Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao was stunned for a long time before he finally replied in embarrassment, “So, Qi Yuanbao and your wife are biological siblings. Nobody could’ve seen that coming.”

Neither Qi Yuanbao, a senior manager of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, nor Wuying Qinxin, Jin Yuyan’s wife, was a Mr. Nobody. Li Yao had naturally collected their files before, but none of the files mentioned the slightest connection between the two of them.

Therefore, it was perfectly reasonable that Li Yao had certain inappropriate deductions.

“It’s their most deeply hidden secret. Outsiders don’t know anything about it at all.”

Jin Yuyan sniffed and said, “My father-in-law was named ‘Wuying Yuanshan’. A hundred and fifty years ago, he was the Sector Master of ‘Spiritual Mountain Sector’, a rather prosperous world at the edge of the Imperium. Also, he made a lot of friends and accumulated tremendous wealth, which vaguely turned him into the leader of the ‘Wuying group’.”

“The Wuying group?”

Li Yao immediately recalled that there was indeed a “Wuying group” in the business world of the Imperium of True Human Beings.

Five hundred years ago, since the royal power declined and the four families rose, the previous members of the royal family had shriveled. Part of the members lingered in the capital, turning into the ragged Imperial Guards that did not have any morale or training. Some other members of the royal family left the capital and found a way out in various parts of the universe with their family belongings.

The four families had been controlling those members of the royal family strictly in politics. They were only allowed to be the Sector Masters of the peripheral worlds of the Imperium but forbidden to touch the power at the center of the cosmos again.

However, even the slimmest camel was larger than a horse. The Wuying family had governed the center of the cosmos for five hundred years after all. Neither their wealth nor their power could’ve thawed in the blink of an eye. Besides, the four families still needed the emperor from the Wuying family to reign the Imperium. Naturally, they could not push the Wuying family too hard. Should it raise the intense resistance of the Wuying family, and the two parties got into a huge fight, it would be other people who would step in and take the advantage.

Therefore, the four families and the members of the royal family somehow reached an unspoken deal. The Wuying family was not to reveal the ambition for the supreme power, but it was not a problem for them to go to the edge of the Imperium and be extravagant merchants, which was even supported by the four families in secret.

Every man sought after either power or fortune. Now that the Wuying family had lost hope to rise to power, if they did not want to live the rest of their life like swine, they could only devote themselves to the pursuit of money.

They carried the wealth of the people that they exploited during the first five hundred years. The abundance of the capital that they brought from the center of the cosmos was naturally incomparable for the small families locally born and raised at the edge of the Imperium. Also, thanks to the secret support of the four families, they had connections, visions, strategies, and technologies that the bumpkins of the peripheral worlds had never seen or heard before. Very soon, the bumpkins were crushed in competitions, and they controlled many central industries at the edge of the Imperium, making a huge fortune through it.

In the hundreds of years that followed, the capitals with the royal family as the background, managed by those with the “Wuying” surname, were known as the Wuying group.

“My father-in-law was once a leader of the ‘Wuying group’. He was an ambitious and visionary man. In his prime days, he even thought to focus all the capitals of the ‘Wuying group’ in order to accomplish an unprecedented achievement!”

Jin Yuyan sighed and said, “It was a pity that he was too determined and confident to forget the reason why the four families supported the ‘Wuying group’ in the beginning. Did those people really want them to make a fortune? Of course not. They were just hoping that a tiny bit of money would be enough to hold the royal family back and corrode their will.

“If the members of the royal family stayed at the edge of the Imperium, living an extravagant and obedient life, the four families would not bother to deal with them at all, but my father-in-law was planning to concentrate all the capitals for a ‘great cause’. Hehe. He was asking to be killed!

“Then, it was the classic drama where revenge is a dish best served cold. My father-in-law ‘Wuying Yuanshan’ was killed in an assassination uncannily, and the whole family was immolated. Even the place of Sector Master was stolen by his subordinates. Naturally, his great dream was gone.

“However, although the assassins massacred my father-in-law’s entire family, two youngest children somehow escaped. They were exactly my wife and my brother-in-law. Right, my brother-in-law did not exactly get away. He suffered a vicious punch from the enemy, whose power of corrosion and corruption haunted him for decades, eventually destroying his physical body and killing him. However, the decades of suffering was part of the reason why he could train himself into a ‘super spectral Cultivator’ in a weird form.

“All in all, after my wife and my brother-in-law escaped, they had a series of fortuitous incidents. In case the enemy continued hunting, they decided to hide their names and implement the revenge plan separately.

“My wife joined the business world with her advantage of inferring what was on people’s mind as a Meditation Healer, turning into a rising star of the ‘Wuying group’ from another perspective, before she investigated the truth of the accident in the Spiritual Mountain Sector years ago. My brother-in-law, on the other hand, changed his name to Qi Yuanbao, nicknamed ‘Hanged Man’. He became a notorious assassin and established his own force ‘Life Claimer’, preparing for their revenge.

“Later, my wife and I met in business…”

Li Yao nodded his head quickly. “Got it. Your marriage is some sort of political marriage!”

Jin Yuyan blushed and replied, “The marriage of people like us certainly can’t be just about love. What caught her attention in me was that I had already become a rather influential person in the business world. She intended to avenge her family with my strength. So, she took the risks and confessed the truth to me.

“After much deliberation, I found the connections and reputation of my deceased father-in-law ‘Wuying Yuanshan’ in the Wuying group irrefutable, and I wanted to hold the strength in my hands. Therefore, we made a win-win choice.

“After that, my marriage with Wuying Qinxin was actually rather pleasant. Our cooperation with Qi Yuanbao was quite smooth too. Under the support of Wuying Qinxin and I in secret, Qi Yuanbao’s ‘Life Claimer’ killed all the murderers who were directly involved in the massacre years ago. Then, naturally, the return of Wuying Yuanshan’s daughter was announced within the Wuying group.

“In the meantime, with the help of the Wuying group and Qi Yuanbao’s ‘Life Claimer’, I rose quickly within the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, defeating almost a hundred competitors, before I finally became the director of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the business leader at the edge of the Imperium!

“Of course, in order not to catch unnecessary attention or invoke the four families’ thunderous attacks again, Qi Yuanbao never resumed his surname of ‘Wuying’, and nobody knew that he was Wuying Qinxin’s biological brother. Otherwise, the power of the brother, the sister, and I was too dreadful. It would’ve been possible that we entered the blacklist of the four families a long time ago and got erased!

“You should understand it now, right? Wuying Qinxin and I are a couple who knew each other before we really grasped power. Later, we founded the most solid alliance of interests, helping each other to succeed. It must be noted that the real murderers of her family were exactly the four families. Who could’ve thought that she would betray me before the four families were destroyed?”

Li Yao thought quickly and inferred for a long time. In the end, he could only nod his head and said, “That’s right. Under normal circumstances, she did have no reason to betray you at all until the four families were destroyed. If I were you, I certainly would’ve trusted my wife who had been with me for more than a hundred years.

“However, you couldn’t have foreseen that Blackstar the Great was already revived, which was the biggest unexpected factor!

“Wuying Qinxin and Qi Yuanbao both belong to the royal family. They are the descendants of Wuying Qi. There are too many things that can be taken advantage of in their relationship. If Wuying Qi persuaded them, envisaging the rise of the royal family for them and tempting them with a title, I probably would’ve been convinced too.”

“Who would not?”

Jin Yuyan’s smile was even more bitter. “That’s why I did not doubt it all when you said that Blackstar the Great had been revived. There was no reason why Wuying Qinxin or Qi Yuanbao would betray me other than that!”

“Speaking of which, Qi Yuanbao has never recovered his surname of ‘Wuying’ or revealed his relationship with Wuying Qinxin partly because of you, right?”

Li Yao looked at Jin Yuyan with a half-smile, “I think if Qi Yuanbao reveals his real identity and everybody learns that he is your brother-in-law, it will be impossible for you to be the director of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and your brother-in-law to be one of the senior managers at the same time. Other managers and shareholders will certainly be wary of your family.”

Jin Yuyan coughed and said, “That’s right. I would be lying if I say that I didn’t try to control more shares of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and suppress the other three assassin groups through Qi Yuanbao. You know that the ‘four gods of death’ are disobedient people with remarkable skills, who also have so many unpredictable assassins at their disposal. I am not a battle-type Immortal Cultivator. If I don’t have a few trump cards, how can I expect to check them?”

“Therefore, you regarded your brother-in-law as the greatest trump card.”

Li Yao said, “But as it turned out, the trump card fell into the hands of Blackstar the Great in the end. You’ve suffered such a setback that you were almost killed. Even if you have luckily escaped, there is still no telling if you can recover your real identity and let other people admit that you are Jin Yuyan!”

Jin Yuyan was indeed the most good-tempered expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage that Li Yao had ever seen. It seemed that “peace makes fortune” had been melted into his blood, bones, and soul. He was utterly unaffected despite all of Li Yao’s mockery but simply sighed and said, “It’s already too late to regret right now. We have basically figured out the background of everything, but a lot of details about the chaos and the assassination a moment ago are still baffling me. We need to sort them out too.”