Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“You…”

Li Yao spoke to the queen hesitantly, “Are you hurt?”

“Of course I’m hurt!”

The queen laughed rather devastatingly. There was no telling whether she was mocking Li Yao or herself. “Why else do you think I was patient enough to listen to all your jibber-jabber? However useless Li Lingfeng was, he was an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage after all. Do you think that I did not need to pay any price to kill him with such an unbelievably overwhelming technique as ‘Dragon Over The Sky’ that was of the Supreme Emperor’s own creation?

“In order to kill Li Lingfeng, I activated ‘Dragon Over The Sky’ to the maximum almost by exploiting every drop of my life energy and focusing my soul into a ‘sword of true dragon’, which dealt a heavy blow on myself when he was obliterated. I have only been bluffing since then.

“I thought that you would immediately escape in fear after witnessing that I slew an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage whose level was even higher than yours in one attack. In that case, I would have enough time to rest and recover before I figured out whether I should continue hunting you or simply return.

“But I did not expect that you had such a secret identity and that instead of running away, you had a conversation with me for such a long time. Naturally, my wounds attacked when I couldn’t suppress them any longer.”

“That does make sense!”

Li Yao was greatly enlightened. He was quite puzzled a while back because Li Lingfeng was an expert at the high level of the Divinity Transformation Stage after all, however incapable the man was. If the queen could stab him to death in one attack casually, everybody in the Divinity Transformation Stage should feel ashamed.

It was only reasonable that the queen almost exploited all her vitality and soul in order to perform “Dragon Over The Sky”, the dominating technique that solely belonged to the Supreme Emperor ten thousand years ago!

“Careful. She may be lying.”

The mental devil, however, reminded him again, “It is possible that she is intentionally showing her weakness to allure you to attack her because she cannot tell if what you said just now is true. If you attack her while she is ‘feeble’, it will prove that all your fancy words just now are made up, and she can easily perform multiple metamorphoses in 0.1 seconds. Do you believe me?”

Li Yao pondered for a moment and said, “That is a possibility too. But it is very likely that she is truly wounded. I don’t believe that she is so strong that she can take down someone in the Divinity Transformation Stage without paying any price!”

The queen’s eyes moved between Li Yao and Li Jialing, as if she were at their mercy now that her disguise had fallen apart.

However, while Li Yao’s words just now were half true and half false, he did mean to get in touch and even cooperate with Li Linghai sincerely.

Besides, considering the situation right now, what could he achieve even if he were to kill Li Linghai? The reign of the Immortal Cultivators would not end here, but Li Yao and Li Jialing probably would.

Li Yao sighed and extended his hand to the queen.

The queen stared at his hand for a long time and frowned. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Well, it means that if Your Grace is too uncomfortable to stand, I can support you.”

Li Yao said sincerely, “As I said, I’m here to help you.”

The queen slowly wiped the bloodstain on her lips. Narrowing her eyes, she stared at Li Yao for such a long time that the gloominess almost pierced through every pore on his face.

In the end, she was truly relaxed, and all the killing intents over his body were concealed.

“You were the special emissary of the Speaker of the government-in-exile of the Star Ocean Republic?”

The queen rolled her almost transparent eyes, as if she was calculating Li Yao’s value. “You must be familiar with the political struggles, conspiracies, and schemes, right?”

“Not exactly. I am almost a straightforward person, and I am the worst at plots and tricks.”

Li Yao said, somewhat in embarrassment, “But I do know quite a few Speakers very well, and I had very in-depth communications with one of the Speakers!”

“Huh…”

Naturally, the queen did not know what Li Yao meant by “very in-depth communications”. She thought for a moment and went on, “You were also the captain of ‘Team Red Lotus’, the Speaker’s secret guards. Was it some sort of personal bodyguard and the head of the special forces? If you are given a bunch of capable but disobedient men, are you able to lead them to carry out missions similar to the destruction of ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’?”

“I think I can.”

Li Yao said, “But I prefer to carry out similar missions on my own, because in such a countryside as Firefly, few experts were qualified to take action with me. Most of them would’ve only slowed me down.”

“Besides, you are a reasonably good refiner?”

The queen looked at him coldly. “Can you maintain a Colossus on your own?”

“No.”

Li Yao shook his head and said, “I am not a ‘reasonably good’ refiner, but a ‘grandmaster’ refiner. I am best at the maintenance, upgrade, and modification of the single magical equipment such as crystal suits and Colossi, and I know a thing or two about the runes, the arrays, and the refiners in the age of the ancient Cultivators too.”

The queen stared at him without blinking.

Li Yao added helplessly, “I could’ve been more modest, but you asked me to speak the truth. The truth is that I am really a grandmaster. What choice do I have? It’s quite upsetting for me too!”

“… Fine. Let’s hope that you are not lying because both the combat ability and the expertise in refining can be verified very easily.”

The queen paced and hesitated for a long time. Finally, she made up her mind and said, “Listen up, I am not particularly bothered by your stance and your ideas. After all, the organized Cultivators are no longer at the center of the cosmos, and you can barely call on many supporters on your own. It won’t be a big deal to keep you by my side.

“Trust me. Before long, you will accept the real true path of immortality and become an Immortal Cultivator.

“But one thing I do care about is whether or not a person is smart enough.

“I killed Li Lingfeng not because of his ambitions, not because of his brutality, not because of our grudge a hundred years ago, but only because he was an idiot who would bring me infinite trouble. Period.

“I hope that you are smart enough. The smarter you are, the more pleasant our time together will be. Do you understand me?”

Overjoyed, Li Yao nodded his head hard. Thinking for a moment, he shook his head again. “But I won’t help you with the looting, burning, or any other immoral things. Should I encounter you doing those things, I’ll definitely stop you too!”

The queen frowned hard and gnashed the coldest voice out of her teeth. “Looting and burning? Who do you think I am? The wife of a certain bandit? I am the queen of the Imperium of True Human Beings, mind you!”

Li Yao said, “Well, what I tried to say were things like the ‘Land of Sins’ and the ‘slaughter stream’. My belief won’t allow me to do nothing in front of such tragedies. So, I definitely won’t help you bully the ordinary people.”

“Bully the hominoids?”

The queen smiled. “You are truly adorably stupid. But it does make sense. You are new to the Imperium after all, and you do not know anything about what happened here in the past thousand years.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll explain everything to you well after we return to the Deep Sea Fleet.

“Right now, all you need to know is that my target is never the hominoids but the well-respected high-level Immortal Cultivators, the noble families, and the experts who are supposed to die of old age.

“From that point of view, our short-term goals are the same. It was not in violation of your belief when I killed Li Lingfeng just now, was it?

“Tell me, if my ultimate goal is to destroy the four Kurfürst families and the other deeply-rooted families, sects, and forces of Immortal Cultivators, and to achieve the goal, I may even slightly loosen the control over the hominoids, give them more rights, and even get the hominoids armed as my troop—Will you give me a hand?”

This time, it was Li Yao who began to stare at Li Linghai, trying to find out the tiniest loophole on the queen’s face.

However, the queen’s un-aging face that looked like a snowy mountain was covered in the invisible solid armor again, making it impossible for Li Yao to notice anything in her heart.

“Loosen the control over the hominoids, give them more rights, and arm them on a large scale…”

Li Yao thought quickly but still found it hard to believe. “Really?”

The queen laughed. “You will know if it is real a while later. I believe that an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage who worked as the special emissary of the Speaker once is capable of making his own judgments.”

“Okay!”

Li Yao nodded his head and said without any hesitation, “If what you do is in the best interests of the ordinary people of the Imperium, as a Cultivator, I will naturally spare no effort in helping you!”

“Then, let’s go now. We have already wasted a lot of time.”

The queen said, “An expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage is like an awl in a bag. Their sharp edges cannot be hidden no matter what. So, you can stop bother thinking of a false identity.

“The Deep Sea Fleet is a private troop that I have founded in person. Few people are aware of its existence now. Every soldier holds unquestionable loyalty to me.

“I’ll tell them that you are a super expert that I raised in secret, some sort of ‘ghost warrior’ or ‘dark assassin’, for the purpose of carrying out secret missions that even the Deep Sea Fleet cannot, say, the mission to execute Li Lingfeng this time, for which you have been lurking for many years.

“Now that Li Lingfeng is dead, you can naturally surface and join the Deep Sea Fleet to stay by my side.

“Since you worked as the special emissary of the Speaker once, you can be my personal bodyguard for now. After we return to the capital and receive updates on the current situation, I’ll try to fight for a more important and critical place for you. Is there a problem?”

Li Yao thought for a long time. “No problem at all. Right. There is a problem. What about him?”

Li Yao grabbed the young man’s rigid shoulders and pushed him to the front.

Li Jialing glared Li Linghai so angrily that his eyes were almost torn apart.

“Him?”

The queen observed Li Jialing up and down for a while before she said coldly, “I almost forgot that there is still such a nuisance.”

“Hurry, say ‘mom’!”

Li Yao said in a low voice, “Her killing intent is gone. She won’t kill you now.”

“I am a monster who was born in a laboratory.”

Li Jialing’s muscles were so tightened that he looked as rigid as a monster. Gnashing his teeth, he squeezed out the words one after another. “I do not have a mother!”

“Exactly.”

The queen was not enraged at all but simply said casually, “I’m glad that you are aware of it.”

Hardly had she concluded her sentence when the queen suddenly took action!