“The Star Ocean Republic?”
Frowning, the queen mumbled, “Firefly?”
Li Jialing blinked his eyes fast, finding it hard to believe.
“Exactly!”
Li Yao nodded his head matter-of-factly. Blinking his eyes that were as clear as water, he turned to the young man, “You heard of the Star Ocean Republic and Firefly before, right?”
“Yes.”
The young man thought for a moment and replied solemnly, “I’m told that it is a bunch of cowardly, shameless, garbage Cultivators who are even worse than cockroaches and rats. They were crumpled by the Imperium a thousand years ago and have been hiding and degenerating in space ever since. They should have become out-and-out space pirates or completely gone extinct, don’t they?”
Li Yao: “… Well, Brother Yao does not like your rhetoric, but yes, I am indeed from that Star Ocean Republic and that Firefly!
“How about it, Your Grace? However devastated Firefly is, it is ‘the last territory of the Star Ocean Republic’ after all. When we escaped from the Imperium years ago, we brought so many facilities away with us. The leadership is also aware of the highly confidential information, say, the coordinates of the relics and treasures of the Star Ocean Imperium! As the saying goes, even a starved camel is bigger than a horse. It is only reasonable that the Star Ocean Republic can raise someone in the Divinity Transformation Stage, and Firefly boasts the abilities to maintain a Colossus. Is there a loophole at all? Just take your time to think, and feel free to chop off my head if you come up with one!”
Li Yao declared confidently and aggressively.
But he was actually not as confident as he appeared.
The existence of Firefly should be a big secret that only he knew. According to the sailing log on Firefly, they were discovered by the Black Wind Fleet, the expedition army of the Imperium, a dozen years ago, after hiding for almost three hundred years. However, Heiye Ming, commander of the Black Wind Fleet, did not report it to the homeland of the Imperium in order to swallow the fat meat alone. Otherwise, the reinforcements sent from the homeland would’ve stolen all the credits.
Later, after the Black Wind Fleet suffered a heavy blow and was almost annihilated, Commander Heiye Ming was already gone, and Di Feiwen, the deputy commander, was determined to make peace with the federation and march back to the Imperium with the power of the federation. Naturally, he would not deliver the intelligence of such significance back to the homeland of the Imperium.
So, theoretically speaking, the homeland of the Imperium only vaguely knew that the Black Wind Fleet had sailed to the edge of mankind’s realm in the age of the Star Ocean Imperium, and the helpless folks of the Black Wind Sector were grimacing to bit the tasteless hard bones after encountering some worthless, barren worlds that were inhabited by disobedient barbarians.
They couldn’t have been aware of the powerfulness of the federation, the scale of treasures in the Ancient Sages Sector, and the Kunlun relic, or the whereabouts of Firefly from the Star Ocean Republic!
However, it was just “theoretically” after all. Who knew if the queen had other sources of intelligence?
Should he be seen through, with her bad temper, it would be helpless even if Li Yao clung to her thigh and cry “grandmother”!
Li Yao focused the acting skills that he had practiced for a hundred years on his face and his eyes. He couldn’t have been more nervous in his heart, but his face and his eyes couldn’t be more frank. Every wrinkle on his face seemed to be brimming with sincerity!
Frowning, the queen stared at him in silence for a long time. Her eyes seemed to be two vipers that were crawling into his head through the eyes and swallowing all of his memories. It was not until she observed him for half a minute that she finally said, “Continue. Tell me your birth and your growth on Firefly.”
Li Yao took a long breath in relief in his heart, knowing that he had passed the second test.
“I was born at a cabin at the bottom of a garbage ship, the most wrecked and low-level starship among the hundreds of starships that made up Firefly.”
With ripples of memories spreading out in his eyes, Li Yao said in a low and poignant voice, “It was a harsh, murky, difficult, and dark world where the strong prey on the weak. It is also known as ‘magical equipment graveyard’.
“Because Firefly was a wanderer in space, it might not find any relic of forsaken worlds or space battlefields to get supplies for decades in the most difficult times. So, we absolutely could not waste any scrap of magical equipment. Even the most useless and broken garbage would be piled up on the garbage ship into hills, which were exactly my home.”
Li Jialing couldn’t help but ask, “Difficult and dark? Where the strong prey on the weak? Didn’t you claim to be Cultivators?”
Li Yao moved his lips, blushing. As if he couldn’t answer the question, he turned his uneasy eyes to Li Linghai for help.
The queen sneered, “Is there a clear boundary between Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators? When there are enough resources, everybody is a decent and righteous Cultivator; when half of the people are going to be starved due to the inadequacy of resources, hehe, the men of honors and integrity in the past will have to consider ‘survival of the fittest’ as the ultimate slogan too!
“Firefly has drifted in the sea of stars for almost a thousand years. Although it did get away from the Imperium’s hunting, it was forced to flee to the places that were more and more barren and desolate at the edge of the civilization of mankind. No supplies, no communication, and no resources. How could there be any Cultivator left? I fear that the loyalists of the Star Ocean Republic are even worse than the fake Immortal Cultivators in the Imperium today!”
Li Yao coughed in embarrassment and said, “You may have a point, Your Grace. All in all, I spent my childhood in the harsh environment and the life-and-death struggles in the magical equipment graveyard. The dark experience is somewhat similar to Li Jialing’s growth. That is also why I felt close to my brother the moment I met him.”
“Brother Yao…”
While Li Jialing did not quite understand the real connotations of “magical equipment graveyard”, he did know a thing or two about “Firefly” and the “Star Ocean Republic” from history books and various kinds of readers.
Many specialists in the Imperium had inferred the ending of Firefly. Their speculation was similar to Li Linghai’s theory. They believed that Firefly would definitely collapse in the desperation of having no way out and because of the shortage of resources, and that the end of the world before its collapse would be a hundred times more terrifying than the harshest mines in the Imperium.
When Li Jialing thought that Li Yao was born in such a place, he further grew subtle sympathy for him.
Li Yao sighed and went on, “All in all, having no parents or anyone that I could count on, I should’ve died in the dark, cruel magical equipment graveyard in my childhood. However, I accidentally found a heavily wounded uncle in the magical equipment graveyard, which changed my fate, and probably the fate of yours too!”
Holding his breath, Li Jialing asked, “Was… Was he my birth father?”
“Exactly.”
Li Yao nodded his head and fell into the memories from a long time ago, as he was speaking the truth right now. “Nobody knew where the uncle came from or what he’d been through, but when I discovered him, he was badly wounded, and even his internal organs were exposed to the air…”
Li Yao noticed that Li Linghai’s eyes were obviously shaking.
Her breath that had been even the whole time had a disorder of 0.01 seconds too.
For an unparalleled expert at the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage or even higher, it was a loss of control that absolutely shouldn’t have happened.
Before the young man exclaimed again, Li Yao continued, “At that time, I thought that the uncle escaped to our garbage ship because he did something bad or pissed off someone on other starships, which was quite usual on the hundreds of starships that made up Firefly.
“I couldn’t tell what was on my mind, but I somehow grew slightly fond of the uncle. Perhaps it was because I never had a father, and he looked rather reliable.
“All in all, I saved the uncle, and after his wounds were healed, he saved me multiple times too. He even adopted me as a son and taught me all his skills in refining. He also gave me a rusty, weird flying sword. Later, the flying sword exploded, and the sticky, soft, and highly-elastic black ball that I call ‘Little Black’ jumped out.”
“You… You…”
The queen couldn’t help but pace back and forth. Perhaps even she did not know what she wanted to ask. After a long daze, she said, “You lived together, just the two of you?”
“Just the two of us. My foster father was never a great talker. He always maintained magical equipment in silence to trade for food to sustain us and for alcohol. His sole hobby was to polish the scraps of magical equipment until they were extremely thin and clear. Then, he would build them into beautiful roses that looked like diamonds.”
Li Yao smiled and said, “When their number was at the highest, our small cottage was filled up by the metal roses, and I felt that they were sticking me even when I slept at night. I asked him why he made so many useless items, which could barely be exchanged for any money, and why he did not jumble them into battle magical equipment instead, but he never answered me.
“Now that I think about it, I understand it now. Perhaps he spent his entire life carving 99,999 metal flowers with delicate runes to make them even more beautiful than real roses because he wanted to give them to a woman at the other shore of the sea of stars, right?”
The thing was true.
Of course, the number of metal roses might not necessarily be 99,999, but there was definitely a whole lot of them.
After his pop passed away, Li Yao buried his ashes with the metal roses and piled them into a small hill. Together, they were kept at the deepest part of the magical equipment graveyard, before they were covered by the infinite garbage mountains.
When Li Yao returned to the federation after a hundred years of hibernation, the magical equipment graveyard in Floating Spear City had been completely deformed.
But maybe today, his pop’s ashes were still deeply buried below the earth in the Heaven’s Origin Sector together with the glamorous, glittering roses, weren’t they?
Li Linghai was in a trance, but the invisible mask and armor of indifference around her could not be formed anymore.
His fingertips, her arms, and her shoulders were all trembling slightly, as if she were trying to hold back the thorns that had crawled out of her heart all of a sudden and entangled her entire body in the blink of an eye!