Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Li Yao understood what the mental devil meant.

For a civilization that was on the verge of extinction, such as the Holy Accord Alliance, cutting off one of its limbs, destroying one of its enormous fleets, and even occupying dozens of Sectors was not a big deal. Its morale and will to resist would not be affected at all. It would be able to fight until there

were no survivors.

However, the most critical part of the civilization of the bees was their ‘Queen Bee’, or rather, their ‘main brain’. In the eyes of the Sanctuary Alliance, they seemed to be five mysterious and omnipresent sages.

Most of the people of the Star Glory Federation were unable to think independently and could only carry out the commands of their master mechanically. Then, if somebody could tamper with their master’s commands or even kill them, the seemingly enormous swarm of bees might collapse and vanish

into thin air.

Li Yao had infiltrated the Sanctuary for exactly this purpose.

Such was the threat of the ‘heresy’ that grew inside the Sanctuary.

In order to prevent the mental network of the ‘main brain’ and the main brain from being compromised, the Heresy Interrogation Bureau became one of the most important traps of the Sanctuary Alliance. Its position was even higher than that of the regular army of the Sanctuary Alliance and the ‘God

Blessers’ who had been engaged with the imperial army for thousands of years.

Li Yao searched the files transmitted by the mental devil carefully.

“You said that the ‘Fortress of Retribution’ is the nest of the purifiers and the cleaners. I already know the purifiers. What are the cleaners exactly?”

Li Yao asked.

“The purifiers and the cleaners are both one of the main combat units under the command of the Heresy Interrogation Bureau, but their targets are different.

The mental devil explained, “The purifiers are mainly targeting ‘objects’. Just like what we saw in Xinle City on Black Castle, they are targeting the goods and works of art from the imperium that contain the intense emotions and desires of human beings. They are sorting the goods, purging, destroying,

and recycling them.

“The cleaners’ target is not ‘items’, but ‘people’. Those who have been corrupted by the demonic creatures and become ‘devilized’ or even ‘heresy’ are all targets for the cleaners.

“And in terms of degree and methods, the cleaners are more serious and cruel than the purifiers. Just from the names of the two, it is not hard to guess that the ‘purifiers’ are still salvageable and can be recycled as long as they are cleansed. The ‘sweepers’, on the other hand, indicate that they are too

deeply possessed to be saved. They can only be exterminated and ‘cleaned’ like garbage after they are bunt to ashes.

“Therefore, the cleaners are a special profession that is hundreds of times more terrifying than the purifiers. Their daily job is to capture and eliminate the guys from the devilized people, the heretics, and the imperium. They are totally different from the purifiers, who are essentially garbage that has

been recycled. The cleaners are the real elite troops. Not only are they an interrogation bureau, they are also the strongest individual combat unit in the entire Sanctuary. Besides, they are best at rapid reactions, squad ambushes, anti- infiltration, and anti-assassination operations. In short… they are like

white blood cells in one’s blood that devour germs ruthlessly. That’s about it!

“However, you don’t need to worry too much. Right now, the attention of the cleaners has been attracted by the resurgence of the Heresy Society, which is even more intimidating than before. Besides, they did not expect that we would turn into such a weird life form and continue lurking inside the

Sanctuary. They thought that we had run away a long time ago. Therefore, for the time being, the cleaners do not have any plan to capture us. We can still move around quietly right under their nose.

“Interesting.”

Li Yao’s soul extended its tentacles and greedily absorbed the intelligence of the Inquisition and the cleaners like an octopus.

Although the mental devil did not want to do anything reckless and did not excavate the core data of the ‘God’s Punishment Fortress’, the surface data that flowed in the Spiritual Nexus was enough for Li Yao to get a preliminary understanding about the investigation and destruction organizations of the

Sanctuary.

“The cleaners are the key.

Li Yao thought for a moment and said, “Since the organization is the strongest combat unit under the Heresy Interrogation Bureau and is responsible for the sensitive work such as the capture of the heretics, it is very likely that we will be able to get in touch with Master Zhi Shan. If we can infiltrate the

organization of the cleaners, won’t we be able to trace back to Master Zhi Shan and even find out the secrets behind the Sanctuary Alliance?”

“Right. I have a vague feeling that the Heresy Society that is ‘rising from the ashes and burning with devilish flames’ is very valuable for research. Have you found any files about it? Ah. Is this the ‘Guild of God’?”

Li Yao was very lucky.

The wreckage of his lurking mainframe crystal processor came from the large mobile laboratory of the ‘Devil’s Child Project’.

The original purpose of the ‘Devil’s Child Project’ was to study the genetic provider of Zhou Xiuyun and Chu Zhiyun, namely ‘Spirit Chu’, the founder of the ‘Heart of God’, the ‘most evil heretic’ a hundred years ago.

Therefore, a lot of files about the ‘Heart of God’ and other heretical associations were stored inside the wrecked crystal processor. Li Yao did not even need to risk infiltrating the Spiritual Nexus and crystal processor nearby. As long as he read the information inside the wrecked crystal processor, he would

have a general understanding about the origins of the heresy and the rise, destruction, and renaissance of the Heart of God.

Over the past thousand years, since Wu Yinggi, the Black Star Emperor, activated the ‘manufacturing factory’ that had been sealed for hundreds of thousands of years, the malformed nation of the Holy Accord Alliance had proliferated at an unbelievable speed and occupied almost a hundred worlds in the

remote space zone.

For ordinary people, the harsh, dry, and desolate environment was like a fish in water for the people of the Sanctuary.

It was because they didn’t care about the environment at all, nor did they have any entertainment. Their lives were simple to the extreme, and every resource was absorbed efficiently.

But the habitable planets did not mean much to them. Most of the people of the Star Alliance lived, no, lived on starships. They were more starship-like and networked than the federation and the imperium.

The typical way of survival for the people of the Sanctuary Alliance was very simple. They would build synthetic farms on habitable planets on a large scale. Since they did not need to consider the taste of food and could take a lot of hormones without worries, the productivity of the farms was very high.

Even the barren planets with harsh environments could support a large population.

In the meantime, the population went to the depths of the planet to excavate the mother lodes of metals and the raw materials of crystals as well as the relics from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

All the raw materials of metals and crystals were refined into new starships with the technology from the primeval relics. When the starships constituted a new fleet, they would be sent to a new Sector and repeat the process.

There was no entertainment. There was no art. There was no desire, and there was no internal strife. When there was a need, they could work for ten days and ten nights expressionlessly and inject hormones and stimulants into their veins, which were almost dry, until they drained the last bit of their life

and collapsed in the mines. They would never complain like their counterparts in the imperium.

‘When they were not working, they would sit in the relaxation room that was no larger than a coffin and minimize their heartbeat, breath, and pulse to reduce the consumption of energy.

Sometimes, when a resource planet was hollowed out, and the resources required to move the local workers were far less than the value that they could create in the future, the ‘worker bees’ would be abandoned ruthlessly. When the last bit of oxygen was running out under the man-made dome of the

resource planet, they would not be scared of the death that was about to drown them.

It was with such a cruel and efficient social organization system, as well as the tireless ‘worker bees’ and ‘soldier bees’, that the Holy Accord Alliance was able to compete with the Imperium of True Human Beings, which dominated the center of the universe with abundant resources and endless experts,

and even had the upper hand.

However, as a small nation against a large nation, if they could not win the war quickly, they would always be faced with the shadow of failure no matter how glamorous their initial victory was.

Lei Chenghu, the ‘god of war’ of the Imperium of True Human Beings, had once analyzed the two most fatal problems of the Holy Accord. The first was that their base was too small and weak, which meant that they could not be sustained for long. More importantly, as a civilization that was close to a

honeycomb, they did not have enough creativity. Most of the people of the Star Glory Federation did not have the ability to act subjectively or creatively at all. They only knew how to follow the instructions of their master. How could they talk about the birth of new technology?

They could only excavate the relics of the primeval civilization from hundreds of thousands of years ago to make up for the lack of technology.

However, there was always a limit to the excavation of relics. If the primeval relics could solve all the problems, more relics could be excavated in the Imperium of True Human Beings at the center of the sea of stars!

After a thousand years of competition, the Holy Accord Alliance today had come to the end of its development. On one hand, all the resources in the periphery of the sea of stars had been looted by them to build an invincible fleet that could bring their combat ability to the peak. On the other hand, the

continuous development ability of almost all the habitable planets and resource planets had fallen to zero. They had to rest for hundreds of years before they could harvest resources again.

In other words, the members of the Sanctuary Alliance had placed all their chips on the table and were ready to gamble.

The strategical retreat of the members of the Star Glory Federation in the counterattack of the imperium was exactly for this purpose—a strategical final war against the imperium.

This was the judgement of ‘God of War’ Lei Chenghu a few years ago. It was exactly the same as the intelligence that Li Yao had received today. Li Yao could not help but click his tongue in amazement at Lei Chenghu’s strategic vision.

Of course, the information that Li Yao gathered did not include the movements of the main fleet of the Star Glory Federation… But judging from the large-scale heretical activities that broke out suddenly more than a hundred years ago, it was not hard to imagine that the leadership of the Star Glory

Federation had suppressed the ‘soldiers’ and the ‘worker bees’ below them to such an extent that the machines could not stand it any longer and started resisting!