Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The Big Bai Fleet was now dancing on a thin, shaking iron rope with a bottomless abyss where blades of flames rose up right below them.

The Colossi of the Imperium, on the other hand, were like the wretched birds that kept harassing the Big Bai Fleet.

The pecking of the birds alone was not necessarily fatal, but it was enough to make the Big Bai Fleet fall into the abyss and be doomed forever.

However lucky the Big Bai Fleet was and however extraordinary Bai Xingjian’s commanding skills were, there were always limits. They had narrowly escaped the siege of the Imperium’s fleet seven times, but the shells of the starships that were white as snow before were heavily damaged because of the bombardment of mystic ray cannons and the magnetic bullets.

The spiritual shields of those starships were all an ominous red. The exhaust flames spurted out by the engine units became disordered, too. All the performance parameters were dropping slowly but irreversibly.

The tightrope walker had already become exhausted.

Even though they were fortunate enough to avoid the eighth siege, they would not be able to survive through the ninth or the tenth.

The good news was that the elites of the Burning Prairie Fleet had basically reestablished their communication and a chain of command. They broke free from the messy swamp and were rushing to the battlefield at the highest speed.

More and more starships who had lost contact joined them, like thousands of brooks that congregated into a surging river.

In the meantime, because of the assault and harassment of the Big Bai Fleet, the front part and the rear part of the Black Wind Fleet had yet to fully combine.

The rear part, which carried numerous star beacons, was as messed up as a pot of boiling porridge. It had no time to reshape into a dense defensive battle formation or a counterattack battle formation to resist the Burning Prairie Fleet.

In the grand competition of ten thousand starships, the battle formation was everything!

Therefore, it was time to deploy the federation’s own Colossi, not to save the Big Bai Fleet, but to add more fuel to the already chaotic battlefield!

The best defense was offense. The Colossi were not shields meant for protection but invincible blades with the sharpest edges in the first place.

Cutting into the core of the Black Wind Fleet; overturning the enormous shield starships, the arsenal starships, and the cruise carriers; and prevent the Black Wind Fleet from transforming as much as possible while waiting for the thunderous attack of the elites of the Burning Prairie Fleet—that was the path to victory!

Doubtlessly, it was a suicidal mission.

The super teleportation array, Heaven’s Artillery, might be able to launch the nine Colossi as well as their affiliated crystal suit legions to somewhere near the battlefield, but no more starships would be able to offer them support.

When they cut into the soft belly of the Black Wind Fleet brutally, it would also mean that they were heavily besieged by the enemy.

Even if the elites of the Burning Prairie Fleet arrived in time, how many of them would get to see the Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars flag rising in the sea of stars again?

But none of the pilots of the Colossi shied away.

The nine Colossi were controlled by the experts with the highest combat ability in the Star Glory Federation in the last hundred years.

They were mostly in the middle and high level of the Nascent Soul Stage, and they were not necessarily servicemen. Quite a few of them had long established their own sects as dominators of their local areas. Essentially speaking, they were all civilians.

With their capability, even if they did not control the Colossi, they would still be the most powerful and influential big shots. Their wealth and their tremendous resources were too abundant to be exhausted in their lifetime. They could accomplish any goal easily.

But when the iron giants glittered in front of them silently, they still listened to the calling deep inside their hearts and signed a harsh contract with the government. They dedicated most of their time to the training with the Colossi, and when their wrist crystal processors buzzed rapidly, they truly abandoned everything and arrived at this place as quickly as possible, prepared to set off to the most dangerous battlefield!

“The blood of the strong must be shed first!”

In the past hundred years, was it not because of such a solemn promise that all the people of the federation had supported the government’s projects to excavate and repair the Colossi by gritting their teeth and offering whatever they had before such unstoppable, ultimate weapons were crafted?

Besides, they were deeply rooted in the soil of their homeland. If the Star Glory Federation was no more, how could their life, honor, and strength glow again?

“Prepare to launch!”

Under the lead of Ding Lingdang, the Blazing Tyrannosaur, the nine strongest experts of the federation all finished their preparations. Like nine storms that were slowly condensing, they held back their strength, waiting for the boom in the last moment.

Ding Lingdang’s eyes, on the other hand, surpassed them and looked at the common soldiers who belonged to the affiliated crystal suit legions that would fight together with the Colossi.

Naturally, the Colossi would not fight on their own. The federation had worked out quite a few special tactics for the Colossi over the past hundred years. Right now, every Colossus had been allotted a crystal suit legion, where more than three hundred elite Exos would fight with it in teamwork.

Ding Lingdang and the other supreme experts, under the protection of the ultimate weapons in the primeval wars, might stand a chance of survival, but the Exos that were about to charge into the core of the enemy’s battle formation were almost sure to die.

However, their inevitable outcome did not stop the Exos from putting on equally brilliant smiles with equally overwhelming confidence beaming out of their eyes!

Ding Lingdang saw Wu Mayan, the leader of her affiliated crystal suit legion, raise his thumb at her with a smile.

After a hundred years of crazy training, Wu Mayan was definitely as good as any Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator in the federation in terms of combat ability. He could even persist for a few rounds under her bombardment.

But he had been walking on the path of qi-training. In pursuit of the maximal expansion of spiritual energy, he had abandoned the possibility of entering the Building Foundation Stage, the Core Formation Stage, or the Nascent Soul Stage!

Even though he might have broken into the legendary ‘1,000th level of the Refinement Stage’, it was nothing more than physical strength inside his body, which was not enough for him to control a Colossus.

Wu Mayan had tested it countless times in the Draconic Phoenix, but however crazily he poured his spiritual energy into it, the Colossi gave absolutely no reaction as if it were just a random rock. In the end, Wu Mayan could only scratch his nose and give up.

“What’s impressive about a Colossus? After I reach the 10,000th level of the Refinement Stage, I will show you how to blow up a Colossus bare-handedly, Masteress!” Wu Mayan had declared angrily when he became the captain of Ding Lingdang’s affiliated crystal suit legion.

All the warriors of the legion were from Iron Plateau. They were all qi-trainers who had kicked away the opportunities of ‘Building Foundation’, ‘Core Formation’, ‘Nascent Soul’, and ‘Divinity Transformation’, and who had rushed forward on the path of qi-training stubbornly, hoping to break into the 100th, the 1,000th and the 10,000th level of the Refinement Stage. They were definitely the most barbaric, toughest, and most violent beings in mankind’s hundred thousand year history of Cultivation!

The Imperium’s army from the center of the cosmos, the Immortal Cultivators with the state-of-the-art techniques and magical equipment, would witness how the savage forces at the edge of the cosmos would bloom!

Ding Lingdang smiled and raised her thumb at Wu Mayan, too, but then she changed into a threatening posture, as if she were saying, “Hey, you’d better work hard later, and do not bring shame to your master, or I will teach you a good lesson once we’re back!”

The earth hummed and shivered as the Heaven’s Artillery began to charge with energy.

Around the silver bowl more than five thousand meters in diameter that was deeply embedded underground, rounds of spiritual stripes were shining one after another, as if an enormous swirl was reaching the bottom of the bowl while revolving at a higher and higher speed.

But the highest command center from the capital city suddenly sent a request for an urgent conversation.

Ding Lingdang was slightly dazed. She activated the 3D light beam, and the person who showed up on the light beam was quite out of her expectations—it was Jin Xinyue.

Jin Xinyue no longer had the calmness and confidence that she had when the ‘Dim Moon Plan’ was just drafted and initiated as if everything was under her control.

Her hair was messy, her face was pale, and her eyes were full of helplessness. In great embarrassment, she hesitated for a long time before she finally opened her mouth. “Masteress…”

Ding Lingdang eyed the little witch up and down for a long time. Then she chuckled and said, “You’re calling me ‘Masteress’ again? Not ‘Madam Ding’, ‘Representative Ding’, or ‘President Ding’?”

Jin Xinyue was so mortified that she did not know what to say anymore. She simply lowered her head deeper.

“Forget it. I have a lot of shortcomings. I’m rude, rash, impatient, and sometimes simpleminded despite my strength, but I am never a petty person!” Ding Lingdang waved her hands reassuringly. “Director Guo has told me all the truth. Since you didn’t really betray the federation, and the so-called ‘terror attacks’ of the CFIA were merely accidents during production, you have proven that you never broke the boundary of the Cultivators. Is there any reason for me to reproach you?”

Jin Xinyue was overjoyed. When she raised her head, her eyes were already filled with tears. “But—But I was very likely deceived by the enemy, which caused us to fall into such a disadvantageous situation. Do you really not blame me, Masteress?”

“You are a smart person, but smart people tend to suffer from their own smartness. None of the people who are fooled think that they are fools.” Ding Lingdang changed the topic. “With everything coming to this, will it help even if I do blame you? Since you are still willing to call me masteress, then, let your masteress clean the mess for you in the stupidest way!”

“Masteress…” Jin Xinyue’s eyes were red.

“Hey, hey, hey. You did not call me just to give an apology, did you?” Ding Lingdang frowned and rubbed her arm hard. “I’m getting goosebumps. When I watch movies, such clichés always make me feel awkward. If everything’s alright, I’ll hang up now!”

“Wait!” Jin Xinyue yelled in a hurry. “There’s still something important that I need to tell you. My ‘Dim Moon Plan’ isn’t so simple. We still have a secret weapon that is installed on a carrier. It is a super bomb excavated from Kunlun!

“I didn’t know that the Black Wind Fleet had seen through my scheme. The original plan was that my ‘demon rebellion troops’ would join the main force of the Black Wind Fleet and try to move the carrier with the super bomb near to Black Swirl, the enemy’s flagship. It would be best if the carrier could be attached to Black Swirl. Once the bomb exploded, it would be possible for Black Swirl to be entirely blown up!

“After the flagship was gone and the leadership of the Black Wind Fleet died, the Black Wind Fleet would immediately fall apart because of the lack of organization!”