Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The word “we” touched all the prisoners.

Were people like them also qualified to be equal to the mysterious and strong Cultivator before their eyes and referred to as “we” by him?

“Outside of this place is the boundless sea of stars, where countless warships of the Immortal Cultivators are fighting. Leaving them aside, more reinforcements of the Immortal Cultivators will certainly arrive in ten to fifteen days. If you stay here, there is absolutely no way that you can get out of your doom!”

Li Yao continued bellowing, “No matter how you bend your knees and beg before the Immortal Cultivators’ feet for their mercy, your fate will still be as cursed as before. You will still receive inhumane sufferings in the sunless prisons and laboratories until you die at the end without a sound!

“There is only one way that you can survive!

“While ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ is more weakly guarded than ever, attack the core of the space fortress with me, kill all the Immortal Cultivators, and occupy the place completely!

“There is an abundant reserve of resources here, including astronomical crystals, fuel, and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. A lot of civil carriers are docked at the spaceports at the periphery too. As long as they carry enough fuel and food, it is impossible that they can ship some people away. It will be a success as long as you persist until the moment of the space jump!

“But the prerequisite of everything is to conquer ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ first and grasp the defense system of the space fortress entirely!

“Otherwise, even if we can hijack a few civil carriers, it is still absolutely impossible to sail out of the spaceports. Even if we can sail out of the spaceports, we will be shot down by the defense system of the space fortress in half a minute!

“Yes. This is a very dangerous, life-blighting mission. Most of you will die here. Nobody can guarantee that you can certainly survive.

“But I can guarantee that the sacrifice of each of you will mean the deaths of ten or even a hundred Immortal Cultivators who will go to the other world with you!

“This is all I have to say. If you still have the slightest courage in your veins, if you do not wish to die anonymously like an ant and a cockroach, if you have had enough of the mockery and derision of the Immortal Cultivators, if you want to avenge your deceased family members, and if you want to fight for a slim chance of survival for yourselves, just come with me. I will fight side by side with you. The resisters and the avengers will blow up ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ and take back the freedom that belongs to us!”

After speaking resolutely to this moment, Li Yao did not waste any time but simply stretched the black wings at the back of his crystal suit to the maximum. Redness emanated from the endings of the feathers again, raising an overwhelming fire of fury, as he dashed to the main area of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”.

The prisoners in the remains of the prison looked at each other in bewilderment, pondering at a loss.

There was no telling who roared first, but very soon, the declarations of anger and regret echoed all over the beehive prison.

“FREEDOM!”

The furiously burning torrent of iron had been gathered. Under Li Yao’s direction, it congregated into an invincible tsunami that could destroy everything as it ran to the most vulnerable abdomen of the Immortal Cultivators!

…

At the central control room in the core part of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, Wuying Lan, owner of the space fortress, still did not have the faintest clue about the superstorm that had already taken shape right next to him.

His face with a casual smile was covered by the colorful, flashing numbers and graphs on the thousands of light beams. He couldn’t have looked more confident of his victory.

The coalition fleet of Starlight in space had been tackled by the fleet of the Imperium led by Li Lingfeng in person. The crystal suit groups that looked like swarms of bees had blocked every gap that the Cultivators could possibly escape through.

Although it would take some additional efforts, the destruction of the coalition fleet of Starlight was only a matter of time.

The underground branch of Starlight on the Land of Sins, which they had intentionally kept as bait, was on the brink of collapse too. It seemed that they might lay down their weapons and surrender without him doing anything.

Everything had been conducted according to the scripts that Li Lingfeng and he had carefully drafted. Everybody was their chess piece and their marionette.

The ecstasy of having everything under control made Wuying Lan narrow his eyes and shiver softly. His nerve endings felt so comfortable that they seemed to be stimulated by feeble electric currents.

On the other hand, and on the more important level, the large epic quest “Dying Light”, a special show presented by the slaughter stream platform of the Heavenly Eye Group, now had an audience rate far higher than the shows of the other corporations of similar types. It was even higher than the combined audience rates from the second place to the tenth place on the rank. To some extent, it had completely monopolized the eyes of all the people in the entire Imperium.

According to the breath, heartbeats, brainwaves, and secretion of adrenaline on the few samples, the viewers had been deeply fascinated by their show and were completely dwelling in the world and ideas that they had constructed.

Both Wuying Lan and Li Lingfeng would announce their grand entrance in the show in the next step. Their influence in the entire Imperium would be expanded further than ever.

For a moment, a ridiculous idea occurred to Wuying Lan’s brain that was almost simmering in excitement.

If the Heavenly Eye Group continued developing like that, was it possible that Li Lingfeng would really become the leader of the Li family and one of four Kurfürsten of the Imperium, and he, as an abnormal member of a branch of the royal family, would get a chance to claim the ultimate throne someday?

But the idea was completely deleted by him after it only flashed for a moment in his head.

Wuying Lan laughed in amusement, at his own arrogance and idiocy.

His reliance was Li Lingfeng and the Li family, but the emperor right now had already been pushed forward and backed by the Li family. The Li family even arranged for Li Linghai to be the queen.

Then, according to the unspoken agreements of the four Kurfürst families hundreds of years ago, the Li family would certainly back off slightly regarding the candidate of the next emperor now that it had earned enough benefits from the current one. It was impossible for two emperors who were inclined to the Li family to be elected in a row.

Besides, the Imperium was now no longer at the age of Blackstar the Great a thousand years ago. The so-called emperor was just a puppet of the four Kurfürst families. Even if he did become an emperor someday, would it be anything interesting? He would be nothing more than a gigantic puppet.

The Heavenly Eye Group was his “imperium”. As long as he could completely grasp the Heavenly Eye Group and extend the tentacles of the slaughter stream platform to every corner of the Imperium so that everybody could hear his voice, see his perfect image, and dance according to his will, everything would be enough.

In such a case, he would be the uncrowned king of the entire universe!

“Hehe…”

Looking at the audience rate that continued on the rise and the looks of the “chess pieces” who were panicked, devastated, or bursting into fury, Wuying Lan chuckled in great satisfaction.

Right then, feeble explosions and quakes echoed from a place far away above his head.

Wuying Lan’s chuckle was immediately frozen.

As if hit right at the tip of his nose by a punch, the dominator of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky” looked more awful than ever.

Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the water cup on the control panel coldly.

“Bo… Bo… Bo…”

The control center should have been absolutely still, but ripples were spreading in the cup nonstop, as if a dinosaur-like behemoth were crashing his fortress heavily.

“Damn it. What has possibly gone wrong? No starships of Starlight can approach us at all. All the attacks have been blocked by our defense shield!”

With a gloomy face, Wuying Lan stared at the ceiling without blinking. His grave eyes seemed to be piercing through the cabin walls in search of the origin of the explosions and the quakes.

“My lord, the beehive prison is under assault!”

The deputy commander of the “Heavenly Eye Legion”, a private armed force of the Heavenly Eye Group, who was responsible for the security of “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky” as the captain of the guards, stammered to him; his teeth clattering beyond his control.

Wuying Lan had such a pale face that the blood all over his body might have been frozen. Grabbing the captain of the guards by the collar, he gnashed his teeth. “What do you mean by ‘under assault’? Who has assaulted us in what way?”

“We do not have any idea yet!”

The captain of guards replied, almost crying, “We only know that the energy relay station of the beehive prison has been completely destroyed and the great array of ‘Dragnet’ is wasted too. The stability of our main energy core has been affected too. We have completely lost in touch with the prison. By estimation, things must’ve completely gone out of control!”

“How is it possible?”

Wuying Lan burst into fury. “The energy relay station of the beehive prison has a protective shell made of seven layers of superalloys. It has the defensive ability that equals the anti-explosive armors at the front of the main-force warships. Unless the garbage of Starlight sail their starships to the deepest part of the beehive prison and barrage it right next to the shell, it can never be blown up! Tell me. How many starships and troops have the enemy deployed to cause such damages? And where are the starships and troops?”

“I…”

The captain of the guards was as confused as his superior, not having the vaguest idea of how the unexpected attack was activated.

Taking a deep breath, Wuying Lan said—one word after another—his fury turning into gloom and indifference, “Why is the damage of such a large scale not detected earlier?”

“Our Spiritual Nexus was hacked by the enemy.”

The captain of the guards replied, “The enemy sent false data streams into our alarm system. They were implanted in a very sophisticated way, which misled our system into thinking that the beehive prison had been peaceful and quiet.”

“What?”

The veins on Wuying Lan’s forehead were jumping crazily. “The garbage of Starlight can’t boast such hacking abilities. What is the situation now?”

“Now, we are still repairing the system and tracing the enemy in an emergency. Ah. All the surveillance cameras from the beehive prison to the center of the City in the Sky have been controlled by us again!”

The captain of the guards operated quickly on his portable crystal processor for a moment, triggering more than ten delicate 3D light beams.

The surging torrents on the light beam completely collapsed Wuying Lan’s calm face.