Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

In the No. 1 spaceport of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, a black starship that looked like three sharp swords condensed together and slowly glided out of the rail. The power rune arrays at the back of the starship burst out brilliant exhaust flames like plum blossoms, accelerating it to such a high speed that it almost tore apart the entire universe when it rushed to the sea of stars far away that had already begun to simmer.

It was “Tornado”, Li Lingfeng’s flagship!

Li Lingfeng was standing on the bridge, and Li Jialing was pacing back and forth anxiously next to him. Around them were quick flashing light beams.

Everything that was happening in the space and below the ground, including Wuying Lan’s remark of desperation just now, was all within their knowledge.

“Wuying Lan was wrong about that. How can he say that there are no miracles in this world? Wouldn’t it be very bad and inharmonious if the farmers, miners, and assembly line workers whose lives are already filled with desperation hear it?”

Playing with a set of colorful Cosmos Rings, which seemed to be made of rainbows, Li Lingfeng said with a smile, “Of course there are miracles in this world. But all the miracles are created by the Immortal Cultivators! We create whatever miracles we want and make them happen to whoever we want them to happen to!”

It was true that miracles were created and controlled by the Immortal Cultivators.

At this moment, inside “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, there was a professional team of more than fifty thousand people in the Heavenly Eye Group who were solely responsible for the creation of miracles.

They were the most brilliant screenplay architects, picture editors, and after-effect engineers. There were also specialists in news, directing, and psychology.

The pictures captured by various sorts of crystal cameras in the war taking place in space and the siege below the ground right now were only the raw materials.

If they were directly broadcasted for the people of the Imperium to watch, the effect would not be shocking and educational enough, and it was often difficult to prevent unexpected factors from happening.

Therefore, although it was “real-time transmission” in name, there would always be a delay of one to five minutes according to the actual situation.

The professional team of fifty thousand people were responsible to filter, edit, and montage the materials in the five minutes that were of paramount importance. They had to decorate, implant, or even fabricate things out of nothing, in order to output a piece of flawless and highly-shocking work, so that the will of the Immortal Cultivators, or to be more exact, the will of Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan, could be carried out as much as possible.

…

At this moment, in the entire Imperium, millions of common people had received the pictures that were carefully compiled by the Immortal Cultivators, including Gao Xiaojian, Gao Kangda’s little brother.

The underground Cultivators in the picture were arrogant and overjoyed at first, before they were devastated and caught in complete desperation. Their extremely twisted faces were so pitiful, disgusting, and hilarious.

Gao Xiaojian and his workmates who had all performed mechanical modifications burst into laughter, amused by the Cultivators’ looks of disbelief and bewilderment.

The ragged starships of the coalition fleet of Starlight, in contrast to the magnificent main-force fleet of the Imperium, were so poor and thin, and they collapsed at the first touch.

Together with the screams, moans, and sound effects such as “we are screwed” that were added during editing, the absurdity of a bunch of clowns who did not know what they were doing was best depicted.

[If you had seen this coming, would you have done it at the beginning?]

Gao Xiaojian shook his head in disapproval and thought fluently with the ways of thinking that his supervisors had inculcated into his head. Can anything be better than working diligently and being a decent man? It was their own laziness and sluggishness that caused the tragedy, and yet they are blaming it on the society, the system, and the government. Also, because of the infiltration and the instigation of hostile forces such as the Covenant Alliance and the extraterrestrial devils, they finally walked on the wrong path, broke the law, and committed all the wrongdoings. The only ramification of their action is that they are hurting both others and themselves!

The Imperium has secured decisive, glorious triumphs at the frontline, but our enemies are certainly unwilling to admit their defeat without fighting back. Even if they know they are doomed, they will still struggle desperately before their death. They will try to conspire with the ambitious forces within the Imperium, hoping to cause the last bit of trouble in the end.

In the picture, an officer of the Imperium who was tall, sharp, and wearing a formal uniform declared aloud, “However, the Imperium is invincible, and our enemies are destined to die. For the Imperium, for the peace and happiness of billions of people of the Imperium, and for the rise of the civilization of mankind, we will never allow any enemy to get things their way!

“Go forward now, army of the Imperium. Destroy the Cultivators before our eyes, the dogs of the Covenant Alliance!”

“Go forward, Imperium!”

“Long live the Imperium!”

“Destroy the Cultivators! Destroy the Covenant Alliance! Long live the Imperium! Long live the Immortal Cultivators! Long live the civilization of mankind!”

For a moment, Gao Xiaojian was caught in a trance and thought that he had become the tall and handsome officer of the Imperium sailing in the sea of stars on the awesome super starship.

The man-made blood in his body all flowed into his brain. He felt that he was burning all of a sudden.

Thunderous roars echoed from the broadcast runes. Gao Xiaojian and his workmates screamed so hard that the dome of the “Loyalty Room” was almost falling apart…

…

“Are you ready?”

On “Tornado”, Li Lingfeng looked at Li Jialing with a smile. “You are the greatest ‘miracle’ that we are going to create in this battle. From this moment on, you will be a falcon soaring in the wind. Just release your potential and claim… the entire universe!”

“I’m ready.”

Li Jialing stopped pacing. Taking a deep breath, he slightly clenched his fists and said, “I almost can’t wait any longer.”

“That’s good. Prepare to fight. I’ll ask my most elite ‘Scorching Wind Squad’ to stay behind you.”

Li Lingfeng said, “Remember. There’s no need to deal with the enemy’s minions. Your target is the enemy’s starships. If you can blow up a starship with your crystal suit, it will be of great promotional value.”

Li Lingfeng did not bring much reinforcement of main-force warships for Wuying Lan this time.

After all, the war against the Covenant Alliance on the frontline was not over yet. Now that the Imperium had swallowed a large area of space zones in a row, the defense line and the supply line were greatly stretched. Fleets had been deployed everywhere to resist the counterattack of the Covenant Alliance.

Besides, the army of the Imperium was not in one piece either. While the fleets belonged to the supreme His Majesty in name, they were in fact under the command of the nobles and the masters of the Sectors. The recruitment of soldiers, the subsidies, and the commanders of various levels were all controlled by the nobles and the Sector Masters, who had long minded their own business without taking orders from anyone.

The vast and newly-earned space zones were a piece of great cake. In regard to the distribution of the cake, the fleets of the Imperium, which represented the interests of different nobles and experts, would probably even burst into huge fights.

Who was willing to abandon the benefits of a planet or even a whole Sector at such a moment and fight the Cultivators together with Li Lingfeng?

Cultivators were nothing more than cockroaches and rats. They couldn’t be anything better than that whether they were crushed or not. Even if they were all killed with no survivors, so what? How many gains could they possibly get? Could the Cultivators make a few resource planets out of nothing and offer them to the Immortal Cultivators?

As for Li Lingfeng himself, although he was the best expert in the prime years in the Li family and had always been known as the “future Kurfürst”, it was the unpredictable future after all.

At the very least, the leader of the Li family was not him right now, and he was not “one of the four Kurfürsten”. Many people in his family within his generation or even his father’s were coveting his place. They would already be considered friendly enough if they did not stab him in the back. How was it possible to expect them to bring out their private troops to help him?

If he were to pull some strings, it was not entirely impossible to gather a few fleets.

The question was that the fleets were not stupid either. If they were to mobilize a lot of troops to him, they were bound to extend their hands into the “Heavenly Eye Group” and the platform of “slaughter stream”, sharing his core interests.

The “Heavenly Eye Group” was controlled by Wuying Lan in name, but in fact, it couldn’t have flourished without the support of the “future Kurfürst”. The construction of the “Land of Sins” and “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, as well as the epic quest of “Dying Light” right now, was all for only one purpose, which was to pave the way for him to be the leader of the Li family and one of the four Kurfürsten by providing support of capitals, connections, fame, media control, or even military credits.

Li Lingfeng absolutely couldn’t tolerate anybody laying fingers on his core interests in any form.

Therefore, after discussing with Wuying Lan for a long time and running the most accurate estimation on the comprehensive capability of Starlight, he still decided to solve the problem with the armed forces of the Heavenly Eye Group themselves, Li Lingfeng’s own private troop, and a few mercenary fleets that were hired with coins.

The Cultivators were an unorganized mess. It was more than easy to crush the enemy with their available forces at hand.

However, the universe was too vast a place after all. If the Cultivators were really determined to run away crazily, it did require some meticulous planning in order to annihilate all the cockroaches.

Therefore, even Li Lingfeng had taken action in person with his flagship in order to reach the most perfect outcome and to make an accomplishment that nobody could question.

“So far, everything has been under our control. The annoying cockroaches that bothered us for a thousand years are finally going to be stomped on today!”

Li Lingfeng patted heavily on Li Jialing’s shoulder. “Go now. The ‘moment of miracle’ that belongs to us has begun. Go make your miracle!”

“Alright.”

Li Jialing smiled and stared at Li Lingfeng. Bowing at him respectfully, he took the opportunity to hide his eyes in the shadow. “I’ll be sure to let you see a shocking miracle!”

…

In the cold, quiet spaceport in “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, in a corner that was only one wall away from the dark space, Li Yao stretched out his limbs and crouched on the ground before slowly opening his crimson eyes.