Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“What!” Question marks filled Li Yao and Ding Lingdang’s eyes. Li Yao could not help but shout, “Hasn’t Boss Bai been dead for more than a century? We were there to witness it at that time. Also, didn’t Bai Xingjian crash into Black Swirl while piloting Infinite Fire, and the body was never found after the explosion…”

While speaking, Li Yao was dazed himself. A lot of lightning struck inside his head.

Yes. Bai Xingjian, as the commander of the Big Bai Fleet, was too weird. Other than anything else, his strong combat ability that even raised the attention of ‘Sword Maniac’ Yan Liren was definitely abnormal!

He was slightly more than a hundred years old at best, and he was the highest commander of a major fleet who must have been occupied in the business every day. There was no way that he could be like Yan Liren, who dedicated himself to his swords and nothing else. How could he boast such high combat ability?

Did Li Yao not doubt that there was something wrong with his death earlier?

Bai Kaixin picked another bottle of wine and held it in his arms. Taking a deep breath, he mumbled, “You are right. That’s why I wanted to see you and ask you more. After all, you, Lei Dalu, and I personally witnessed my father Boss Bai’s last battle on Spider Den years ago. Also, you spent almost ten years in the residence of Yan Xinjian, the Supreme Space Pirate, and received part of Yan Xinjian’s heritage, which helped you grasp the mysteries of the ‘ultimate core’. To some extent, you are sort of Yan Xinjian’s disciple…”

“Wait.” The more he listened, the more confused he became. “Aren’t we talking about Boss Bai? Does it have anything to do with Yan Xinjian?”

“Just hear me out. You’ll know everything soon,” Bai Kaixin said. “I want to confirm something with you first. Below Spider Den, during Boss Bai’s last battle, neither you, me, or Lei Dalu saw that he was dead with our own eyes, right?”

Li Yao thought for a moment and realized that it was true.

In the underground fortress on Spider Den, he and Boss Bai had been in one team, and Bai Kaixin and Lei Dalu had been in another team. After the four of them met, all the mysteries had been unraveled. Yet, they had still been faced with the collapse of the underground fortress as well as the pursuit of the Temple of Immortals, Black Spider Tower, the Immortal Cultivators, and the hostile space pirates.

There was nowhere to run to because the enemy had besieged them from every direction, and the underground world had been about to collapse. It had truly been a situation without any chance of survival.

At last, to ensure the safety of his son Bai Kaixin, Bai Xingjian had volunteered to cover the retreat and distract the enemy’s attention. After killing a lot of Immortal Cultivators and hostile space pirates, he had died a valiant death.

However, none of the survivors had seen Boss Bai’s death in person. That was just their deduction.

Even though he had indeed been killed in the battle, there was still no knowing if his remaining soul had been completely obliterated.

Seeing Li Yao nod, Bai Kaixin asked with an even more trembling voice, “Then, I want to know something else. Did Yan Xinjian’s remaining souls all perish? Is it possible that a little bit of his unsubstantial soul escaped together with you when you crawled out of his residence? Can you confirm or disprove the possibility?”

Li Yao blinked quickly. He was even less confident about the matter.

Yan Xinjian had been the strongest expert at the edge of the cosmos in the ‘pre-federation’ era. His abilities both in commanding starships and personal combat had been appallingly high. He had even been the first confident talent who was bold enough to try to break into the Divinity Transformation Stage in the few Sectors around in the past five hundred years.

It was a pity that he had grown up in an age of isolation and ignorance. He did not have the communication technology, resource support, and advanced training facilities that the federation had, nor had he been aware of any experience or solution to deal with minor apocalypses.

Besides, the man’s heart had been impure, and there had been too many irrelevant thoughts inside his soul. In the end, he had failed in his attempt to advance into the Divinity Transformation Stage. His soul had been shattered into hundreds of remaining souls that occupied the bodies of hundreds of mice, which slowly perished in the dark, sunless cave.

By the time Li Yao opened the ‘Supreme Residence’ that he had prepared for himself to enter the Divinity Transformation Stage, the remaining souls that were attached to the mice had mostly withered. They had been as mottled as murals corrupted by the wind and sand.

During his ten years of training, Li Yao had felt the tiny clones of Yan Xinjian retrograding faster and faster. Most of them had turned into ordinary rats, but as for exactly whether or not a few of them escaped…

Li Yao suddenly recalled that when he left the Supreme Residence, a mouse that seemed somewhat intelligent did run away together with him. There was no telling where it went afterward.

Li Yao could not help but ask, “Bai Xinghe and Yan Xinjian, are they related?”

“Perhaps. There’s even more,” Bai Kaixin said. “There is still a third guy involved in this, a young man named ‘Mouse Bai’. The young man was an orphan on Spider Den at the beginning. There was no telling whether he was the offspring of some space pirates or hostages that had been kidnapped. Regardless, he was just an insignificant person between a servant and a slave.

“When Spider Den was taken down, we discovered a lot of such kids. To some extent, they were actually the most miserable victims of the chaos that the space pirates caused.

“Until we found valid proof of their crimes, naturally, we would not discriminate against such kids. Those were the days when the Flying Star Sector was in dire need of hands. A lot of children received formal education and later distinguished themselves in many fleets of the New Federation.

“As for Mouse Bai, his life almost came to an end when we broke into Spider Den. At that time, he seemed to fall off from a high place and hurt his head badly. He was incontinent and unconscious for a long time. Soon, he was thrown into the pile of dead bodies to wait to die.

“But he did not die. He crawled out of the dead bodies and even joined the Burning Prairie Fleet by chance. In the end, he grew into the most excellent fleet commander of the federation one step after another, becoming Bai Xingjian of the Big Bai Fleet!

“Falling from a high place, entering a coma, revival after death, a grand performance. Li Yao, have you thought of something after those words are connected?”

Li Yao thought quickly and immediately understood what he meant. “Possession and reincarnation?”

“Exactly,” Bai Kaixin said. “I’m highly suspicious that although my father’s fleshly body was shattered, his soul did not completely perish. In the meantime, while most of Yan Xinjian’s remaining souls perished, one of them did manage to escape!

“The Pirate Potentate and the Supreme Space Pirate, two equally powerful and ‘repugnant’ souls, might have had some sort of weird attraction to each other, right?

“The strength of each of them alone was not enough for them to be reincarnated in the body, but the two broken souls somehow joined into a brand-new soul and entered the body of the young man, Mouse Bai, who was already dead. Then, the magnificent being—Bai Xingjian—was reborn!”

“Bai Xingjian… Bai Xingjian… Bai Xinghe plus Yan Xinjian?”

Li Yao finally understood the whole meaning of the name. He could not help but have a feeling of epiphany.

In such a case, Bai Xingjian’s unbelievable and even ridiculous capabilities would be perfectly explainable.

When Bai Xinghe and Yan Xinjian, two of the most dreadful space pirates in the past five hundred years, combined, they were certainly more than qualified for Yan Liren to draw his sword.

Li Yao was quite amazed, but Ding Lingdang found it hard to believe. “Brother Bai, this whole story is a little bit too staggering and unbelievable. Everything is just your hypothesis. Do you have any more concrete evidence?”

“Of course. Does their style in commanding count?” Bai Kaixin said. “A fleet commander’s style of commanding is as unique as his fingerprints and retinas. Other people can mimic them but can never do exactly the same as them.

“In the eras of both Yan Xinjian and my father, the crystal processor technology was already quite advanced, allowing them to leave the data and files of many classic battle cases.

“Before, Bai Xingjian had concealed eighty percent of his capabilities and intentionally altered his commanding style, so nobody thought about it that way.

“But during the last battle, he completely tore off his camouflage and revealed the magnificent abilities of the Divinity Transformation Stage. It also gave us a chance to collect the traces of his real commanding style and the activities of his fleet. After the data was translated into all kinds of parameters, they were a more than ninety percent match to the files left by Yan Xinjian and Bai Xinghe. The only difference was that he had greatly upgraded and evolved on the basis of Yan Xinjian and Bai Xinghe!”

Li Yao nodded hard. “It is very likely. Any genius commander couldn’t have appeared out of nowhere for nothing. He’d already gained his reputation during the Uranian Ring War. Such an unpredictable and yet casual style was definitely not something that every commander is capable of.”

Bai Xinghe was silent for a long time before he said, “Before he left, he spoke to me and told me a lot of things. In between the lines, he almost admitted his identity.

“After hearing what he said and recalling what happened when he tried to break into the Nascent Soul Stage almost fifty years ago, I—I am ninety-nine percent sure that he is my father, Boss Bai!”

Li Yao and Ding Lingdang looked at each other and asked, “Fifty years ago?”

“There are too many details for me to properly explain right now,” Bai Kaixin explained. “All in all, I believe that Bai Xingjian is the combination of the souls of my father and Yan Xinjian, the Supreme Space Pirate. But during the first fifty years of his life, two incompatible parts that were ‘Boss Bai’ and ‘Yan Xinjian’ resided inside his body at the same time, like two different personalities. The personality that was ‘Yan Xinjian’ somehow hated my guts and wanted me dead desperately. The personality that was ‘Boss Bai’ naturally tried to stop him.

“Fifty years ago, when Bai Xingjian tried to advance into the Nascent Soul Stage, the killing intent of ‘Yan Xinjian’ finally reached its limits, and the contradiction between the two personalities erupted. In the end, the personality of ‘Boss Bai’ vanquished the personality of ‘Yan Xinjian’, saving both me and himself.

“In fact, I grew suspicious after the incident. Everything I said just now was figured out over the long time after that. However, before I had the chance to challenge him and make everything clear…”

“Why didn’t you ask him before?” Ding Lingdang asked in a hurry.

Bai Kaixin smiled bitterly. “This whole thing was simply too weird. How would you have asked him if you were me? Meet him at his office and ask him directly, ‘Hey, are you my father?’ Would that do?”