Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Linghai took away the Colossi of the three Divinity Transformation Stage experts but were not in a hurry to deal with them. Instead, she steered “Hellstar” to the depths of the black fog, where the black fog enshrouded a medical cabin with thousands of sticky tentacles, making it unable to move at all.

Naturally, it was “Silver Fox” Li Jiande, the most senior Kurfürst of the family, that was inside the medical cabin.

While Li Jiande’s vision and other senses were blocked by the black fog a moment ago, preventing him from seeing the progress of the battle, he knew exactly that he had failed now that he saw his brother Li Jianyi and the rest of them had taken off their Colossi and floated in the midair obediently, and the remains of countless crystal suits and Colossi were spreading around them. He simply heaved a sigh, apparently in the deepest regrets.

“Hellstar” extended two metal tentacles and dragged the medical cabin to right below the gigantic faces. The soul-stirring eyes all stared at him gloomily, as if they were trying to collapse the former prime minister of the Imperium from the bottom of his soul.

Under the pressure that felt like billions of water, “Silver Fox” Li Jiande was utterly not scared but simply laughed aloud. “Idiots! Idiots! What a bunch of hopeless idiots! They will know how stupid their retreat today is when they die the most miserable death one day!”

Li Linghai had covered the space around the medical cabin with her spiritual energy, and therefore, she was not scared that Li Jiande’s voices and telepathic thoughts would spread out. She sneered, “Why are they stupid?”

“Even if you have been possessed by a thousand-year-old ghost, you cannot be Blackstar the Great in his prime days!”

“Silver Fox” Li Jiande’s eyes were bloodshot, and his hair and beard were flying. With the courage as if he were fighting all the stars in the universe, he finally shouted out the name of “that emperor”. “The real Blackstar the Great died a thousand years ago. Even if part of his soul lingered till this day, it must be terribly weak! Even though you have attached yourself to Li Linghai and nurture yourself through her flesh and soul, it is impossible that you have recovered 100% of your strength. It will already be incredible if you can recover twenty or thirty percent of your strength!

“You may boast the combat ability of the Divinity Branching Stage, but you can’t be higher than the middle level of the Divinity Branching Stage. But the three of them are all at the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage! If they truly summon their courage to fight you, you can kill one of them at best before you are suppressed by the other two!

“Besides, you have not completely possessed the body, and it’s only part of your soul that is temporarily residing inside Li Linghai’s body. There will be great damage for both your remaining soul and Li Linghai’s physical body if you bring out the combat ability of the Divinity Branching Stage for a long time, won’t there? It must be noted that your enemy includes not only the five experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage and dozens in the Nascent Soul Stage here but also everybody else of the four Kurfürst families! So, how could you have been bold enough to fight with your best? You cannot afford the risk of being heavily wounded at all!

“Those idiots who have more brawn than brains could’ve figured it out as long as they gave it some thought! Hehe. If you can really unleash your expertise in your prime years, why on earth have you been hiding inside Li Linghai’s shell stealthily, too gutless to let the world know your existence, and why did you play those tricks and divide and conquer us with the advantage of the array? Wouldn’t it have been much easier to simply suppress all of us?

“I suspect… Haha, I suspect that your spiritual energy has almost been exhausted after you slew the first guy in the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage, or maybe there’s something wrong with the melting of your remaining soul and the body, and it’s impossible for you to kill a second expert at the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage, is it not? What a shame! If they had slightly summoned their courage and attacked you together, they would’ve cut you into pieces and removed the hazard once and forever!”

Li Linghai listened in silence and did not burst into fury even when she heard Li Jiande’s vicious curse in the end. Instead, she laughed aloud. “Isn’t it only logical? Today is not like the old days. The Imperium at the sunset is no longer the Imperium a thousand years ago!

“A thousand years ago, when the Star Ocean Republic was corrupted by the Cultivators and catching the last breath, the first-generation Immortal Cultivators were all transformed from the Cultivators who were of honor and integrity and who were worried about the future of mankind.

“They were all the real Immortal Cultivators with dreams and ambitions! Only such Immortal Cultivators could sacrifice for the civilization of mankind fearlessly under my lead without caring about their own interests!

“But today, after a thousand years, the Imperium of True Human Beings has contracted the exact same disease that killed the Star Ocean Republic. The Immortal Cultivators today have retrograded into selfish, shortsighted, and conspiratorial guys that are no different from the pigs in the bloated parliament of the Star Ocean Republic a thousand years ago!

“You can only see yourselves in your eyes. You have no dreams, and you do not know what you are fighting for. You are just a bunch of worms carrying the banner of the Immortal Cultivators but actually under the control of your instincts. You are talking about ‘unity’ and ‘sacrifice’? Such people in the Divinity Transformation Stage without beliefs are all gaudy counterfeits. Not just four, even if a hundred had come today, I would still have grasped your weakness and suppressed all of you!”

“Silver Fox” Li Jiande was rendered speechless. His inviolable courage a moment ago was entirely gone, and his body began to shrivel. Like a drowning person, his face was covered in lifelessness as he mumbled, “… Your Majesty, I-I’m willing to surrender!”

“You are a rarely-seen smart person. You were once the prime minister of the Imperium. You are rather prestigious nationwide. By logic, I should give you an opportunity to correct your mistakes because I am in dire need of hands right now.”

Li Linghai said coldly, “But it’s a shame that there is no place for ‘Kurfürst’ in my vision!”

“Silver Fox” Li Jiande’s lips trembled, and he was even more withered than before.

He was not really saying that to surrender. He did not even care too much about his own life anymore, and he was simply using it to test Blackstar the Great’s attitude toward the entire Li family.

It seemed that Blackstar the Great did not intend to keep the four Kurfürst families at all, and they were destined to perish!

“You—”

Having ended up on bad terms, “Silver Fox” Li Jiande did not need to hide anything anymore. The wrinkles on his face immediately gathered into a hideous ghost face as he laughed crazily. “Whatever vision you may have, it won’t work out! Even if you can eliminate the four Kurfürst families, so what? You will die eventually someday! After you die, the royal authority will still decline, and the local magnates will still rise! The future emperors will only be more and more idiotic and weak. Very soon, new ‘Kurfürst families’ will show up and destroy the Imperium that you have carefully constructed! You cannot defeat us. You cannot beat time and the entire universe!”

“You’re wrong.”

Li Linghai picked up Li Jiande and dragged him to her face before she said, one word after another, “Now that I have returned to the human world, I will not allow the Imperium to fall into somebody else’s hands. From today on, I will be the Imperium. I will not age or die in the next ten thousand years, and the Imperium of True Human Beings will surpass the Star Ocean Imperium in the past and become the best regime of the civilization of mankind that unites the entire universe!”

“Not age or die in the next ten thousand years?”

“Silver Fox” Li Jiande trembled hard.

For some reason, he did not hear any insanity from Li Linghai’s declaration but only solemnity and graveness, as if…

As if the ghost that should’ve been gone a thousand years had truly found a way to live for ten thousand years!

“You have missed the best opportunity to stop me.”

Li Linghai squeezed Li Jiande’s medical cabin and said casually, “But I’m rather curious about one thing. As ‘Silver Fox’, you are best known for your calculation and carefulness. But why are you unwise enough to get involved in the dangerous mission in person? With your identity and strength, shouldn’t you be supervising the battle in the rear? In that case, you possibly could’ve realized the secrets of the underground palace and made corresponding remedies.

“But you have chosen to come here in person, not even resorting to a spiritual puppet with remote communication abilities or a hologram projector. Why?

“Give me an answer to solve my confusion, and I will spare a hundred lives of those from the Li family.”

Li Jiande could’ve refused to answer the question.

After all, the distance between “Blackstar the Great” and “credibility” was as long as the distance between the Empyreal Terminus Sector and the edge of the cosmos.

However, in his sorrow and desperation, “Silver Fox” Li Jiande trembled for a long time but still said in remorse, “The arrest operation targeting Li Linghai was planned by me in person, but Li Linghai happened to be my biological granddaughter. The Yun family, the Song family, and the Dongfang family could not completely trust me, fearing that it was my scheme with Li Linghai and Dongfang Sheng to catch all of them.

“Therefore, they demanded me to arrive in person and command on the spot in order to trust my sincerity and send out the toughest warriors. I am… essentially their hostage!”

“That explains a lot.”

Li Linghai couldn’t help but burst into laughter, and the hundred metal tentacles around “Hellstar” trembled crazily at the same time. “‘Silver Fox’ Li Jiande, just ask yourself, do such ‘four Kurfürst families’, who are utterly disorganized and do not have the slightest mutual trust, not deserve to die?”

“… They do.”

“Silver Fox” Li Jiande said in devastation, “They all deserve to die. None of them is wronged!”

“Then die now!”

The metal tentacles of “Hellstar” minced brutally. The medical cabin, together with “Silver Fox” Li Jiande inside, was immediately shattered and enshrouded in black flames as the background of “Hellstar”.

“The Imperium that I have established through arduous work has been reduced to such poor conditions by the unworthy descendants. A thousand years can pass by easily, but the pain will stay forever!”

As the black flames fell down, high-pitched roars that completely did not sound like Li Linghai echoed from deep inside “Hellstar”, “To clean up the broken realm from the beginning, Imperium, I have returned!”