Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

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“Yes,” Di Feiwen said. “The dozens of worlds and hundreds of resource planets that the Covenant Alliance has thrown out were more like meat with thorns than bones with meat. The Covenant Alliance has exploited those planets so seriously that they will be heavy burdens for the time being. They will not function again until tremendous resources are invested in them first.

“However, no matter how stingy the meat is, the hungry gluttons will still fight over it without caring about the cost. The experts have endless desires for territory, population, and resources. Now that the Covenant Alliance appears so vulnerable and worthless, the ‘alliance of fear’ has completely crumbled into nothingness.

“Then, when the lords and experts in the Imperium fight each other for the fat meat, what will happen if the army of the Covenant Alliance launches a counterattack beyond their expectation?”

“Is there any evidence that supports your deduction?” Li Yao asked.

Di Feiwen shook his head, but then he nodded. “I don’t have any direct proof, but here’s an interesting fact. The reports from the capital have mentioned many times that large numbers of troops of the Covenant Alliance have been defeated, but few high-level generals of the Covenant Alliance have been killed or captured.

“My king, you should know that it is very easy to fabricate news that tremendous soldiers on the enemy’s side have been killed in order to boost morale, but it is less convenient to fabricate the deaths of the famous generals.

“Besides, three to five years is too short. Even if it were a bunch of pigs who were piloting the starships of the Covenant Alliance and they waited in line to be killed, it wouldn’t have been so easy to annihilate all of them so quickly, right?

“Therefore, I’m strongly suspicious that the Covenant Alliance evacuated from a lot of Sectors voluntarily and in order. They threw the heavy burdens to the Imperium while keeping most of their available forces in the central area, waiting to launch a fatal attack.”

Li Yao pondered for a moment. “It is such a simple strategy that we can see it clearly although we are at the edge of the cosmos. Are the leaders of the Imperium all idiots?”

“We are not involved in the incident. Naturally, we can analyze the whole picture calmly,” Di Feiwen said. “However, if you are involved in the game, you are often not free to do what you want. The trophies of dozens of Sectors are too attractive. With the Immortal Cultivators’ nature to strengthen themselves without considering the cost, who could turn a blind eye on them and hold back their urges?

“Besides, ‘unity’ can never be achieved singlehandedly. Even if a certain aristocrat or a warlord is wise and calm enough to know the importance of unity because the great foe is yet to be eliminated, how can they not join the greedy game when other people are all dividing the territory and looting the trophies unhesitatingly? If other people loot and they don’t, they will become relatively weak, and the weak will receive the cruelest punishment in the Imperium!”

Feeling that his head was beginning to ache, Li Yao remarked, “So, the Covenant Alliance has set up an open trap that you have no choice except to set foot in, right?”

“It is an open trap, but it is also a wild gamble,” Di Feiwen said. “If my analysis is correct, the leader of the Covenant Alliance right now definitely deserves to be called a genius. After concluding that the strategy of aggressive attacks that the Covenant Alliance adopted in the past thousand years was wrong, he was bold and capable enough to offer to abandon what they had earned in the past thousand years in order to perform the most complete strategic adjustment.

“If such a great man does exist in the Covenant Alliance, how can he sit and wait for the Imperium to organize themselves? After all, the dozens of worlds that he has thrown out indeed boast a lot of potential. If the Imperium can truly digest and absorb those worlds into the military and political system of the Imperium, the Covenant Alliance will be a victim of its own scheme, and it will be forever doomed.

“Therefore, he must have a series of fatal moves to raise contradictions and conflicts within the Imperium. Chaos rising in the Imperium will be inevitable!

“Today, he has thrown out dozens of Sectors as bait. Then, what are the prey that he intends to ‘hunt’ and ‘devour’?

“All in all, I am not sure whether our greatest enemy will be the Imperium or the Covenant Alliance, and whether we are going to overturn the Imperium or give the Imperium a hand at the most critical moment.”

Di Feiwen’s words rendered the four of them silent.

A long time later, Li Yao sighed gloomily and said, “I feel that my head is close to exploding.”

“There is no need to be upset, my king,” Di Feiwen said earnestly. “Even if the current leader of the Alliance of the Holy Covenant is a rare genius and he has decided to use a shocking plan over the past few years with the dozens of Sectors, there is at least one factor that he could in no way have foreseen—the Star Glory Federation.

“The Star Glory Federation—which is led by smart, almighty heroes such as my king and Speaker Ding—is definitely an unexpected chess piece that will shake the entire game!”

Li Yao tilted his head and thought for a long time before he nodded slowly. “That’s very true.”

…

After figuring out the basic situation in the Imperium, Li Yao spent the next two weeks studying the details of the Heavenly Eye Plan and the Heavenly Slayer Plan with the leadership of the intelligence system and the strategic deception center, including Ding Lingdang, Jin Xinyue, Di Feiwen, and Guo Chunfeng.

After much consideration, they still decided to set the first jump point as the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy.

Without the navigation of an enormous space gate, it was practically impossible for an organized troop to cross such a long distance at once. Even if they did make it through the journey, the powerful space ripples would likely be discovered.

Therefore, the smaller the scale of the first jump, the better. For Li Yao, it would be best if he went alone.

For a person of his level, when he was to carry out an infiltration or investigation mission, 99.99% of the intelligence workers and experts would be a burden.

For the experts at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage such as Ding Lingdang, they would be a heavy burden for the starships and the supplies. Every unparalleled expert was a glutton of gold and a bottomless hole to absorb resources. How could two experts close to the Divinity Transformation Stage get so many resources for their daily training?

Eventually, the plan that Li Yao and the others came up with was that he was going to jump to the depths of the Devilish Scorpion Nebula first and investigate the situation there to check if it was suitable as a platform for the federation to enter the Imperium and if it was possible to find ‘Starlight’, the resistance organization of Cultivators, as well as the ‘lost Cultivator’ who had allegedly lived more than a thousand years.

Whether or not he found ‘Starlight’ and the ‘lost Cultivator’ eventually, he would find a way to send signals back to the federation when the environment was appropriate.

Once his signals were received, the elite intelligence group made of members of the Strategic Deception Center, the Secret Sword Bureau, and the Dim Moon Fun would jump over as the first wave and establish a long-term, professional station for intelligence work.

If the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy was too rough to serve as a platform and no valuable intelligence could be found, Li Yao would find a way to move to the worlds at the periphery of the Imperium where the ‘Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors’ was more active. Then, he would try to collect some messages through the intelligence network of the merchants. It would be even better if he could step into the core circle of the Imperium and find a spy that the federation could make use of.

For Li Yao himself, he also had a personal motive.

He had not forgotten Li Linghai, who could be his foster father’s old lover.

Li Linghai had been the Crown Princess of the Imperium of True Human Beings more than a hundred years ago.

Judging from the intelligence that the Black Wind Fleet had received intermittently in the past hundred years, the previous Crown Princess had already become the queen.

After the death of ‘Blackstar the Great’ Wuying Qi, no emperor as dominating as him had appeared in the thousand years of succession of the crown. Even though they were not puppets, they were always hamstrung by the aristocrats, ministers, and warlords.

Therefore, the identity of ‘queen’ was not very impressive by itself.

However, through Di Feiwen, Li Yao also learned that the queen Li Linghai was from the ‘Li family of Canglan’.

The Li family of Canglan was a deep-rooted noble family that had been prosperous since the age of the Star Ocean Republic with a history of thousands of years. When Wuying Qi overturned the republic and established a monarchy, the Li family of Canglan had made great contributions.

The fact that it was one of the four Kurfürst families was the best proof for the capability of the Li family of Canglan.

Li Linghai was apparently one of the central figures in the Li family of Canglan. Otherwise, how would she have been qualified to be the queen of the Imperium?

How did such a mysterious and strong woman get in touch with Li Yao’s foster father, a refugee from the Covenant Alliance?

Also, his foster father had given him half of what appeared to be a key and asked him to deliver it to Li Linghai, promising that Li Linghai would certainly guarantee the safety of Li Yao and even the Star Glory Federation. What was the meaning of that?

In any case, Li Linghai and the Li family of Canglan were a lead that was worth following.

Since the Imperium was not well-united, the Li family of Canglan would have its own ambitions and interests, too. Perhaps the two parties could achieve cooperation of a certain degree. Whatever the price was, the federation needed to have ten to twenty golden years of development. After that, the federation would have the sharpest claws and teeth.

That was Li Yao’s goal.

Basically, he now had three identities.

First of all, he was naturally an emissary who was responsible for the reconnaissance for the main troops and the search for a suitable platform.

Secondly, he was a ‘diplomat’. The relation between the federation and the Imperium was very subtle right now, and they were not necessarily sworn enemies who had to fight the moment they met. Even if the federation could not live in peace with the Imperium in the general sense, it was at least possible to compromise with certain forces within the Imperium and make a deal with them.

Who else was more qualified to take part in diplomatic activities on behalf of the Star Glory Federation than Li Yao?

Eventually, in the worst case scenario that nobody wanted to see, he would also be the most dangerous expert who would be responsible for the ‘unrestricted warfare’ and ‘asymmetric attacks’ within the Imperium in retribution for the Imperium’s invasion against the federation.

Of course, the federation would not place all their hope on him alone.

According to the deal, if he did not send any messages back in half a year, a second batch of experts who were combinations of ’emissaries’, ‘diplomats’, and ‘destroyers’ would be sent out to the Imperium.