Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Heiye Lan’s words were detonating Li Yao’s every brain cell as if it were a crystal bomb. A great carnival of fireworks seemed to be going on deep inside his head!

His heart was pounding, and he could not have been more thrilled!

Li Yao’s every nerve was being blasted by the rampant emotions that felt like surging tides.

Every second with those monsters and the special agent from the Imperium was such a great test on his acting kills. He was truly suffering!

Ding Lingdang! Ding Lingdang is already capable of crushing a scout team of the Black Wind Fleet with a fleet from the federation?

Legendary expert? My wife must’ve accomplished many world-shaking achievements in the past hundred years while I was in hibernation. Chances are that I’ve already been eclipsed again. Hahahaha!

The Star Glory Federation has developed quite fast, too. Although Heiye Lan was merely with a small claw fleet, it is obvious that the fleet under Ding Lingdang’s lead couldn’t have been the entirety of the federation’s main forces, either! In a head-on clash in space, the federation was able to offer the Imperium with a crushing defeat, which at least suggests that the technological gap in the weapons and magical equipment between the two parties is not so huge that it cannot be made up by the advantage in number!

As long as we maintain the advantage in number, we will certainly be able to drown the expedition army of the Imperium!

Right. What’s Ding Lingdang doing around here?

Since Heiye Lan ended up here, the space zone where they had a fierce battle couldn’t have been too far away from the dark nebula. Why on earth would Ding Lingdang show up here leading a federal fleet?

Li Yao thought of something. He felt that a flower was blossoming in his heart, thinking in delight, Is it possible that my wife was looking for me with a large batch of soldiers?

It’s possible. Very possible!

A hundred years have passed. My wife’s level has soared significantly. She is already the legendary expert ‘Blazing Tyrannosaur’ now! Also, the overall capabilities of the federation must’ve made remarkable progress, too. It has super fleets that have fiercer firepower and longer working hours!

My wife hadn’t received any messages from me in the hundred years. She couldn’t stand waiting at home by herself. So, she set off to search the nearby of the dark nebula, only to detect the battle between Firefly and the claw fleet from the Imperium by accident!

I’m afraid that those people from the Imperium never thought about covering themselves up, either. The style of their starships and their emblems are rather idiosyncratic with distinctive features. Therefore, my wife was able to recognize them without any trouble.

Once she had discovered a fleet from the Imperium, and seeing that it was not large in size, my wife was too grumpy to care about anything else. If she could capture some starships and Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium, our odds of winning the war to protect the federation later would definitely be much higher!

Yes. That must be the case. Hooray for my wife!

Li Yao was overjoyed. However, on second thought, even if Ding Lingdang and the federal fleet’s original purpose was to search for him and the Ancient Sages Sector, they would certainly change their destination after accidentally getting involved in the battle between the Imperium of True Human Beings and the ‘rightful government of the Star Ocean Republic’.

The Star Ocean Republic was an important transitional period between the Star Ocean Imperium and the Imperium of True Human Beings.

The legendary ‘Blackstar the Great’ had been elected as the supreme leader of the Star Ocean Republic first before he rescinded the parliamentary system, arrested the members of parliament, and changed the republic into dictatorship, establishing the Imperium of True Human Beings!

Before, Li Yao had thought that the Star Ocean Republic was already a historical term that had been buried in the deepest part of the cold universe two thousand years ago.

It had never occurred to him that such a ‘government-in-exile’ established on a starship had fled to somewhere near the federation!

It seemed to be a coincidence, but on second thought, it was not very strange.

Most of the areas in the universe had been divided by the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance. Where else could the government-in-exile of the Star Ocean Republic go if not the remote space zones at the edge of the civilization of mankind?

For the federation who was determined to stand up against the Imperium, the government-in-exile, or the ‘rightful government’, of the Star Ocean Republic was certainly extremely valuable.

Moreover, the first batch of the refugees had all escaped directly from the Empyreal Terminus Sector. If the federation could cooperate with them, it would be easier for the federation to learn about the situation at the heartland of the civilization of mankind.

It was needless to say that there was still the ‘Star Ocean Seal’ that had once been used by the legendary Supreme Emperor himself!

By his estimation, after defeating the claw fleet of the Imperium, rescuing Firefly, and learning that it carried the ‘rightful government of the Star Ocean Republic’, Ding Lingdang and the federal fleet could only do what was important first and escort the rightful government of the Star Ocean Republic and the captives from the Imperium to the homeland of the federation.

Li Yao sighed gloomily.

In his perception, he had only been awake for several years.

However, in reality, a hundred years had passed after all. A hundred years!

After a hundred years of development, what did the federation look like today? Where was his wife right now? What was she doing? Was she still having fun tearing apart warships?

Li Yao was suddenly grasped by an irresistible urge. He almost hoped that he could be teleported back to the federation immediately to visit his family and friends, whom he had not seen for a hundred years, and appreciate the Star Glory Federation that was being reborn and rising rapidly!

“Blazing Tyrannosaur? That’s a rather majestic alias!” Li Yao could not hold it any longer. In a hoarse voice, he asked, “How strong is she exactly? In the Divinity Transformation Stage? What makes her ‘legendary’ in this… Star Glory Federation?”

“Even if she is not in the Divinity Transformation Stage right now, she can’t be far away from it. She is well above the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage. The tough, cruel techniques that she has practiced are as dominating as the techniques of some Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators I know, if not even more brutally aggressive. She is definitely only one step away from the Divinity Transformation Stage!”

Heiye Lan’s eyelids were bouncing fast as she replied in a shivering voice. It was obvious that she had not been freed from the nightmare that was Ding Lingdang. Holding her arms, she paused for a moment and continued. “I do not know many more details. We were at an absolute disadvantage in the battlefield. Soon after we interrogated the captives, our starship was broken through, and all the captives were rescued. Even most of the interrogators ended up as the enemy’s prisoners!

“Also, the entire space zone was still savaged by the interferential bombs released by Firefly. Not only were we unable to contact the mother fleet a few hundred lightyears away, even the communication channels between two starships or two Exos next to each other were seriously jammed. All the transmissions of signals were intermittent and fuzzy. I only collected part of the intelligence before I had to break out of the siege together with ‘Weary Tooth’, the only intact ‘Bloody Blade’-level assault warship!

“The only thing on our mind was to escape and to contact our mother fleet after we were away. There was no time to gather more information at all!

“That ‘Blazing Tyrannosaur’ Ding Lingdang was like a ravenous dragon that chased after us and bit us without letting go!

“She almost blew apart ‘Weary Tooth’. It was riddled with roles, and the communication units and the engine units were greatly damaged. Even the space jump units were unstable!

“We were hunted by her for days. Seeing that we were about to sink if we didn’t take any action, we had to risk performing an irregular, extreme jump during the high-speed cruising and while the warship was seriously damaged! The destination of the jump was set to be the middle of the boundless dark nebula next to the battlefield!”

“You mean the Ancient Sages Sector?” Wu Suiyun said.

“We didn’t know about the existence of the Ancient Sages Sector at that time and just thought that it would be easier to get rid of the enemy inside the dark nebula.

“Extreme jumps are too dangerous. A warship riddled with holes cannot withstand the furious turbulence in four-dimensional space. Even if the warship can jump over, the odds of the crew members’ survival are shockingly low, bordering on zero. Every voyage manual in the Imperium warns us against such things time and time again!

“As it turned out, although Weary Tooth successfully jumped to the depths of the dark nebula, the starship that was already riddled with holes was seriously twisted and savaged again. It would collapse at any time!

“Everyone on the starship except for me was torn apart by the storms in the four-dimensional space or scourged by the uncanny cosmic radiation. They died the most miserable deaths!”

“Wait!” Meng Chixin asked warily, “Why were you alive when everybody else was killed?”

“Because I was protected by my Colossus,” Heiye Lan said quickly. “Although my Colossus was defeated by the Blazing Tyrannosaur and its arms and legs were all broken, the cockpit, or the spiritual residence, was not entirely damaged. It still boasted very powerful protective abilities. When the extreme jump was performed, I was hiding inside the spiritual residence and survived the disaster under the shelter of the Colossus. However, as a result, my Colossus completely collapsed and can never be used again!”

Meng Chixin sniffed. “So, you just luckily survived the disaster and ‘happened’ to discover the Ancient Sages Sector?”

“It was not exactly a coincidence.” Heiye Lan shook her head. “I only managed to find this place with the automatic navigation magical equipment on Weary Tooth by following the trace caused by a signal when it penetrated through the dark nebula.”

“The trace caused by a signal?” Meng Chixin was dazed for a moment. “What’s that?”

“I can’t explain it very clearly. I’m not a navigator, and I don’t know much about the ways to maneuver a starship.”

Heiye Lan thought for a moment and said, “Let me make an example. The dark nebula outside the Ancient Sages Sector is like a muddy swamp. If a snake slithers on it, there will certainly be a trace after the animal passes, and the trace won’t vanish until a while later.

“When the information streams pierce through the dark nebula, it’s like snakes crawling over a muddy swamp or desert. Vague traces will also be left behind.

“The denser the cosmic dust is, the more obvious the traces left by the signals will be.

“At that time, I had no choice. Every direction meant certain death to me. Therefore, I simply followed the trace and moved forward. Eventually, I found the Ancient Sages Sector. Then, I activated a magnetic field with the last bit of spiritual energy inside Weary Tooth, attracting a batch of war debris, which you call ‘stars’, and landed from the sky, pretending to be a meteor shower!”