Chapter 1261: The First Clue

In the picture behind Su Changfa, Wuying Qi’s black crystal suit was gradually upgrading. It was becoming ever larger and more spectacular. It was getting more and more hideous too.

The upper half of the helmet protruded like a skull into a thorny crown.

The black arrows that represented Wuying Qi’s forces were expanding nonstop, raging inside the Empyrean Terminus Sector.

Countless starships crashed in the space zones nearby. Thousands of Cultivators perished like insects in the winter. The Cultivators tasted the strength of the Immortal Cultivators for the time, and the strength was more invincible that they could have imagined!

The Empyrean Terminus Sector, the capital of the Star Ocean Imperium in the past and the Star Ocean Republic at that time, had fallen into the hands of the Immortal Cultivators!

Although Li Yao was still highly alert, he could not help but feel awed by Wuying Qi’s desperate counterattack.

From the punishment field to parliament, and from a prisoner on death row to the first president of the Star Ocean Republic, Wuying Qi’s life was truly magnificent and intriguing!

However…

Li Yao thought for a moment and asked suspiciously, “It wasn’t enough for Wuying Qi to just control the capital, was it? There were so many other Sectors in the Star Ocean Republic. Did nobody object to him? Most importantly of all, what about the central army, which was supposed to protect the capital as the most elite troop?”

“Fellow Cultivator Li, you are indeed smart,” Su Changfa said. “You’ve noticed the critical question quickly enough!

“Of course, it wasn’t enough to just control the capital. The seething local forces needed to be intimidated through thunderous approaches, too! To achieve that, the most important thing was to destroy the central army cleanly and neatly!

“The central army was unaware of the capital falling into Wuying Qi’s hands. After a long journey, they finally arrived at the frontier that Wuying Qi had carefully operated on for more than ten years.

“Despite the well-training soldiers, the ample supplies, and the rightfulness, they were unfamiliar with the local environment. They were unaware of the locations of the cosmic storms, the best places for space jumps, the differences in the spiritual and electromagnetic fields, the stars that boasted special spiritual waves that could affect the sailing starships, and so on.

“The universe is too boundless and mysterious. Too many dangerous factors can affect a voyage. Without the navigation of local guides who were familiar with the situation, even the largest starships wouldn’t be able to move forward at all.

“Also, they were so arrogant that they did not consider the operation to be a battle mission at all. They were under the illusion that the border defense army and the natives would give up and beg for mercy the moment that they arrived and that they were mainly there to regroup them!

“Most importantly, even the central army had been seriously infiltrated by the Immortal Cultivators of the Salvation Syndicate, who constantly sent valuable intelligence to Wuying Qi’s side.

“The conceited central army underestimated both the combat ability of the border defense army and the resistance of the local armies of the vassal worlds! It should be noted that the local magnates had just uprooted the original interest groups under Wuying Qi’s support in order for themselves to rise to power. They had all expressed their loyalty with real actions, and the blood on their sabers had not been dried yet. Once the central army won, the previous interest groups would certainly counterattack, and they would die without a burial!

“Therefore, the vassal worlds that had been rather ostensibly complicit with the capital before were in fact quite loyal to Wuying Qi!

“But the central army knew none of it.

“All that they knew about were the false messages that the Immortal Cultivators sent back!

“Misled by the false messages, the central army thought that Wuying Qi’s remaining forces had already crumbled and that the border defense army was suffering from internal strife with the troops from the vassal worlds, which had proved loyal enough to join the capital’s side again!

“The central army, overjoyed, accepted the ‘local armies of the vassal worlds who had returned to the right path’ without any wariness. They launched attacks toward the border defense army together. As they expected, the border defense army suffered tremendous losses and fled in panic while leaving a large number of starships behind!

“Hehe. Nobody would feel sorry for the death of the Cultivators who were as greedy as pigs and as stupid as dogs! Wuying Qi’s subordinates played the same trick that was played on Karan, but they were fooled without defense again!

“Right when they were taking over the starships left by the border defense army, the crystal bombs that were buried deep inside the starships, together with the arsenals and the engine compartments, exploded all at once, turning the entire space zone into an ocean of fire!

“The broken debris filled the entire sailing route. The elites of the central army were stuck inside, unable to move at all.

“The battlefield was carefully selected by the border defense army and the local troops in the first place. After a certain period, because of the integration and friction of two nebulas, an enormous, highly-intense cosmic storm would be raised here, which was called by the locals as ‘Death Wing’. You can tell from the name how dreadful it is!

“The elites of the central army suffered a suicidal explosion first and then got caught in the Death Wing later. It shouldn’t be hard to guess their damages.

“When the remnants finally survived the scourge of the Death Wing, the border defense army and the local troops, which appeared to be engaged in a fierce battle earlier, suddenly marched out from the two flanks and gave the most advanced, formidable, and glorious fleet of the Star Ocean Republic a critical attack!

“Right then, Wuying Qi’s counterattack in the capital and his actions, including dissolving the parliament, arresting the representatives, and announcing his inauguration as the acting president, were finally delivered to the central army, too.

“Their final pillar, which was their legitamacy as the army of the authorities, collapsed!

“Right now, the border defense army and the local troops were the ‘rightful armies’, and they were the rebels that had no support!

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“Without supplies and ammunition, and because of the heavy casualties, the central army finally collapsed and surrendered to Wuying Qi’s border defense army. The most elite troop of the Star Ocean Republic thus belonged to Wuying Qi!

“After controlling the capital and the few most elite troops in the Star Ocean Republic, Wuying Qi had basically settled the trouble once and for all!

“In other local Sectors, many Immortal Cultivators of the Salvation Syndicate were active, too. With their cooperation inside, Wuying Qi was simply unstoppable. All the local forces surrendered to him without much resistance. As everybody hoped, the ‘acting’ in his title was removed, and he was nominated as the unquestionable first president of the Star Ocean Republic!”

Li Yao could not help but raise his thumb for Wuying Qi’s thunderous approaches in his heart again.

As the saying went, outsiders watch things for fun, but people of the trade notice the tricks in them. Interesting details were included in Su Changfa’s story, which must have been embroidered more times than anybody could count. Only someone like Li Yao could notice them!

There were too many suspicious points and coincidences in the whole event. It was even more unbelievable than fiction!

However, the loophole revealed in the most critical part gave Li Yao the first clue about the truth in the past!

The loophole hole was that… for such an incredible man like Wuying Qi, after slaughtering ten million civilians and gathering the power of the frontier area through false orders and purges, how could he not have foreseen that the capital would be determined to execute him?

He was now the biggest warlord in the Star Ocean Republic. As a warlord, he should not go to the territory of the central government easily, and even if they did, he would need to tread lightly with as many soldiers with him as possible. Was that not common sense?

How could he not have predicted that, the moment he returned to the capital, he would be captured and sentenced to death?

Su Changfa described Wuying Qi to be a white lotus flower that was selfless and kind in nature. Everything that he did was because he was forced to. However, such bullsh*t could only fool a three-year-old.

Li Yao reckoned that Wuying Qi must have been transformed into an Immortal Cultivator a long, long time ago!

Perhaps it was the moment when he was thrown into the crater, or perhaps it was during his hundreds of years of travel in the dark universe, but all in all, he was probably already an Immortal Cultivator before he arrived in the Star Ocean Republic!

He did not discover the Star Ocean Republic ‘by accident’; his destination had been the strongest country in the civilization of mankind since the very beginning!

Therefore, he intentionally fed himself to the authorities and had himself trialed!

I understand it now!

Since the very beginning, Wuying Qi’s appetite had never been able to be satisfied by a few remote Sectors in the frontier. The whole time, he had one and only one goal, which was the capital, the Empyrean Sector, and the supreme power of the Star Ocean Republic!

Li Yao was almost shrieking.

With Wuying Qi’s ambitions, it was meaningless to be a warlord who controlled little more than ten remote, vassal worlds.

Even if Wuying Qi kept a low file and did not do anything, the strategical environment that he was in was still quite harsh.

In front of him was the Covenant Alliance, which had just suffered a brutal failure and hated his guts.

Behind him was the central government of the Star Ocean Republic that was hostile to him, too.

With enemies both in front and behind, such a territory was certainly not suitable for long-term development. It would only be a cage that would trap him to his death!

The Star Ocean Republic was a traditional superpower with tremendous potential after all. With his insignificant scale, if he competed with a hundred Sectors, he stood absolutely no chance of winning once his opponents got serious, entered the state of emergency, and had a general mobilization!

Therefore, just like dealing with the Covenant Alliance, he had to finish the battle quickly with unexpected moves!

Going to the capital and being held in prison was a gamble that was even more shocking and perilous than the Battle of Karan. He had three aims.

Firstly, to ease the wariness of parliament. The Cultivators would think that he was just so-so and that he was a fish in the water tank with nowhere to run. So, the country would not have a general mobilization. Their pace would be slowed.

Secondly, to command the Immortal Cultivators lurking in the capital personally. Since he was determined to lead the rise of the Immortal Cultivators, what he had dedicated his most attention to was certainly the capital other than his nest in the frontier. Countless Immortal Cultivators would have been hiding in the Empyrean Terminus Sector.

Thirdly, to mislead the authorities into thinking that the biggest threat right now was the army that he left in the frontier.

Right. It was also highly likely that he had kept the starships and the magical equipment that he had captured from the Covenant Alliance in the space zones in the frontier. Such valuable treasures were definitely attractive items for the central government!

Perhaps, the Immortal Cultivators lurking in the darkness had been fanning the flames and subtly manipulating the decisions of the authorities, too. In the end, they successfully made parliament dispatch the central army, whose combat ability was the highest, to regroup the border defense army and accept the starships and the magical equipment of the Covenant Alliance.

When the three aims were combined, Wuying Qi created a fatal distraction with his return to the capital!