Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Li Linghai had never really trusted me, no more than she ever trusted you. It was just a deal. I made her an offer that she could not refuse.”

Holding his arms, Li Yao licked his lips and said with an enticing voice, “Money, glittering coins, astronomical resources, immeasurable Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures… The government-in-exile of the Star Ocean Republic is short of many things, but money is certainly not among them!

“However Li Linghai hated the Cultivators, she did not hate the Cultivators’ money. It required money either to overthrow the four families or to reestablish order in the Imperium. In the new order of the new Imperium, it would still take money for her to fight for the supreme power with the ‘allies’ like you. Was there any reason for her not to cooperate with me?”

“Fair enough.”

Greatly enlightened, Jin Yuyan nodded his head and said, “If it were me, I would’ve cooperated with anyone if they had come to make deals with me with crystals that could fill a planet, no matter they were Cultivators, extraterrestrial devils, or other bizarre alien lives.

“If the crystals they brought for the deal were enough to fill a Sector, then f*ck it. I could become an avid Cultivator in the next second!

“There’s still one problem though. Didn’t you say that you were planning to surrender because Firefly was beyond maintenance and short of resources, and it was impossible for you to persist? Let me ask you, how did the desperate beggars like you get so much money to convince the queen of the Imperium?”

Li Yao sweated hard. “Well, about that—”

Jin Yuyan narrowed his eyes. “Huh?”

Li Yao swallowed. “Don’t be hasty, and stop looking at me so suspiciously and giving me so much pressure. Just listen to my explanation. The whole thing is very complicated, really. It can only be explained slowly and gradually… Yes, it’s true that Firefly was beyond maintenance and too destitute for us to live on anymore, but in the meantime, we were also very rich, if not the wealthiest in the universe. They—they are actually not contradictory! Aya, Director Jin, you are such a smart person with such prowess in business, and yet you can’t understand such self-evident logic?”

Jin Yuyan shook his head. “I don’t. Please continue your slow explanation.”

“We… We were short of cash, the resources to repair the starship, and the food to feed all the people, but it didn’t mean that we didn’t have other things!”

Li Yao slapped his thigh and said, “Coordinates! We have coordinates!”

Jin Yuyan’s eyes glittered. “What coordinates?”

“The coordinates of Sectors!”

Thinking quickly, Li Yao felt that his brain cells were exploding into a raging river as he went on colloquially, “You should know that mankind occupied three thousand Sectors in total in the prime days of the ancient civilization, but after the civil war of ancient Cultivators, the rise of demons, and the establishment and collapse of the Star Ocean Republic, the war grew more and more intense, and the magical equipment was more and more destructive. Countless Sectors were destroyed in wars. Even their coordinates had been soaked in the river of time.

“Today, the Imperium of True Human Beings and the Alliance of the Holy Covenant combined have only controlled slightly more than a thousand Sectors close to the center of the cosmos. The other Sectors have all become dead graves, scattered in the unknown places at the edge of the universe.

“Although they are dead, those worlds once boasted an atmosphere and a highly-developed civilization after all, if not perfect industrial infrastructure or relics that contain secret treasures. As long as they are found, it will be possible to re-establish an atmosphere and an ecological circle, restoring the former prosperity of those Sectors. At the very least, it is much more convenient and cost-efficient than to find a resource planet that is in fact not suitable for the survival of human beings and establish settlements on it despite the unfavorable conditions, isn’t it?

“Since the age of the Star Ocean Imperium, people living at the center of the cosmos have been expanding, trying to recover the glory of the three thousand Sectors in the past. The Star Ocean Republic was certainly not an exception during our prime days. We once sent countless exploration fleets, which gathered abundant astral data and new sailing routes. That information was later taken away by Firefly. As a result, the expedition of the Imperium of True Human Beings had to start from scratch. It took you a thousand years and countless resources, but you’ve only managed to stretch the border of the Imperium out by a tiny bit.

“In the recent hundred years or so, because the cost of the external expedition was too high, and the efficiency when ‘star children’ were sent to explore planet by planet was too low, the Imperium had in fact dropped external expeditions.

“But… But that’s only because you didn’t have the accurate coordinates. It was certainly difficult to locate one habitable planet from ten billion planets. However, as long as you have the relatively accurate coordinates, and as soon as the vitality in a Sector is recovered, just think about it, how much profit and how many business opportunities will be in it? And how much money will be flooding in?”

Jin Yuyan stared at him again, his eyes as glittering as crystal coins, and his voice also sounded like clicking coins. “How many Sectors… have you located?”

“Not too many, and not too few. About a hundred.”

Li Yao said, “The coordinates of those Sectors were stored in the database of the Institute of External Exploration of the Star Ocean Republic and brought away by us when we evacuated. Our original thought was to escape to the edge of the cosmos, settle on a few stable Sectors, reestablish our country in a thousand years, and then find a way to counterattack the center of the cosmos.

“It was a shame that when we found those Sectors according to the coordinates, we realized that they had been ruined in war a long time ago, their civilizations gone. They were all worlds full of rust and deserts like the Land of Sins.

“The resources we carried were too few for us to modify or reestablish such forsaken worlds. On the other hand, we were scared that the hunters of the Imperium might find us after we settled. In that case, we would’ve been screwed!

“In a panic, we looked for those Sectors one after another, updating their detailed information and marking them on the maps, but we eventually gave up settling in those places and continued fleeing. In the end, when we wanted to turn back after the resources were low, there was already no time.

“So, Director Jin, you realize where I’m getting at, right? We’re like explorers who have found countless treasures but who are too hungry to open them. If we can’t come up with a solution, we will be starved outside of the treasures that are brimming with milk and honey!”

Jin Yuyan finally understood it. “So, you are aware of the locations of a hundred abandoned Sectors, but you are short of the first resources, or the… initial funding, to develop them, right?”

“Exactly. Initial funding is an accurate description. This is why I am just a simple-headed warrior and you are a business genius!”

Li Yao slapped his thigh in excitement and said with even greater temptation, “You should know that those Sectors were very prosperous and developed once. Many of them were the famous natural paradises in the age of the ancient Cultivators. Too many unimaginably great seniors and experts used to train themselves there. Some other Sectors were the important production and research bases during the thirty thousand years of the Demon Beast Empire, and laboratories and weapon factories could be found anywhere. Even the relics of the primeval age could be easily spotted too! It was a shame that we were short of the initial funding in order to develop them on a large scale. There was nothing we could do about the relics that had been sealed for ten thousand years except for drooling.

“After much deliberation, if we did not intend to starve while holding the gold bowl, we could only return to the center of the cosmos and look for someone to cooperate with. That was why Li Linghai entered my eyesight.

“At first, I thought she was a leader of the reformists, and that was why I was honest with her. I didn’t know that the great fiend Blackstar the Great was lurking behind her!

“Even if we offered all the Sectors that Firefly had found during the thousand years to Wuying Qi, he would not let go of us. With that in mind, my only option was to run. It was not until I escaped to the peripheral worlds that I finally realized that you, director of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and one of the best businessmen of the Imperium of True Human Beings who began his career in space trades and development of asteroids, are a much more suitable partner than Wuying Qi and Li Linghai are!

“Come on, Old Jin, enough with your hesitation. Drop your bias. Both the Cultivators and the Immortal Cultivators work for money, right? Think about it, if you discover a new Sector, you will be able to establish a hundred trade routes. The profits of reestablishing a Sector include the sales of properties, the development of the mines and farmlands, the immigration fees, etc. Tsk, tsk, tsk. It’s too much for me to calculate. Would you like to run an analysis yourself?”

Jin Yuyan was obviously breathing faster.

Even though he was trying to suppress his heartbeat, he was not controlling his own body after all, and the little details still betrayed him without him knowing it.

“Is it true?”

He asked a meaningless question.

“I know it is hard to convince other people when I make such a statement without any evidence.”

Li Yao opened his hands and said calmly, “However, if you could think from a different perspective, why are you not convinced when Li Linghai and Wuying Qi have believed it?”

Slightly stunned, Jin Yuyan was deep in thought.

“Do you think that Li Linghai and Wuying Qi were so stupid that they were fooled by me easily, and they did not run any investigation on my statement?”

Li Yao said, “My cooperation with Li Linghai during the past half of the year had been quite pleasant until we fell out after I accidentally noticed the existence of Wuying Qi. Therefore, it was their problem, not mine. If I had lied to them, I would’ve been killed by them a long time ago!”

Jin Yuyan took a deep, deep breath.

“I still feel that you’re lying, but at least, the ratio of your lies has dropped from 10% to 1%. My instincts tell me that the routes of space trades that you talked about are a real thing, and it is indeed possible for me to make a great fortune if I cooperate with you.”

Jin Yuyan held his forehead and said, “It’s truly a very weird feeling, but whether or not you are speaking the truth, in the situation today, I don’t seem to have any option except to trust you without any reservation.”