Li Lingfeng was silent for a moment. Sighing softly, he said, “If I said that everything we have been doing is only meant for self-protection, would you believe me?”
Li Jialing blinked. “Self-protection?”
“The strength we talked about just now to manipulate people through the slaughter stream as a super platform is extremely fragile and can easily be completely demolished despite its magnificent power,” Li Lingfeng said. “From the large-scale infrastructure across the Sectors, to the information connection to all the planets in a certain Sector, and even including the terminal devices that meet our demand… Too many uncertainties are involved in the project.
“A lot of people, whose minds are rigid and obsolete, fear new, unknown strength. They believe that said strength poses a threat to the old order that they have established with starships, chainswords, and electromagnetic whips. Therefore, they have made up their mind to destroy our cause without considering anything else.
“Some other people see the value and potential of the strength and want to steal it for themselves. They extend their blood-sucking tentacles to our cause like shameless parasites, draining every bit of the achievements that we have made after a hundred years of hard work.
“As the saying goes, the tallest tree catches the most wind. Wuying Lan and I have come this far while holding the concept of ‘slaughter stream’ just like going against a fiercely burning torrent. We must tread lightly with every step, and we are faced with the threat of countless storms and arrows every second. One moment of carelessness, and we will be shattered and mired in an eternal doom!
“In order to safeguard the cause that we have created through so much hard work, we have no choice except to continue moving forward and prove the strength of ‘slaughter stream’. We will attract more capital and resources, gather greater connections, build images that are more vivid and impressive, and make a superhero that everybody in the entire Imperium knows… Only in such a way will those guys with ill intentions have to think carefully before they lay their fingers on us. Do you understand?”
Li Jialing’s eyelids were slightly shivering. He asked in disbelief, “With your position in the Li family, and Lord Wuying running the game as a member of the royal family, are you still scared of other people’s greed?”
“Royal family?” Wuying Lan said with a self-mocking smile. “In the Imperium of True Human Beings, the royal family is the cheapest of all things. After a thousand years of dispersion, there are at least a million people in the Imperium with a surname of ‘Wuying’, ninety-nine percent of whom are common workers and dealers. Even the branches that are close to the main bloodline like me are also too many to be counted. When the specific interests are concerned, nobody cares if you belong to the royal family!”
“The higher you climb a mountain, the colder you will become. Like I said to you before, the higher I reach within the family, the more people eyeing me in secret.”
Pausing for a moment, Li Lingfeng glanced at Wuying Lan. “This is not much of a secret for Lord Wuying. Take Li Linghai, my good sister and the almighty queen of the Imperium, for example. She is an absolute conservative who feels natural disgust toward any mass information dissemination that involves the entire Imperium like ‘slaughter stream’. She believes that such an approach eliminates the capital’s authority and has always been thinking to take ‘slaughter stream’ away, or to destroy it once and for all if she can’t!”
Narrowing his eyes, Wuying Lan added, “The queen is a tough one. Everybody in the Empyreal Terminus Sector knows that the brilliant and unstoppable emperor, who has just defeated the Covenant Alliance and is ambitious enough to be a second Blackstar the Great, is actually a piece of useless cr*p with more ambitions than talents. Had it not been for the manipulation of the queen, he could not even have launched a single battle!”
“Yes!” Li Lingfeng sighed. “Who could have thought that my sister, who purely focused on the advancement of personal strength, would grow into such a terrifying person someday? She is even coldhearted enough to show no warmth to me, a blood brother who shares the same parents with her. Now that she has set her eyes on us, what can we do except try our best to protect ourselves?
He patted the young man’s shoulder again to sense the shivering muscles of the young man and grasp the subtle changes in his mind. “No matter how many misunderstandings you may have of me and Wuying Lan because of our doings in the past, I hope you can understand that it is for your own good.
“I would very much like you to join our cause. Whether or not you join us, you are one of my guys in the eyes of outsiders. Nothing can change that.
“If our cause collapses one day and Wuying Lan and I are both despised and doomed, there is no way that you can stay out of this business. A lot of people will catch you and slice you up to study, trying to figure out the Origin Plan and the secrets of your refinement in Manjusaka. Then, you will understand what hell really looks like.
“How about it? Do you need some more time to think about it?”
Li Jialing looked at the enormous light beams on the wall of the spherical palace he was in.
Inside the light beams were the pitiful wretches who were caged in transparent glass jars, which were darting at what they thought was light, only to crash into the transparent glass and bleed hard.
Time and time again, they never regretted even if they were killed.
“That will be unnecessary.” Narrowing his eyes, the young man put on a mysterious smile. “It seems rather interesting to be a hero. However, can I spend some time in the beehive prison?”
“The beehive prison?”
Wuying Lan and Li Lingfeng looked at each other and asked curiously, “Why do you want to go there?”
“Didn’t you say just now that you want me to arrive from the sky in the coolest crystal suit and go on a killing spree?” Li Jialing smiled. “Of course I need to prepare myself well in order to fully unleash the strength that has been suppressed for more than ten years. I want to select a few crystal suits and find a few tough prisoners in the beehive prison to enjoy myself with. Killing someone like Li Yingxiong felt like stomping on an ant, which was not fun at all!”
“Of course you can!” Overjoyed, Wuying Lan nodded quickly. “You have just cracked your seal. It is indeed necessary for you to do some adaptive training in order to activate your full potential in the shortest amount of time possible. I can help you create an independent training area down there and capture a batch of the toughest experts from the beehive prison for you. You can play with them however you want.”
“That is too troublesome. I think I’ll simply go to the beehive prison and look for agreeable targets on my own.” Li Jialing licked his lips ravenously. “I vaguely have a feeling that a couple of experts are far from enough to fill my stomach. I wonder, will Lord Wuying’s experiment plans be affected if too many prisoners are damaged by me?”
“Hahaha!” Wuying Lan laughed and waved his hands. “Just rest assured and play however you want. After the battle, we will have a copious supply of test subjects. Alright. If Lord Li has no objection, I’ll have someone lead you to the beehive prison. It will be your playground!”
Looking at Li Jialing, Li Lingfeng said with a smile, “I have no objection at all. Ah Ling, I know that you have always been a very smart kid. Besides, even the most idiotic fool would’ve known what choice was in his best interests after so many years of edification by us!
“You can do whatever you see fit in regard to training. If you come across any questions, feel free to ask me. But you won’t have too much time. In two days at most, the most splendid scene of our epic quest will begin. By then, we will choose the most soul-stirring and blood-freezing moment for you to cut in.”
“Then, I’ll be off now.” Li Jialing nodded. Then, as if he suddenly recalled something, he said, “Right. There’s still something insignificant that bothers me. Both of you claim that the ideas of the Cultivators are both stupid and dangerous, and I, for one, believe that only fools and idiots will believe in such things. But why have so many people put their faith in them despite all the examples in the past thousand years?”
“Well, about that…” Looking at the young man’s eyes that were filled with curiosity, Li Lingfeng replied somewhat helplessly after a brief silence, “Perhaps it is because there are simply too many fools in the universe!”
…
At the ninth dock in the peripheral space port of the City in the Sky, a ragged carrier was floating in the void. All the cargo and crew had been cleared. The starship was ready for a full maintenance and upgrade.
However, dozens of starships were waiting in line for maintenance and examination. It wouldn’t be the unattractive carrier’s turn for at least a couple of days.
Therefore, nobody knew that an infuriated expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage was squatting in the most inconspicuous part of the carrier!
“Killing both the body and the mind, the Immortal Cultivators are too outrageous!” Furious, Li Yao slapped his thigh hard. “Not only are they going to destroy the Cultivators physically, they are also going to tarnish our spirit and our soul! What a bunch of sordid, shameless, filthy, inhumane, animalistic scumbags!”
“Not exactly,” the mental devil said solemnly. “I feel that the methods through which the Immortal Cultivators are dealing with the Cultivators share a lot of similarities with how the Cultivators dealt with the Immortal Cultivators in the Star Glory Federation in the old days. At that time, the federation also focused more on destroying the ideas and the spirit of the Immortal Cultivators than on destroying their physical bodies.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course. Instead of sentencing Su Changfa, an Immortal Cultivator, to death, the federation appointed him as a professor in a major college. The man was caged and kept like a rare, endangered species for the criticism of other people. Wasn’t it exactly like what Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan are doing today? As I recall, you were the one who came up with the idea. You said similar things such as ‘ideas can never be killed’, didn’t you?”
“…Did I? I don’t remember any of those things now.”
“That’s fine,” the mental devil said. “Why don’t I retrieve the sound and picture from your brain and help you refresh your memories?”
