Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

After Jin Yuyan finished his speech coldly, the atmosphere somehow became awkward.

Puffing his cheeks like a globefish that surfaced on the water, Li Yao thought for a long time and finally surrendered. “It’s… It’s indeed hard to explain. Or rather, I can come up with ten thousand explanations, but every one of them will be an insult to your wisdom. So, is it possible that we can neglect the unimportant details for now and focus on our mutual enemy in good faith?”

“You tell me.”

Jin Yuyan said, “I’ve just been betrayed by my wife and my most trusted subordinate, who reduced me into such ghastly conditions. How can I cooperate with you if you cannot explain your identity and your purpose?”

“Fair enough.”

Li Yao sighed and took out a glittering jade chip from his pocket. Delivering it to Jin Yuyan, he said, “Seeing is believing. About my real identity, please take a look at this, Director Jin!”

“This is…”

Jin Yuyan narrowed his eyes, turning extremely solemn and weird. Taking over Li Yao’s jade chip with both hands, he rubbed it softly in his palm. The more he touched it, the more surprised he became. Sweat the size of beans was falling from his forehead nonstop.

“Since Director Jin has managed the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors for years, you must be knowledgeable enough to tell the background of this item.”

Li Yao closed his eyes and sighed, before he said gloomily, “It’s been a thousand years since this item appeared at the center of the cosmos.”

Jin Yuyan glanced at Li Yao in disbelief and then observed the jade chip in his hands carefully.

He was indeed a knowledgeable businessman. Surprisingly, he knew how to activate the item. Placing his hands into a gesture that looked like a blooming lotus flower, he restricted his vitality field into a special unlocking form, which made the upper half of the jade chip blossom too.

In the next moment, the torrent of light that entailed infinite brilliance flowed out like a glittering spring, soaking the entire warehouse in the vast sea of stars. From among the infinite stars, the most splendid silver lines emerged and entwined into a complicated, splendid stamp.

Although it was just an illusionary stamp, it felt like a whole planet was pressing down. Jin Yuyan was dumbfounded under the blast.

“This is… the Cosmic Stamp! The Cosmic Stamp that was passed on from the Star Ocean Imperium and brought away by Firefly after the collapse of the Star Ocean Republic!”

Jin Yuyan’s voice was shivering. The thousands of streams of information inside the stamp congregated into an overwhelming torrent that flooded into his brain, making a magnificent, grave voice echo inside his brain. “We hereby appoint Li Yao as the Special Representative of the Speaker of the Star Ocean Republic…”

The voice announced almost twenty mighty, awesome-sounding titles in a row. Basically, Li Yao was a representative of all the advanced officials in the Star Ocean Republic. He was also asked to be fully responsible for the diplomacy, trade, or even war between the Star Ocean Republic and the Imperium of True Human Beings.

All in all, endorsed by the Cosmic Stamp, Li Yao was a living embodiment of the Star Ocean Republic!

“You are a Cultivator? One of the remnants of the former regime who escaped from the center of the cosmos a thousand years ago?”

Never could Jin Yuyan have thought that Li Yao had such an identity, which was truly a shock for him. He examined the jade chip again and again and even released his own soul to investigate the remaining power on the signature. He then scanned the soul marks left on the official document dozens of times, but he still found it hard to believe.

“Old Jin, you don’t have to be so cautious. A remnant of the former regime is not an honorable identity. Is there any need for me to tell such a lie?”

Li Yao smiled bitterly. “In fact, I am a very low-key man, and I do not want to intimidate other people with those things unless it is necessary. I proposed to neglect the details just now, but you were too petty and paranoid to believe me. That’s why I had to confess my real identity. Just look at the jade chip with the signature of the Cosmic Stamp. Could such a document have been fabricated in advance? Also, I happened to land on the Martial Meritocrats Sector when I just came to the Imperium, and I blew up that ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ by the way. Yes, the mysterious Cultivator who went on a rampage in front of all the netizens of the Imperium was exactly me. I didn’t want to bring up such trivia at all. Really. It almost sounds like I’m bragging about myself. But you simply didn’t trust me. What choice did I have?”

“It was you!”

Jin Yuyan stood up, his voice shivering. “It was you who blew up ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ and destroyed ‘slaughter stream’ on your own!”

Li Yao sighed again. “Yes, that was me. Now, my trump cards have been fully exposed. Hmm, why do you look so awful, Director Jin? You can’t be such a man of principles that you will kill every Cultivator you see, right?”

“Not exactly. I don’t hate Cultivators any more than other Immortal Cultivators do.”

Jin Yuyan narrowed his eyes. His face looked somewhat dark and green as he said, one word after another, “However, Wuying Lan borrowed more than three trillion dollars from the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors during the construction of ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’. It was one of the greatest loans that the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors granted.”

Li Yao: “…”

Jin Yuyan: “Also, I personally thought highly of Wuying Lan’s ‘slaughter stream’ and believed that it was a great money-making program that could also promote our ideas. So, I invested more than three hundred million onto the program from my personal venture platform. That was all my own money and had nothing to do with the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors at all.”

Li Yao: “…”

Jin Yuyan: “Furthermore, some of the talented weapon developers of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, whom we had been training with tremendous resources, were sent to ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ to cooperate with Wuying Lan’s team on the cutting-edge magical equipment. They were supposed to give the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors a hand in the future with their products. As it turned out, all those weapon developers were killed, resulting in the greatest loss of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors in terms of weapon development. We might not be able to establish a new team in another twenty years.”

Li Yao: “About that, Old Jin, what if I say that I was bragging to show off myself and the job in ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ was not done by me at all? Well, it doesn’t sound very persuasive, does it?”

Jin Yuyan nodded his head slowly. “It does not.”

Li Yao: “On the bright side, even if I hadn’t destroyed ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, and your investment and your team were still there, wouldn’t your wife and her lover be taking all the advantage today? It’s better to be given to a Cultivator than to your vicious wife and her lover. While I am a Cultivator, I have never cheated on you, don’t I? Look, if you think about it that way, you would feel much better, wouldn’t you?”

Jin Yuyan: “… I swear to god that if you don’t shut your mouth, I will abandon my future, my career, and my beliefs and fight you, shameless scoundrel!”

“Don’t be rash, Old Jin! Let’s just talk nicely. It’s just about money, alright?”

Li Yao hurried to surrender. “The Star Ocean Republic has nothing except money! Calm down, you have to calm down. Everything is negotiable. I’ll double compensate for your losses, alright? Let’s talk! Let’s just calm down and talk!”

Money was the best sedative. Jin Yuyan immediately resumed icy tranquility from fury.

Staring at Li Yao for a long time, he finally said, “What’s a Cultivator, and a special representative of the remnants of the Star Ocean Republic, doing in such a treacherous time in the Imperium?”

“We mean no harm at all but only want to come home.”

Li Yao raised his hands, his voice mellow with infinite affection for the hometown. “Since we escaped from the center of the cosmos a thousand years ago, Firefly has drifted for too long in the vast, dark, and cold universe. Our starship is beyond maintenance, our resources are running out, and our people are tired of incessant escaping and exploration.

“There is no hope ahead of us at all. Even the firmest beliefs have been corroded in the disappointing day after day and year after year. Right now, we only want to come home and find a minor sanctuary in our previous home.

“After all, we have been fighting for the Star Ocean Republic for a thousand years. No matter how loyal our ancestors were to the country that should’ve died a long time, their offspring have done their best. It is not a disgrace to surrender after a thousand years of resistance, is it?

“However, we did not know the Imperium of True Human Beings’ attitude toward the—well, refugees of the former regime. Were they determined to annihilate all of us, without any room of negotiation, or was negotiation an option under certain circumstances, and a deal could be made for us to return to the center of the cosmos?

“Therefore, as a special representative of the Star Ocean Republic, I snuck back into the Imperium by myself to investigate the situation of the Imperium and the stance of the authorities. Of course, it would be even better if I could reach out to the influential dignitaries first.”

“That explains a lot. After struggling for a thousand years, you finally realized that you had nowhere to go and decided to go back and surrender?”

Jin Yuyan sneered, “It seems that the Cultivators’ beliefs are just fancy disguises that are used to trick people too.”

“The darkness and cruelty at the edge of the cosmos are far beyond your imagination.”

Li Yao said quietly, “Too many things that I would rather not talk about happened in the thousand years after Firefly left the Imperium, which… significantly changed our beliefs and even allowed me to view problems from the perspective of the Immortal Cultivators.”

“No wonder you reached out to Li Linghai. You must’ve thought that Li Linghai, as a reformist, was more likely to tolerate the Cultivators than the four Kurfürst families, and that if the reformists could control the politics of the Imperium, you would have a chance to come home or even play a role in the politics of the future Imperium, right?”

Flashes of lightning were accumulating inside Jin Yuyan’s eyes. “But why did Li Linghai trust you and regard you as a trusted subordinate, even keeping it a secret from the other major leaders of the reformists?”