Li Yao stabbed his fingers deep into his hair, which was as fluffy as a bird nest. His eyes hollow, he said, “Give me half a day, and I will certainly be able to sort the whole thing out and locate Blackstar the Great’s flaws. He must have flaws, because he was not prepared to be exposed so soon. He was forced to activate his plan because of ‘Silver Fox’ Li Jiande. Also, he couldn’t have predicted that I would appear in the Seven Seas Grand Market and rescue you. In other words, the plan he is implementing right now is a backup plan of backup plans. He’ll be a real god if his plan is still flawless under such circumstances!”
Jin Yuyan sighed and said, “Be my guest, but please take a look at the hologram of the space zone. The Astounding Thunder Fleet has voluntarily sent a message to Yun Xuefeng’s main fleet. The two parties are about to be engaged.”
Greatly alarmed, Li Yao turned back abruptly and stared at the red and blue light spots on the holographical map of the space zone for a long time, before he left the command center without saying anything.
Enshrouded by coldness, he returned to the “Palace of Black Wind King” as soon as possible.
The most advanced communication facilities in the place allowed him to contact Boss Bai at any moment and share most of the real-time data in the “Coalition Fleet of Pyromaniacs”, making it possible for him to monitor the space battlefield more clearly and deeply.
In the dark and quiet communication room, the fluorescence from the dozens of 3D light beams in the room illuminated into a twisted, illusionary realm beyond reality.
Sitting at the center of the many light beams, Li Yao simply allowed the torrential information sliding on his face and his body quickly.
He seemed to have been back to the moment when he inferred what was on Jin Tuyi’s mind in the Blood Demon Sector by himself.
His soul seemed to have been placed on a frozen lake. He could hear the ice cracking apart and feel that the cold water was about to erupt like magma.
As time went by, the situation in the space battlefield changed again and again in the most dazzling way.
Lei Chenghu truly deserved to be a man known as the “God of War”. His expertise in fleet commanding and space battles was as good as Boss Bai’s, if not better. The Astounding Thunder Fleet commanded by him was really like a tide made of thousands of rumbling thunders—a tide that was alive and infuriated!
The Astounding Thunder Fleet caught Yun Xuefeng unprepared the moment it jumped to the Seven Seas Space Zone.
Perhaps Lei Chenghu realized very calmly that it was impossible to hide the organized jump of such an enormous fleet for too long. He simply exposed some of the spiritual waves voluntarily, pretending that they were a random garrison fleet of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors that had rushed to the place as reinforcements.
After detecting the “random reinforcement troop” that was not far away from him, Yun Xuefeng immediately deployed a branch fleet that included one Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship to annihilate the enemy.
It was safe to say that Yun Xuefeng’s decision was reasonable and did not involve any mistake. In order to destroy a reinforcing troop that was not large in scale, a branch fleet led by one Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship was more than enough in any case.
It was a shame that what Yun Xuefeng encountered was Lei Chenghu.
The duel of the two generals lost suspense in the very beginning.
In the next three hours, Lei Chenghu taught everybody in the area a lesson about the arts of commanding, the coordination of thousands of barraging cannons, and the fearlessness of the soldiers of the Imperium who were bold enough to fight with an Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship.
The soldiers and crew members on the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship who had always been proud also learned why their fleet could not be called “best” or “ace” when they had such an enormous warship.
A hundred rapid attack ships that had an amazing speed surrounded the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship in a hundred streaks of brilliance, like a pack of brutal wolves attacking a clumsy buffalo. No matter how many fatal attacks the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship shot out, they merely brushed past those rapid attack ships, wasting the spiritual energy and the ammunitions for nothing.
When the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship finally hit a few rapid attack ships, a few Colossi that belonged to the Astounding Thunder Fleet broke into the warship under their cover.
In the meantime, the arsenal warships, the shield warships, and the inferential warships that provided protection for the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship were separated, surrounded, and swallowed by other starships of the Astounding Thunder Fleet.
When a wound as gigantic as a canyon was torn from inside to outside on the Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship, and infinite materials and flames spurted out, its destruction was already inevitable.
Lei Chenghu declared his arrival with the destruction of an Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship, which caused significant consequences on both the enemy’s side and his own.
The defenders seemed to have just been injected with a powerful cardiotonic. Their morale that had hit rock bottom previously bounced to the peak again.
The attackers’ fighting will that had been gathered after all the trouble collapsed all of a sudden into nothingness, gone for good, exactly like the broken Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship.
What was most horrifying was not Lei Chenghu’s tough combat ability but his unparalleled influence and prestige.
Lei Chenghu had been in service for almost two hundred years. In his early years, he annihilated space pirates in the peripheral worlds of the Imperium and struck an alliance with many worlds. Then, he led the soldiers in his hometown to resist the Covenant Alliance in the times of crisis. By the time of the Imperium’s counterattack, he led the vanguard and conquered the enormous Third Battle Area with a bunch of defeated and untrained soldiers. His fame was unparalleled, and he was a role model as the most standard Immortal Cultivator, meeting all the moral requirements for an Immortal Cultivator.
Even his enemy who loathed him and wanted to kill him could only admire his integrity and respect him as the “last Immortal Cultivator of the Imperium”.
The psychological blow of the participation of such a “God of War” in the battlefield on the attackers was much greater than that of the destruction of an Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship.
Just like Jin Yuyan said, Lei Chenghu was himself a rather unique warlord from the peripheral worlds. He was the same kind of person as the warlords and local magnates who took up more than 90% of the attackers and understood them well.
In the past two hundred years, Lei Chenghu had fought those warlords countless times and even saved their lives on the most dangerous battlefields. In the Imperium’s counterattack not a long time ago, Lei Chenghu had also commanded the troops of many warlords to expand the territory of the Imperium.
Even right now, the Astounding Thunder Fleet was still mixed with a lot of Immortal Cultivators from the peripheral worlds of the Imperium. They were essentially brothers from the same world. How were they going to fight the war?
Not a single warlord from the peripheral worlds of the Imperium could stand the consequences of attacking Lei Chenghu’s fleet.
Or rather, so much as Lei Chenghu coughed lightly, countless young bottom-level officers who zealously worshipped him would be joining him and accepting his command!
It was certainly not good news for Yun Xuefeng and other Immortal Cultivators of the four families.
In the meantime, it was not pleasant for the Cultivators like Li Yao either.
If the situation went on, even if the “battle of Seven Seas” was won, the greatest winner would only be Lei Chenghu and Wuying Qi behind him. It would be impossible for Li Yao to achieve a balance among the Immortal Cultivators.
Even Boss Bai was sending messages to Li Yao crazily.
“What exactly is going on? Why did a riot suddenly burst out in the Seven Seas Grand Market? Why did Lei Chenghu’s fleet suddenly jump to the Seven Seas Space Zone?
“Damn it. The Astounding Thunder Fleet is really strong. As expected of a super army that has been tested through two hundred years of bloody battles. They’ve swallowed an Adamantine Super Arsenal Warship so quickly!
“Our Coalition Fleet of Pyromaniacs has been gathered for no more than three months. Despite the assistance of the super artificial intelligence, we probably would be no match for the Astounding Thunder Fleet.
“Hey, hey, hey, Li Yao, who are we helping right now? If we continue to pretend to be ‘loyal’ and stay on Yue Xuefeng’s side, we will soon burst into conflicts with the Astounding Thunder Fleet!
“Yun Xuefeng is going mad. Really. The guy is already eyeing me in a creepy way. I estimate that he will push us out to resist the Astounding Thunder Fleet if he loses a few more branch fleets!
“What do we do? Should we stab Yun Xuefeng in the back right now and take Lei Chenghu’s side? But exactly which side is Lei Chenghu on? He is undoubtedly the purest Immortal Cultivator!
“One moment of carelessness, and we may become Yue Xuefeng and Lei Chenghu’s mutual enemy. That… That will definitely be the greatest joke!”
Li Yao sent a message to Boss Bai. “Give me an hour, and I’ll give you an answer. Until then… please hang in there. Boss Bai, I trust you. You can make it!”
Li Yao cut the communication with Boss Bai quickly, allowing himself time to analyze and deduce calmly in the cold swirls of thinking.
In the green fluorescence, there was nothing but himself made of blood, who sat on his opposite side and held his cheeks with both hands, contemplating together with him. It was almost like a weird mirror had been set up before him.
“Wuying Qi’s mental attacks were very good. They were nothing like the in-depth hypnotization, psychological hints, and soul shocks that we had seen before.”
The mental devil said slowly, “I’ve carefully analyzed the mark that he implanted into our soul through the soul explosion and realized that it involves changes of the most fundamental layer of the soul. It is a very brilliant brainwashing technology. Similar techniques are rarely found among human beings.”
“Rarely found among ‘human beings’?”
Li Yao keenly grasped the key. “That means they have been found elsewhere?”
“It’s hard to say if they are the same, but we indeed saw similar modifications in the brain tomography of the Pangu Clan as well as the Covenant Alliance.”
The mental devil replied somewhat uncertainly.
In the Kunlun relic, the primeval relic discovered in the Star Glory Federation, Li Yao had slain a living member of the Pangu Clan. The exploration team also discovered a lot of decayed and withered bodies of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan later.
Below the ground of the Land of Eternal Night in the Ancient Sages Sector, inside the Nuwa warship and the Pangu laboratory, there were plenty of well-preserved bodies as well.
After slicing and scanning the well-preserved brains, valuable experimental data had been retrieved, which was of great help when it came to the studies on the souls of the many races in the Pangu civilization.