was far from enough to reverse the situation of the battle.

In the meantime, since Fishbone was under the camouflage of debris, it could not adjust the direction on its own initiative to avoid the Colossus. Even if it fled at full speed right now, it would not get away from a casual attack from the Colossus!

At this time, desperate roars echoed in another communication channel. At the central battlefield, a Colossus of the Imperium had broken the barricade of fierce firing of the federation and breached Burning Prairie.

The double bad news made everyone on Silver Moon, including Jin Xinyue, as gloomy as dead people. Their heartbeats almost stopped, and their bodies were cold, while they stared at Fishbone flying toward the Colossus of the Imperium helplessly.

In another five seconds, the two parties would pass by each other. During the moment, the Immortal Cultivator inside the Colossus would certainly perceive the weirdness of Fishbone.

He would not need to check at all. A casual attack of the cannon would be enough to blow up the carrier, which was already riddled with holes and did not even open the spiritual shield together with the wormhole bomb it carried.

So, that would be the end of the ‘Dim Moon Plan’ that she had worked on for a hundred years and the fate of demons and the New Federation…

Jin Xinyue felt that all the bones inside her body had been removed. She took a deep breath but could not stop the sourness that was spreading out of her nose at all.

“Look!”

Right then, the most unbelievable thing happened!

The Colossus of the Imperium was only three seconds away from Fishbone when it suddenly suffered an overwhelming bombardment. The attacks of mystic rays, like raindrops, did not leave a single mark on the indestructible shell of the Colossus, but they were enough to raise the fury of the Immortal Cultivator who felt that he had been insulted.

In the last second, the Colossus of the Imperium slightly changed the trajectory and deviated from Fishbone’s course, lunging at the source of the attacks not far away from Fishbone.

Jin Xinyue was completely choked with sobs. She almost could not believe her eyes. Summoning all her computational ability, she magnified and sharpened the picture, only to discover that the attacks toward the Colossus of the Imperium were launched by a team of most common soldiers of the federation.

Judging from the obscure emblem and paint on their broken crystal suits, they seemed to be soldiers of the Heaven’s Origin Fleet. Even their leader was nothing more than an insignificant major.

A team of common soldiers of the Heaven’s Origin Fleet, whose crystal suits had been deformed and almost blown in smithereens, were more like debris than Fishbone.

But they somehow managed to pass through the fire net under the help of unknown strength and drifted to this place, and they even launched a suicidal attack at the invincible, dominating Colossus of the Imperium.

The seemingly meaningless suicidal attack made Fishbone and the wormhole bomb survive the disaster and continue its journey toward Black Swirl!

“The federation…”

Jin Xinyue was dazed for a long time. Then she mumbled with her most intense feelings.