Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
From the broken tubes, water drops were dripping nonstop, further adding to the cold and creepy atmosphere in the warehouse.
Li Yao spent ten minutes introducing the backstory and the general situation today to Jin Yuyan. In the end, he clenched his fists and looked at the guy with innocent eyes while speaking in the most sincere voice, “Trust me, Old Jin, everything I said just now is true. Right now, the two of us are the last hope of the reformists, the Imperium, and the true path of immortality! No matter how depressed and frustrated you are, do not give up hope. Summon your courage and fight for the true path of immortality together with me!”
It took Jin Yuyan another five minutes to completely digest what Li Yao said.
Closing his eyes, he considered for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, they were already filled with profundity and wisdom.
Jin Yuyan extended one finger. “Let me confirm everything with you. You are saying that Blackstar the Great, the ancestor of all Immortal Cultivators, has been reborn and attached to Queen Li Linghai’s body and that he is manipulating everything behind the curtain for the purpose of reclaiming the ultimate throne from the four families?”
Li Yao nodded his head quickly. “That’s right!”
Jin Yuyan extended another finger. “Then, because he is all by himself after just being reborn and he is scared that he would be exterminated by the four families should his identity be exposed, he is making use of the strength of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the reformists, and even I have been a pawn for him?”
Li Yao continued nodding. “Correct. Your comprehension is truly remarkable!”
Jin Yuyan extended a third finger. “Blackstar the Great is just taking advantage of me, the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, and the reformists. Although the four Kurfürst families are our mutual enemy, he is in fact a ‘royalist’ that is even more conservative and autocratic than the four families. If he seizes the fruit of the reformists, he will certainly strangle the reformists and destroy the free coin as well as the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors?”
“That’s exactly what I was saying!”
Li Yao was delighted. “Wuying Qi’s beliefs are absolutely incompatible with yours or mine. He can’t be a reformist at all but a royalist a hundred times more conservative than the four Kurfürsten, because he is the greatest living embodiment of the royal power! His shadow was clearly behind the riot in the Seven Seas Grand Market too. Is that not enough to suggest the problem?”
Jin Yuyan extended his fourth finger. “Therefore, I can only cooperate with you now in order to compete with Blackstar the Great as well as the four Kurfürst families and to carry out the idea of ‘renew the Imperium’ to the entire sea of stars based on my wealth, my expertise on the capital market, my connections at the periphery of the Imperium, and your unparalleled physical strength?”
“You can’t be more correct!”
Li Yao was almost crying. He slapped his thigh and said, “That’s absolutely the case. Right now, we are the saviors of the reformists. We are the real reformists and the future dominators of the Imperium. You have wealth, and I have invincible strength. We are naturally best allies! I have high hopes for you, Old Jin. Other people would’ve been stunned for a long time before they realized what was going on after hearing such a piece of appalling news. I didn’t expect that you could sort it through and summarize the key points so soon. Judging from your calmness and your wisdom alone, your future is absolutely promising. After our cause succeeds, not just the financial minister of the Imperium, you will be more than enough to serve as the Prime Minister of the Imperium.”
Jin Yuyan said, “Okay.”
Li Yao asked, “What do you mean by ‘okay’?”
Jin Yuyan said casually, “‘Okay’ means ‘interesting’.”
Li Yao said, “What do you mean by ‘interesting’?”
Jin Yuyan said coldly, “‘Interesting’ means I don’t believe you.”
“With everything coming to this point, you still don’t believe me?”
Li Yao’s eyes were widened, with shock and frustration all over his face. He smashed his fists hard and said, “Old Jin, just think about it carefully. Even if I want to deceive you, I wouldn’t tell such a terrible lie that ‘Blackstar the Great has been revived’, would I? I even have the videos where I fought Wuying Qi! That’s real!”
“Yes, that part is real. I don’t believe that you would make up such a ridiculous lie either.”
Jin Yuyan said, “However, the most brilliant lies always consist of 90% facts and 10% false statements. Just because you did not lie about that does not mean everything you said was true.”
Li Yao said: “… Fine, regarding my statement that ‘you have wealth and I have invincible strength’, I may have exaggerated it a bit. I truly don’t have the ability to kill Blackstar the Great right now. You’ve seen right through it! What keen eyes you have!”
Jin Yuyan said, “The amount of physical strength is not the key either. I know very well what ‘Vulture Li Yao’ is capable of. Although you might not be ‘invincible’, your expertise should be more or less enough. What I cannot think through is something else. I would like you to enlighten me.
“If you can give me a perfect answer, there won’t be a problem however you want me to cooperate with you. I am a dying man after all, and I can’t be any greater loser whatever wild gambles I am to take again.”
While speaking, Jin Yuyan became so intimidating that he truly looked like a gambler who had lost all his belongings and who was about to bring out his life and soul to make a comeback.
Li Yao declared resolutely, “Feel free to ask anything, Director Jin. I’ll certainly tell you everything I know!”
“Alright. Since we are about to cooperate sincerely and carry on the banner of the reformists, we should not hide anything from each other. At the very least, we should be aware of each other’s backgrounds.”
Jin Yuyan said, “Everybody knows how I rose. I’ll explain to you why I got stranded inside the body of a woman later too. However, can you tell me your origins, your school, and your lineage, Fellow Cultivator Li?
“You are in the Divinity Transformation Stage and not just a random guy in the Divinity Transformation Stage. Even an experienced Divinity Transformation Stage expert like Qi Yuanbao who was adept at assassination skills chose to escape after having one head-to-head clash with you, which implied that he was quite wary of you. How strong is your combat ability exactly?
“Such an experienced expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage with an extraordinary combat ability can’t emerge out of thin air. There must be a powerful force supporting you on your back.
“In the past hundred years, in order to expand the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, I visited almost every planet on every Sector at the edge of the Imperium. I know a thing or two about the local magnates and the hermit families, but none of them has a member like you.
“In order to deal with the four Kurfürst families, I’ve been paying attention to the intelligence from the center of the cosmos too, particularly that regarding the experts among the nobles, to whom you don’t belong to either.
“Then, it has been baffling me for a long time. How exactly did you emerge out of nowhere beyond everyone’s expectation?”
Faced with Jin Yuyan’s question, Li Yao smiled rather lightheartedly. “As I’ve already explained it to the fellow reformists earlier, I was a dark warrior that the queen raised in secret to help her carry out the most secretive, dangerous, and clandestine missions. Is it strange at all that people from the outside world never heard my name before?”
Jin Yuyan nodded his head. “That’s right. In the past, you explained it in such a way. At that time, although I was not entirely convinced, I was not bothered by it too much, but now that I think of it, something is greatly wrong. If you were truly a dark warrior that the queen carefully trained, you must’ve followed her for more than fifty years before you advanced into the Divinity Transformation Stage, didn’t you? Then, why on earth would you betray her and escape from the capital?”
“Because our beliefs are different!”
Li Yao replied without any hesitation, “Although the queen groomed me, I still grew into a real reformist thanks to the lessons on the ideas of the reformists! When I discovered that the queen was merely realizing her own ambitions with the renewal of the Imperium as a disguise, and the most terrible Blackstar the Great was residing inside her body, I certainly had to split apart from them and even stop them!
“Old Jin, we are both men with beliefs and the real Immortal Cultivators, unlike the fake Immortal Cultivators of the four families who are cowardly and only care about their own interests. If you are willing to be sacrificed for what you believe in, why can’t I?”
“That’s exactly what baffles me.”
Jin Yuyan said, “According to what you said just now, you had followed Li Linghai for more than fifty years, and you were her most trusted subordinate that she trained in person. She invested astronomical resources in you, and you lived up to her expectations and became her toughest dark warrior, making great contributions for her.
“On the other hand, it has been decades, if not longer, since Blackstar the Great’s remaining soul was attached to Li Linghai. It was Wuying Qi who raised Li Linghai’s ambitions first. That was the reason why Li Linghai recruited subordinates, expanded her influence, and trained the dark warriors like you.
“Then, since the very beginning, the people who trained you shouldn’t have been just Li Linghai but should’ve also included Wuying Qi. Even if it was inconvenient for Wuying Qi to show up in person, he should’ve inculcated the idea about the supremacy of the royal power into your head. How on earth did you become a reformist?
“Stop telling the bulls*it like you stood uncorrupted and you somehow came up with the ideas of the reformists on your own. You should’ve been trained by Wuying Qi and Li Linghai when you were at your weakest. Was the almighty Blackstar the Great not able to create a most loyal dog after decades of work?
“If such a dog had random thoughts easily and even got out of control beyond the master’s control, I find it hard to believe that the ‘Blackstar the Great’ was authentic.
“This is exactly my greatest confusion. Please give me a straight answer, Fellow Cultivator Li. Who are you exactly? Where do you come from? Where did you get such enormous capabilities? What is it that you are really after?”