Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

2135 Turn a Foe… Into a Friend?

“I am not angry. In fact, I appreciate your honesty, which is a good beginning for our cooperation.”

Li Lingfeng said sullenly, “At the very least, it is much better to admit to the truth than to persist in the ridiculous identity of a ‘Cultivator’.”

Li Yao couldn’t help but tap the helmet of the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit to retreat the facial cover. With the look of “I do feel the same” on his face, he bulged his eyes and said, “You think that the identity of a ‘Cultivator’ is funny and absurd too, right? That’s too f*cking correct. When those a*sholes devised the identity for me, I thought exactly the same!

“I cursed them exactly on the spot—What is your problem? Is there something wrong with your head? Are you not considering reasons and logic at all? I would certainly have to reveal the capability of the Divinity Transformation Stage and my Colossus in the mission, but the Cultivators are a bunch of stray dogs and mobsters who have been killed and brutalized since a thousand years ago! What kind of foolish person would believe that the Cultivators could send someone in the Divinity Transformation Stage to carry out the mission in a Colossus?

“It… It was absolutely impossible. Even pigs wouldn’t have believed that. The readers would’ve criticized the author for being too unbelievable, outrageous, and adding too many lucky factors to the supervillains that were Cultivators even if it were in a novel. It was needless to ask how it could deceive you and the cunning, smart big shots of the Li family!

“To be honest, I have pretended to be a lot of people in my life. I can even play a sixteen-year-old whore vividly. But it is truly a very troublesome challenge to pretend to be a Cultivator in the Divinity Transformation Stage this time. I totally can’t imagine what exactly makes a ‘Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivator’, what is on their mind, or what they look like!”

Li Lingfeng nodded his head slowly. “I understand it very well. The high and mighty big shots of families and the commanders of the coalition fleets never care about the actual situations in the frontline but always expose the specific executors in all kinds of unnecessary dangers.”

Li Yao rolled his eyes and put on a cunning smile. “What now, Fellow Cultivator Li, are you trying to test which family or space fleet I come from? It does not seem important.

“All in all, guess how those sons of b*tches replied to me. They argued that victors did not need to explain and would not be punished. As long as I could sabotage your plan neatly and destroy ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, nobody would care if ‘the Cultivator from the sky’ was true or false.

“Or rather, even if all the forces and everybody knew clearly that I was a fake Cultivator and in an obvious disguise, so what? Your stream platform would already be destroyed, and the Heavenly Eye Group would likely be merged and swallowed by other people. ‘The Cultivator from the sky’ would never show up again. It would be clean and neat without any sequela, right?”

“No, there is sequela.”

Li Lingfeng said coldly, “The tales of the Cultivators would spread out in the sea of stars. Countless hominoids would be inspired by the nonexistent scumbag. They would cause great trouble and seriously jeopardize the overall interests of the Imperium.”

Li Yao laughed. “I didn’t know that Fellow Cultivator Li is such a noble patriot. But rest assured. The Imperium is so magnificent, and the Cultivators could barely be called an ailment. A questionable tale and a few videos that could be fabricated by any crystal processor can’t hurt the foundations of the Imperium.

“Besides, that is all the families and relatively independent space fleets have been doing. The interests of the family and the fleet are always placed above the interests of the Imperium, right?”

“Yes. You have made it in a very remarkable way.”

Li Lingfeng narrowed his eyes and said, one word after another, “Even though I am on your opposite side, I have to admit that it is a clean, rapid, and textbook stealth-and-sabotage operation. Other people will only appreciate your ruthlessness, decisiveness, and heartlessness, without being bothered by your ridiculous false identity as a ‘Cultivator’.”

Li Yao raised his eyebrow and blew a whistle. He said with a smile, “You really do not hate me? Your peace of mind right now strikes me as a bit pretentious, Fellow Cultivator Li!”

“Of course I hate you. I want to skin you, cut you into pieces, and burn you into ashes.”

When he thought of the damage Li Yao caused to “Manjusaka, the City in the Sky”, the brutality inside Li Lingfeng’s eyes was running out again. “To be honest, if it were yesterday, or even just half an hour ago when I had eight warships and hundreds of elite warriors hunting you together, I definitely wouldn’t have let go of you but asked you to beg to be killed. I would’ve tortured you alive for ten years, before drawing out your soul and shattering it, making you die for good!

“But is there any point in saying that right now? Even if I hate your guts, so what? Right now, the greatest threat to me is not you but Li Linghai. In the meantime, the greatest threat to you is not me but Li Linghai, too!

“Like you said just now, ‘business is business’. There’s nothing personal between you and me. Even if we do have the greatest hatred toward one another, we can always make concessions at a life-and-death moment, right?”

Li Yao rolled his eyes again and again, and the smile on his face was even more intense. “Yes. Business is business, and interests are interests. Anything can be bargained and negotiated for survival.”

“Besides, you are just a tool.”

Li Lingfeng said, “I know everything about the experts above the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage who are public in the Imperium, including their techniques, their attack patterns, and the Colossi they use. All their data are in my head, but you are certainly not among them.

“So, the answer is obvious now. You are a secret weapon domesticated by a certain family, just like I raised Li Jialing and Li Linghai raised her secret armed force ‘Deep Ocean Fleet’.

“Like you said just now, you can pretend to be countless people in the most vivid way, and even acting as a sixteen-year-old whore is not a problem for you. It better proves my speculation.

“You are the kind of creatures, like ‘pretenders’ or ‘ghost warriors’, who are trained to help the family with the clandestine businesses through the most bloody, dark, and dangerous missions, right?”

Li Yao’s pupils constricted violently. As if he were stung by a nonexistent needle, his voice suddenly turned cold. “Ghost warriors? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I know you don’t.”

Li Lingfeng smiled. “Every deeply-rooted ancient family has tragic persons like you, who can never show up with their real faces or enjoy the dignity, power, and glory that they deserve despite their dominating strength! Instead, they have to carry out the most dangerous, evil, and ugly missions time and time again. One moment of carelessness, and they will either be killed miserably in the frontline or thrown out as a scapegoat when the scheme is exposed!

“Take your mission for example. There’s no need to describe the dangers in sneaking into ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’ for sabotages on your own and to face my thunderous fury. You may be killed by me at any moment.

“Even if you return in one piece for now, should any information be leaked, the Li family may burst into fury and trace back to the schemer behind the curtain, the force that you belong to. Chances are that you will be traded or sacrificed. Tsk, tsk, tsk. When I think that way, while I am quite miserable right now, your conditions are no better than mine!”

In the confrontation of the two of them, Li Yao seemed to be unable to hold back his temper for the first time. He said coldly, “Fellow Cultivator Li, what is it that you are trying to say? We seem to be running out of time!”

“What I want to say is that we are actually the same type of people. I understand you!”

Li Lingfeng was even more sincere than when he talked to Li Jialing a moment ago. “Although you are in the dark while I am in the light, we are actually the same tools for our families.

“Haha. Everybody knows that I am the best within the prime generation of the Li family, the well-acknowledged ‘next Kurfürst’. But how many people know that I am just a target that the big shots of the family have pushed to the front? ‘If a tree grows taller than other trees in the forest, it will be destroyed by the wind inevitably.’ Do the seniors of my family not understand such a simple logic? If they truly want me to be the leader of the family and the Kurfürst, there is no reason why they should tell everybody about it eloquently. Shouldn’t they simply train me, support me, and give me more troops and power in secret?

“But now, they have promoted it on a large scale and informed everybody in the world that I am very likely to be the next leader of the family and the next Kurfürst. What is the meaning of that? They are obviously pushing me to the stage to help them shoulder the storms and arrows from inside and outside of the family as a cover for the real future heir in their hearts!

“Hehe. They thought that I was truly bemused by my ambitions, but I knew exactly what they planned!

“I will never admit to being a tool. ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, the Heavenly Eye Group, the slaughter stream platform, and everything about Li Jialing were the attempts I made to get rid of my pathetic fate!

“I am the captain of my own fate. The real big shots of the Li family consider me as a fool, a puppet, and a tool, but I will let them know who will laugh to the end and who is most qualified to control the entire Li family!”

As he approached the end, Li Lingfeng was already yelling.

Li Jialing, who had been raised by Li Lingfeng in secret since childhood, never knew that his uncle whom he deemed a fiend had such a side. He was stunned for a moment.

Sensing his subtle changes of feelings, Li Lingfeng smiled at the young man casually. “Why, Jialing, you did not expect that your uncle to be someone like this? In fact, you should have. Where exactly do you think the insubordination and sense of competition deep inside your soul came from?”

Pausing for a moment, he extended his hand at Li Yao again and said slowly, “Also, I believe that any expert who has advanced into the Divinity Transformation Stage is unwilling to have their fate controlled by a family, a fleet, or a sect, and to live like rats in the gutter that will never see the sunlight!

“Your Colossus is so tough. Do you not want to let it appear in the sky of the capital of the Imperium in broad daylight someday?”

Li Yao: “… Well, truth be told, I did give it some thoughts before.”