Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao smiled brilliantly. “Exactly. You and I are both left with no choice except to open our minds and cooperate with each other.”

“Then, you will have to help me win back the Seven Seas Grand Market and the control of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors first!”

Looking at his somewhat clumsy body, Jin Yuyan sighed and said, “It’s absolutely impossible for me to compete with them with my current look.”

“That’s not a problem!”

Li Yao agreed quickly. “Like I said just now, your wealth plus my strength, we will be invincible!”

“Also, despite your lousy performance just now and your ridiculous lies, I would rather believe that it was your disguise. You institutionally pretended to be shameless and incapable in order to ease my wariness.”

Jin Yuyan looked at Li Yao. “Didn’t you?”

Li Yao: “… Of course, it was totally my disguise. You’ve seen through me after all!”

“You are clearly an unparalleled expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, and yet you have completely hidden your gravitas and your dominance. You do not have the vibe of someone superior at all but vividly strike me as a shameless scoundrel. It is evident that your computational ability is very high!”

Jin Yuyan went on, “Since your computational ability is so high, you must’ve calculated that you and me are far from enough to challenge Blackstar the Great and the four Kurfürsten at the same time. So, may I boldly assume that you have powerful reinforcements out there and even a whole plan for victory?”

“Of course I have reinforcements and plans. Everything is within my calculation. However, the enemy cannot be destroyed only with calculation. I still need your help. I need the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors to play a greater role in the renaissance of the Imperium!”

Li Yao said, “However, we need to figure out what has happened to you first. How were you tricked into this body by Qi Yuanbao and your wife? Also, what’s the situation of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors today? Which managers have possibly been convinced by Qi Yuanbao and your wife to take Blackstar the Great’s side, and which ones are too tied to the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors to surrender? I believe you must know the answers as the director of the organization, right?”

Jin Yuyan was stunned for a long time. Rubbing his rough face in disgust, he said in a hoarse voice, “Rising from a tiny group of merchants to the largest business group in the Imperium today, the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors has certainly encountered many storms. We also expanded and protected our business routes with violence and took down those who jeopardized our business interests countless times.

“Killers and assassins played an important role in the process. Black Flag, Bloody Skull, Life Claimer, and Lamp of Death, the four most powerful groups of assassins in the Imperium, are all deeply associated with the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. The super assassins who lead the four assassin groups are also our partners whom we have worked with for more than a hundred years. They are the shareholders of many agencies under the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. There is a deep trust between us.

“Of the ‘four gods of death’, the one I trusted most was Qi Yuanbao, leader of ‘Life Claimer’, who is known as ‘Hanged Man’.”

“Wait—”

Li Yao asked in surprise, “Qi Yuanbao, the senior manager of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, is ‘Hanged Man’, one of the four gods of death? But I was told that ‘Life Claimer’ is an assassin group exclusively made of ghosts, and ‘Hanged Man’ is one of the strongest spectral Cultivators in the Imperium!

“Was the bald man in leather coal who tried to kill you with daggers outside of the Commodity Market not Qi Yuanbao?”

“Yes, he was exactly Qi Yuanbao, one of the strongest ghosts in the Imperium.”

Jin Yuyan explained, “That is exactly why he is horrifying. The general ghosts, however tough, can only crawl into the artificial bodies and control the machines to move. However, Qi Yuanbao has practiced a weird art named ‘Body Puppet Technique’. He soaks the newly-deceased bodies in a mixture of special drugs for polishing, and after eighty-one days, the bodies will not decay anymore but remain vivid with temperature and air, like living people.

“His remaining soul could hide in those bodies, allowing him to regard the real bodies as his ‘artificial bodies’. In such a way, he can easily turn into any random person. He is unpredictable and beyond recognition.

“Except for me and my wife, few people know his secret. Everybody only pays attention to the rigid mechanic bodies when they are wary of his assassination. As a result, he often takes advantage of their weakness and kills the enemies in bodies of flesh and blood.”

“Body Puppet Technique. So to speak, the bald man I fought a moment ago was not a living person at all but a dead body that had been specifically refined?”

Li Yao felt that his head was dizzy. There were indeed countless peculiar tricks in the vast space. He did not know that there was such a weird technique.

“Yes, that was only one of the ‘body puppets’ that Qi Yuanbao often used. I don’t know how many similar body puppets he has secretly refined in secret.”

Jin Yuyan sighed and said, “As one of the five senior managers, his position is not much lower than mine in the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. It is impossible for me to monitor his every move.”

Li Yao said in deep thought, “The so-called ‘Body Puppet Technique’ sounds like it involves the combination of the soul and the body. It’s rather similar to the ‘Soul Transfer Technique’ that you mentioned a while earlier. So, it was also Qi Yuanbao who suggested you transfer your body into this… strong woman?”

“Exactly.”

Jin Yuyan said frustratedly, “One and a half months ago, Qi Yuanbao came to me and claimed that there was unquestionable proof that the four Kurfürst families were planning an assassination against me, and their trump card was one of the closest people around me. They had bought over one of the ‘four gods of death’, who would stab me in the back at any moment!

“Qi Yuanbao was a senior manager responsible for the security in the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. He was in charge of my safety too. Naturally, I could not ignore his intelligence.

“Also, I confirmed the intelligence through other sources many times. There wasn’t any problem at all. All the pieces of evidence suggested that the four Kurfürst families were trying to assassinate me, and they had very likely bought over one of the ‘four gods of death’.

“The problem was that the four gods of death were seniors who had worked with me for almost a hundred years. They had extensive connections within the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, and they had raised a bunch of disciples that were adept at killing.

“I could not accuse any of them without valid proof, which would only dishearten the partners and incite dissatisfaction. Wouldn’t I be asking to be killed if I pissed off a bunch of assassins for no good reason?

“However, it would always be a hidden problem if it was left alone. I was not a battle-type Immortal Cultivator. Being the target of one of the best assassins of the Imperium was certainly not a good feeling. I almost had a nervous breakdown before the assassin showed up.

“Seeing that I was upset and panicked, Qi Yuanbao suggested that I should use a stand-in to allure the assassin to show up.”

Li Yao nodded his head. “It is quite normal for a big shot like you to prepare a couple of stand-ins.”

“Yes. I had seven stand-ins waiting for my call at any moment. They had all received plastic surgeries and looked identical to me. Even their gaits, tones, and habitual movements had been trained. Sometimes, even I couldn’t distinguish them from myself.”

Jin Yuyan said, “However, such stand-ins could only fool the regular assassins. The super assassins like Black Flag King, Red Lady, Hanged Man, and Revenant From The Dead Sea had been working with me for a hundred years. How could they have been deceived?

“No false stand-ins could’ve possibly tricked them unless my own body was built into a very special stand-in!

“It was naturally very risky, but if the betrayed ‘god of death’ was not found out in time, I would be in equal danger. After weighing the pros and cons, I accepted Qi Yuanbao’s proposal and conducted the ‘Soul Transfer Technique’ with a loyal female bodyguard. My soul entered her shell, and her soul entered mine, thereby producing the most perfect stand-in.”

“Wait—”

Li Yao frowned and said, “Weren’t you a bit too gullible? Did you not feel that this ‘Soul Transfer Technique’ reeked of the smell of schemes? It was a dangerous thing to let the soul leave the body. Should anything go wrong at such a moment, it was very possible that you could get killed. Did you really trust Qi Yuanbao so much?”

“Even if I didn’t trust Qi Yuanbao, I at least trusted my wife Wuying Qinxin.”

Jin Yuyan said gloomily, “The suggestion was made by Qi Yuanbao, but the ‘Soul Transfer Technique’ was performed under the supervision of my wife. My wife is of the same origin as Qi Yuanbao. She is also a most distinguished Meditation Healer who is adept at all the secret techniques in soul training. What was there to be suspicious about if she was monitoring every procedure in person?”

“What should I say?”

Li Yao glanced at Jin Yuyan and hesitated for a long time. He then finally spat it out. “Not that I’m blaming you, but aren’t you a bit too… innocent in life although you are a victorious dominator in business? Your wife is of the same origin as Qi Yuanbao. So, they must be from the same school. When they suddenly proposed such a plan that was full of the air of plots, why did you not grow wary at all or consider the possibility that they were having an affair and conspiring to murder you? Did you really not notice any anomaly in your daily life, not realizing that they were often hanging around stealthily?”

“What’s wrong with your head? Have the most excellent Cultivators on Firefly become so dirty and underbred after being corrupted by darkness for a thousand years?”

Jin Yuyan burst into fury. “Who says that they are from the same school or that they are ‘having an affair’? Your imagination is truly remarkable! They did hang around a lot, sometimes even in my own house openly, but wasn’t it perfectly normal? By ‘of the same origin’, I meant that Qi Yuanbao and my wife Wuying Qinxin are biological siblings. They are even twins who were born with a gap of only several seconds. Qi Yuanbao is my brother-in-law. Who else should I have trusted if not them?”