Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

At the periphery of the fourth quadrant of the Imperium of True Human Beings…

The universe was boundless and naturally did not have directions or the so-called “quadrants”.

However, if the territory of the Imperium was to be observed from the equator of the capital planet of the Imperium, it would look like a rather peculiar group of stars, which was basically in the shape of an oval.

If the north pole and beyond of the capital planet was regarded as “up”, the omelet-shaped universe would be basically round. Then, the classification of “quadrants” would be meaningful.

The fourth quadrant had the most Sectors in the entire Imperium. They were almost twice as many as the other three quadrants.

However, the newborn Sectors were rather weak and barren, not enough to give birth to enormous forces that spanned Sectors. They were just separated, independent, and broken forces who minded their own business.

It was often the case that every Sector was ruled by a tyrant, and the local lords fought each other all the time. Blood was shed incessantly, and the fire of destruction never died out in the vacuum.

Since they were all members of the Imperium of True Human Beings, the battles and merges of the local lords were naturally not conducted by the regular army and were mostly carried out by privateers, or to be more direct, space pirates.

That was a battle form that was smaller and less intense but also much more cruel, shameless, and sleazy than regular battles. In the battles of space pirates, soldiers were thieves, and thieves were soldiers. Victims were bandits, and bandits could turn into new victims at any moment. It was the game rule that everybody knew.

This place was the hometown of “God of War” Lei Chenghu. In his younger days, the most prestigious serviceman of the Imperium today had organized hunting against the space pirates many times, with remarkable accomplishments. For a while, the space pirates at the edge of the fourth quadrant were almost entirely gone.

However, he could annihilate space pirates, but he could not get rid of the soil from which space pirates were born. It was the boundless universe as well as the ambitions and desires of human beings.

Therefore, after he led his main force to the frontline of the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance’s confrontation, the space pirates at the edge of the fourth quadrant who had vanished were revived and got even worse, transforming the place into the most famous land of chaos and destruction in the entire Imperium again.

Speaking of which, the recent decades, and especially the recent years, were indeed the golden time for the space pirates.

At first, the Imperium mobilized tremendous troops to the frontline for the expedition against the Covenant Alliance. As a result, the rear was weakly defended and did not have enough soldiers to resist the space pirates.

The warlords and Sector Masters in the worlds who were unwilling to send their troops to the frontline to be killed often preferred to claim that their fleets had been destroyed by accident in space. But in fact, those fleets were only turned from regular troops into privateers, which would harass and ambush other Sectors when they were not defended.

While the Imperium’s expedition army marched forward, one world after another was recovered, and inestimable assets had been shipped back too. Those assets significantly enlivened the business activities at the peripheral worlds of the Imperium, but they were also the fattest prey in the eyes of the space pirates.

By the time the reformists rose quickly and the “Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors” intended to challenge the old business order, they secretly supported a lot of massive pirate gangs to resist the four Kurfürst families and other nobles with a great amount of money due to their lack of combat abilities.

The four Kurfürst families and other big nobles were naturally unwilling to give in. They either annihilated or appeased the space pirates, recruiting a lot of them for their own purpose and starting a cruel war of “space pirates against space pirates”.

After a few years, quite a few space groups had expanded exponentially and were even capable of dealing with the elite deep-sky fleets. Their mysterious, stealthy, and unpredictable style gave their hostile forces quite a headache.

Zuo Tianying, for one, was having a strong headache right now.

He was a space pirate in the early days himself, and his pirate gang, “Mirage Eagle”, had been quite famous too. It was perfectly normal. Few of the important persons at the peripheral worlds of the Imperium were not space pirates when they were young. Similar humiliating stains could be found in the pedigrees of a lot of warlords, leaders, and even Sector Masters too.

Just like all the powerful, influential persons, after Zuo Tianying became a deacon of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, it had been a long time since he had done such simple, crude, and unprofessional things like killing and fighting.

Not only did he refuse to do it anymore, but he also forbade his subordinates from talking about it. He sometimes even couldn’t hold back his despise and disgust when he looked at other space pirates.

Zuo Tianying liked to call himself a “legitimate businessman” right now.

While everybody knew that businessmen and bandits couldn’t be separated at the vast and dangerous universe at the edge of the Imperium, the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors was a group of merchants with great ambitions and visions after all. They barely looted other people or forced other people to make deals with them. Instead, they tried to establish a brand-new business order and be the regulator and arbitrator of the order.

So, Zuo Tianying’s vaunt was not entirely wrong.

Although he loathed his past and other space pirates deep down in his heart, Zuo Tianying’s job required him to deal with the people he disliked all the time.

He was the manager of the “Blue Sky Market” under the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.

The Blue Sky Market was a free fair established inside a very inconspicuous stone belt centered at a desolate resource planet far away from the habitable planets, surrounded by the debris of countless starships and space fortresses.

People whose goods were still bloodstained and must be kept a secret, people who were unwilling to pay the special taxes to the authorities of the Imperium, and people who were wanted by the major worlds of the Imperium and chased by the bounty hunters, were the most frequent visitors of the free fairs like “Blue Sky Market”.

Here, taxes were not required, nobody would check the source of the goods or the identity of the seller, and even the most dangerous prohibited items were purchasable. Even if you had stolen the dear mothers of the four Kurfürsten, somebody would be bold enough to buy them from you as long as the price was acceptable.

The bandits and criminals that everybody cursed and pursued in other worlds could still buy the most mysterious Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, the most effective strengthening drugs, the magical equipment that guaranteed the best performance but did not guarantee quality, and of course, the most charming whores and the most fatal assassins. The so-called “free fair” was exactly such a murky, lawless, and yet absolutely free place.

The Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors had established dozens of free fairs at the edge of the Imperium. Through the free fairs, the capitals, goods, intelligence, and talents from different worlds were gathered. The unattractive free fairs actually yielded astronomical revenues every day. They were also the foundation of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.

Among them, the scale and the flowing capitals in the “Blue Sky Market” definitely ranked the top five.

Having created an enterprise from scratch and growing from a Mr. Nobody to the manager of the Blue Sky Market, Zuo Tianying certainly had extraordinary skills. He was among the most distinguished deacons in the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. Even Jin Yuyan, the General Deacon, had high hopes for him.

Therefore, although he barely had any fondness of and was even physically disgusted by the guy sitting on his opposite side, who was wearing a short T-shirt, sucking iced juice, and even placing his hairy legs on the desk arrogantly, he still controlled his expression tightly without letting any redundant emotion leak out.

Just as what the intelligence says, a cocky guy who doesn’t know who he is at all.

Zuo Tianying quickly browsed through the files of this “Boss Bai”, the head of space pirates, and sneered in his heart, “However, the more arrogant someone is, the easier it will be to trick them. Just let him feel good about himself for a while longer. It won’t hurt anything. Chances are that I can even get more favorable terms if I offer him a few adulations!”

Deep down in his heart, Zuo Tianying did not take this “Boss Bai” seriously.

Yes, Boss Bai was a new-generation star who only rose in the circle of space pirates in recent years, and his accomplishments in the past were almost “marvelous”. In only a few years, he had swallowed quite a few space gangs that were famous nationwide in the Imperium. He even had the splendid feats where he fought a top-tier fleet of the Imperium in a head-on clash and returned in one piece, and where he attacked seven resource planets controlled by the Imperium in only half a month. One might say that he was a once-in-a-hundred-year “genius” among space pirates.

But he was a young man who had just distinguished himself after all. The name “Boss Bai” was never heard of before. Judging from his brash and disobedient behavior today, how awesome could he have possibly been?

Zuo Tianying estimated that this Boss Bai was probably from a noble family or perhaps a family of generals. He had remarkable combat and commanding abilities, and he was desperate to make a name for himself and maybe to seek avenge. That was why he had been so impatient and glittering in the past two years without realizing the significance of a low profile at all. He was rather lucky to have met the war between the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance at first and the conflicts between the reformists and the Kurfürst families later. Everybody was too occupied to deal with him. Otherwise, a man who did not know what he was doing like him would’ve been beleaguered and squashed by the army!

Such kind of people, however strong they were, would only end up as the knives of other people.

The mission that Zuo Tianying accepted from the headquarters of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors was exactly to recruit Boss Bai and other rogues in the fourth quadrant no matter the cost and to turn them into the knives in the hands of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the reformists.

It was rather easy for him to get in touch with Boss Bai.

Since the Blue Sky Market was the largest and safest free fair in the few Sectors around, Boss Bai’s “Big Space Pirate Gang” visited the place for the disposal of stolen goods as well as purchases and maintenance frequently too. While Zuo Tianying had never met Boss Bai in person before, they at least knew each other’s name.

After he let the intermediary pass over the intention of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors subtly, Boss Bai was already drooling and sending himself to him like a dog who had smelled meat.

Observing the man pretending to be arrogant yet unable to cover the greed and expectation in his eyes, Zuo Tianying couldn’t help but chuckle to himself, knowing that the deal was probably a sure thing now.