Li Yao said, “I’ve heard a thing or two about news from the royal palace whose authenticity I was not certain about. The… force that I belong to was involved in the issues of the election of the Crown Princess too. However, hehe, those guys only wanted me to train myself hard into a slaughter machine with more brawns than brains. So, they never cared to explain the inside information to me so clearly!”
Li Lingfeng said with a smile, “There is still a lot more intelligence that we can communicate with each other after things are settled here.”
Li Yao sniffed, giving neither approval or disapproval. “Please continue, Fellow Cultivator Li. If the queen was a kind woman, if not weak in nature, why are you so terrified of her right now?”
“That is the problem. My sister’s personalities have changed greatly in the past decades. She has turned even colder, more ruthless, and more iron-hearted than me. Perhaps she already changed more than a hundred years before she entered the royal palace, but she disguised herself very well and nobody discovered it.”
Li Lingfeng sighed and turned to Li Jialing. “Jialing, I do not want to lie to you. At first, I wanted to use you as a leverage because I thought it would be hard to completely eradicate one’s nature no matter how cruel and cold your mother tried to be. And that when we met, she would more or less show some hesitation or loopholes.
“In a competition of two experts, one moment of hesitation or loopholes would be more than enough to decide the outcome of the battle.
“I even thought that, even if she was relentless enough to dispose of you when you were a fetus, which in fact was nothing more than ‘abortion’, she would certainly hesitate slightly when she saw you standing before her as a grown man, right?
“But I was wrong. I truly underestimated my ‘kindhearted, sentimental, and docile’ sister. Or maybe, she had encountered amazing incidents in the past decades, which granted her terrifying opportunities.
“All in all, when I fought her just now, I intentionally used you to disrupt her mind. But I sensed very clearly that she couldn’t care less about you, and that she was exactly here to kill you. There was not the least maternal love in her at all. You must trust your uncle!
“Furthermore, I would like to disclose an even greater secret to you. In the past hundred years, my sister and His Majesty had twelve princes and princesses in total, four of which died. According to my secret investigation, the deaths of at least two princes were highly suspicious and very likely to be related to my sister!”
Li Yao and Li Jialing were both stunned. Li Yao asked, somewhat in disbelief, “Are you implying that she has already killed at least two of her own children?”
“Very possible, believe it or not. There’s no need for me to lie to you about that, right?”
Li Lingfeng sneered, “Jialing, you should understand it now. Ancient people said that ‘even ferocious tigers do not eat their own children’, but your gene provider is a fiendish woman a hundred times more ferocious than a tiger. If you have the slightest expectations or extravagant hope in her, it will be you who suffer in the end!”
Li Jialing swallowed hard. Despite the super modifications that Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan performed in his head, everything that happened today was enough to make it explode.
Li Yao narrowed his eyes. “So to speak, something is truly wrong with the queen?”
“Of course!”
Li Lingfeng said, “Think about it. She was just a mediocre woman who knew nothing but fighting at the beginning, but in only a hundred years, she founded her own forces while keeping it a secret from the spies of the four Kurfürst families and so many warlords. During the full counterattack of the Imperium against the Covenant Alliance, she also helped the emperor to consolidate his authority in the army and even won the support of the tremendous bottom-level officers in the army. Such sophisticated planning and the resources and wealth that were required for her to recruit her subordinates while deceiving everyone, where did they come from? They couldn’t have just come out of thin air, could they?”
“Got it. It seems that the queen indeed has great secrets behind her.”
Li Yao’s eyes glittered with greed and bloodthirst. “So, you wanted to tame the queen, monopolize the secrets, and grow even stronger than the queen?”
“Yes. That was what I had been planning in the past decade.”
Li Lingfeng opened his arms and admitted frankly, “But the situation is different today. I would like to, and I have to, share the big secret with you.”
Li Yao rolled his eyes quickly and asked, “One last question. How strong is the queen exactly?”
“Very strong. At least a minor level higher than me.”
Li Lingfeng seemed truly desperate for cooperation. Not fearing that it might scare Li Yao away, he said, “This is another amazing and uncanny issue. The queen is a tool we used to monitor the emperor. She shouldn’t have any secrets. The family has been paying close attention to her training all the time. However talented she is and whatever fortuitous incidents she went through, there is no reason why she can be so strong. Besides, she spent most of her time in the heavily-guarded royal palace. What kind of fortuitous incidents could she possibly have run into?”
Li Yao once heard Di Feiwen, the deputy commander of the Black Wind Fleet, talking about those anecdotes before.
Ever since Blackstar the Great, the biggest enemy for the emperor of the Imperium was not the Covenant Alliance or the Cultivators, but the large and small nobles and warlords including the four Kurfürst families.
The central government and the local forces continued the tug-of-war in a dynamic balance, which was the main theme of the thousand years of history of the Imperium.
Also, as the territory of the Imperium expanded, it was only natural that the strength of the warlords and the local forces grew stronger, and the authority of the emperor was gradually diminished. Eventually, they became the puppets of the nobles and the warlords.
To avoid the reappearance of an unprecedented man of the time like Blackstar the Great, the nobles and the warlords couldn’t have been more cautious of the royal family. The education and the training of the royal family, in particular, were under the close watch of the four Kurfürsten.
The tutors of the royal family were all selected by the warlords. There were specific regulations regarding the arts and techniques that they could practice.
The disobedient and persistent members of the royal family were very likely to “die abruptly of mental derangement”. It was absolutely impossible for an emperor or a certain royal prince to pick up an unparalleled technique from the “royal library” and rise unstoppably after grasping it.
Since Li Linghai was a member of the Li family, what she had been practicing should be the techniques of her family too, and the status of her training within the royal palace should be under high control.
So, how exactly did she advance into the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage, even higher than Li Lingfeng?
Li Yao’s head was in a mess.
But thankfully, Di Feiwen had told him a lot of the inside information about the Imperium before, which spared him of the ignorant look on his face.
Li Lingfeng continued cheering him up. “However, there is no need to be too worried, Fellow Cultivator Li. Although the empress’ absolute combat ability is higher than ours, she has snuck into the Martial Meritocrats Sector and the Sand Primitive Sector for an annihilation operation, which must be kept a secret from everyone.
“It is difficult for us to kill her, but it wouldn’t be too realistic for her to kill two experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage with two Colossi even if she is at the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage, right?
“On the other hand, we do not even need to have a head-on clash with her but only need to threaten her that we will run away for a few days, which will put her in a very awkward situation when the main troops arrive.
“Therefore, we do have bargaining chips to play the game with her. I stand by what I said. As long as we can put down our grudge and join our hands sincerely, she definitely would not be bold enough to attack us.”
Li Yao’s fists were clenched, loosened, and clenched again. Finally, he made up his mind and nodded his head slowly. “Fine, I’ll work with you for now and figure out what trump cards the queen has!”
“Spectacular!”
Li Lingfeng clapped his hands and smiled. “Then, please hide somewhere, Fellow Cultivator Li and my nephew. She is unaware that the two of you are right here. You will be an unexpected troop!”
“Wait!”
Li Jialing bulged his eyes and glanced from Li Yao to Li Lingfeng again through lightning and rain. He gnashed his teeth. “I-I haven’t promised anything yet!”
“Huh?”
Li Lingfeng frowned in a daze. “Jialing, I thought that you were already calm and rational enough after a dozen years of strengthening and refinements. As your uncle, I have explained everything to you just now. If you still can’t make the right decision because of rashness, hatred, or parental bond, you would be such a great disappointment.”
“I couldn’t care less about the parental bond. Even if Li Linghai is really my gene provider, so what?”
Li Jialing was trembling hard, but he managed to go on. “However, I still can’t completely trust you. There are still too many obscure details in the whole matter!
“Who is my father exactly? Is he from… the Covenant Alliance? And how did Li Linghai make acquaintance with someone from the Covenant Alliance, keep each other’s life seeds, and even combine them into a fetus in the end? Why did he do that? Where is my father?
“I will not be taken advantage of again like a fool until all the questions are clear to me!”
Li Lingfeng couldn’t have looked more awful. He glanced at Li Yao again, as if he were weighing the pros and cons of confessing everything. A moment later, he said coldly, “So, you have guessed it too. That does make sense. Now that I have told you your real identity, ‘the Origin Plan that was corrupted by the Covenant Alliance’ would not make any sense, and the incomplete ‘Path of Ultimate Benevolence’ deep inside your head would be inexplicable.
“Yes. Your father is indeed from the Covenant Alliance. But as to the specific details, even I only know the general picture…”
“Wait. I do not want to hear it from you. God knows if you are lying to me again!”
Li Jialing demanded, “I want to hear it from Li Linghai in person! If you truly want me to cooperate with you and deal with Li Linghai, you will find a way to allure her to speak out all the truth and to corroborate your words. Then, I will make a judgment myself! If what you said just now is true, we will certainly give you a hand at the critical moment. If not… you can go to hell!”
“You—”
Li Lingfeng did not expect Li Jialing would play such a move.
Even Li Yao couldn’t help but smile. “Fellow Cultivator Li, it seems that of everything you said, at least one thing is true—You have truly invested all your efforts and resources on your nephew. He has been built into such an excellent talent!”