Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Wuying Qi’s methods are truly remarkable!”

After hearing the introduction of the two kids, Li Yao secretly sighed.

First of all, Blackstar the Great forced the reformists and God of War Lei Chenghu into the dilemma where they had to rebel and raise a war to “renew the Imperium” in desperation through the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance.

Then, he wasted no time jumping to the heartland of the Li family with a great army, coercing the Li family to make a stance with the gesture of dying together with the enemy. As a result, a wedge was deeply driven among the four Kurfürst families, raising great waves in the politics of the Imperium, which were nothing more than stagnant water. The unparalleled Dongfang family was truly overthrown!

While the Dongfang family was overthrown, the man also secretly killed Emperor Shenwu and let the Dongfang family take the blame, completely exterminating the possibility for the remaining forces of the Dongfang family to make peace with the other three families.

The balance of the politics of the Imperium was completely broken. For survival, the remaining forces of the Dongfang family could only kneel before the reformists.

After only half a year, the heart of the Imperium had already changed the color, or rather, resumed the original color it used to have!

As for the… civil war that the two kids talked about?

If the reformists were really a force led by Queen Li Linghai, chances were that a prolonged civil war would’ve really broken out.

However, the so-called “reformists” were just a disguise on the surface. They were actually “loyalists” led by Blackstar the Great, the ancestor of all Immortal Cultivators, in person!

Even today after a thousand years, Blackstar the Great was still prestigious in the middle and bottom classes of the Imperium of True Human Beings and among all the communities who were depressed about reality. If his banner was raised again, it was very likely that he could win their support with no bloodshed.

Now that Wuying Qi was bold enough to surface at such a moment, he certainly had trump cards to take care of the four Kurfürst families quickly and regain the supreme power. Tremendous bottom-level Immortal Cultivators killing the high-level Immortal Cultivators in their families while shouting “long live the emperor” and legions betraying and joining Blackstar the Great’s side one after another were blood-freezing pictures that could very likely happen.

Furthermore, according to Long Yangjun, Wuying Qi was even in a mysterious relationship with the Covenant Alliance and could even influence the strategies of the Covenant Alliance to some extent.

Therefore, the politics of the Imperium right now were like an iceberg floating on a black ocean. The part above the surface of the ocean was already hideous and terrible enough, but the part hidden in the water was ten times more dangerous and mysterious.

Before he came to the Imperium, Li Yao once naively thought that the Immortal Cultivators were “better” enemies than the people of the Covenant Alliance, and he could even temporarily cooperate with the “small enemy” in order to deal with the “big enemy”.

But after he came to the Imperium and witnessed the miserable life of the ordinary people in the Martial Meritocrats Sector and below the surface of the capital planet, Li Yao completely dropped the idea.

The Imperium and the Covenant Alliance were fundamentally integrative. The Immortal Cultivators were the soil where the Covenant Alliance was grown. If he did not remove the dark and stinky sludge, would it help at all to just cut the weeds on the ground?

Until the cruel reign of the Immortal Cultivators was stopped, a second or third Covenant Alliance would always show up.

Li Yao would never watch an Immortal Cultivator like Blackstar the Great take control of the center of the cosmos again while doing nothing.

Even if he needed to negotiate with some of the Immortal Cultivators, it would never be Wuying Qi. Between him and Wuying Qi, one must die. They could only carry out their beliefs with blades and bullets!

However…

Compared to Wuying Qi who had gradually revealed his tusks and claws and who had occupied the Empyreal Terminus Sector with a powerful army and countless trump cards, Li Yao had barely any force at his disposal.

Given the treacherous situation, he could not contact his hometown the Star Glory Federation at all. Even if he could, how many troops could the Star Glory Federation send to the center of the cosmos in an expedition?

It was needless to say that massive fleet jumps would inevitably leave traces, giving the Immortal Cultivators a chance to grasp the federation’s coordinates or even to march back at it. Then, the last haven in the entire universe would be tormented in war, too.

Therefore, now was certainly not a good time to ask the hometown for reinforcements.

His allies seemed to only include Long Yangjun and Boss Bai, but it remained to be seen whether or not the two “allies” would chop him into pieces the moment they met him.

Are you serious? The game at the center of the cosmos is so difficult?

Li Yao scratched his head hard, and his eyes fell on the two kids who seemed innocent and harmless but in fact contained infinite dangerous possibilities, as well as the super-tiny spiritual puppets behind them.

It seemed that he would have to count on the two little kids if he did not want the Imperium to fall into Wuying Qi’s hands and if he wanted to stabilize the situation at the center of the cosmos.

“Xiaoming, Wenwen, you said just now that you were still far away from the limits of your abilities.”

Thinking for a long time, Li Yao asked, “Then, how will your abilities grow, and how can you break the limits?”

Beaming with interest, the two kids leaned over in excitement and said at the same time, “To let us gain access to state-of-the-art crystal processors and a fully-automatic assembly line of magical equipment, of course! The more super crystal processors we have, the more powerful our computational ability will be. The more assembly lines and corresponding resources there are, the more spiritual puppets we will be able to produce. We can even analyze the structure of the super crystal processors and ‘duplicate’ more of them!”

Li Yao said, “Can I understand it in such a way—given enough super crystal processors, a magical equipment factory, and, of course, enough metals and crystals, you can turn into self-sufficient bases, building spiritual puppets, excavating mines, and producing alloys on your own. Then, through the magical equipment factory, you can produce even more spiritual puppets, battle puppets, fully-automatic crystal tanks, Spiritual Nexus bases, spiritual towers, etc. incessantly. In the cycle of production, fight, territory expansion, increased production, improved combat ability, and so on, you will upgrade yourself and eventually cover a whole planet and even the universe?”

“Theoretically, yes, but it is barely accomplishable in reality.”

Li Xiaoming pouted his lips, not without regrets. “It’s like every human being has the possibility of training. Theoretically, everybody can advance into the Divinity Transformation Stage or the Divinity Branching Stage. Who can deny such a possibility? How terrifying a civilization where everybody is in the Nascent Soul Stage, the Divinity Transformation Stage, and the Divinity Branching Stage will be!

“But as a matter of fact, due to the limitation of resources and the interference of various factors, the odds of such a future border on zero. At the very least, we cannot foresee it with our computational ability.

“That is also the limit of the evolution and strength of the information lives. Theoretically, we can totally spread our information tentacles to the entire planet or even across several Sectors in the universe.

“But actually, the further we extend the information tentacles, the more energy and computational ability it will take to sustain them. In the meantime, the threads that we can separate are limited, too. After we reach the limit, controlling one more spiritual puppet will double our overall computational load, which will result in chaos to our metadata. We will not be able to free ourselves from the logic vortexes.

“It is exactly the same as why there can’t be an infinitely growing dinosaur in nature. After the size and the weight exceed the limits, the seemingly strong dinosaur will be collapsed and destroyed by itself.”

Li Wenwen added carefully, too, “Although carbon-based lives and information lives are different concepts, the same restraint applies to us, at least for now.

“Perhaps given tens of thousands of super crystal processors and all the resources of a prosperous world, we will be able to create some miracles. But where is such a prosperous world that is under our control?”

After hearing what the two kids said, Li Yao did not know whether he should feel happy or worried.

To be honest, it was also hard for him to imagine a world completely made of spiritual puppets and a super army purely controlled by “information lives”.

Neither himself nor the civilization of mankind today was prepared to embrace such a strong and independent child.

Particularly, human beings had a gray history of “patricide”. Although it was not exactly a “mistake” of human beings, they would naturally feel suspicious of their child civilization.

How a parent civilization and a child civilization could coexist in peace was too huge a question for Li Yao to come up with an answer immediately.

He only wanted to give it more time so that everybody could get to know and accept information lives gradually. In calmer and more rational situations, people smarter than him in the future would address the complicated question!

If Xiaoming and Wenwen could really control a whole resource plant and produce an invincible army, it was not necessarily a good thing for either themselves or the civilization of mankind.

“In fact, Xiaoming and I inferred many times how to make us stronger.”

Li Wenwen continued gently, “Our conclusion is that, at least in the current phase, our prosperity and the prosperity of mankind are linked. If we can win the trust of some of the human beings and get to use their Spiritual Nexus, their crystal processors, and their magical equipment, we will be able to help those human beings significantly improve their combat abilities. In the meantime, we will be given a broader room and a vaster future for our own survival and development.”

“Got it.”

Looking at the two kids, Li Yao said, “Assume that there is a way to ‘import’ you into a fleet of human beings, will you be able to significantly increase the combat ability of the fleet and even make it the strongest fleet that human beings have ever seen?”

“We do not know what the strongest fleet that human beings have ever seen is, but if we are talking about the main-force fleets of the Imperium of True Human Beings, then yes!”

Li Xiaoming was blushing in excitement. Like a little war maniac, he waved his arms and said, “Human warriors boast very high individual combat abilities. Without any network and even without orders from their superiors, they can still observe the battles on their own, make decisions that will benefit the whole, and carry them out.

“On the other hand, we boast the powerful abilities of information collection, data organization, and commanding massive war puppets, transforming the plain battle puppets into the strongest slaughter machines!

“When the two things are combined, the super fleet that will be born will certainly be invincible!”