Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The office of the ‘Defense Counsel of the Federation’ was located in the southern suburb of the capital city in the Heaven’s Origin Sector, right next to the General Staff and the Command Center of the federal army.

As a civilization of Cultivators that had strong individuals, the Star Glory Federation had been carrying on a ‘parallel policy’ in terms of national military power since the Old Federation six hundred years ago. While a powerful regular army was maintained, the sects and the individuals, on the premise that they abided by the ‘Constitution of Cultivators’, were allowed to boast an extremely high personal combat ability.

In many cases, the supreme experts from the major sects had a personal combat ability far more advanced than the federal army, but when it came to ‘profoundness’ and ‘durability’, they were certainly no match for the federal army.

During the six hundred years of development in the federation, the military and Cultivators once had contradictions. There was even a dark period known as the Age of Red Dragon Army where one party completely suppressed the other. However, the drawbacks of such a system were soon revealed and rectified. The parallel regime of two fists was restored. The two parties had been supervising each other to achieve a dynamic balance.

After six hundred years of cooperation, and faced with the threat of the Imperium of True Human Beings, the military and the Association of Cultivators, which represented the interests of the Cultivators, had been combined. Today, the highest decision-making and war command center in the federation was not the Department of Defense, the General Staff of the military, or the National Strategies Institute in the parliament, but this place—the Defense Counsel of the Federation, made of the leadership of the military, the leadership of the Secret Sword Bureau, and the many Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators and even Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators in the Association of Cultivators.

According to tradition, the position of president of the Defense Counsel would be taken by the Speaker of the Federation, and the three vice-presidents were assumed by the big shots from the military, the Secret Sword Bureau, and the Association of Cultivators respectively.

The series of gray, egg-like buildings in the southern suburb of the capital city was the command center of the most fatal armed forces of the seven Sectors in the federation!

At this moment, countless shuttles and fully-armed Exos were milling about inside the gray eggs, like bees that had been infuriated. Alarms were echoing nonstop within the Defense Counsel, too. Everything was a mess!

The military, Secret Sword Bureau, Association of Cultivators, parliament… The giants of various parties came one after another. Even a lot of mysterious people who barely showed up in the news had revealed themselves, but they were obviously anxious, too.

They had every reason to be anxious, because something devastating had just happened.

Two hours ago, more than ten starships disguised as supply ships had launched assaults on three space gates in the periphery of the Heaven’s Origin Sector simultaneously. They had successfully seized one of the space gates and blocked the other two with bombs that contained tremendous interferential materials, including Gold Graphite.

It meant that, for the time being, of the three enormous lighthouses in the Heaven’s Origin Sector that were supposed to guide the external starships to jump in, two had been entirely turned off, and the brightness from the last had been redirected to the unknown darkness.

Who knew what kind of stuff would pop out from the darkness?

Because of the internal infiltration, the assault was fluent and soundless. It was completed in only half an hour. Also, the assaulters adopted very advanced technology to hack the Spiritual Nexus. They intercepted and replaced the communication between the three space gates and the space jump control center on the ground in advance. Therefore, it was not until half an hour ago that the accident was finally noticed and reported.

The federation today boasted seven boundless Sectors at the edge of the cosmos. It could more or less be counted as a ‘dinosaur’, although not a gigantic one. Naturally, the reaction speed of its central nerves could not be as high as the reaction speed of a mouse.

After the Defense Counsel of the Federation confirmed the seriousness of the issue and sent out the Heaven’s Origin Fleet, the local fleet stationed at the capital, to march at the three space gates, ripples from the four-dimensional space had already raised a turbulence of spiritual energy of an enormous scale near the biggest space gate. A bloody mouth seemed to slowly open and was about to consume the entire space zone!

When Wan Guqing, the Supreme Speaker of the Star Glory Federation, stepped into the command center of the Defense Counsel, the first thing he saw was exactly the colorful, devastating images displayed on hundreds of light beams after the ‘bloody mouth’ was scanned in various ways.

Wan Guqing was two hundred and twenty-five years old. Of all the Speakers of the federation, he was not certainly among the most brilliant. He lacked personal charisma, and his connections with the major sects and the military were not deep enough, either. He was purely a dutiful, hardworking civil official, nothing more.

Many people called him ‘camel’ behind his back. Even his wife and his children sometimes called him that to his face, half-jokingly.

Including himself, everybody knew that he was not one of the Speakers who could dominate the world and be respected as ‘heroes’, but a worker who set the stage, prepared the armor, honed the weapons for the heroes in silence, and sent the heroes to the stage with his shoulder as the stairs. From the Old Federation to this day, six hundred years had passed with almost a hundred Speakers. But only a few had a description of half a chapter in the history textbooks. Most of the Speakers showed up in the appendices with their names and the dates of their birth and death. It was doubtless that Wan Guqing would be one of them. Even his photograph would not be added to the history books, and even the pickiest examination officers would not trick the students with his life events as the questions.

On the other hand, he never complained about his destiny. During his two five-year terms, he had done everything that he could to mobilize all the forces that could be mobilized, accumulating the war potential of the federation coin after coin to lay a foundation for the ‘highest warring state’ to come and to provide armor, swords, and a stage for the real heroic figures such as Ding Lingdang or Jin Xinyue.

In the past decade, he seemed to have grown older by a hundred years. He had originally lacked the vibe of a compelling leader, and now he looked even more clumsy and dumb, like a piece of rotten wood that had been burnt in fire for too many times.

According to the calendar, the new Speaker of the Federation would be elected in another two weeks. From that day on, the various powers of the federation would be transferred one after another. In one and a half months, the new Speaker would swear in right before the Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars flag and billions of people of the federation. After that, he would be completely relieved of the heavy burden that had been deeply buried into his flesh and bones. But then, the real problem now was—

Would the Star Glory Federation still exist in one and a half months?

Wan Guqing’s feelings were all hidden in the deep wrinkles, like every day in the past ten years. He seemed to be an old camel that was moving unhurriedly although it had encountered a black storm in the desert, as if the dense light spots on the hundreds of light beams were nothing more than some annoying sand.

His attitude, which was so calm that it bordered on sluggish, had an amazing reaction with the slightly panicked atmosphere inside the Defense Counsel. Gradually, all the anxious and agitated people around were influenced by him and slowed down. They were even looking at him, full of expectation!

Almost a hundred enormous light beams were connected to the telescopes that were located in the satellites and asteroids. They were depicting the terrible scenes that were happening in space from different levels through different ways of probing.

On the 3D images sent back by the telescopes whose main probe approaches were gravity change and space ripple capture, the deep, profound space was like a vulnerable eggshell that had been broken abruptly by a certain object. The pieces of the eggshell were flying out clearly and did not die down until more than ten seconds later.

The telescopes that mainly detected spiritual energy and heat, on the other hand, discovered dozens, hundreds, and then thousands of butterflies that looked like stars. They were surrounded by raging, glamorous brilliance, which interweaved and melted, illuminating the entire dark universe!

Some other crystal cameras that had been deployed at the periphery of the Heaven’s Origin Sector for reconnaissance purposes managed to send back some close-distance images before they were disrupted and destroyed. The real appearance of the arrivers was obvious on them.

The arrivers were super starships that were pure black, with bodies as even and smooth as a mirror and as clear as glass. On the two sides of the head, the trident lightning emblem and the black storm emblem were embedded!

After a long distance jump that covered dozens of lightyears, the arrivers, ripping apart the four-dimensional space and barging into the core area of the Star Glory Federation with invisible but overwhelming flames of spiritual energy, still maintained the most even, dense, and organized formation in the array that was almost ten thousand kilometers long. They aimed at the home planet of the Heaven’s Origin Sector in the strictest square.

The solemn, grave, and rigorous battle formation declared in the most majestic way the unparalleled performance of the starships of the Imperium of True Human Beings and the toughness of the Immortal Cultivators from the Imperium who were piloting them!

“High—High-energy reaction!”

“More than three thousand starships from the Imperium are arriving at the Heaven’s Origin Sector through space jumps. This must only be the vanguard. More troops are still waiting to be teleported!”

“The periphery area of the Heaven’s Origin Sector has turned into a pot of hot soup. The entire space has been churned into a turbulent area!”

“Not good. Our aim has failed!”

Space jumps were long processes, like when an enormous dinosaur passed through a narrow valley. Even the three thousand starships in the vanguard could not be teleported all in one jump. Despite the signs of intense reactions of spiritual energy, they were still in a highly unstable space superposition state. To some extent, most of them were both in the Heaven’s Origin Sector and at the orbit of the brown dwarf simultaneously.

It was their most vulnerable moment. It was also the best opportunity for the defenders to attack.

However, on the surveillance and the aiming light beams, the gravitational waves, space ripples, and aftershock of spiritual energy and heat raised by the Black Wind Fleet were all blurred. Although the behemoth did not completely vanish, it was now covered in thick mist, making the best weapons deployed on the home plant and the star fortresses in orbit lose their target!