Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Faced with the scattered light spots on the 3D light beam that altered their direction and paved forward fluently, the ministers, representatives, advisors, and analysts in the highest command center were all dumbfounded. Tides of disbelief each higher than the last were raised in their hearts!

Anyone with some understanding of space warfare would understand how difficult it was to turn an entire fleet made of countless starships that had different safety distances and spiritual shield frequencies when the fleet was running at a super high speed of several thousand kilometers per second!

The structure intensity of the starships themselves, the limits of the body and brains of the soldiers on board, the coordination among the starships, their locations in the battle formation… All of them were complicated problems that were a high burden of calculation.

Moreover, such a movement had been performed in the ‘cone-shaped attack formation’, the densest formation of all, against the fatal bombardment of the enemy. If they had not seen it with their own eyes, they would never have believed that it could be done. The commander who was bold enough to do such a thing must be the craziest person in the world!

The Big Bai Fleet, however, miraculously accomplished it.

They had performed the most glamorous emergency turn. Thousands of exhaust flames pulled almost perfect arced traces before they stabbed into the soft belly of the Black Wind Fleet like shining sabers.

“How is it possible? Why did the Big Bai Fleet show up there? Weren’t they supposed to be marching toward the No. 2 and No. 2 space gates?”

“They are not under spiritual and magnetic interference at all. They turned off the network and entered the radio silence state, thereby keeping themselves safe from the attack of the crystal processor virus. They’re maintaining minimal communication within the fleet. Yet, they kept such a strict and delicate battle formation with such weak communication?”

“Is such amazing commanding ability really accomplishable for the beginning level of the Nascent Soul Stage? What exactly is going on?”

“In any case, they have come at the perfect time. The second wave of starships of the Black Wind Fleet are still mixed with the star beacons. They are fundamentally a tray of loose sand and still under the shock of the space ripples. Those starships are practically defenseless!”

“Contact the Big Bai Fleet now. Hurry. Hurry up? What? Still can’t reach out to them? Well—”

Unlike the ‘navy’ in the civilizations of single planets, the ‘Deep Sky Fleets’ of universal civilizations often wandered off the mother planet or even mother world and explored the places thousands of lightyears away or even further. The mother world had little control over the Deep Sky Fleets, and the Deep Sky Fleets were essentially self-governed, independent kingdoms.

It could be said that the Star Glory Federation had nine Sectors. Other than the seven Sectors in the general sense, the Burning Prairie Fleet and the Big Bai Fleet were two tiny Sectors that had all the necessary elements.

In contrast the Burning Prairie Fleet, which was built by the funding from the federal government, the Big Bai Fleet had been constructed mostly based on Jin Xinyue as well as the civil corporations and private sects such as the Glorious Sunlight Group. It had basically been developing on its own. Naturally, the federation government had even less control over it.

The Big Bai Fleet had just finished a voyage drill that lasted a whole year. Although sailing logs were sent back every few days, nobody knew exactly where they had gone, what they had done, what changes they had experienced, and what they were up to except for the information provided on the logs.

Everybody knew that Bai Xingjian, the commander of the Big Bai Fleet, had always been a misfit for the traditional fleet system of the federal army, but he was Jin Xinyue’s trusted subordinate.

Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!

Everybody cast their eyes upon Jin Xinyue.

But Jin Xinyue was as dumbfounded as they were. Staring at the unpredictable but thunderous spots on the light beam, she did not have the vaguest clue what was happening to the Big Bai Fleet or Bai Xingjian.

“According to the acceleration right now, there are only three minutes to go before the Big Bai Fleet clashes with the second wave of starships teleported by the Black Wind Fleet!”

On the light beam, the war was like a chess game.

The first unexpected chess piece jumped up and bared its bloodstained tusks!

…

The war was a chess game, in which the leadership of the federation—such as Wan Guqing, Guo Chunfeng, Jin Xinyue, and Bai Xingjian—were the players.

For the dominating big shots, their war was fought from the dry and safe command center in front of the thousands of ever-changing light beams by reading the numbers and data and making corresponding arrangements.

Their war was sometimes magnificent and grand, sometimes mysterious and unpredictable. It was indeed a great game with the universe as the board and the starships as the chess pieces.

Everything was clear on the board. There were always traces to be found. The process of attacks and counterattacks always repeated itself. Soul-stirring ‘decisive moves’ might happen every once in a while, too.

Even if they failed, they would at least know clearly why they had failed. They would still have time to be shocked, dazed, infuriated, or regretful.

However, a war could not just be won by the big shots.

Every amazing decisive move from the big shots, every well-concocted scheme, and every deeply-hidden trap had to be accomplished by the common soldiers who were fighting hard on the frontline.

For the common soldiers deeply mired in the cruel battle between the Heaven’s Origin Fleet and the Black Wind Fleet, it was impossible for them to regard the war as a game.

Through the bloodstained goggles on their helmets, the war unfolding in front of their eyes was not a chess game where every player’s every move was clear, but two enormous, chaotic, violent turbulences of death, which were colliding and dragging each other into mutual destruction!

The Rabid Dog was one of the common soldiers.

He could not see the scheme of the Black Wind Fleet, the mayhem of the Burning Prairie Fleet, and the miraculous arrival of the Big Bai Fleet. He did not know that the tiny light spots that were hopping out of the void from far, far away were the components of the Imperium’s space gate. Nor could he foresee what would happen after the star beacons were done assembling.

He could only see that the spiritual shields of the starships around him were turning dim red, like venous blood that was slowing dried.

He could only see that the shells of a lot of starships turned dangerous orange before they exploded without warning. While they turned into enormous fireballs, they shot out tremendous pieces that were mixed with violent spiritual energy and electric arcs in all directions, producing deadly storms that swept without any pattern on the battlefield.

He saw that the sharp shrapnel reaped lives easily like sickles, caring little whether their targets were a friend or foe, without the least mercy. A lot of soldiers of the federal army and soldiers from the Imperium were fighting hard when they were pierced through by the same broken pieces, ending up like meat on a skewer.

He saw even more people whose trajectory was deviated and whose power rune arrays were broken because of the blow of the broken pieces. It was utterly useless however hard they struggled, until they fell into the enormous pillars of light that were shot out by the warships of the two parties in desperation. The moment they fell into the pillars of light, they were immediately lost, like mosquitoes falling into melted steel, leaving neither the slightest scream nor the tiniest dark smoke.

The Rabid Dog had mostly been involved in ground battles within the atmosphere, but he had also participated in space battles before.

Deaths in ground battles were always accompanied by screams, cries, tears, and fearless roars, as well as deafening explosions.

The battles in space, on the other hand, were utterly soundless. Everybody seemed to be playing a solemn, grave mummery.

The most glamorous pictures of destruction and the most maddening silence gave him an extremely weird sense of contradiction, making it impossible for him to tell which of the two forms of battles were crueler.

Perhaps wars were always the same. For insignificant dust and worthless ants, who were nothing more than figures larger and small on the combat ability calculation tables, the ground and the space were equally cruel.

It was true that he was at the peak of the Core Formation Stage. He was also a major in the federal army.

But so what?

The several-kilometer-long starships were swirling before him slowly like dying whales, only to be pierced deeply by dozens of light pillars like spears. Cracks were slit easily on the seemingly solid plate armor, and fireballs erupted out of the cracks like abnormal tumors. What erupted out of the cracks at the same time were the Cultivators in the Building Foundation Stage, Core Formation Stage, or the Nascent Soul Stage who were piloting the starship. Whether or not they could activate their feeble spiritual shield for self-defense, they would eventually be burnt to ashes or melted into orange meteoroids together with their crystal suits.

The Rabid Dog drifted with the surging tides of spiritual energy, like a straw that was floating on the surface of an ocean. The meteoroids made of countless human bodies and their magical equipment brushed past him.

His spiritual energy was running dry. His crystal suit was about to be wasted, and only dozens of rune arrays were still functional, barely.

At this moment, even the tiniest bullet might take away his insignificant life. Faced with such an enormous and chaotic battlefield, such an absurd and cruel fate, was there any difference between a Core Formation Stage Cultivator or an ant?

His body that was floating like a dry leaf suddenly halted, as if he had reached the eye of the storm that was temporarily steady. The heated battlefield came to a weird peace.

When his violently shaking brain gradually stabilized, the Rabid Dog finally sensed the excruciating pain caused by his broken bones, exploding internal organs, and furiously burning nerve endings, as well as the sense of suffocation now that his soul had been exhausted.

The field-tested veteran realized with his keen intuition that the brief peace was an ominous sign.

They had failed the war!

The fire in the bleak space died out as fast as it was ignited. After only a moment, nothing but cold debris of starships and bizarre-shaped corpses was left around him, like a boundless grave in space. The sparse pillars of light that the starships on his side shot out would only raise counterattacks a hundred times more enormous from the enemy’s side. The Exos of the Imperium, mixed with thunder and lightning, were also sweeping over like a swarm of locusts!

The Rabid Dog laughed miserably, only to vomit a large mouthful of blood. He felt numbness around his abdomen. When he looked down, he noticed that a section of an antenna as thick as fist had pierced his liver.

His experience of walking past death in the past hundred years told him that it was a fatal wound.

This time would truly be the last time that he struggled.

“Such… an unremarkable death. Damn it!”

The Rabid Dog felt that his head was dizzy. His past was flashing in the darkness like a kaleidoscope. The burning pain in his liver area and the never-forgotten punch a hundred years ago gradually overlapped.

He felt like vomiting again.

This time, he wanted to vomit out the blood of his entire life.