“Xu Zhicheng volunteered to stay!”
Li Yao was greatly surprised.
He respected the man who suffered the loss of two children and became the Grand Guardian of Nepenthe in utmost desperation very much.
Despite their different beliefs, and although the guy had just awakened his spiritual root and was not nearly as strong as him, Li Yao admitted that Xu Zhicheng boasted tremendous charisma and was a real man.
In order to cover the refugees and to soothe the wrath of the Immortal Cultivators, Xu Zhicheng had really devoted his everything. Even many Cultivators might not be able to do the same.
“Did anything happen to Xu Zhicheng and the leaders of Nepenthe who were left behind? Were they killed by the Immortal Cultivators?”
Li Yao asked in a hurry.
“Not yet.”
Li Xiaoming shook his head and said, “The arrival of Dad and Long Yangjun enshrouded the uprising of Nepenthe in a complicated, obscure shadow. A lot of small resistance groups are active below the ground of the capital. So, the Immortal Cultivators are not actually interested in Nepenthe itself but have focused most of their attention on Dad and Long Yangjun.
“In order to elicit clues about Dad and Long Yangjun from Xu Zhicheng and other leaders of Nepenthe, they naturally would not kill the captives easily. Those people were simply locked in the Great Iron Plants for interrogation.
“On the other hand, to get the situation under control, it was impossible for the Immortal Cultivators to kill all the workers. After all, skilled workers who are familiar with the harsh environment of the underground world are hard to find. If too many people are killed in a short time, the entire Great Iron Plants will be paralyzed.
“It occurs to us that the Immortal Cultivators seem in a hurry to produce a batch of magical equipment with the energy and the assembly lines in the Great Iron Plants. Xu Zhicheng volunteered to surrender and was willing to maintain the order of the factories and restore production as soon as possible. With those terms, the Immortal Cultivators spared his life for now.”
“However—”
Li Wenwen added, “According to our analysis, it is just the Immortal Cultivators’ trick. The previous workers of the Great Iron Plants have been ‘polluted’ by Nepenthe after all, and it is absolutely impossible for the Immortal Cultivators to trust them again.
“Right now, the Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet are too busy fighting each other to bother with the riots below the ground. That’s why they have reached a temporary compromise with the workers for now.
“After the situation on the ground settles down, the Immortal Cultivators will be able to move skilled, more obedient workers from elsewhere, or simply replace the workers with spiritual puppets. Then, they will certainly raise their sabers and kill everybody involved in the riot of Nepenthe. According to the documents that we copied, the Immortal Cultivators have done similar things too many times.
“It is the same for Xu Zhicheng and the rest of them. A couple of days are more than enough to dig out all the intelligence in their heads. Right now, they are no longer of any value to be used. Perhaps they will be executed very soon!”
Pacing back and forth anxiously, with messy thoughts popping up in his head, Li Yao suddenly raised his head and asked, “What about Long Yangjun and Li Jialing? Do you know where they brought the refugees to?”
“The refugees of the Great Iron Plants were reorganized into smaller groups and evacuated to a hundred deeper towns. After all, with the magical equipment and the assets they brought from the Great Iron Plants, it would be enough for them to live in the towns for a while.”
Li Wenwen said, “As for the specific whereabouts of Aunt Long and Li Jialing, we truly don’t know. Our ‘vision’ is highly dependent on the Spiritual Nexus of the Imperium, and the places they escaped to must’ve been the dark corners where there were no network or surveillance cameras. So, it was impossible for us to track them.
“After all, having been developed by all the civilizations in the past hundreds of thousands of years, the underground world of the capital planet boasted innumerous cracks, tunnels, caves, and unknown shelters. It is more than easy to hide two people!”
“Then…”
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao asked, “When you still could see her, did you never think to leave her a message and tell her where you brought me to?”
The two children looked at each other and both shook their heads hard.
“We are still too weak to believe other people easily right now.”
Li Xiaoming said solemnly, “The Pangu civilization did not like human beings one bit, and the Nuwa civilization was made of crazy people who were always too indulgent of their feelings. Whether Long Yangjun belonged to the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan, we could not predict what she would do at all. Adding the ‘unordered variable’ rashly would’ve been a great test on our computational ability.”
“More importantly—”
Li Wenwen looked at Li Yao worriedly. “The last time we peeped at Long Yangjun, she was cursing Dad vehemently with all the profanities imaginable, claiming that you were a shameless, cunning, sleazy son of a bi*ch who left such a great mess behind and simply ran off. She also said that if she ever bumped into you again, she would cut you into pieces and feed you to dogs.
“We analyzed the micro expressions on her face carefully and discovered that she was really in a very unsteady fury at that time. With the bloodline of the Nuwa Clan, Aunt Long was quite emotional in the first place. Chances were that she would really do what she had promised!
“How could we have told the coordinates of this place to Aunt Long who was exasperated? If she did come over madly with her Colossus, it would’ve been barely possible for us to resist her!
“After that, she led a bunch of refugees to the dark zone where the network was highly unstable, if there was a network at all. It was impossible for us to trace her even if we remotely controlled some tiny puppets!”
“Isn’t it funny how things turned out?”
Li Yao wiped off his cold sweat and sat back on the rock again. Staring at the two kids and considering for a long time, he raised the most critical question. “Right. Do you know what is happening on the surface of the planet right now? What has been going on in the world of Immortal Cultivators in the past month?”
“Although we did not dare to sneak into the confidential database of the highest authorities, it was not a problem for us to read the general information flowing on the Spiritual Nexus. The capital of the Imperium has been particularly lively in the past half month!”
Li Xiaoming said, as if he were hoping for more trouble to happen, “Firstly, soon after the secret base of Dongfang Wang, the former Prime Minister of the Imperium, was destroyed, the news of Emperor Shenwu’s demise came over. There was even concrete proof suggesting that the desperate members of the Dongfang family slew Emperor Shenwu.
“The four Kurfürst families had sustained the balance of the Imperium for five hundred years. Even though the leaders of the Dongfang family suffered the strikes of the series of scandals and probably needed reshuffling, the Dongfang family as a whole wouldn’t have collapsed, although it might lose a lot of its power and influence.
“Therefore, a lot of middle- and low-level Immortal Cultivators of the Dongfang family had been staying out of the trouble to protect themselves. They even hoped to earn greater benefits for themselves in the reshuffle of the leadership.
“But now that such a severe crime like the ‘regicide’ was set to public, the Dongfang family was faced with complete collapse and eternal doom.
“Although the royal authority of the Imperium had declined in the past five hundred years, and many emperors died uncanny deaths, there had never been such a valid indictment before. For the Immortal Cultivators of the Dongfang family who were in a panic, it was obviously a signal that the other three families were going to eliminate all of them.
“Therefore, the situation that had just died down was in turmoil again. Almost all the Immortal Cultivators of the Dongfang family launched attacks at the other three families, determined to die together with them in desperation.
“The Dongfang family was the strongest of the four Kurfürst families in the first place. Despite the loss of leaders, including Dongfang Wang, it did not lose much of its combat ability. Now that the two parties had ended on bad terms, the war would certainly be protracted.
“Right when the four Kurfürst families were in a fierce fight after the fallout, the reformists rose abruptly.
“The reformists had been supporting the other three Kurfürst families to attack the Dongfang family together with them previously, but for some reason, they won the support of the middle- and low-level Immortal Cultivators of the Dongfang family and even attracted a large batch of young people of the other three families.
“Right, the reformists also completely controlled the royal palace. They seemed to have excavated a lot of good stuff from the royal palace, too. There must be a massive underground armory deep inside the royal palace, which is protected by very powerful barriers and firewalls. We’ve studied them a lot of times but never had the courage to break in.
“Just like that, the previous armed forces of the reformists, the desperate forces of the Dongfang family, and the young generations in the other three Kurfürst families who intended to overthrow the seniors and reshuffle the leadership exactly like the Dongfang family, plus the Astounding Thunder Fleet commanded by Lei Chenghu, launched shocking attacks in only half a month.
“Under the slogan of ‘renew the Imperium’, they organized an elite daring team, which showed up in front of the Council of Elders unexpectedly, claiming that the Council of Elders of the Imperium today had been invaded and seriously corrupted by the extraterrestrial devils. Even many people in the guardian troops of the Council of Elders ‘defected’ to the reformists’ side.
“It was a textbook ‘decapitation’. After only a day of fierce battles, they had already taken down the Council of Elders. Many elders were even captured alive by the reformists.
“Of course, not all the five hundred elders of the Imperium were in the capital. More than half of them participated in the daily operation of the Council of Elders through super-remote holograms. They were able to keep themselves in one piece, readying their troops in their own territories.
“A tiny group of elders was also able to flee from the capital thanks to their loyal guards who fought bloodily.
“Right now, most of the places on the capital planet have been occupied by the reformists, and only 1% of the places are still controlled by the troops that are loyal to the Kurfürsten. Most of the places are spaceports with massive space jump systems. They are hoping to send out more important people and intelligence through the spaceports.
“All in all, the reformists’ aggressive attacks are truly unexpected. Although all the parties are still in active negotiation, a comprehensive civil war of the Imperium of True Human Beings seems unavoidable right now.”
