Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Maybe it was his imagination, but Heiye Ming suddenly felt unusual fatigue. Every thought inside his brain was galloping rampantly like a wild horse. Even a lot of his brain nerves were producing weird noises.

It was something that had never happened before in his long military career. He could tell that it was a sign of mental derangement!

Am I really too old now? Or maybe I was too heavily wounded in the battle a hundred years ago, and I never had a good chance to rest well in the journey over the past hundred years.

Heiye Ming secretly sighed to himself.

I wasn’t like this in my prime. At that time, when I participated in the large-scale battles between the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance with the strongest fleets of dozens of Sectors, even if the fierce battles lasted a whole month and I burnt my life and soul again and again, I was never as exhausted.

Now, I’m just annihilating a bunch of wretched brutes at the edge of the cosmos, and yet everything has become a mess…

Calming himself down, he focused his attention on the battle at hand.

The Burning Prairie Fleet, the Big Bai Fleet, and the Colossi of the federation, despite their unexpected combat ability, were still within the acceptable range. It was only a matter of how much he was willing to pay for the victory.

But as for Su Changfa and Lu Qingchen…

Heiye Ming thought of something. He retrieved the surveillance interface of Lu Qingchen’s brainwaves and physical parameters again.

At this moment, Lu Qingchen was sealed in an iron coffin tightly and hung in midair, branded with the cruelest barriers to ensure that the slightest twitch of any muscle, vein, or nerve would be sensed by Heiye Ming. Even the feeblest ripple inside his brain would be manifested on the main frame crystal processor clearly.

From the time he was locked up, Lu Qingchen’s brainwaves had been abnormally peaceful, so peaceful that Heiye Ming even suspected that something was wrong with the surveillance equipment. He had to summon more advanced crystal processors and facilities again and again to connect Lu Qingchen’s brain to the main frame crystal processor deeply, in order to ensure the veracity of the feedback of brainwaves.

But when he checked again, Heiye Ming discovered, to his surprise, that Lu Qingchen’s supposedly peaceful brain was erupting like a volcano. It surpassed the Refinement Stage, the Building Foundation Stage, the Core Formation Stage, the Nascent Soul Stage, the Divinity Transformation Stage, and even the limits of human beings in only one second!

It was not even waves that could possibly be triggered by the brain of a human. A supernova seemed to have exploded deep inside Lu Qingchen’s brain and unleashed infinite energy!

How is this possible?

What are the guys in the surveillance room doing? Why didn’t they report such an anomaly to me?

Is this a fault of the crystal processors, or…

Heiye Ming activated his soul to the maximum, controlling different crystal processors and crystal cameras while dialing through more than ten communication routes at the same time.

Right when he was about to summon a large batch of subordinates to look into Lu Qingchen’s situation, the abruptly rising curve of brain activity dropped in an equally steep manner, until it hit the bottom and turned into a straight line without any ups and downs.

Lu Qingchen’s brainwaves returned to zero.

Theoretically speaking, it was a sign of death.

Of course, some experts who practiced special techniques could reduce their heartbeat, breathing, brainwaves, and all other biophysical indices to little to none. But right now, more than thirty probe pins had been deeply pierced into Lu Qingchen’s brain. It would not be easy for him to play any trick even if he wanted to.

Heiye Ming suddenly had an ominous feeling.

It was the natural instinct of a seasoned warrior in extreme danger.

A 3D light beam was slowly unfolded in front of his eyes. In the picture, Lu Qingchen was still hanging in midair, shaking slightly. There was no telling whether he was dead or alive, but the Immortal Cultivators who were supposed to watch over him were all lying on the ground, drooling, bleeding, and cramping uncontrollably.

Damn it! Heiye Ming shouted aloud in his heart. His telepathic thoughts expanded in all directions like an octopus, trying to summon his subordinates.

But all the telepathic thoughts bounced back as if they had hit an invisible wall!

The next second, darkness arose in front of his eyes, as if an all-pervasive black curtain slowly surrounded him. Two different worlds seemed to have overlapped with each other. In one of the worlds, he was in the nervous interaction liquids inside the command capsule on his original bridge. In the other world, he was in the middle of a weird, black ocean!

“It seems that the Black Wind Fleet is in trouble.” A scornful voice echoed in his ears casually. “Do you need me to give you a hand?”

It was Lu Qingchen’s voice.

Heiye Ming’s pupils constricted violently. He tried hard to condense his telepathic thoughts to penetrate through the black curtain. He even waved his hands and fleet crazily, hoping to catch the attention of other people on the bridge, but the subordinates who were next to him seemed to be in a completely different world. None of them noticed the anomaly at all.

In the meantime, the dark matter, similar to a jellyfish, slowly rose from the ‘ocean’ below his feet and began to consume him from his feet!

Heiye Ming was greatly shocked. He hurried to boost his soul, but his soul seemed to be polluted by something. It was impossible to activate the usual strength at all.

“It’s useless. When the Black Wind Fleet performed the space jump, I injected a little something into your soul and the mainframe crystal processor of Black Swirl.” Lu Qingchen’s chuckles echoed from various directions in the black ocean. “Even the Blood God, the commander of the expedition army of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago, couldn’t bear to refuse such a gift. Why don’t you stop wasting your strength for nothing?”

Heiye Ming realized that he had fallen into a dreadful trap. With everything coming to this point, the seasoned general of the Imperium calmed down. “Are you Lu Qingchen or something else? Your master, Su Changfa, has betrayed the Imperium, but you didn’t betray the federation. Both of you have abandoned the true path of immortality?”

“Hehe. I am Lu Qingchen and just… Lu Qingchen.” The voice echoed again in the black ocean. “As for my master Su Changfa, I regret to tell you that he passed away a long time ago. What you saw on the Spiritual Nexus was an illusion, or rather, it was my master’s database.

“Betray the federation? Of course I didn’t! Look at what is happening before your eyes. How brave the soldiers of the federation and how magnificent their fleets are! Such a federation is so powerful, honorable, and invincible! Why on earth would I betray such a great motherland and join an Imperium that is decaying and not half as strong as it appears?”

“So, I’ve been completely fooled…” Pain flashed inside Heiye Ming’s eyes. A moment later, his eyes grew sharp again, and he gnashed his teeth. “No. Your strength is so vicious. This is atypical for a Cultivator. What are you exactly?”

“Like I said just now, I am an Immortal Cultivator who loves the federation and the civilization of mankind.”

In the dark ocean, Lu Qingchen peacefully said, “As you have seen, the Star Glory Federation right now is like the sun at seven o’clock in the morning. It is pure, righteous, and magnificent. Nothing can stop it from rising.

“But when the sun rises to its peak, it will eventually start falling. Every new force will inevitably be contaminated with hopeless diseases and bad habits after it develops to a certain point. It will slowly decay and degrade until it becomes what it used to despise and fight against. Heroes slay dragons, only to turn into dragons later. It has always been the case since ancient times.

“There may be infinite resources in the universe, but the resources that can be collected and utilized efficiently by mankind are limited. At the very least, compared with the population and desires of human beings that grow exponentially, they are far from enough. As long as this contradiction remains unresolved, no matter how bright, pure, and magnificent the Star Glory Federation is today, will it really last?

“On the path to the center of the cosmos, during the expansion and conquest of the three thousand Sectors, the Star Glory Federation is bound to meet a lot of conundrums and be faced with all kinds of tough, painful choices. In the dilemmas, it will become what it used to hate and object to in the past step by step, ending up being… another Imperium.”

“What do you want exactly?” Heiye Ming struggled to shout. “Since you claim to be a firm Immortal Cultivator, and you are so pessimistic about the future of the federation, surrender to the Imperium now! No. Not surrender, join hands with the warriors of the Black Wind Fleet. If we join our hands, we can certainly shake the political structure of the Imperium. We may—we may even be able to control the entire Imperium and the entire sea of stars!”

“Exactly. You do have a valid point, General Ming. That’s what I believe and what I am doing right now!” Lu Qingchen smiled. “However, since we are forming an alliance, there is bound to be someone in charge, right? If you meant what you said just now, General Ming, just open your soul completely and do not refuse my gift anymore. Let me inject the real great path into the core of your soul. Then, together, we will reform the federation, revolutionize the Imperium, and rescue the whole universe from the heinous Pangu Civilization!”

“Your—your great path?” Heiye Ming widened his eyes, with hissing sounds echoing deep inside his throat. “Your Immortal Cultivator 2.0 theory?”

Lu Qingchen did not give an answer—he simply went on. “I believe in the true path of immortality, but one’s belief shouldn’t be stubborn, rigid, and forever the same. Instead, it should change and develop according to the contradictions in reality, and it must be ready to evolve and change at any moment!

“Look at yourselves, people who claim to be believers of the true path of immortality. You were beaten by the Covenant Alliance at the center of the cosmos and had to flee everywhere like stray dogs. No. Not ‘like’. You are stray dogs because you have even lost the Black Wind Sector, your nest.

“You have come to the edge of the cosmos to conquer a bunch of barbarians. Yet, under the radiance of the path of the Cultivators, you are being crushed into an utter mess, unable to do anything about it.

“Is such a pedantic, inflexible, inward-looking true path of immortality really qualified to represent the future of mankind?

“General Ming, ask yourself. If the true path of immortality is really the only truth in the entire universe, why is this battle such a mess? Your performance right now is truly a shame for the true path of immortality!”