The conversation between the commander of the Black Wind Fleet and the head of the CFIA took seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds.
There were twenty-three hours, forty-two minutes, and thirty-eight seconds to go before the Black Wind Fleet performed a space jump and arrived at the Tian Yuan Realm, the heart of the Federation.
At this moment, a hundred lightyears away, in the Hundred Flowers Space Zone, the transit station at the center of the seven Sectors of the Federation …
Li Yao was still eating noodles, beef noodles in sour soup.
"That's why I vaguely have a bad feeling about this!"
Li Yao's mouth was full of twisted noodles. While wolfing them down, he said to Long Yangjun solemnly, "I have a feeling that Jin Xinyue's plan has been seen through, and a great scheme is slowly unfolding against the entire Federation. One moment of carelessness, and the Federation will be doomed forever! Also, the scheme is likely to explode very soon. It's far faster than we can imagine. Do you believe it? "
Looking at Li Yao, Long Yangjun tried to hold back her urge to roll her eyes. "You do have a point. As expected of Monster Li, who never fails to consider anything. By logic, I should trust you very much, but you have already had your third bowl of noodles. Third bowl!"
Li Yao blinked his eyes and picked up the third braised egg with the disposable fork. "What's wrong with noodles? Only when you are full will you have the strength to fight the bad guys with wits and courage. You will make a grand comeback!
"Do you know what the key is? The key is that Jin Xinyue's plan is too precise, and her scheme is too perfect. There seem to be too many things that she wants to take into account, too!
"It is the same logic as refining. The more precise a piece of magical equipment is, the more likely it is to malfunction. The more perfection it pursues, the more likely it is to collapse. If you want to perform dozens of different techniques with one piece of magical equipment, it is very possible that you will not be able to perform any of them well.
"All in all, from what we have seen so far, I feel that Jin Xinyue's plan is too big, far beyond what she can control. Perhaps no one can control it, even if her father, Jin Tuyi, is reborn.
"If we get to the bottom of it, she is still too young, too naïve, and sometimes too childish. But it is not entirely her fault. The situation that the Federation is faced with right now is much more perilous than the situation that her father faced years ago. Not only do we have to take care of the Black Wind Fleet, we have to do it in the shortest amount of time and at the lowest cost. We cannot consume too much strength in case the Imperium sends out a second expedition army.
"This is an impossible mission, no wonder Jin Xinyue is willing to take the risk!"
After Li Yao finished eating the braised egg, he picked up a ham sausage that had been soaked in the fat cow's sour soup and took a big bite. He praised his disciple's plan, but also regretted it.
Long Yangjun narrowed her eyes and tried not to watch his gluttonous behavior. She asked, "If so, what do we do now?"
"To this moment," Li Yao said solemnly, "according to our analysis, Jin Xinyue is still loyal to the Federation and her master. Also, she has never crossed the boundaries of a Cultivator. With that in mind, she is still my good disciple! Now that my disciple's plan has gone wrong, it is my duty as her master to clean up after her. Otherwise, what do I need a master for? "
Long Yangjun nodded and said, "Fair enough. But right now, everything is just our speculation. We do not even know who the enemy is other than the Black Wind Fleet and whether or not they have a scheme. Let me ask you, how do you expect your disciple Jin Xinyue to clean up her big, round ass?"
Li Yao smiled. "That is why I asked the Federation to let us take a transit in the Hundred Flowers Space Zone when we arrange the sailing route!
"The Hundred Flowers Space Zone does not have any habitable planets or too many resource planets. It is even more barren than the Dragon Snake Space Zone and not worth developing.
"However, this place is located at the center of the seven Sectors of the Federation. It is a very important node for space jumps. Also, it has a 'double star' system. The spiritual waves released by the two stars when they interact with each other can be condensed into an excellent 'gravity slingshot', which can help the starships carrying out the space jump and save tremendous spiritual energy.
"Space jumps cannot be performed randomly, especially when there are so many Sectors and starships in the Federation right now. Tens of thousands of starships are jumping here and there every day, digging temporary wormholes one after another. If the sailing routes, routes, and jump points are not well planned, it will be very easy for the starships to interfere with each other. Great accidents in space will either not happen at all, or if they do, it will likely result in a tragedy where tens of thousands of people will be killed or injured!
"Therefore, after discovering the Water Crystal Sector and the Forest Ocean Sector one after another, the Federation began to develop the Hundred Flowers Space Zone on a large scale and established a super enormous space city named 'Hundred Flowers City' as a transportation hub. There are also more than a hundred space gates and almost ten thousand star beacons near Hundred Flowers City.
"The starships traveling to and from the major Sectors of the Federation often jump from their mother planet to the Hundred Flowers Space Zone first, where they will be supplied and maintained. After replanning the sailing route, they will jump to their destination with the help of the 'gravity slingshot' of the double star system. It is the safest, most orderly, and most economical route of spiritual energy."
"I know that," Long Yangjun said, nodding. "However, the starships of our delegation don't need to save so little spiritual energy. We can ask the government of the Federation to help us establish a special sailing route, can't we? I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time. Why do we have to transit in the Hundred Flowers Space Zone when we can directly jump from the Uranian Ring Sector to the Tian Yuan Realm? It will waste a lot of our time. "
Li Yao went on. "The Federation spent tremendous funds and decades to build the Hundred Flowers Space Zone into a transportation hub that connects the seven Sectors. Countless sailing routes and starships have to transit in this place. In order to calculate the complicated sailing routes and the space ripples after the starships jump, an enormous computation center is required.
"Therefore, Hundred Flowers City boasts the most awesome super crystal processor in the entire Federation. We only have three super crystal processors of the same level. One is in Hundred Flowers City to control the sailing routes in space. One is in the Tian Yuan Realm, responsible for the big data calculation of the government of the Federation. The last one is in the Star Prier's House on Spider Den in the Flying Star Sector, where it is used to monitor the astronomical anomalies, analyze the star map of the Pangu civilization, and search for new Sectors.
"The last super crystal processor, or the 'array of super crystal processors', was a legacy from the Star Ocean Imperium and was repaired by the specialists through unremitting efforts. It was with its computation and search that we were able to discover four new Sectors in a row in only a hundred years! The computation center of Hundred Flowers City boasts the computational ability of the same level as the Star Prier's House. Isn't it awesome? "
Long Yangjun frowned. "Does it have anything to do with the scheme we talked about just now?"
"Don't be hasty. Let me finish first."
Li Yao licked his greasy lips and said confidently with a sausage in his mouth, "Hundred Flowers City is not just a transportation hub for the Federation but also the center of the entire 'grand-unified Spiritual Nexus'. The computation center here is actually divided into two parts. One is responsible for the transportation, and the other is responsible for the operation of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus!
"It's quite understandable, isn't it? The enormous information streams of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus have to be refracted in the four-dimensional space by the method of 'breaking the void' in order to reach the nearby worlds a hundred lightyears away in the blink of an eye. Is there a more suitable place to be the center of the Spiritual Nexus than the Hundred Flowers Space Zone?
"Since the center of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus is in the largest computation center of the Federation made of countless super crystal processors, the control and development center of the game 'Civilization' is naturally in this place, too. It is not an exaggeration to call this place the 'heart of the virtual world' of the Federation at all."
Brilliance beamed out of Long Yangjun's eyes. "I understand it now. You are worried that the Black Wind Fleet's target is not the seven Sectors but this place, right? Once they assault this place and paralyze the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus and most of the sailing routes in space, it will be a fatal blow to the Federation! "
"That's not exactly the case."
Li Yao shook his head. "At first, when I discovered that the Hundred Flowers Space Zone was the transportation hub and the center of the virtual world of the new Federation, I did consider whether or not the Black Wind Fleet would attack this place by surprise.
"But on second thought, the losses outweighed the gains.
"Because both the sailing routes in space and the nodes of the Spiritual Nexus are distributed and well-connected in the shape of a net. Even if the so-called 'hub and center' are destroyed by the enemy, it is impossible to completely paralyze the sailing routes and the transmission of the Spiritual Nexus of the Federation. The best that can happen is that the transmission speed will be slowed down, the efficiency will be lowered, and the cost will be significantly increased. Although the strike will be severe, it will not be fatal.
"However, for the Black Wind Fleet, 'mobility' and 'suddenness' are their greatest advantages right now. Once they jump to this place, where there are not many resources except for two stars, they will lose both mobility and suddenness. It will be barely possible for them to jump out again. You should know that the space jump of an entire fleet is completely different from the space jump of a single starship, right?
"It's like a common soldier in ancient times can walk fifty kilometers in a day with slight training, but an army of hundreds of thousands of people wants to march fifty kilometers in a day? Even the best soldiers in the world can't do it! "
Long Yangjun nodded.
She was from 'ancient times' herself. When she controlled the court in the past, she naturally had to pay attention to military issues, too.
The smaller the size of the army, the faster it would march. It was not unusual for a scout squad made of elite fighters and Cultivators to travel eight hundred kilometers in a day and a thousand at night. But when there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers, not just a hundred kilometers, they would already be elites if they could cover ten to twenty kilometers in a day!
The Black Wind Fleet was such a behemoth that boasted at least thousands of starships. It was like a dinosaur weighing a hundred tons. It would not launch a "jump" easily, and once it jumped into a swamp, it would be difficult for it to jump out immediately.
Destroying the transportation hubs and the center of the Spiritual Nexus of the Federation would mean that they would be completely exposed to the Federation. Harassed and harassed by the Federation's fleet, it would be barely possible for them to perform a second jump. The Hundred Flowers Space Zone would not be able to get many resources, either. Eventually, everybody would be worn out.
It was certainly not the result that the commander of the Black Wind Fleet wanted.
"In that case, what are you doing here?" Long Yangjun asked in surprise. "I thought that you wanted to defend the Hundred Flowers Space Zone with the strength of the twelve of us!"
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