Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

After saying that, Fei Qi seemed to have been greatly stimulated. Although Long Yangjun was piercing his acupoints and soothing his nerves, his facial organs were still wry, and there was excitement all over his face. “Those filthy, lowly miners conspired with the wicked people of the federation and marched into the Uranian Ring, the most spectacular and splendid hall of our civilization. They burnt, killed, plundered, and sabotaged, destroying all the art and culture that the Heavenly Light had accumulated for thousands of years. It was an apocalypse. The Uranian Ring civilization was done and done for good!

“The rebels of the Earthly Brute and the fleets of the Star Glory Federation attacked and occupied the Uranian Ring. The Heavenly Light lost our most important base. Our last remaining fleets wandered at the edge of the galaxy, without the support of resources or a base anymore. We became rootless duckweeds.

“We were unable to take back the Uranian Ring. The ammunition, spiritual energy, food, and other assets were all running dry. The sordid people of the federation were infiltrating us on a large scale, too. They divided us through all kinds of cunning and crooked methods, luring a lot of traitors on our side over to them. Our morale was lower than ever.

“Unable to fight the war anymore, we had no choice but to surrender.

“Although the Star Glory Federation had won the war, we still had a rather powerful fleet under our command. With whatever was left of our spiritual energy and the ammunitions, although it was impossible for us to take back the Uranian Ring, we were still capable of dealing heavy damage to the expedition army of the federation if we chose to die together with them.

“Under such circumstances, the Star Glory Federation couldn’t risk suffering such great damages just in order to annihilate each and every one of us. They accepted our surrender, but on one condition, we must accept the new government of the Uranian Ring Sector and all the decisions that it made. If we found them unacceptable, we would be asked to leave, meaning that we would be exiled!”

Long Yangjun waved her hands again. “A new government?”

“Yes. The Star Glory Federation is a highly hypocritical country.” Fei Qi gnashed his teeth. “They have been in the business of expansion and robbing this whole time as out-and-out invaders, but they have always been fond of varnishing their actions and righteously claiming that they were serving justice!

“Even a three-year-old knows that the federation had a war against the Uranian Ring Sector because it wanted to swallow the Uranian Ring Sector and occupy the super-large orbit dock that we inherited from the Star Ocean Imperium. However, in the federation’s propaganda, the war became a civil war of the Uranian Ring Sector!

“The officials of the Star Glory Federation described the insurgency of the Earthly Brute as an ‘uprising’ and the rebels of the Earthly Brute as a ‘revolutionary army’. It was supposedly at their invitation and request that the Star Glory Federation intervened in the war. So, the actions of the Star Glory Federation were justifiable as a so-called ‘Interstellar Law’!

“The Star Glory Federation claimed that it had no intention of colonizing the Uranian Ring Sector whatsoever and that our future would be decided on our own. Once the war was over, the government that was exclusively made of the Heavenly Light naturally had to be reshuffled. The new government would be elected and established through a referendum consulting all the people of the Uranian Ring Sector, including both the Heavenly Light and the Earthly Brute.”

Deep in thought, Long Yangjun said, “That doesn’t sound like a very harsh requirement to me.”

“Not very harsh?” The most painful memory in Fei Qi’s mind seemed to have been triggered. He bellowed, “This is an out-and-out trap, a blatant scheme! The population of the Heavenly Light is very small. It is less than one percent of the population of the Earthly Brute. If a new government was to be established according to the ratio of the population or through a referendum, we would have no power at all!

“To make matters worse, even our pitiful one percent of the power was stolen by the members of the Heavenly Light who surrendered to the federation in advance!

“Those traitors also belonged to the Heavenly Light, but they were among the bottom class of our people in the beginning. They were mostly workers who lived outside of the Uranian Ring and were responsible for the maintenance of the shell of the Uranian Ring!

“Those black sheep in the Heavenly Light were the first to surrender when the Earthly Brute and the Star Glory Federation assaulted the Uranian Ring. With their familiarity with the structure and weaknesses of the Uranian Ring, they sold our civilization to win the favor of their new masters. Right now, their cause has been justified, and they have become the spokespersons of the entire Heavenly Light, the mascots of the new government!

“Just like that, under the manipulation of the Star Glory Federation, an organization named the ‘Referendum Committee’ was founded to ‘help’ the people of the Uranian Ring Sector establish a new government. Jin Xinyue, the witch who is as venomous as a viper and a scorpion, was nominated as the president of the committee.”

“Wait!” Li Yao frowned again and asked, “Who is this… Jin Xinyue? Weren’t you talking about Ding Lingdang a moment ago?”

“Jin Xinyue is another notorious she-devil who is as infamous as Ding Lingdang in the federation,” Fei Qi explained. “They are both powerful, brutal beings. Many people even say that the two women have divided most of the power of the federation!

“The two she-devils each have their specialties. Ding Lingdang is tough, cruel, and bloodthirsty. She conquers free worlds like ours with pure strength. In comparison, Jin Xinyue is best known for her shamelessness, cunningness, and mercilessness. People say that when she smiles at you, you should be prepared to be devoured without any bones left! Half of the plots and schemes of the federation have been planned by this she-devil.

“During the war, Ding Lingdang, the Blazing Tyrannosaur, naturally took the lead. Once the war was over and the Uranian Ring civilization was to be chewed and digested, it was certainly the turn of Jin Xinyue, the Venomous Witch!

“Under Ding Lingdang’s lead and Jin Xinyue’s manipulation, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine what the new government of the Heavenly Brute rebels and the traitors of the Heavenly Light is like.

“The very first decision that the new government made after it was established was to reorganize the ‘Referendum Committee’ into the ‘Accountancy Committee’, which would still be directed by Jin Xinyue and specifically focus on holding the Heavenly Light’s ‘oppression’ over the past thousands of years to account.

“The second decision was that the Uranian Ring Sector would be merged into the Star Glory Federation and become a participant of the federation!

“It was a sign that they did not bother camouflaging their purpose any longer but were desperate to swallow our world!

“The righteous members of the Heavenly Light such as us couldn’t do anything at all while our lovely civilization was ravaged and devoured by the Star Glory Federation, because we could barely protect ourselves at that time. Under the shameless scheming of the wicked Jin Xinyue, most of our properties were confiscated. Some of the less fortunate ones even went bankrupt and lost everything overnight with a huge debt!”

Li Yao scratched his chin and asked, “Your properties were confiscated? Well… Under what ruse did this Venomous Witch confiscate your properties? Just because you lost the war?”

“Not exactly. As an extremely hypocritical and vile country, the Star Glory Federation certainly wouldn’t resort to such a simple and straightforward excuse to achieve their purpose,” Fei Qi said bitterly. “The witch Jin Xinyue brought tremendous skillful… lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and insurance specialists from the Star Glory Federation. They analyzed and calculated the ‘oppression’ that the Earthly Brute had suffered when they were collecting resources below the ground over thousands of years.

“The final conclusion of the ‘Accountancy Committee’ was that the previous government of the Uranian Ring civilization was heavily responsible for the management faults in the development of the underground mother lodes during the past thousands of years. The faults included excessive overtime, frequent accidents due to inappropriate safety measures, lack of compensation and subsidies after the accidents, child labor, lack of benefits such as endowment insurance, unemployment insurance, rental allowance that should be due for most of the workers, and so on.

“The most unbelievable thing was that she—she—Jin Xinyue even claimed that the strengthened arms that we carefully prepared for the Earthly Brute were a type of abnormality. So, they could be considered an ‘occupational injury’!

“All in all, the compensation, overtime fees, belated salaries, and all the other money we owed, together with the interest from thousands of years, became a flabbergasting, astronomical amount of money!

“The Accountancy Committee spent a whole year drafting an accounts list that was altogether a hundred and twenty thousand pages, elaborating on our every ‘default’. They also pointed out that the previous government of the Uranian Ring civilization needed to pay the offspring of all the miners in the past thousands of years, namely the entire Earthly Brute, a huge amount of money including unemployment relief, pensions, overtime fees, work-related injury compensation, death compensation, and the corresponding interest.

“The previous government of the Uranian Ring Sector had already been exploited in the war. Where on earth could we find the money to compensate them?

“Therefore, not only the entire Uranian Ring, but also the affiliated facilities inside the Uranian Ring, including the training chambers, laboratories, docks, and residences that belonged to us individuals in the beginning, were all confiscated ‘legitimately’.

“Most of the Heavenly Light were deeply connected with the mining industry in one way or another. If we got to the bottom of it, everything on the Uranian Ring came from the surface of the planet. Faced with Jin Xinyue’s unreasonable logic, we couldn’t argue at all, and we were now allowed to take even a single rivet away!

“The previous leadership of the government, who were big shots in the Heavenly Light that owned shares in the mining industries, had even more miserable outcomes. After the entire Uranian Ring and the affiliated facilities were reimbursed, the remaining part would have to be paid by themselves in person. Many mining giants were in so much debt that they wouldn’t be able to pay it back in ten lives. It was even more miserable than killing them instantly!”

Fei Qi was so despondent while he was talking that he struggled to continue due to sobbing many times. Finally, he calmed himself down and said sorrowfully, “Just like that, after the liquidation was over, the Uranian Ring Sector was officially swallowed by the Star Glory Federation.

“The Star Glory Federation claims to hold the policy that everybody is free to come and go. If the Heavenly Light was willing to accept the reality that they had lost everything and had to start from scratch, and to lower their heads and pledge loyalty to the Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars flag of the federation, they would be allowed to stay in the Uranian Ring Sector and even become a citizen of the federation someday.

“As for those who were unwilling to join the federation, the Star Glory Federation wouldn’t force us. They chose a new habitat for us, this place, the Dragon Snake Space Zone!”