Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Linghai was still silent, as if she hadn’t heard a word that her brother said.

However, Li Yao vaguely noticed that thousands of cracks had appeared on the invisible mask on her face, and the feelings in the deepest part of her heart were slowly leaking out.

Li Lingfeng sensed his sister’s subtle changes too. Even more confidently, he went on, “If the queen cannot provide a reasonable explanation, I do have an immature speculation that I would like to propose.

“Perhaps the young female warrior had a lot of stories with the refiner from the Covenant Alliance deep inside the mysterious world fragment, but she kept it a secret and did not report it to the family.

“The things at the beginning were probably true. The exploration teams of the two parties did have a brutal battle, in which most people were killed by each other. She and the refiner from the Covenant Alliance were the only survivors. With her combat ability, it was naturally more than easy to capture the enemy and keep him alive in order to maintain the starship and explore the world fragment with the guy’s skills in refining.

“However, while there was no telling what happened when the man and the woman were all by themselves in the half year that followed, their relationship far exceeded the boundary of a captive and an enemy, and the most passionate love burst out.

“It was incredible, wasn’t it? By logic, a well-trained Immortal Cultivator who held unquestionable loyalty to the Imperium would absolutely in no way fall in love with someone from the Covenant Alliance.

“People of the Covenant Alliance, on the other hand, were all human-shaped machines whose feelings and emotions were under high control or had been obliterated altogether. How could they have boasted the ability to ‘love’?

“Therefore, nobody has ever thought that way during the past hundred years.

“But when I reflected on the whole incident, a eureka moment suddenly occurred to me. Was it possible that the world fragment itself contained certain anomalies, such as traps, arrays, or ancient relics and heritages, and that the two of them encountered something and received something, which interfered with their souls and facilitated a certain degree of mutations in both of them?

“The mutations allowed the refiner from the Covenant Alliance to break the blockage of the ‘Three Fundamental Laws’ and gain the ability to feel, and subsequently, fell in love with someone for the first time. In the meantime, the female warrior who used to be ‘meek, innocent, and unsophisticated’ was given a certain dark heart that even the big shots and the loyalty tests of the family could not see through?

“On closer look, the speculation does make a lot of sense, at least on the refiner of the Covenant Alliance’s side.

“A ‘human-shaped machine’ who had been suppressed by barriers all the time and never tasted any kind of feelings learned for the first time what was love, what was hate, and what were human beings’ natural-born urges after the shackles were completely shattered. Then, at exactly such a moment, he found a beautiful, captivating girl right next to him. Wasn’t it only natural that he fell in love with her devotedly?

“The female warrior, on the other hand, had encountered a cosmic storm and the death of all her companions on her very first mission to the sea of stars away from the family. It was only natural that her soul was greatly shocked. When she was in the middle of the perilous, mysterious world fragment, it wouldn’t be strange that she regarded the refiner from the Covenant Alliance, the only man nearby, as the sole reliance and gradually grew feelings for him, right?

“I can totally imagine in what a clumsy and passionate way the refiner from the Covenant Alliance would express his love after his seals were broken and his desires were released like wild beasts.

“The female warrior who used to only know training and fighting in the family had never been faced with such a situation too. It was only natural that she lost her defense and threw herself to him!”

Crack! Crack!

The land below Li Linghai’s feet was torn apart in huge explosions. The cracks extended to all directions like dragons in the most appalling way.

Li Yao, however, secretly frowned. He knew that it was a sign that Li Linghai’s mind was disturbed, and she lost control over her spiritual energy, which was certainly not good.

It appeared that Li Lingfeng was indeed onto something she would rather not talk about.

Li Jialing was breathing hastily too, and he almost couldn’t keep the stealth state. Li Yao thought that the young man was already remarkable enough to have kept cool for such a long time after eavesdropping on such astonishing information.

Li Lingfeng’s cockiness was almost flowing out of every pore on his face. He went on, “It was a shame that good days could not last. The unfortunate couple from antagonistic sides couldn’t hide in the world fragment forever after all. After the starships were repaired, they had to go separate ways.

“The female warrior reported after her return that she killed the refiner from the Covenant Alliance in person. Was it true? I’m inclined to a negative answer. Perhaps they repaired their respective starships with the resources in the relics inside the world fragment, before they returned to their own sides on two different starships, never to see each other again, except that they hid the relationship that must never be leaked deep down inside their heart.

“Perhaps the female warrior thought that it was just a minor episode in her life, and she would soon forget everything. Even though she couldn’t, the memory would be nothing more than a collection in her heart that she could play with now and then.

“But she had greatly underestimated a sentimental woman’s eagerness for love.

“It was especially so when she was forced to marry a man that she did not love at all as a tool of the family and to go to the heart of the Imperium, where she would monitor or even manipulate her husband according to the orders of the family. The cold and dark contrast made the ‘wonderful memories’ of the world fragment in the old days turn into a cluster of venomous thorns that gradually grew inside her chest and slowly entangled her heart, her limbs, and her head!

“Perhaps she had never been in love with her husband, had she?

“Even though she tried to forget everything of the past and to transfer her feelings for the refiner of the Covenant Alliance to her husband, the orders from the family would not allow her to do that. She was not allowed to have any feelings for her husband, which would affect the great cause of the four Kurfürst families to control the Imperium!

“Sometimes, I am even suspicious if she ever loved the twelve children that her husband and she had.

“None of the children were born out of her own intentions. She was only forced to retrieve her life seeds and fertilize them when there was no choice.

“She had no feelings for the children at all. Whenever she saw her husband and those children, she would be reminded of her desperate fate and become even more desperate!

“The desperation reached the climax in the year when her husband turned from ‘Crown Prince’ to ‘His Majesty’.

“Perhaps until then, she had illusions that some accidents might happen, and another prince would become the emperor, or that her husband would simply die an abrupt death. After all, there were too many crown princes who died abruptly in the history of the Imperium.

“In that case, her life in the future would be more or less freer, and it was even possible for her to flee from the center of the power swirls.

“But after the crown prince turned into His Majesty, and she turned from the crown princess into the queen of the Imperium, she would be trapped in the desperate cage at the capital of the Imperium forever!

“In utmost desperation, or perhaps under the inferences of the feelings that other people did not know, she did the most appalling and bold thing in the spur of the moment.

“She secretly retrieved one of her life seeds and unfroze the life seed of her lover from the Covenant Alliance that she had kept by her side for decades. After combining them into a zygote, she found a way to get an unmanned exploration starship, which was granted the abilities of automatic navigation and nurturing human babies after modifications.

“She placed the fetus into the unmanned exploration starship, set the destination to be the edge of the cosmos, and launched the fetus out!

“Why did she do that?

“Perhaps after giving birth to so many ‘biological children’ that she did not love, she yearned to have a baby that she truly wanted to give birth to with the one that she truly loved before?

“Perhaps she considered the baby to be some sort of reincarnation for her. She hoped that the child would go to a place that nobody could find in her replacement, where the child would be far away from slaughters, conflicts, schemes, tricks, deceptions, and betrayals, living a free and unstrained life.

“Perhaps it was just a soundless rebellion of her against the family?

“Or rather, did she want the child to find the man, her lover from the Covenant Alliance who had broken the boundary of the ‘Three Fundamental Laws’?

“Can you tell me the answer, Your Grace… and my… dear sister?”

Li Linghai shivered slightly. Her calmness when she just arrived was entirely gone.

“You are quite imaginative.”

Narrowing her eyes, Li Linghai sniffed and said, “What a shame that you are not a culture-type Immortal Cultivator.”

“Hehehehe. It has nothing to do with imagination; it’s all about computation and deduction abilities.”

Tapping his head softly, Li Lingfeng said, “Did you know that I spent thirty years drawing the psychological portrait of you without leaving any details? Also, we share the same parents after all. Although we do not know what is exactly on each other’s minds, we do have a lot of similarities in our thinking. After thirty years of repetitive deductions and computations, I believe that my speculations up above are at least 70% likely to be correct.

“There’s no need to deny it. Just let me finish. The most spectacular part is about to come. In fact, the story was quite warm and sweet so far, wasn’t it? It was quite normal for a woman to do something silly in her rashness when she was captured by love, right?

“But our queen was definitely no common woman. She was a woman who had certain amazing experiences in the mysterious world fragment, which triggered weird mutations in the deepest part of her heart, and who had been soaked in the swirls of power for so many years!

“Power is like drugs. As long as you touch any of it, you will never be able to get rid of it. You will only fall deeper and deeper and grow more and more addicted.

“Having sunk in the swirls of power for decades, the queen had enough of working as a puppet and a tool of the family and made other plans. She intended to seize the highest power, but the fetus that was a combination of her bloodline and the bloodline of the guy from the Covenant Alliance, which was a product of her rashness, was obviously her greatest weakness and loophole. There would be dire consequences should it be discovered.

“Therefore, from almost the moment the unmanned exploration starship was launched, she regretted, or rather, grew rational again.

“She immediately made up her mind to destroy the unmanned exploration starship and the fetus inside. She did put it into practice too. She caught up to and blew up the exploration starship in the depths of the space, obliterating the trouble for good. At the very least, she thought she did.”