Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Di Feiwen explained the past miserable experiences to Li Yao with a mix of truthfulness and exaggeration, giving Li Yao a glimpse at how the merchants in the Imperium of True Human Beings did business.

According to Di Feiwen, the businesses trading in precious training resources among the difference Sectors within the Imperium were theoretically very profitable.

However, because ninety-nine percent of people were ‘hominoids’ who were no better than slaves, there was little effective demand, which resulted in the stagnation of the market.

Even though some of the ‘hominoids’ were free citizens of the Imperium, they were often personally attached to experts and great families. In such a case, the training resources that they needed were purchased and distributed by the experts and the great families together. What they needed were mostly cheap goods of mediocre quality, whose returns were few. It was practically impossible to develop an exuberant upstream and downstream industry chain and new industries as the federation did.

The ‘true human beings’ naturally had a very high demand for training resources. They were willing to pay a high price for magical equipment, crystal suits, pills, and starships.

However, they often had interconnected business networks and long-term partners. A lot of the fields were monopolized by the traditional conglomerates such as the four Kurfürst families. The new business groups that had gradually appeared in the last hundred years or so could not compete with the traditional nobles and even the ‘royal merchants’ at all.

“The ninety-nine percent of bottom-level people do not have any demand. The one percent of nobles do have demand, but the entire market has been monopolized by themselves,” Di Feiwen remarked in obvious dissatisfaction. “The latecomers are not able to cram into their trade at all even if their heads are broken. It is not a bad outcome at all if they are drained by the monopiles!”

Li Yao listened for a long time and finally understood something. In general, the Imperium was a tray of loose sand, but there were vaguely two interest groups.

First of all, there were the contributors who helped Blackstar the Great claim the throne during the establishment of the Imperium of True Human Beings. They were the royal family and the traditional nobles such as the four Kurfürst families.

In the first one or two hundred years after the Imperium was founded, they had almost occupied all the prosperous areas at the center of the cosmos and monopolized the most profitable trades. They became the makers and maintainers of the game rules.

Then, there were the new worlds that the Imperium had found during its conquest.

Those new worlds were sometimes governed by the local experts who had surrendered to the Imperium and sometimes managed by the outcasts who had failed in the struggle of power at the center of the cosmos like the Black Wind Fleet.

Although they were weaker, they had the advantage in numbers. After a thousand years, they had more or less accumulated some strength, which gave them enough courage to express their discontentment regarding the game rules made at the center of the cosmos.

The ‘merchants’ that Di Feiwen talked about were even more miserable. They were mostly homeless dogs who had failed in conflicts in the past thousand years, or they had lost their homes, not conquered any new worlds, and therefore had to wander in the sea of stars.

The so-called ‘Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors’ was an organization where the losers gathered to warm each other and lick each other’s wounds.

With their keen instincts as merchants, they vaguely sensed the problems in the current system of the Imperium. However, they did not have the courage, the interest, or the capability to rise up and overturn the old system to establish a new world.

What they could do was travel in the worlds at the periphery of the Imperium where the forces of the emperor and the great nobles were not so influential and search for experts who they could cooperate with or even join. They hoped to win protection and expand the cooperation, slowly establishing a ‘free market’.

The Black Wind Sector had been an excellent partner for the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors at the beginning.

Since the Black Wind Sector was at a land of wars, it had great interest in training resources and would barely turn anything down.

The ‘hominoids’ of the Black Wind Sector, under the enormous pressure to survive, had more training opportunities than the ‘hominoids’ from the heartland of the Imperium.

After all, even if they were minor ‘slave soldiers’, it was certainly not bad to make them as strong as possible.

Furthermore, the Cultivators of the Black Wind Sector were best known for their disobedience, and they did not listen to anyone’s command after they went mad. Neither the emperor nor the four Kurfürst families were fond of the lawless, insubordinate barbarians, which created yet another opportunity for the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.

The Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors had begun the infiltration work on the Black Wind Fleet a long time ago. The cooperation between the two parties was rather pleasant. Even Di Feiwen, the master of the ‘Di’ family, which was a rather renowned family in the Black Wind Fleet, was appointed as a senior manager of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.

It was a pity that the Black Wind Sector as well as the other four worlds had already been taken down by the Covenant Alliance before any further cooperation. After the series of changes that followed, Di Feiwen spent the next hundred years in hibernation and wandered to the edge of the cosmos.

Out of his expectations, Di Feiwen found a country named the Star Glory Federation where everybody participated in training!

Di Feiwen’s heart had long been filled by the glittering coins of the Imperium. He could not care less about unsubstantial concepts like being a Cultivator or an Immortal Cultivator. However, the current business system in the federation and the effective stimulus on people’s ‘training demand’, as well as the scale of the entire training market and the upstream and downstream industry chain after the stimulus, made his heart pound. He was almost too excited to control himself.

Several barren worlds at the edge of the cosmos already had a market so huge. If the pattern could be copied to the center of the cosmos, what would it be like?

That was the biggest reason Di Feiwen had been willing to restrain the remaining soldiers of the Black Wind Fleet for a ‘battlefield uprising’.

After the ‘battlefield uprising’, he had spent three years observing and studying in silence. After he had figured out the operation pattern of the ‘training industry’ in the federation and was confident of his discovery, he finally shared everything about the ‘Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors’ unhurriedly.

“I did not know that such an organization existed within the Imperium!” Li Yao was rather delighted, too. “So, is there a possibility for the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the Star Glory Federation to cooperate?”

“There is, but the risk can be very high,” Di Feiwen explained, still in a seemingly frank and dutiful way. Yes. As a senior manager of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, he had a few secret intelligence channels under his control and various connections in the Imperium. He also knew dozens of vulnerable points that could easily be breached through at the peripheral worlds of the Imperium.

However, the ‘Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors’ was just a loose business organization after all, not a well-organized party of revolutionaries with lofty ideals. For every merchant, whoever gave them milk would be their mother. Betrayal and conspiracy were compulsory courses for them.

Today, they could absorb Di Feiwen, the No. 2 person of the Black Wind Sector, as a senior manager for their interests. But tomorrow, they might join the four Kurfürst families together also for their interests.

Yes. With his secret letter, envoys of the federation could sneak into a certain secret bureau of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors within the Imperium and receive tremendous intelligence. But nobody knew how valuable the intelligence was and if the strangers would betray the guests from the federation!

“For a decent price, they would sell one of their parents and give the other one for free,” Di Feiwen said. “How much is a senior manager who has been gone for a hundred years possibly worth?”

Therefore, in the Heavenly Eye Plan, the few secret bureaus of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors that Di Feiwen provided, as well as the contacts of some famous merchants, were all kept in reserve.

Unless it was absolutely necessary, it was definitely more reliable and secure for the federation to collect intelligence on its own.

“If we are going to collect intelligence on our own, I suggest we set the first jump point as somewhere near the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy.” Di Feiwen proposed another ambiguous but important message.

The so-called ‘Devilish Scorpion Galaxy’ was at the periphery of the Imperium. It was on the side far away from the Covenant Alliance and relatively close to the federation. It included almost ten Sectors and was given the name because of the scorpion-shaped nebula at its center.

The reason the first jump point was set to this place was because some Cultivators might still exist there!

Seeing that Li Yao had raised his eyebrows with great interest, Di Feiwen hurried to explain, “This is just a groundless tale. I only heard somebody talking about it more than a hundred years ago. It is said that an organization of Cultivators named ‘Starlight’ exists deep inside the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy, which has an ancient Cultivator who has been resisting the Imperium since the last years of the Star Ocean Republic with his immeasurable Cultivation.”

“He has been resisting the Imperium from the last years of the Star Ocean Republic to this day?” Li Yao could not help but feel dumbfounded. If that was true, the ‘ancient Cultivator’ could be no younger than a thousand years old. Would that not make him even older than ‘Gui Suishou’, the most famous senior in the federation?

Gui Suishou had lived for a thousand years by hibernating most of the time, but a resistance organization of Cultivators deep inside the Imperium must have been faced with the cruel hunting of the Imperium every day. It was impossible to hibernate for a long time. How did the guy survive a thousand years despite the fierce daily fights?

“The so-called ‘ancient Cultivator from the Star Ocean Republic’ is probably just a widely-spread rumor,” Jin Xinyue said. “It is perfectly normal for the ordinary people in the Imperium who suffer brutal oppression to hope for the arrival of a ‘savior’. However, it is possible that the resistance organization of Cultivators named ‘Starlight’ does exist, or once existed before, right?

“If we can find such a resistance organization, even if we can only find one or two Cultivators of the Imperium who are still resisting, it will mean a lot for us.”

Li Yao nodded heavily. Then he asked, “Is it possible that a resistance organization of Cultivators has lurked inside the Imperium for a thousand years without being annihilated?”

“Not very likely, but it is an interesting rumor nonetheless that is worth spending some time on. Should it be true, we will be in great advantage,” Jin Xinyue said. “The astronomical environment in the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy is very complicated. Cosmic storms and desolate worlds are everywhere. It is indeed a great place for hiding and guerrilla warfare.

“One other thing. There’s no telling if it is a coincidence, but the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy has a world named the Martial Meritocrats Sector. You should remember that it is ‘Blackstar the Great’ Wuying Qi’s hometown!”