Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Not just the yaksha squad, even Li Yao was slightly dazed when he heard the answer.

What a coincidence. Wasn’t Eternal Brightness one of the ‘laboratories of human nature’ that Chu Zhixiao had talked to him about the day before? It was faked as a miniature nation of Cultivators and designed to test the evolution of society when human beings had abundant resources and were

inexhaustible?

He did not know that the puppet king was hiding there.

However, on second thought, it was quite normal.

Right now, the main task of the Holy Accord Alliance was to fight against the Imperium of True Human Beings. Most of the computational ability of the Great Sage had to be deployed to the battlefield, and the ‘lab of human nature’ was just a frontier exploration and a piece of idle chess. Before the

imperium was completely destroyed, the Great Sage would not pay much attention to it. Hiding there was much safer.

On the other hand, most of the residents on Eternal Brightness did not know the truth of the outside world and were isolated from the world. Their social form and the environment of the Spiritual Nexus were self-contained, which made it easier for the puppet king to lurk and manipulate them.

More importantly, if the puppet king was Lu Qingchen, the ‘nation of Cultivators’ on Eternal Brightness might remind him of his hometown, the Star Glory Federation. Maybe, it was also one of the reasons why he chose the ‘experimental warship of human nature’ as his nest.

With Guan Qixing laying the groundwork, Li Yao generously revealed the address he had locked onto.

The address that the two of them traced was almost the same, except that Li Yao was more precise. He was almost as accurate as one of the crystal processors on Eternal Brightness.

Of course, the precision was not very important, because the puppet king was not stupid enough to launch an invasion with only one crystal processor. After a large-scale operation, it would certainly destroy the evidence and replace it with a new crystal processor that had never been exposed.

Allin all, as long as the puppet king was hiding on Eternal Brightness, everything would be easier.

As it tumed out, Chu Zhixiao did not doubt that Li Yao’s ‘performance’ had suddenly improved. He only complimented that the tracking mode developed by Guan Qixing was quite useful and sent a lot of data back to the Heresy Interrogation Bureau through the communication room of the Psychic Temple.

Half an hour later, the yaksha squad had just finished resting and filling enough food and ammunition for themselves and their magical equipment when a new command was sent over.

The large-scale riot inside the Psychic Temple proved that the puppet king had grown suspicious. There was no time to lose. If he ran away again, the yaksha squad would set off immediately to destroy the Heart of God and capture the puppet king!

The difficulty of the operation was not whether or not they could destroy God’s Heart Association, but rather, they had to block every route of escape before the puppet king noticed them.

It was very likely that the puppet king had been lurking on the main force warships and the most important star fortresses of the Star Glory Federation. He would definitely notice the large-scale mobilization.

Besides, the strategical war between the Star Glory Federation and the imperium was about to begin. At such a delicate moment, it was impossible for the puppet king to disrupt all the arrangements on the frontline.

Therefore, the yaksha squad was still the main force to capture the puppet king. Of course, most of the teams of purifiers and cleaners under the command of the Heresy Interrogation Bureau, as well as the special forces of the ‘God Bless’ that were adept at boarding battles, would jump to the vicinity of

Eternal Brightness to support the yaksha squad.

In the end, if possible, the five supreme masters did not want the capture operation to disrupt the normal order of Eternal Brightness, because the experiment on human nature on a large scale had lasted for three hundred years and yielded a lot of interesting data. The higher-ups were hoping that the

ignorant world could continue developing and see how far the human desire could grow and how much it could corrupt the spirituality of human beings.

If they were consumed by the flames of war, all their previous endeavors would be wasted. It would take them another three hundred years to accumulate enough resources.

Of course, more importantly, the life and death of the puppet king had to be captured alive. He could not run away, nor could he commit suicide in fear of punishment, because the higher-ups had the same idea as Li Yao. They all believed that the puppet king could not have appeared out of thin air. Maybe

the puppet king was a puppet of a mysterious existence, and the ‘mysterious existence’ was the most dangerous enemy of the Sanctuary!

The code name of the operation was ‘Ghost Catching’.

An hour later, the ghost-catching operation officially began.

Carrying such an arduous mission, all the members of the yaksha squad, together with a team of elite cleaners and the elite special forces selected from the ‘God Bless Army’, boarded a tusk-shaped assault starship and slowly sailed into the most suitable space for space jumps at the edge of the Golden

Lion Sector.

Sensing that the vast sea of stars outside the cabin window was turning more and more illusionary, Li Yao suddenly had a weird feeling.

Fast. It was too fast.

It had only been a few days since he learned of the existence of the puppet king, when he snuck into the yaksha squad in the form of a spider tank and participated in the mission to capture the puppet king, when he jumped from the Heresy Interrogation Bureau to the Psychic Temple, and when he was

about to jump from the Psychic Temple to Eternal Brightness.

The missions in the Sanctuary were completely different from those in the federation and the imperium.

There was no need to mention the Star Glory Federation. Even in the Imperium of True Human Beings, the people he was faced with were living, breathing, and full of personality.

Li Linghai, the empress of the Star Ocean Imperium; Dong Fangwang, the prime minister of the imperium; Jin Yuyan, the manager of the General Commerce Alliance; and even Wu Yinggi, the Black Star Emperor. They were all specific people with their own beliefs, ambitions, and desires.

However, in the Sanctuary Alliance, except for the eccentric creatures such as ‘Devil’s Child’ and ‘Yaksha’, the lowest-level ‘soldier bees’ and ‘worker bees’, the priests of the ‘best’ race, the director of the Heresy Interrogation Bureau, and even the ‘best’ master who had just appeared in the sacred light of the

crystal processor, all of them were featureless, had no personality, and had fuzzy faces. They did not look like specific human beings at all. Instead, they were symbols, symbols, and components on a giant machine.

Imagine an enormous, precise, and solid machine made of billions of components the size of a planet. Everybody, including the chief of the inquisition and the supreme master, would be insignificant screws that could be replaced at any time inside the machine. It was exactly how Li Yao felt when he was

carrying out a mission.

With a starship as the carrier, one would be drifting in the vast sea of stars forever, making one feel insignificant and lonely.

A starship, on the other hand, was not enough to maintain the most fundamental circulation of resources. It had to rely on the intangible Spiritual Nexus to receive missions and supplies from an unknown place. The belief and admiration for a certain supreme force were deepened, too. Without anybody

knowing it, its personality and self had been deprived, and it had turned into a small part of the enormous machine.

So much so that, as long as a random command was sent from the portable crystal processor, it would become a law. It was enough for people to contribute and sacrifice without any hesitation. There was simply no need to figure out who sent the command, nor was there any need to think about the truth

behind the command.

It was a literal, out-and-out ‘national machine’ that had been fully activated.

However

‘There was always a manipulator behind any machine.

Even if there weren’t, in the past, there would always be someone who would set the procedures and tasks of the machine.

‘Who was the controller of the enormous machine that was the Sanctuary Alliance? The five fuzzy, personalityless masters, the sleeping Pangu Clan, or… something else?

While Li Yao was pondering, he sensed the soul ripples from the mental devil.

“Hey, do you feel that something is not right?”

The mental devil.

“What’s weird?”

Li Yao was dazed for a moment and asked back.

“It is exactly why the puppet king is so easy to locate.

“Think about it,” the mental devil said. “The puppet king shattered all the surveillance videos and data when he activated Gao Huan. He deleted them time and time again, and it was almost impossible to recover them. If we were not talented and his old friends who were familiar with his methods, it would

have been impossible to recover them.

“It is evident that he does not want his existence to be discovered, right?

“Isn’t that obvious?”

Li Yao replied, “Of course, the puppet king does not want other people to find him. Finding him means death. Is there a problem?”

“Don’t be hasty. Listen to me.”

“The problem is,” the mental devil said, “if the puppet king did not want anybody to find him, why would he keep the high priest under his control alive?

“Well…”

Li Yao thought quickly and immediately realized what was going on. Having been enlightened by the mental devil, he realized that something was not right, too. “It does make sense. On the surface, the fierce battle in the Psychic Temple just now was truly soul-stirring. A lot of infected people were

raging, their flesh and blood flying everywhere. A high-level priest fled in a hurry and self-destructed in the end. It was also a special skill that we played on the Spiritual Nexus. Our telepathic thoughts were flying randomly between almost ten Sectors, making it look like a thrilling movie.

“However, there was no need to go through so much trouble. There was no need for the puppet king to keep the priest alive in the first place. After he completed the task of ‘activating Gao Huan’, he could’ve killed the priest by silencing him. Then, everything would’ve been settled and nobody would’ve

known that he was hiding on Eternal Brightness.

“Alright. Let’s say that the high priest was an important chess piece that he arranged in the Psychic Temple. It was not easy for him to corrupt the high priest. If he was reluctant to kill the high priest in the beginning, he should’ve killed him and silenced him when the yaksha squad came to the Psychic

Temple for investigation.

“Chu Zhixiao and the rest of them interrogated dozens of workers before it was the high priest’s turn. The puppet king clearly had plenty of time to ‘snail off. Why didn’t he do that? Why did he have to make such a thrilling scene? In the end, we still caught his tail and locked onto his real body? Such a

low-level mistake does not seem likely to be made by the puppet king—Lu Qingchen…”