"Speaker Shui Yian, who led Firefly out of the 'unusual period' more than two hundred years ago, wrote the report on the 'Red Lotus Plan' in person and even carved his unique spiritual stripes on it?"
Right when Tang Dingyuan took over the highest command in the bridge again, Cui Lingfeng sent over a series of reports about the origins, roles, responsibilities, and permissions of Team Red Lotus. They were written in black and white. Not only were there the spiritual stripes of Speaker Shui Yian, the founder of the team, every Speaker after Shui Yian had also left their own unique spiritual stripes in the documents. The history was passed on in an orderly manner until Speaker Cui Lingfeng's generation.
The documents proved the identity of Team Red Lotus. They also endorsed the operation to sweep the Immortal Cultivators that was marching forward inside Firefly right now.
At this moment, Team Red Lotus was the one with the highest permissions on Firefly other than Cui Lingfeng and Tang Dingyuan. Just like Qi Changsheng once joked, they could not have been more awe-inspiring than Team Red Lotus!
Regarding Team Red Lotus, which had marched out of the darkness out of nowhere, the 'bridge faction' led by Captain Tang Dingyuan had complicated feelings.
By logic, the elite warriors were the private armed forces that were directly under the Speaker's command. Also, they had been secretly established by Speaker Shui Yian more than two hundred years ago while bypassing the bridge and even parliament!
Establishing a private army that only obeyed the Speaker's command with the few resources that belonged to the entire Star Ocean Republic was truly crossing the bottom line and not in line with the spirit of the Star Ocean Republic at all.
If it were any other time, the "bridge faction" would've criticized the existence of Team Red Lotus as a "scandal". They would've even tried to deprive the Speaker of his command over the troop so that the troop could be divided and merged into other troops that were more under his control.
But today, the key members of the 'bridge faction', including the captain's daughter, were all locked in Black Stone Prison. It was Team Red Lotus who rescued them in person. Even Captain Tang Dingyuan himself was rescued by 'Lin Jiu', the captain of Team Red Lotus.
Not just that, 'Captain Lin' had also rescued the Speaker and the captain on his own, indirectly killed Cheng Xuansu, and captured Ding Zhengyang alive, reversing the whole situation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he had saved the day!
Such great contributions undoubtedly proved the reasonableness and necessity of Speaker Shui Yian's establishment of the troop more than two hundred years ago. How could Tang Dingyuan and the other core members of the "bridge faction" be shameless enough to criticize their savior?
Besides, faced with the shocking names on the list that Ding Zhengyang provided, Tang Dingyuan had to admit that the 'infection' of the Immortal Cultivators on Firefly had reached an extremely serious level. At this moment, perhaps' Team Red Lotus' was the only team that was trustworthy!
Tang Dingyuan was not a man who had a strong desire for power. Otherwise, he wouldn't have proposed to join the Xing Yao Federation on his own initiative. His conflict with Speaker Cui was more about business. Now that Speaker Cui's stance had subtly changed, there was no reason for him to continue arguing with the speaker at such a critical moment.
Besides, if everything stated in the document was true, the 'warriors of the Red Lotus Sect' such as' Lin Jiu 'who were willing to be sealed for hundreds of years were out-and-out heroes. No matter how Tang Dingyuan looked at Cui Lingfeng, he could not deny that.
After thinking it through, and during his conversation with 'Lin Jiu', he discovered that the captain of Team Red Lotus was not interested in the competition between parliament and the bridge at all but was focused on striking the Immortal Cultivators. Tang Dingyuan could not help but feel deep respect for his savior from more than two hundred years ago. He corrected his attitude toward Team Red Lotus quickly.
Compared to Tang Dingyuan, for Speaker Cui Lingfeng, his choice was even more complicated.
It was impossible for Tang Dingyuan to see through the forgery arts that had been passed down from generation to generation in parliament. He could believe in the existence of 'Team Red Lotus' without any qualms when he knew nothing about it.
However, for Cui Lingfeng, who had forged the 'secret documents of Team Red Lotus' in person, it was a gamble that could doom the entire Star Ocean Republic and even the Xing Yao Federation with one moment of carelessness.
Should I completely trust the 'natives of Team Red Lotus' of unknown backgrounds?
The question had been haunting Cui Lingfeng's heart like a viper since the beginning.
In the beginning, he might have thought of relying solely on the Red Lotus people to tide over the crisis. After the dust had settled, he would think of a way to get rid of them or isolate them for investigation so that he could thoroughly understand their origins and motives.
However, when the Immortal Cultivators lurking inside Firefly were uprooted and interrogated one by one, the situation turned out to be much more serious than he had imagined.
While the bridge where Ding Zhengyang was at was a disaster area where many workers in key posts had been transformed into Immortal Cultivators, parliament was not any worse. Quite a few influential representatives had been involved, too.
It was needless to mention Cui Lingfeng himself. For so many years, he had trusted Cheng Xuansu and regarded her as his foster daughter. He had asked her to take care of all his affairs, large or small. As it turned out, almost all of them had been 'wiped out'.
Cui Lingfeng discovered in embarrassment that, just like Li Yao said, he had truly become a commander without an army. There was nobody around him that he could rely on.
Also, his situation was even worse than Tang Dingyuan's.
Theoretically speaking, Tang Dingyuan was only the No. 2 person in the government-in-exile. He had been secretly arrested at the beginning of the scheme. Everything that happened later could be said to have nothing to do with Tang Dingyuan.
But Cui Lingfeng was different. Even though he had been deceived and bewildered by Cheng Xuansu, Ding Zhengyang, and the rest of them, he had been the one who had issued the order to arrest more than a hundred leadership members of the bridge and society. If he denied the existence of 'Team Red Lotus' and that everything was part of his plan to 'lure the snake out of its hole', it would be a great scandal. Since he was so ignorant and incompetent, he would certainly shoulder the responsibility of leadership and be ousted. In the meantime, parliament, which was already riddled with holes in the first place, would be even weaker after being affected by such an incident. It would be impossible for it to resist the 'bridge faction'!
Without the checks and balances of parliament, God knew what kind of agreement the technical staff on the bridge would reach with the Xing Yao Federation!
Cui Lingfeng had never believed that 'Cultivator' was a synonym for nobility and holiness. Fellow Cultivators were fellow Cultivators, and negotiations were negotiations, but even blood brothers had to settle their accounts!
Therefore, he could only count on 'Team Red Lotus'.
Then, Speaker Cui Lingfeng discovered that Team Red Lotus was too useful!
At first, Cui Lingfeng did not think that Team Red Lotus could play a big role outside of the battle. He had thought that the 'natives of the Red Lotus Sector' other than Li Yao were all pure warriors.
But out of his expectation, the natives of the Red Lotus Sector had demonstrated impeccable, impeccably perfect achievements in sweeping all the Immortal Cultivators on the starship, appeasing the infuriated people who did not know the truth, boosting the morale of the bottom-level soldiers, and coercing the Immortal Cultivators for more intelligence and benefits.
As the commander of the starship, Tang Dingyuan might not have been able to see through all the abilities that those people boasted.
But as the Speaker and a self-proclaimed 'bad Cultivator', Cui Lingfeng was very certain that those 'natives of the Red Lotus Sector' were definitely not regular Cultivators of the Combat Department.
The feeling they gave him was that they were either generals who had been through hundreds of battles, overlords who ruled over a region, or powerful ministers with noble titles. Even 'Zhu Zongyou', who seemed to be the youngest among them, had the majesty of a dragon and a tiger, the bearing of a member of the royal family!
At this moment, Cui Lingfeng was completely certain that those people were definitely not spies of the Imperium of True Human Beings.
Neither the Imperium nor the Holy League was extravagant enough to raise more than ten 'extraordinary, distinguished' spies and send them to the edge of the cosmos as if they did not cost anything.
It was needless to mention the Xing Yao Federation. It was just a local magnate that had suddenly made a fortune in the middle of nowhere. How could it have raised such 'profound' Cultivators? Judging from the demeanor of those people, they were even more impressive than the authentic Cultivators of the cosmos!
In the end, Cui Lingfeng deduced that it might be some sort of trick. Were they really spies of the Imperium of True Human Beings who had intentionally sacrificed 'Cheng Xuansu', 'Ding Zhengyang', and other people in order to control Firefly and break into the Xing Yao Federation?
But the speculation was soon disproved by him.
Considering the situation at that time and their capability, they did not need to resort to trickery at all. They could have killed both him and Tang Dingyuan directly. Then, they could have achieved their purpose through the cooperation of Ding Zhengyang and Cheng Xuansu.
The real spies would not have chosen to show up in such an 'abrupt' way at all. Besides, it was impossible for them to have known beforehand that he would summon Professor Luo De to his side.
As long as they were not spies of the Imperium, Cui Lingfeng was prepared to ignore their identities and take a gamble!
He would just consider them to be 'natives of the Red Lotus Sector'!
Getting to the bottom of it, even Cheng Xuansu, who had the bloodline of the heroes, whom he knew very well, had betrayed him. What could her 'background' prove?
For the government-in-exile, which had been rather passive in the communication with the Xing Yao Federation because of the extreme shortage of high-end warriors, the arrival of Team Red Lotus might be a lot of bargaining chips in the negotiation to come. Perhaps they could really become the last hope of the government-in-exile!
Taking a deep breath, Cui Lingfeng thought everything through.
The remarkable computational ability of the admin-type Yuanying was boosted to the maximum. While forging the 'secret files of the Red Lotus Sector' as if they were familiar with the job, they also drafted a speech named 'To My Compatriots on the Starship'.
Very soon, the speech was transformed into powerful, resolute soundwaves that rolled, spread, and surged in every corner of Firefly!
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