Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Dongfang Bai was truly dumbfounded.

The three hyenas that intended to gnaw the corpse of the giant beast suddenly discovered that they were the prey under its sharp tusks. They couldn’t help but shudder slightly under Lei Chenghu’s radiating eyes.

“Are-Are you serious?”

Dongfang Bai stuttered.

Lei Chenghu smiled sullenly, his eyes full of disdain and pity. He sighed. “You talk about ‘survival of the fittest’ all the time, and when you are faced with dozens of specific hominoids, you are not reluctant to ravage and take away their lives. But when things get serious, you all have cold feet.

“What kind of Immortal Cultivators are you exactly? You are just useless garbage under the disguise of Immortal Cultivators who dwell in the boring ecstasy of showing your magnificence by bullying the weak!

“Those words are exactly what I want to say to the Council of Elders. I am responsible for all of them, and none of them is a joke.

“Although I confronted the Covenant Alliance in the Black Wind Sector for a hundred years, I never agreed to launch the strategic counterattack in the first place.

“However, the Council of Elders had already issued the call of a general mobilization. I had no choice but to carry out the order of the Council of Elders dutifully.

“After our army pushed forward to the line of ‘Shenying-Guhe’ unstoppably, recovering eighteen Sectors in a row, I reported to the Council of Elders again and requested to change from strategic attack to strategic defense immediately. We should not launch a new round of attacks until we run the eighteen Sectors carefully for at least fifty years.

“However, the greedy, shortsighted guys in the Council of Elders and the base of the expedition army threw my kind advice aside again. They pushed forward recklessly like wild dogs that had smelled meat, until when dozens of Sectors are swallowed today, making the pressure on defense and logistics higher than ever.

“You know what fear is now, and you want to stop while you still can?

“Let me tell you, it’s too late!

“The Covenant Alliance will absolutely not stand by and watch the Imperium revives the recovered territory. In the past ten years, our army has conquered so many habitable planets and resource planets, but we never found any sign of the main force of the Covenant Alliance, which is the greatest hidden problem!

“I guarantee with the head on my neck that before long, perhaps when the noble lords in the court of the Imperium are struggling against each other while negotiating how the ‘fruits of victory’ should be divided, the main force of the Covenant Alliance will certainly march out from the least expected coordinates and launch the counterattack of the greatest scale so far. If our army cannot resist the counterattack, not only will we lose all the recovered worlds, we will even completely lose the strategical initiative of the war. Our heartland will be exposed to the edge of the Covenant Alliance at the mercy of our enemy!

“It is barely possible for us to get out of the peril. You people who sit in the offices daydreaming before the crystal processors are truly hilariously ignorant!

“The best defense is attack. Before, I did not support launching such an immature counterattack, but now that the counterattack has been carried out for such a long time, objection won’t help anything anymore. Instead of distributing the precious forces to the dozens of Sectors that have just been recovered and are seriously short of resources, I would rather concentrate all the soldiers and continue pushing forward to the heartland of the Covenant Alliance!

“In order to completely break through the Covenant Alliance’s last defense line and force the enemy’s main force into a decisive battle, the scale of the expedition army must be expanded by at least 20%!”

20%!

The three investigators including Dongfang Bai were completely dumbfounded. Looking at each other in bewilderment, they did not know what to say for a long time.

“I know that there are difficulties. But no war comes easily.”

Lei Chenghu said casually, “I have carefully studied all the economic policies and regulations of awards and punishments that are implemented in the general mobilization. It occurs to me that you have neither explained the great significance of the war and the dangerous situation the Imperium is faced with to the people, nor completely trigger the people’s resolution to sacrifice everything for the civilization of mankind.

“In my eyes, there are still great potentials to be dug out in the rear. I am writing an article named ‘Strategies of the Next Phase’, in which I have described a ‘concentration camp system’. It is supposed to be used on the people of the newly-recovered space zones who have been seriously brainwashed by the Covenant Alliance. But at such a critical moment, it wouldn’t hurt to set up certain ‘concentration camps’ in the worlds that are deeply polluted by the ideas of the Cultivators with riots happening all the time. I believe that it will significantly increase the work efficiency of the hominoids and their patriotism. At the very least, it will greatly lower their consumption, save more resources, and ensure the supply in the frontline.

“All in all, the war has reached the most critical moment. The Imperium and the Covenant Alliance are like two bulls who stick each other with their horns. Both of them are panting and exhausted. All that matters is who collapses first. Everything will be doomed when one of them shows the slightest sign of collapse!

“Therefore, from now on, we must be prepared to fight for another five to ten years and sacrifice at least fifty billion people. If you want to win, the Council of Elders must consider my strategies carefully.”

Dongfang Bai swallowed hard and slightly stepped back, as if a ferocious tiger surrounded by ghostly fire would rip apart the barrier of the space and tore his throat directly.

“The Council of Elders will never agree to such a crazy plan.”

The head of the special agents swallowed hard, his voice shivering like a flickering candle. “Besides, the local nobles and warlords are already complaining and resisting openly and secretly at the current intensity of resource supply. How can we further intensify the general mobilization?”

Lei Chenghu smiled. With a “I knew you cannot achieve it” look on his face, he changed the topic and said, “If you can’t, just prepare for a strategic retreat!”

Dongfang Bai was utterly confused. “What?”

“The dozens of newly-recovered Sectors are destined to be lost.”

Lei Chenghu explained patiently, not to Dongfang Bai, but to the many elders behind him. “Especially the twenty or so Sectors that have been conquered in the recent three years. They are the thorny, poisonous baits that the Covenant Alliance has tossed out!

“If the Council of Elders cannot send more soldiers to the expedition army, I suggest we abandon the twenty Sectors voluntarily and retreat the army back to the ‘Shenying-Guhe’ line to both concentrate the troops and reduce the logistical pressure. Perhaps there will still be a chance to resist the Covenant Alliance’s last counterattack.

“Of course, even if we choose the relatively conservative strategy and really retreat to the ‘Shenying-Guhe’ line, the expedition army must not be reduced or disbanded. It must retain its current scale and further concentrate on the chain of command. That is the only way to find an opportunity for a strategic decisive battle with the main force of the Covenant Alliance!”

“It is even less possible!”

Dongfang Bai blurted out, “The enemy has run off after a crushing defeat, and yet you ask our army to back off without fighting and abandon more than twenty worlds voluntarily. That is really—”

“Yes. It’s truly impossible. The ravenous nobles have long craned their necks ready to divide the delicious and succulent trophies. Who is willing to give away the fat meat that they have already swallowed?”

Lei Chenghu shook his head and sighed. “Cowardice is not the reason for failure, nor is greediness. But if you are both cowardly and greedy, or if you are greedy when you should be cowardly and cowardly when you should be greedy, there is no way that you can survive!

“This is all that I want to say. Do what you see as fit!”

Lei Chenghu closed his eyes slowly, deep in thought.

“Marquis Liaohai…”

Dongfang Bai was overwhelmed for a moment. After a long daze, he said, “I’m afraid you are exaggerating, aren’t you? While alluring the enemy to push forward recklessly has always been a trick in the military, who is ever crazy enough to pay the price of dozens of Sectors to do so?

“We are talking about dozens of habitable planets and hundreds of resource planets. The population, mother lodes, and all kinds of resources are inestimable!

“Such tremendous resources would be absorbed by the Imperium if there is an error in their strategy. By then, the Covenant Alliance will really be doomed for failure!

“Even the craziest gambler would not take such a wild gamble, would they? This is almost a gamble on the fate of the country!

“More than ten years ago, when the Imperium launched the strategic counterattack, the Covenant Alliance was clearly at an advantage. Why would they resort to such an insane gamble?

“Therefore, the base and the Council of Elders have considered if the enemy was alluring us to push forward, but the possibility is little to none!”

“Oh?”

Lei Chenghu opened his eyes abruptly again and said, one word after another, “A gamble on the country’s face? Well said!

“It is true that, if the Covenant Alliance is as strong as it appears, and it keeps its advantages over the Imperium, there will be no reason for any gamble.

“But what if the Covenant Alliance is not as strong as it appears?

“What if the enemy is on the verge of collapse after everything has been wasted in the millennium war?

“What if the Covenant Alliance is destined to collapse if they fight the Imperium in the battlefield for decades instead of playing the trick to allure us to push forward?

“In such a case, is it possible that the enemy would wager everything in a wild gamble? Tell me!”

Shocked, Dongfang Bai was rendered speechless.

“Compared to the system of the Imperium, the greatest advantage of the Covenant Alliance’s system is that the desires and the free will of the citizens are contained to the largest extent through the genetic brainwashing.”

Lei Chenghu said casually, “In such a way, the strength of all the citizens is highly concentrated almost without any internal conflicts. The friction within the society is close to none, unlike the Imperium where internal competitions happen all the time.

“But such an abnormal system also has a natural-born deficiency.

“Without free will, there will be no creativity and innovation. Without feelings and desires, nobody will think to push civilization forward. The whole world is lifeless, and everybody is just a fully-wound machine in their place.

“The only factor that pushes the Covenant Alliance to evolve is the Pangu relics that they have been excavating. They upgrade themselves by the technologies and the magical equipment that their ‘god’ grants them.

“A thousand years ago, with the advanced technologies from the Pangu relics and the zero-friction social system, the Covenant Alliance took the Imperium unprepared and secured a strategic advantage over the Imperium.

“However, wars are the fastest means of communication between civilizations. After a thousand years of war, the Imperium boasts technologies close to the Covenant Alliance through various channels.

“In the meantime, the fatal weaknesses of the Covenant Alliance, namely the lack of creativity and motivation and the lifelessness, have been more and more exposed.

“Besides, for the past thousand years, the Imperium has been occupying the most prosperous area at the center of the cosmos, with a comprehensive national power higher than the Covenant Alliance’s. Despite the brutal failures in the frontline, it can always refill new soldiers and resources incessantly. The Covenant Alliance, on the other hand, cannot afford such a war of attrition.

“The war of the Covenant Alliance against the Imperium is a typical war where a small country fights a big one. It is already a miracle of miracles that they persisted for a thousand years. Now that they are done with their clever tricks, and they know they only have several decades left, is it strange at all that they decide to play an insane gamble?”