After the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance, the “Deep Sea Palace”, the base of the reformists, began to function at a high speed like a fully-wound machine.
In the three days that followed, Li Linghai was busy handling complicated information and didn’t show up before Li Yao and Li Jialing.
Li Yao and Li Jialing, on the other hand, did not idle by either. They modified and tested crystal suits together with Master Jin Tianzong. Li Linghai wanted them to improve the stealth abilities of a batch of advanced crystal suits significantly. It seemed that they would very likely carry out a secret infiltration mission in the so-called wild gamble.
Three days later, in the deepest part of the Deep Sea Palace and led by Li Linghai, Li Yao walked into a sphere-shaped secret chamber that was as huge as a pavilion.
The secret room was more than a hundred meters in diameter. Drifting at the center of the room on the floating discs, Li Yao and Li Linghai were like two ants that had crawled into an enormous iron ball.
Dim light flashed on the dark wall around and congregated into colorful swirls now and then, which were as dazzling as kaleidoscopes.
According to Li Linghai, the secret chamber was a facility left from the Star Ocean Imperium. It was the core of the entire star fortress and a very powerful communication room.
Through the communication room, she could communicate with her subordinates everywhere in the universe without worrying that the Spiritual Nexus might be monitored or compromised.
Even if somebody wanted to intercept the content of their communication, what they could catch would only be twisted, meaningless code. It was even impossible to lock onto the coordinates of the two parties in the communication. No method of communication could have been safer.
It was exactly because of the discovery of such a powerful communication room that Li Linghai gradually built the Deep Sea Palace into her nest.
When Li Yao and Li Linghai slowly walked into the communication room, there were already ten magnificent, handsome officers with earnest eyes who were wearing the old military uniforms from when the Imperium of True Human Beings was just founded a thousand years ago.
Seeing that Li Linghai arrived, they all stood at attention and performed the most standard unity etiquette to the queen of the Imperium, before they said at the same time, “Long live the Imperium!”
Li Linghai and Li Yao raised their right arms and returned the etiquette.
This was the first time that Li Yao had performed the unity etiquette of the Imperium of True Human Beings solemnly. He then recalled that Li Linghai promised that she would nominate him as an elder of the Imperium the other day. He couldn’t help but feel funny and absurd.
He did not try to cover his uneasiness either. After all, Li Linghai knew his background very well. He would only raise suspicions if his attitude changed too fast.
After the unity etiquette was done, many people looked at Li Yao coldly.
The officers wearing the old military uniforms of the Imperium were naturally the leadership team of the Deep Sea Fleet, who craved to restore the glory of the Imperium in the old days.
Li Yao met some of them a few days ago, including Tu Zhengdao, the deputy leader of the Deep Sea Legion, who had tested crystal suits with him many times and was convinced by his expertise in both fighting and refining.
They were well aware of Li Yao’s professionalism in the arts of refining.
Even Master Jin Tianzong, director of magical equipment in the Deep Sea Fleet, admitted in person that, leaving theories aside, Li Yao’s skills were better than his in terms of practical maintenance and adjustment.
Besides, this “Vulture” was allegedly a trusted subordinate that Her Grace had raised in secret. His future was nothing but promising, considering that he was now the queen’s personal bodyguard and magical equipment consultant.
Therefore, many of them simply retreated their eyes after glancing at Li Yao and nodded in respect.
As for the other officers, Li Yao had never seen them before, but he had heard their names a lot of times.
The most important one of them all was naturally Dongfang Sheng, the highest commander of the Deep Sea Fleet.
From the surname, it could easily be told that Dongfang Sheng was from the Dongfang family, one of the four Kurfürst families. He shared the same family lineage with Dongfang Tuo, the former elder of the Imperium who had just met his demise.
However, just like Wuying Lan, who was technically a member of the royal family but received no attention at all because he was from a secondary branch, a lot of descendants of secondary branches who were as insignificant as dust, grass, and ants could also be found in the Dongfang family, which had also lasted more than a thousand years with a population of more than a hundred thousand.
The fate of the secondary descendants was even more miserable than the outsiders because they were the victims that the proud descendants of the main bloodline could reach and bully most easily.
Also, as members of the Dongfang family, it was expected that they shed the last drop of blood for the service of the family, and at the slightest disobedience, they would be punished by family rules that were a hundred times crueler than the law.
The outsiders could always escape. Those “members of the family”, however, were destined to be the most dutiful sacrifices of the family. They had nowhere to run to at all.
Theoretically speaking, the secondary branches of the family, after showing distinctive talents in training, would be appreciated by the big shots of the family, distinguish themselves, and march all the way to the leadership of the family.
But it was still just “theoretically”.
The weak stayed weak, and the strong would be forever strong. For the secondary descendants who lacked resources since the very beginning, it was certainly not an easy task to distinguish themselves in the cruel competitions within the family. Besides, if they wanted to distinguish themselves, they would have to stomp on somebody else in certain competitions and tests.
If they happened to stomp on the head of a beloved disciple of a big shot or a descendent of the eminent main bloodline, it was inevitable that they would be hated by those who failed. Those people had ten thousand ways to exterminate the hope of the ambitious secondary descendants.
There was no need to elaborate on Dongfang Sheng’s story. It was just one where a secondary descendant craved to climb upward, only to piss off somebody he shouldn’t have by accident. As a result, he was framed and even almost murdered. Unwilling to give in, he launched a counterattack and broke out of the siege, ending his relationship with the family on bad terms. That was basically everything.
When Li Yao heard the name of “Dongfang Sheng” for the first time, he was rather surprised by Li Linghai’s confidence to have appointed an officer from the Dongfang family to govern the entire Deep Sea Fleet.
However, after he learned that Dongfang Sheng had killed hundreds of descendants of the main bloodline of the Dongfang family, blown up a warehouse of crystals, and even executed an elder of the Dongfang family before he finally escaped and that he remained the “traitor” of the Dongfang family with the highest bounty on his head after decades, Li Yao completely shut his mouth.
He was particularly astounded to know that Dongfang Sheng’s bounty by the Dongfang family was twice as much as the bounty on Li Yao offered by the authorities of the Imperium after he destroyed “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”.
It would be the first clue of the man’s dominance and his determination to challenge the family.
Li Yao and Dongfang Sheng looked at each other, and sensing each other’s immeasurable strength, lowered their eyes in silence at the same time.
Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!
On the arc-shaped wall around, the colorful swirls grew more and more intense and soon congregated into a fuzzy figure that was projected to the middle of everybody, turning into a hologram almost two meters tall.
It was a woman wearing a black cape, on which hideous runes that were as twisted as earthworms had been sewed with dark gold threads. Her entire face was hidden below the hood, and her back was slightly hunched, giving an extremely weird air.
Li Yao was somewhat alarmed. He knew that the woman who was far away in the capital of the Imperium and only manifested remotely through the Spiritual Nexus was the leader of the “Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils”, an assassination, sabotage, and intelligence agency under Li Linghai’s command. Her name was “Yue Wushuang”.
As the saying went, “when you are staring at the abyss, the abyss is staring at you too”.
The devil huntresses of the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils, during the thousand years of battles against the extraterrestrial devils, had also absorbed brand-new techniques from the extraterrestrial devils. They were even infiltrated and corrupted by the extraterrestrial devils again and again before they were treated and purged. In the end, while they had annihilated countless extraterrestrial devils, they were mixed with the devilish air that they could not get rid of.
Of all the special forces of the Imperium of True Human Beings, the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils was the most mysterious, dark, and cold one.
Many of their techniques were even performed with the strength of the extraterrestrial devils. When they burned their lives and souls to the maximum, they were no different from the extraterrestrial devils themselves.
It was also the reason why many elders of the Imperium intended to remove the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils and even kill all the devil huntresses because there was simply no telling whether they were humans or devils.
The only thing that could control the devil huntresses, or the “devils”, making them defend the Imperium in the darkness and slash their sabers at the extraterrestrial devils, was their infinite loyalty to the emperor.
Therefore, when the noble lords in the capital mentioned the leader of the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils in disdain occasionally, they would often address Yue Wushuang by another name—Moon Devil.
Li Linghai spared no effort reminding Li Yao that “Moon Devil” Yue Wushuang was an extremely dangerous person. Although she was “only” at the high level of the Divinity Transformation Stage, countless terrifying techniques originating from the extraterrestrial devils were hidden inside her seemingly weak body, which could allow her to kill other Divinity Transformation Stage experts of the same level easily. She was also particularly good at stealth and tracking.
In other words, if Li Yao were to duel with “Moon Devil” Yue Wushuang, it was possible that he would have nowhere to run to even if he wanted to.
As an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, she certainly had her own beliefs and goals and would not work for anyone else easily. Li Linghai only managed to recruit “Moon Devil” Yue Wushuang by promising to expand the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils and make it the “First Agency” to monitor the Imperium.
Yue Wushuang, Dongfang Sheng, Jin Tianzong, and even Li Yao were all extraordinary people in the Divinity Transformation Stage. They could not be simply regarded as Li Linghai’s subordinates.
They were all fellow Cultivators who shared the same goal and made up the team of “reformists” together.
Therefore, even Li Linghai had to show enough respect to them.
Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!
On the opposite side of “Moon Devil” Yue Wushuang, a second hologram was projected and condensed into a tall, slim, smiling man in glamorous clothes, who gave Li Yao exactly the same feeling as Di Feiwen, the deputy commander of the Deep Sea Fleet, did.
As he expected, the moment he saw the emblem on the man’s chest, which was a pattern of nine overlapping coins, Li Yao realized that the man was Jin Yuyan, the highest director of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.