The wrinkles on Li Jiande’s face were all frozen, turning himself into a real cold, rigid fossil. He did not speak again until after a long silence. “Are you really bold enough to do that?”

“Look me in the eyes, grandfather.”

Li Linghai leaned her face close. There was not the slightest hint of blood on her fair, flawless skin, but some dark air was vaguely flowing below her skin and finally concentrated at the depths of her eyes into two black spots the size of needle tips.

She stressed and repeated, “Look at me in the eyes and tell me why I am not bold enough to do that.

“Don’t forget that you just planned an incident where the queen was attacked in the capital a month ago. You already decided to completely eliminate the queen who tended to be insubordinate, except that my strength was higher than you expected and your plan did not work out.

“Right now, we have ended on bad terms, and I have revealed all my plans and capabilities. Instead of taking a wild gamble, should I just wash my neck and wait for somebody to chop off my head?”

“Even if you are bold enough to do that—”

Li Jiande said calmly, “Such insane and inhumane actions will not win the support of all the reformists and soldiers. Without their support, your insane plan can’t work out at all.”

“I do not need to have the support of all the soldiers. At the very least, I only need a tiny proportion of the key persons to absolutely obey me.”

Li Linghai sneered, “Relying on the key persons, I will destroy the Divine Rain Planet and kill hundreds of millions of people first, completely declaring war on the family.

“The rest of the soldiers are chasing the remainder of the Divine Rain Fleet in the vast space of the Divine Rain Sector on their starships. They have no time to stop me at all. By the time they discover it, they wouldn’t be able to do anything except to watch the space fortresses and the orbit docks smashing the ground on fire.

“When the destruction does happen and what is done is done, will the soldiers who never knew the truth have any choice except to follow me and fight until the end? Such felonies will absolutely never be forgiven or pardoned. Even if you swear on your life that you will pardon the soldiers who were not involved in the massacre, there is no way that they are going to believe it.

“Besides, it is impossible for you to pardon them, right? Otherwise, how can you face the hundreds of millions of unrested souls on the Divine Rain Planet? And how can you face the various factions in the family who have tremendous interests in the Divine Rain Planet?

“Therefore, destroying the Divine Rain Planet will only strengthen our internal cohesion and my leadership over the coalition fleet of the reformists, allowing us to carry out the strategy to die together with the enemy to the end!”

Li Jiande took a deep breath and held back his urge to cough. He said, “You know that your crimes are unforgivable, too?”

“Of course I do.”

Li Linghai smiled again. “However, I also understand the saying that ‘those who steal a hook will be executed, but those who steal a country will be knighted’. Unforgivable crimes equal to zero crimes. None whatsoever.

“Besides, death means the conclusion of everything. Since I will die either way, will there be any difference in whether I commit the unforgivable crimes or not?

“Of course, grandfather, you are totally free to not believe everything I have said but launch an assault at the Divine Rain Sector right now. You can see if you can rescue a few heavy industrial cities that have been worked on for hundreds of years before I destroy the entire Divine Rain Planet.

“However, even if my strategies all fail, in the worst-case scenario, I will still be able to lead the remaining troops to wander and cause trouble in the Li family’s heartland as bandits, and I can still deal heavy wounds to the Li family, making the other three families grow covetous of you.

“This is not how your granddaughter envisions the future, but if you are too obstinate to listen to my heartfelt advice, I’m afraid that I will have to make the decision and never look back!”

Looking at Li Linghai’s smiling and enchanting eyes, Li Jiande was silent for a long time again. In the end, he heaved a long sigh and said slowly, “Good granddaughter, I agree with your opinion. Your father is a pig. How on earth did he fail to see the potentials in you and decide to send you into the royal palace as the crown princess? What a great waste it was!

“If he had discovered the ambitions and strength hidden deep inside your blood in time and sent you to me for education, perhaps I wouldn’t have been caught in the awkward situation where I could not find a worthy heir.

“A pig like your father should die a hundred times and that still won’t be enough!

“But it is still not too late, now that I have discovered you in person.”

There was not the delight that she was in an advantageous situation on Li Linghai’s face. She said casually, “Right now, the family hasn’t suffered huge losses, and the reformists haven’t declared the four Kurfürst families to be our enemies openly. Our targets are just the scoundrels in the capital. As long as Grandfather is willing to listen to the appeal of me and the fellow Cultivators, the situation will still be under our control, and… yours!”

“The appeal of the reformists?”

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Li Jiande didn’t give a straight reply. “What do you want?”

“Very simple. We want the Li family, as one of the four pillars of the Imperium, to hear the voices of the soldiers from the frontline and the Immortal Cultivators from the bottom level of the peripheral worlds.”

Li Linghai said unhurriedly, “We hope that you can support our righteous action to ‘Honor the Majesty and Settle the Rebellions’ and that you can eliminate the villains in the Council of Elders, remove the cancers residing on the flesh of the Imperium, and build a more beautiful and magnificent new Imperium together with us.”

Li Jiande’s small eyes were rolling fast. “Who are villains? Who are cancers?”

Li Linghai declared loudly, “The Dongfang family, who are bold enough to arrogate the power of the royal family and claim to be ‘First Family’, is the cancer of the Imperium and even the civilization of mankind!

“The elders of the Dongfang family and their vassal families are the most heinous villains that must be wiped out.

“For the Imperium and for the civilization of mankind, the Dongfang family must be destroyed. The reformists have been gathered exactly for such a purpose. Whatever the price is, we are going to annihilate the national thieves and rescue the Imperium!

“However, the Dongfang family is too deeply-rooted, wealthy, and powerful for the reformists to defeat them on our own. Grandfather, please call for the forces of the entire Li family as well as the vassal families to stand on our side and support us!”

Instead of bothering whether or not the Dongfang family was truly the “villain” and “cancer”, Li Jiande simply asked, “Is the strength of the reformists and the Li family combined enough to settle the Dongfang family quickly and neatly, without casting the Imperium into a civil war when the two parties are caught in a predicament?”

Li Linghai replied casually, “The reformists and the Li family combined will be enough to be on par with the Dongfang family, but it is still not sufficient to crush the Dongfang family thunderously.

“However, if the other three Kurfürst families are united, together with the forces of the reformists, it will be enough for us to eradicate the cancer unstoppably!”

Li Jiande cackled like a crow again and beamed with interest. “Good granddaughter, can you convince the other two families to play with the fire?”

“I can’t, but I believe you certainly can, grandfather.”

Li Linghai said with a smile, “Why else would I come to seek grandfather with such enormous ‘sincerity’?”

Li Jiande said, “What if I can’t either?”

“Then I will have to die.”

Li Linghai said gloomily, “As the queen of the Imperium of True Human Beings, it is not an outrageous demand to ask a few planets to be buried with me, right?”

Li Jiande coughed lightly and calculated without saying anything.

“I absolutely believe that Grandfather is wise and persuasive enough to convince the other two Kurfürsten. The most important thing is that the three Kurfürst families have been dissatisfied with the Dongfang family for a long time. They are just short of a reason to fight the Dongfang family and an opportunity for cooperation.”

Li Linghai said comfortably, “Politics is nothing more than a game of balance. The politics of the Imperium of True Human Beings in the first five hundred years was the balance between the royal authority and the four Kurfürst families. In the second five hundred years, when the royal authority declined, it became the balance within the four Kurfürst families.

“The four Kurfürst families are exactly like the four legs of a table. Only if they are of equal height can the longevity and stability of the Imperium be ensured. If any one of the families grows too huge, it will mean that they are knocking over the table for a reshuffle.

“It was a tacit understanding among everyone and a tradition that we all abided by in the past hundreds of years, but in the recent two centuries, the Dongfang family played dumb and expanded crazily in violation of the tradition, until it is almost twice as strong as any of the other families right now.

“I’m very eager to find out what the Dongfang family’s purpose is in expanding their forces so drastically, and when their expansion will stop. Are they really going to replace the Wuying family, overthrow the Imperium of True Human Beings, and become the well-deserved dominator of the universe and the ‘First Family’?

“When that day comes, what should the Li family and the other two Kurfürst families do? Should we pledge loyalty to the new superpower again and kneel before the Dongfang family? Even if we are willing to do so, will the Dongfang family be bold enough to accept our allegiance?”

Li Jiande seemed to have fallen asleep. Even his eyes had been half-closed.

Li Linghai, however, knew clearly that her old and cunning grandfather was listening, analyzing, and considering carefully.

“Grandfather, don’t think that I’m just fretting. ‘The strong stay strong’ is a truth that is never proved false in the cruel competitions of the Immortal Cultivators. For the smaller worlds at the edge of the Imperium, the four Kurfürst families are the strong ones that have stayed strong, but among the four Kurfürst families, isn’t the Dongfang family the strong that have stayed strong too? The Dongfang family is expanding faster after each other. If we do not stop them now, we will never stop them and can only watch them swallow us one bite after another!”

Li Linghai raised her voice and gnashed her teeth, as if she were angry. “For the Li family, there is another hidden problem that is even more critical. The Li family is not necessarily the weakest of the four Kurfürst families, but it is now in an awkward phase where it lacks talents in the next generation. Now that grandfather is still alive, we can still manage to deal with the Dongfang family. But if we do not seize the opportunity to launch a critical attack, when grandfather can’t hold on any longer one day in future, who can represent the interests of the Li family and resist Dongfang Wang, the leader of the Dongfang family and the Prime Minister of the Imperium who is in his prime years?”

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