Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Thinking about that, Li Yao sighed, somewhat helplessly.

It had never occurred to him that the situation of the Ancient Sages Sector would be so chaotic.

Without a government that had absolute control, it was barely possible to reach a long-lasting alliance or cooperation. Even if the emperor of the Great Qian Dynasty was persuaded, would he still be able to fulfil his promise when the Great Qian Dynasty was demolished by the rebels in the Riot of White Lotus, or the Heaven Battering King, or the Dark Cloud Ghost Knights from Ghost Qin?

Besides, people would suffer when a dynasty rose and when a dynasty perished. The more conflicts there were in the world, the more struggles the common folk would have. Too many innocent ordinary people had been, were, and would be killed in a protracted dynasty-changing war!

Li Yao was definitely not the most merciful person in the world. The Ancient Sages Sector was a good distance away from his homeland, too. They were two irrelevant Sectors.

However, it did not mean that he could turn a blind eye to his own kind who were identical to him—the white-haired old men, the children learning how to speak, and the adolescents in the best years of their life—while they were slaughtered miserably in the war.

Moreover, people were not just killed in the war. In great famines, tragedies where people ate each other’s children as food were not unusual at all.

In such an environment haunted by the ghosts, all kinds of immortal, inhumane things could happen. It was not just human beings that were trampled upon into dust but also the dignity of mankind.

If possible, Li Yao did not want such a tragedy to continue.

In his own belief, in the spirit of the federation, or in the national interests of the Star Glory Federation, there would be a lot of benefits if Li Yao interfered in the internal affairs of the world, helped the Ancient Sages Sector settle the chaos, and even supported a regime that was ‘pro-federation’.

However, it did not mean that Li Yao had to take the Great Qian Dynasty’s side.

Having received the basic history education in the Star Glory Federation and read many ancient classics, Li Yao knew the tales of the rise and decline of hundreds of dynasties in the three thousand Sectors.

The peasant rebellions such as the ‘White Lotus Cult’ or the ‘Heaven Battering King’ might not necessarily be the living embodiment of justice.

The Ghost Qin troops from the northern prairies could be brutal and ruthless barbarians, too.

But it did not mean that the aristocrats and the ruling class of the Great Qian dynasty were any better.

Generally speaking, at the end of a dynasty, it was often not outside trouble that crushed the dynasty but the internal putrefaction. It would be a compliment to call most of the nobles and bureaucrats in such a period ‘scumbags’.

Judging from the serious crisis that the Great Qian Dynasty was in, Li Yao seriously doubted that the federation could reverse the situation by dedicating tremendous resources.

After all, the federation was too far away from this Sector, which was a living example of ‘beyond reach’. If the Great Qian Dynasty was truly too rotten to be rescued, there would be nothing Li Yao could do.

Besides, the Great Qian Dynasty, which must have considered itself the center of the universe, might not trust the federation’s kindness at all!

In conclusion, the Great Qian Dynasty was not the only candidate that the federation had to cooperate with.

The White Lotus Cult, thriving in the southeast, and the Heaven Battering King, raging in the northwest, were two uprising forces both worth observing.

After all, the peasants in the medieval era were the most dutiful, obedient kind of folk. They would not have taken the great risk of fighting the fully-armed elite troops of the court unless they were truly pushed into desperation and left with no choice.

Only when they were too hungry and ate up all the rind and the grassroots, when they realized that they would either die of starvation or be killed in a revolt, would they rise up and seek a gratifying fight.

As for the solutions to famine…

It just so happened to be a strong suit of the modern Cultivation civilization.

The ancient Cultivation civilizations and the modern Cultivation civilizations had their own advantages in the military field, and the ancient Cultivation civilizations were even better in certain aspects. However, when it came to civil Cultivation technologies, the ancient Cultivation civilizations would suffer a crushing defeat.

The essence of the modern Cultivation civilizations was not the chainswords, not the crystal cannons, and not the crystal warships.

It was the popularized training arts and magical equipment, such as fertilizers and pesticides that could increase the yields of the farmlands and kill the pests, the automatic reaping machines, and the meteorological magical equipment deployed in the sky that could forecast and even change the weather.

With the help of such civil magical equipment, famine, a problem that troubled mankind for tens of thousands of years, was revolved once and for all, allowing the exponential growth of the population!

A civilization only had endless possibilities when its population was beyond a trillion!

It was so for the modern demons, too. The first creations of the botanists of the Blood Demon Sector, of whom the Fire Ant King was a good example, were not the ferocious, carnivorous plants but hybrid rice, wheat, potato, or bananas, which were resistant to the cold and drought and had a high yield.

What was the foundation of the overwhelming beast tides? The demonic plants such as hybrid rice, wheat, potatoes, bananas, and everything else that filled their stomach!

Every civilization’s development was in the shape of a pyramid. However spectacular the experts at the tip of the pyramid were, they had to be supported by the tough bedrock at the lower level.

The more solid the bedrock was, the more likely the experts at the tip of the pyramid would be able to break the limits of the civilization.

Although the logic was self-explanatory for modern human beings and demons, it might not be understandable for the ancient Cultivators.

In many worlds of ancient Cultivators, when the mortals were rising up because of starvation, the Cultivators often thought that it was no big deal and were still enjoying their own life!

It seemed even easier to support the rebellions such as the White Lotus Cult and the Heaven Battering King than to support the Great Qian Dynasty.

Li Yao did not know how developed the space cruising technology of the Star Glory Federation was right now after a hundred years.

However, it should not be a problem to summon a few carriers that brought cold-proof, drought-proof, high-yielding, genetically-modified crops as well as tremendous humanitarian assets once the space gate was established.

With enough people, people would be calmed down. He could impose influence on the rebellions as a representative of the federation and even transport the excessive population of the Ancient Sages Sector to the federation, which would partly relieve the population pressure of this world and partly build up the strength of the federation. Was the stone that killed two birds not perfect?

If the Great Qian Dynasty, the White Lotus Cult, and the Heaven Battering King were hopeless, the Ghost Qin troops in the north could also make a potential strategic partner.

Li Yao was an alien to the Sector. He had no concept of ‘rightfulness’ at all.

For him, there were only two things that mattered, the first being the people’s rights of survival and development and the second being the local regime’s long-term cooperation and even integration with the federation.

Generally speaking, when an ethnic minority overthrew the central dynasty, barbaric slaughters and bloody suppressions would always follow.

However, if the ‘iron riders’ on Dragon wolves with hard bows found hundreds of crystal warships over their heads, they might want to change their policy.

The ethnic group ‘Ghost Qin’ was the last candidate on Li Yao’s list if he absolutely had no choice. After all, it did not matter who claimed the central plateaus in the end as long as the process was fast enough, which would be far better than a hundred years of fighting and killing.

Of course, for the federation to influence the politics of this Sector, two questions had to first be figured out.

Firstly, Li Yao had to get to the bottom of the mysterious signal sent to the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector a hundred years ago. Judging from the civilization level of the Ancient Sages Sector, it was technologically impossible!

Secondly, Li Yao needed to find out whether or not scouts from the Imperium of True Human Beings who had similar missions to his were now stirring trouble in the Ancient Sages Sector.

Li Yao had learned most of his tricks from Su Changfa, a professor of the Imperial Colonization University in the Imperium of True Human Beings.

It was not hard to imagine that, if the scouts of the Imperium did sneak into the Ancient Sages Sector, they would certainly support the local forces to achieve their purposes.

Chances were that the Dark Cloud Iron Knights in the north were already each holding a machine gun now!

Li Yao could not help but feel chilly when he imagined them riding Dragon Wolves and shooting their machine guns.

Li Yao would never establish the space gate, which could potentially expose the coordinates of the federation, until the two questions were figured out.

But they seemed too far away right now.

Li Yao sorted through his thoughts and continued his report.

“As for the military forces of the Ancient Sages Sector, I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg because I’m at the southwest corner of the country. It is hard to estimate the specific scale of the forces here.

“I can only say that one state of the Great Qian Dynasty seems enough to mobilize tens of thousands of soldiers, and there are eighteen such states in Great Qian.

“Their weapons are rather shabby, but because of the abundant spiritual energy, their average body build is even better than the federal army’s, which makes them rather tough warriors in head-on battles.

“As for the high-end warriors, I haven’t found anyone in the Divinity Transformation Stage yet. But according to the southwest barbarians, of the more than thousand sects in the Ancient Sages Sector, the top hundred are almost all supervised by Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators. The top ten sects even have more than one Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators.

“Chances are that there are around five hundred Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators in this world. Their quality is amazingly high, too. Many of them are in the high level or even at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage!

“Up until now, there are three ‘super experts’ worth my attention.

“Firstly, Wan Mingzhu, known as ‘Mother White Lotus’, who is the leader of the ‘White Lotus Cult’ that is causing trough in the southeast of the Great Qian Dynasty.

“Mother White Lotus is a strong spectral Cultivator without a body. She claims to be the ‘forebear of all the ghosts’. Her whereabouts are unclear, and her attacks are unpredictable. She must be a super expert adept at attacks of pure energy. I’ve never seen such opponents before. I have to be very careful when I’m dealing with her.

“The second one is Qi Changsheng, the ‘Heaven Battering King’ who leads the millions of peasants in the northwest and has survived the hunting of the emperor’s army dozens of times.

“According to my fellow barbarians, the guy has built an invincible, indestructible body. Wherever he goes, there is nothing but drought. He has killed countless people without leaving any living creatures behind. He is the scariest fiend of killing in the Great Qian Dynasty.

“Of course, such a description must entail the intentional vilification of the court, but it is evident enough of the guy’s toughness, too.”