Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The local guards of the Green Wind Sector finally came.

But at this moment, the turmoil of the million people was already beyond any measure.

The assassins of the Blood Oath Alliance, although not all involved in the scheme, were still expanding the chaos intentionally or unintentionally to disrupt the reactions of the local guards under the stimulation of more than ten years of life-and-death comradeship.

“No one from the logistics department is a good guy!”

“It is exactly because of the sloppiness of supplies that we failed to make greater accomplishments in the war!”

“The soldiers in the frontline are all good guys. The officials at the back are all idiots!”

It was almost a consensus of all the troops in the frontline.

Even the troops that were directly under the commander of the four Kurfürst families would think so intuitively after a decade of bloody battles.

By the time the exasperated local guards finally rushed to the podium, the assault warships that were obviously determined to die together with the enemy had already crashed into it.

While the anti-air magical equipment could leave thousands of holes on the assault warship, it was impossible to completely obliterate the metals weighing almost ten thousand tons.

The broken, burning assault warship smashed on the podium like a shrieking shooting star. The blast blew the soldiers who came for aid to almost a hundred meters away. They could see nothing anymore in the middle of the rising flames and smoke!

To this moment, Dongfang Tuo, the elder of the Imperium, had not died yet.

His loyal personal guards were all blocking the assassins on the podium. Some of them even exhausted their lives and weaved powerful defense shields with their souls and spiritual energy, helping the elder of the Imperium to resist the damage caused by the collision of the assault warship.

“Protect the elder. Get the elder out of here now!”

A team of local guards of the Green Wind Sector escorted Dongfang Tuo, who had been heavily wounded, to leave the area.

They patted a piece of oval-shaped magical equipment on their waists, and a translucent, arc-shaped shield appeared behind each and every one of them. When ten or so shields overlapped, they sheltered Dongfang Tuo without a single gap, like a solid turtle shell.

Before that, however, one of the flyers drifted and found its way through the shields onto Dongfang Tuo’s face.

Dongfang Tuo managed to raise his head on the floating stretcher and concentrate his attention on the content of the flyer despite his wounds. He was already infuriated, with his face pale and blood flowing out of his mouth, when he was only halfway through it.

“Those a*sholes are truly insubordinate and lawless!”

The elder of the Imperium gnashed his teeth. “The army… has been infiltrated to such an extent. It’s really… It’s really—”

Before he was able to finish his remark, he heard the thick and disordered panting behind him.

Slightly stunned, he turned around, only to discover that a local guard of the Green Wind Sector was staring at him. The man was also sweating hard with bloodshot eyes and nervously cramping lips.

Dongfang Tuo’s pupils immediately constricted to the size of needles. “… Wait. This is not true!”

“Slay the national thief and protect the Imperium!”

The local guard of the Green Wind Sector roared and ripped apart his own crystal suit brutally, revealing the terrifying body below where most of his internal organs had been replaced by destructive crystal bombs through surgeries. He lunged at Dongfang Tuo and embraced the elder of the Imperium tightly before the rest of the soldiers realized what was going on.

“Long live the Imperium!”

The guard laughed and shouted desperately.

BOOM!

A dazzling crimson fireball burst out from within the halo of spiritual shields. Dongfang Huo, who had been heavily wounded in the first place, was killed on the spot.

The enemy’s crystal bombs seemed to have adopted unique designs and very sordid formulas that targeted the soul.

When the situation was finally under control, and the local guards sent Dongfang Tuo’s broken, burnt body to the hospital for resuscitation, it was already impossible to rescue a single part of his soul. The man had been completely obliterated.

It was exactly “Incident of the Blood Oath Alliance” that took place three days ago, and this would soon shock the entire Imperium.

The vast Imperium of True Human Beings included hundreds of Sectors, but there were only five hundred elders in total in the entire territory.

It was not hard to imagine the position and the value of every elder of the Imperium.

Before, cases were not rare where assassins from the Covenant Alliance tried to kill the elders of the Imperium.

However, it was indeed an unprecedented event since the establishment of the Imperium that an elder of the Imperium was assassinated by his own army in broad daylight in a triumph ceremony under the witness of a million people.

Although the crystal bomb embedded in the member of the Blood Oath Alliance only blossomed for 0.5 seconds, the blast it raised did not stop there at all. After it killed Dongfang Tuo, it spread out at a speed faster than light in the entire Imperium, causing heated reactions in all the worlds, forces, fleets, sects, and planets.

Three days later, the blast rendered the bridge of Dragon Abyss, the flagship of the Deep Sea Fleet, into dead silence. Queen Li Linghai stared at the intelligence on the light beam, unable to say anything for a long time.

“How did this happen? It essentially disrupted my whole plan. The reformists have been pushed to the center of attention and on the verge of doom!”

Li Linghai’s fury almost burned several holes on the light beam. Then, she began to stare at Li Yao who was standing next to her.

“This really has nothing to do with me,” Li Yao shrugged and said.

Pausing for a moment, he said again, “Was it not done by your people? The slogan of this Blood Oath Alliance sounds a lot similar to the ideas of the reformists!”

“Of course not. We have not been prepared to completely declare war on the four Kurfürst families. Why would we do such a serious thing as to assassinate an elder of the Imperium?”

Narrowing her eyes, Li Linghai gnashed her teeth angrily. “The Blood Oath Alliance is a radical organization established by the young officers in the frontline spontaneously. There are a lot of similar organizations in the dozens of Sectors in the frontline, such as ‘True Dragon Union’, ‘Pioneers’ Society’, etc. Just like what I said a few days ago, they are the products of the infuriated young officers who cannot see any light in their future and who have a strong sense of injustice.

“The Blood Oath Alliance, on the other hand, is the most radical and extreme one of all the organizations of the young officers.

“In fact, I actually thought to regroup the organizations of the young officers and unite all of them before.

“However, things are often particularly sensitive in the army. With swords, sabers, guns, starships, and crystal suits in their hands, the young officers might’ve caused irreversible trouble in their passion. So, our infiltration in the army has always been particularly prudent. The best we did was to exchange the ideas of the reformists with the young officers. Our talks were all very subtle, and we never asked them to organize such an intense assassination operation!

“This is great. The entire Council of Elders will burst into fury because of the assassination. Although the Blood Oath Alliance will certainly be uprooted under the thunderous strike of the Council of Elders, the other organizations of young officers and the forces under the influence of the reformists will certainly take a great hit at the same time. Our cause will suffer a heavy blow!

“The strategy we had in mind earlier, which was to hide and call for supporters in secret until the time was appropriate, is absolutely infeasible right now!”

Thinking for a moment, Li Yao asked, “Is this Dongfang Tuo so important?”

“Of course he is!”

Li Linghai’s voice was mixed with ice right now. “He was one of the most important persons in the Dongfang family and had a huge influence in the finance and economics of the Imperium. He was also the CEO of the Imperial Expedition Bank, which is responsible for more than 50% of the military assets in the Imperium’s counterattack this time. Furthermore, he was personally responsible for the logistics affairs in the base of the expedition army, and astronomical money and resources slipped through his fingers every day. Was he not important?

“However, the manager of logistics in the expedition army is also a hot potato which has a lot of thorns in it. A lot of people hated Dongfang Tuo after he managed the supplies and logistics for so many years.”

Li Yao did not understand the subtleties in it until Li Linghai’s careful explanation.

This time, the Imperium of True Human Beings had launched a counterattack at the Alliance of the Holy Covenant with the power of the entire country. Naturally, the supplies that the overwhelming fleets and legions consumed every day were a terrifying number.

So many military assets could not be provided by any single Sector but required the joint efforts of all the worlds, in order to support the army’s battles in the frontline.

Then came the question. Different worlds had a different reserve of resources and a different view on the war. They also had different estimations about how many benefits they could earn through the war. So, it was a very subtle art to collect enough resources from those Sectors.

Offering all the resources of one’s own Sector dutifully to help the Imperium win the war only to watch other people claim all the advantages was certainly not something that any Sector Master or warlord was willing to do.

“Our world has supplied so many resources to the frontline, but my fleets in the frontline are often not fed. They are so hungry that they are almost licking the rust on the screws. Still, they have to carry out the most arduous battle missions. The troops that are directly under the command of the four Kurfürst families, on the other hand, are happy and healthy every day. Have my resources been fed to those pieces of crap?”

The warlords and the Sector Masters from the peripheral worlds sometimes had such complaints.

Honestly speaking, it was not necessarily true that Dongfang Huo had secretly stolen the resources of the peripheral worlds and supplied them to the fleets of the four Kurfürst families.

However, since astronomical military assets must be organized and distributed every day, it was simply too difficult to supply a fleet of a certain world exactly with the resources collected from the world.

Besides, for the warlords and the Sector Masters of many peripheral worlds, it did not matter at all what the truth was. They were only trying to get more benefits for their fleets with their tough stance.

While the Imperium was vast and prosperous, the total quantity of resources was limited after all. As the battle line was stretched out, the distribution of resources for the fleets in the frontline became more and more troublesome.

No matter how they were distributed, some fleets were always dissatisfied. They believed that “worms in logistics” such as Dongfang Tuo was intentionally giving them a hard time and therefore grew deeply resentful for the elder of the Imperium.

Therefore, the truth about the Blood Oath Alliance’s assassination was still hidden in the mist. There was no telling what it was exactly yet!