Perhaps it was his imagination, but Heiye Ming suddenly felt a weird tiredness in his heart. Every thought in his head was raging like a wild horse that had broken free of its reins. Countless messy thoughts were also popping up in weird noises.
It was something that had never happened in his hundreds of years of campaigning in the sea of stars. It was a sign that he was about to be mentally deranged!
Am I too old after all? Or was it because I was too heavily wounded in the battle a hundred years ago that I did not have a chance to take a good rest during the hundred years of wandering?
Heiye Ming secretly sighed. I was not like this when I was in my prime. At that time, I participated in the large-scale battle between the Imperium and the Holy League together with the strongest fleets of dozens of Sectors. Even if the fierce battle lasted an entire month and I burned my life and soul time and time again, I would not be so exhausted.
Right now, I am already overwhelmed just by annihilating some wretched barbarians at the edge of the cosmos …
Calming himself down, he focused his attention on the battle at hand again.
The Burning Prairie Fleet, the Great White Fleet, and the Colossi of the Federation, although their combat ability was far beyond his expectations, did not touch his bottom line. It was just a matter of how much he had to pay for the victory.
But Su Changfa and Lu Qingchen …
Heiye Ming thought of something and retrieved the monitoring interface of Lu Qingchen's brainwaves and body parameters again.
At this moment, Lu Qingchen was sealed inside an iron coffin and hung upside down in midair. The cruelest seals had been branded all over his body to ensure that the anomaly of his every muscle, vein, and nerve would be monitored by Heiye Ming. Even the tiniest ripple inside his brain would be displayed clearly on the mainframe crystal processor.
Ever since he was locked up, Lu Qingchen's brainwaves had been unusually calm. They were so calm that Heiye Ming even suspected that the surveillance magical equipment had malfunctioned many times. He had to summon more advanced crystal processors and instruments time and time again to connect Lu Qingchen's brain to the mainframe crystal processor deeply to ensure the sensitivity of the brainwave feedback.
Heiye Ming discovered, to his surprise, that Lu Qingchen's supposedly tranquil index of brain activity had soared to the sky like a volcano eruption at some point, breaking through the limits of the Refinement Stage, the Building Foundation Stage, the Core Formation Stage, the Yuanying Stage, the Divinity Transformation Stage, and even the limits of human beings!
They were not ripples that could be triggered by a human brain at all. It was as if a supernova had exploded deep inside Lu Qingchen's brain, releasing endless energy!
"How is this possible?"
"What the hell are those guys in the control room doing? Why didn't they report to me when something like this happened?
"Is there something wrong with the crystal processor, or?"
Heiye Ming boosted his soul power to the maximum. Controlling the crystal processors and the crystal cameras, he connected more than ten communication lines simultaneously.
However, right when he was about to summon a large batch of people to investigate Lu Qingchen's situation, the curve of the brain activity index that had been rising out of nowhere slid down at the same steep angle until it reached the bottom of a deep valley. Then, it turned into a straight line that did not have any undulations.
Lu Qingchen's brainwaves went back to zero.
Theoretically speaking, it was death.
Of course, some of the experts who practiced the 'Turtle Breathing Technique' could reduce their heartbeat, breathing, brainwaves, and other biophysical indexes to the point that they almost disappeared. But right now, more than thirty probes had pierced deep into Lu Qingchen's brain. It would not be so easy for him to play tricks.
Heiye Ming had a bad feeling about this.
It was the natural reaction of a seasoned soldier for extreme danger.
A 3D light beam slowly popped up in front of his eyes. In the picture, Lu Qingchen was still hanging upside down, shaking softly. There was no telling whether he was dead or alive, but the Immortal Cultivators who had been watching over him were all cramping on the ground, bleeding and foaming.
"Damn it!"
Heiye Ming shouted in his heart. His telepathic thoughts spread out like an octopus, trying to summon his subordinates.
But all his telepathic thoughts were bounced back brutally as if they had hit an invisible wall!
In the next moment, his eyes turned dark, as if an all-pervasive black curtain had slowly descended on him. Two worlds seemed to have overlapped. One of them was the neural interaction liquids in the command capsule in the bridge where he had been, and the other … was the depths of a weird black ocean!
"It seems that the Black Wind Fleet is in trouble."
A mocking voice echoed next to his ears casually. "Do you need my help?"
It was Lu Qingchen's voice.
Heiye Ming's pupils constricted violently. He tried to focus his telepathic thoughts and break through the black curtain. He also waved his hands, hoping to attract the attention of other people on the bridge. But his subordinates who were right next to him seemed to be in a different world from him. None of them noticed his anomaly.
Also, a certain black substance that looked like a jellyfish slowly floated up from the 'depths of the ocean' below his feet and slowly swallowed him from his feet!
Greatly shocked, Heiye Ming tried to summon his soul, but his soul seemed to have been corrupted by something and could not trigger its usual strength at all.
"It's useless. When the Black Wind Fleet performed the four-dimensional space jump, I already injected some tiny 'gifts' into your soul and the mainframe crystal processor of Black Swirl."
Lu Qingchen's chuckle echoed from all directions in the black ocean. "Even the Blood God, the commander-in-chief of the expedition army of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago, could not bear to turn down such a gift. Why are you wasting your time?"
Heiye Ming realized that he had fallen into a dreadful trap. With everything coming to this point, the seasoned general of the Imperium calmed down. "Are you Lu Qingchen, or are you something else? Your master Su Changfa betrayed the Imperium, but you did not betray the Federation. Have you all abandoned the true path of immortality? "
"Hehe. I am Lu Qingchen. Just … Lu Qingchen."
The voice echoed from the black ocean again. "As for my master Su Changfa, it is a pity that he perished a long time ago. What you see on the Spiritual Nexus is just an illusion. Or rather, it is just my master's database.
"Betrayed the Federation? Of course not! Just look at what is happening right in front of your eyes. How valiant the warriors of the Federation are. How magnificent the fleet of the Federation is. How powerful, noble, and invincible such a Federation is. How can I betray such a great motherland and join the Imperium that is declining day by day? "
"So to speak, I've been completely tricked …"
Pain was beaming out of Heiye Ming's eyes. A moment later, the brilliance became sharp again. He gnashed his teeth and said, "No. Your strength is so evil. It is not the approach of a Cultivator. What are you exactly?"
"As I said just now, I am an Immortal Cultivator who loves the Federation and the civilization of mankind."
In the dark ocean, Lu Qingchen said calmly, "As you can see, the Xing Yao Federation right now is like the sun at seven o 'clock in the morning. How pure, how bright, and how powerful it is. Nothing can stop its rise.
"However, when the sun rises to the highest sky, it will eventually fall. Any new force will inevitably be corrupted by incurable diseases and bad habits after it develops to a certain extent. It will slowly decay and metamorphose, eventually turning into what it despised and fought against in the past. A hero slays a dragon, and a hero turns into a dragon. It has never been different from the ancient times.
"The resources in the universe may be infinite, but the resources that human beings can collect and make effective use of will always be limited. At the very least, compared to the population and desires of human beings that are expanding geometrically, it is far from enough. As long as the contradiction cannot be resolved, what can the Xing Yao Federation today do, however bright, pure, and powerful it is?
"On its way to the center of the cosmos, during its gradual expansion and domination of the three thousand Sectors, it is destined to run into a lot of problems and be faced with all kinds of painful choices. Also, in the dilemma, it will gradually turn into what it hated and opposed in the past, into … another Imperium."
"What do you want exactly?"
Heiye Ming struggled hard. "Since you claim to be a determined Immortal Cultivator and are so pessimistic about the future of the Federation, just surrender to the Imperium right now! No. Not surrender but join hands with the people of the Black Wind Sector. If the two of us join hands, we will definitely be able to shake the political situation of the Imperium and even — even control the entire Imperium and the entire universe! "
"Yes, you do have a point, General Ming. That's exactly what I'm thinking, and that's exactly what I'm doing!"
Lu Qingchen smiled. "However, if the two of us are going to form an alliance, we will certainly need a 'leader', won't we? If you mean what you said just now, General Ming, just completely open your soul and stop rejecting my gifts. Let me inject the real beliefs into the core of your soul. Then, let's reform the Federation, renew the Imperium, and save the entire universe from the wretched Pangu civilization together! "
"Your — your beliefs?"
Heiye Ming bulged his eyes and hissed deep inside his throat. "Immortal Cultivator 2.0?"
Instead of answering, Lu Qingchen simply said, "I believe in the true path of immortality, but the so-called belief is not stubborn, rigid, and unchangeable. Instead, it should be constantly changing and developing in the contradictions of reality, and it should be self-renewing and upgrading at any moment!
"Just look at the guys who claim to believe in the true path of immortality. You are running everywhere like stray dogs at the center of the cosmos because of the Holy League. No, not 'like'. You are stray dogs. Even the 'Black Wind Sector', your home, is gone.
"You have come to the edge of the cosmos to conquer a bunch of barbarians, only to be beaten into a mess under the brilliance of the true path of the Cultivators.
"Can such a rigid, old-fashioned, and rigid true path of immortality really represent the future of the civilization of mankind?
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