Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“You—”

Caught unprepared, Long Yangjun was unable to say anything for a long time, as if her throat were stuffed with a crystal bomb.

Seeing her blushing face, Li Yao gloated even more. Rubbing a Cosmos Ring on his little finger, he retrieved a tiny object and delivered it to Wuying Qi with both hands respectfully. He said, “Now that I have agreed with Your Majesty’s ideology, there is no need to hide anything now. Not only have I confessed the secrets about Neltharion, but I am also willing to offer the critical item to Your Majesty. This is exactly the half key to the central room in the Supreme Emperor’s mausoleum!”

On Li Yao’s palm, the half black metal stick floated and emanated deep brilliance.

“What!”

Long Yangjun gasped hard and said subconsciously, “It’s fake! It must be fake! Don’t fall for it, Your Majesty!”

Li Yao sniffed. “His Majesty’s eyes are too keen to be fooled by any trick. Your warning was highly redundant!”

Greed flashed in Wuying Qi’s eyes as he opened his fingers and attracted the half key that Li Yao offered to himself. He examined the key in his palm carefully.

Then, he took out Li Linghai’s half key. After the two parts of the key were stuck together, they were truly combined in tiny cracking sounds!

Wuying Qi injected a stream of feeble spiritual energy into the key to inspect the cohesion of the key, only to detect no error at all. The key was such a complete piece that he could not stab his spiritual energy into it at all.

“This is indeed the critical key to open the last part of the Supreme Emperor’s mausoleum!”

Wuying Qi grabbed the complete key in his hands tightly. Eyeing Li Yao with even more compliments and trust, he said, “Well done, Li Yao. I appreciate your judiciousness and your loyalty.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty!”

Li Yao cut Long Yangjun with his eyes again.

Long Yangjun’s cheeks were puffing like bloated dolphins. Gnashing her teeth for a long time, she finally unleashed her ultimate move. “Fine, fine, you are truly His Majesty’s loyal subject, but I wonder, have you told His Majesty the things about Lei Chenghu?”

Slightly stunned, Li Yao immediately showed embarrassment.

Wuying Qi had been scanning the look on their faces and the changes of their biophysical parameters. Detecting Li Yao’s anomaly, he slightly frowned and asked, “Huh?”

“Ha. It seems that you haven’t told His Majesty such an important matter yet. Why, do you want to keep the last trump card to negotiate with His Majesty?”

Long Yangjun grew cocky again now that she hit Li Yao’s weakness. She grimaced and said, “Are you going to confess yourself, or do you want me to tell everything to His Majesty?”

“Who… Who’s keeping any trump card? I just didn’t have the time to say it.”

Li Yao glared at Long Yangjun brutally, before he said to Wuying Qi while blushing. “Your Majesty, as a matter of fact, we—we had a minor agreement with Lei Chenghu…”

Narrowing his eyes, Wuying Qi asked expressionlessly, “What kind of agreement?”

“I wonder whether or not Lei Chenghu reached out to Your Majesty and reported that I snuck into his flagship and tried to persuade him.”

Scratching his messy hair, Li Yao said rather hesitatingly, “Well, if he did report it to Your Majesty, he must’ve claimed that he refused me determinedly and even released abundant crystal suits and Colossi to kill me, but I still escaped in the end. However, his story was fake. It was just a play that he and I acted together.”

“Is that so?”

Terrible fire was surging inside Wuying Qi’s eyes. “So to speak, even Lei Chenghu, the God of War and ‘the last Immortal Cultivator of the Imperium’, has also betrayed me?”

“Not exactly. Please make no mistake, Your Majesty. Lei Chenghu is the toughest Immortal Cultivator and will never betray Your Majesty easily for the Cultivators.”

Li Yao waved his hands quickly and said, “However, I stupidly told Lei Chenghu that Your Majesty might be doing something that… jeopardized the true path of immortality, say erasing the free will of the Immortal Cultivators through brainwashing or destroying the whole Empyreal Terminus Sector.

“For Lei Chenghu, the Imperium seems more important than Your Majesty. Getting to the bottom of it, he is loyal to the Imperium but not to Your Majesty, to the true path of immortality but not to the one who created it, and to the free will of mankind but not the order of a certain supreme being. That is where his belief lies and must not be corrupted.

“We talked for such a long time that my mouth almost went dry, but in the end, he was only skeptical and claimed that he would never betray Your Majesty without concrete evidence.

“Besides, the Seven Seas Space Zone was still an utter mess. Most of Yun Xuefeng’s remaining troops had been taken over by Song Yushi, who was still capable of dealing with the Astounding Thunder Fleet. Lei Chenghu needed time to finish Song Yushi’s fleet. Even if he planned to interfere with the battle in the capital, he was still incapable of that!

“Therefore, we reached an agreement with Lei Chenghu and split. We came to the capital to look for evidence, and he would finish Song Yushi and the likes as soon as possible, hoping to crush all the enemies in the Seven Seas Space Zone in ten to fifteen days. Then, he would gather an elite fleet and wait for our message.

“If—well, if Your Majesty is truly doing something that jeopardizes the free will of mankind, he’ll be on our side and stop Your Majesty with us.

“Please forgive me, Your Majesty. At that time, I did not understand the true meaning of enlightenment yet. I thought that it was just regular brainwashing. That was why I made such a plan with Lei Chenghu.

“Also, I believe that Lei Chenghu never meant to betray Your Majesty. Once he perceives the amazement of enlightenment, he will definitely support Your Majesty too.

“Therefore, please don’t punish General Lei Chenghu, Your Majesty. He… He is truly a great loyal man, much more loyal than me!”

Wuying Qi smiled and said, “That explains a lot. So to speak, you were sent here by Lei Chenghu’s information boat, weren’t you? How did you plan to search for evidence at the beginning?”

“Yes, we came here on Lei Chenghu’s boat.”

Li Yao said, “After Nepenthe’s uprising last time, we accidentally discovered the Gold Crystal Pyramid. At that time, the Gold Crystal Pyramid was not unearthed yet, but we already detected that it was of paramount importance for Your Majesty and that it must’ve been your ultimate secret weapon. Therefore, we reached this place again this time.

“We planned to take pictures of the secrets here with our portable cameras and steal the central data in the mainframe crystal processor of the secret weapon. Then, we could find a way to deliver the data back to the Seven Seas Space Zone, or maybe we could jump back to the Seven Seas Space Zone ourselves so that Lei Chenghu could see it.

“Photos can be fabricated, but the central data can hardly be. We would have concrete evidence.

“We did not expect that the four families’ ace fleets would be blocking and interfering with the Spiritual Nexus of the capital so intensely, or that Your Majesty had deployed such a powerful barricade below the ground of the capital planet that only Your Majesty’s own battle net could transmit messages. Our data had been blocked by the two shackles and could not be sent out at all.

“As for the videos and photos and the information in the crystal processor, they were stored in my jade chips, which we planned to bring out. It seems impossible right now!

“Also, we did not anticipate that Your Majesty’s ‘Next Sun Plan’ would be activated so quickly that the whole Empyreal Terminus Sector would be brimming with the brainwashing waves in twenty-four hours. By the power of the sun, everybody will be enlightened with an unprecedented epiphany.

“If Lei Chenghu learns of such a thing, that pigheaded old man would definitely think that it is a deprivation of mankind’s free will, and that we are as evil as the Covenant Alliance. He will definitely try his best to stop it.

“What a pity. Your Majesty’s plan is so meticulous, and the barricade here is so thorough. How could he learn the secret at all?

“Unless, of course, Lei Chenghu should grasp a certain network virus that is above the most cutting-edge technology of the Imperium, boast the most awesome crystal processor specialists of the Imperium who can hack the battle networks of both the four Kurfürst families and the reformists, so that he can hijack the crystal cameras and the crystal processors in this place despite all the blockades and firewalls, ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ us directly while he secretly exchanges data with us. But how is it possible?

“Also, even if he learns it right now, so what? It’s too late! He’s still stalled by Song Yushi. Is an Astounding Thunder Fleet enough to crush the four families’ eight Adamantine Fleets in half a day and get all the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warships under his control? Hahahaha. That’s the greatest joke in the world!

“Therefore, getting to the bottom of everything, Your Majesty is the most brilliant and scrupulous of all. Even though Lei Chenghu and I played a few tricks earlier, they are not worth mentioning at all in front of Your Majesty’s magnificent cause. Those who try to sabotage Your Majesty’s plan are like ants that try to shake a tree!

“What do you think, Long Yangjun? Stop looking at me with such shocked expressions. Like I said earlier, I’ve been completely honest with His Majesty without keeping anything from him. I have talked about everything regarding the deal we made with Lei Chenghu. If you think that I missed anything, why don’t you provide supplements?”

Long Yangjun opened her mouth, only to come up with nothing. She could only shut it up and said helplessly, “There is nothing I can add. That’s the deal that we prepared to accomplish in ten to fifteen days. We did not know that Your Majesty would be acting so fast and not leaving any chance to us at all!”

“Of course.”

Li Yao said, “Why else would His Majesty be ‘His Majesty’?”

“However, I still feel that you are acting!”

Her eyes bloodshot, Long Yangjun stared at Li Yao without blinking. She made up her mind and took off a Cosmos Ring from her left middle finger while gnashing her teeth and said, “If you are truly as loyal to His Majesty as you claim, you do not need extra weapons since you are under the meticulous protection of the Imperial Guards. So, do you dare to offer the Cosmos Ring that stores your Colossus to His Majesty and asks His Majesty to keep it for you?”