The wind was stunned, the storm was stunned, the thunder was stunned, the queen was stunned, and so was Li Jialing.
"The Star Ocean Republic?"
The queen frowned and mumbled to herself.
"Firefly?"
Li Jialing blinked quickly, finding it hard to believe.
"Yes!"
Li Yao nodded matter-of-factly. Blinking his eyes that were as clear as water, he turned around and asked the young man, "You've heard of the Star Ocean Republic and Firefly, haven't you?"
"Yes, I have."
The young man thought for a moment and said solemnly, "I'm told that they are a bunch of cowardly, shameless, and garbage Cultivators who are worse than cockroaches and rats. They were crushed by the Imperium a thousand years ago and fled in terror. Then, they have been hiding in the sea of stars and degrading themselves. Right now, they are either out-and-out space pirates or completely extinct, aren't they?"
Li Yao: "… Well, although I don't like your choice of words, it's true that your Brother Yao is from Firefly, the Star Ocean Republic!
"How about it, Your Grace? However poor Firefly is, it is the 'last homeland of the Star Ocean Republic' after all. When we fled from the Imperium years ago, we took so many bottles and containers of our belongings with us. The leadership also knows a lot of secrets that nobody else knows, such as the coordinates of countless relics and treasures from the Star Ocean Imperium! A starving camel is still bigger than a horse. The Star Ocean Republic raised an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, and Firefly boasted the ability to repair and maintain the Colossi. Are there any flaws? Just think about it. Please chop off my head if you come up with a flaw! "
Li Yao said confidently. His every word was laced with bones.
But he still felt a little unconfident.
The existence of Firefly should be a great secret that only he knew. According to Firefly's own voyage log, they were not discovered by the Black Wind fleet of the expedition army of the Imperium again until more than ten years ago. However, Heiye Ming, the commander of the Black Wind fleet, did not report the matter to the homeland of the Imperium in order to swallow the fat meat for himself. Otherwise, if the homeland of the Imperium sent new reinforcements, wouldn't the credit be stolen by somebody else?
Later, when the Black Wind Fleet was heavily struck and almost entirely annihilated, Heiye Ming was already gone. Di Feiwen, the deputy commander, was determined to make peace with the Federation and march back to the Imperium with the strength of the Federation. Naturally, he would not have sent such critical intelligence back to the homeland of the Imperium.
Therefore, theoretically speaking, the homeland of the Imperium only vaguely knew that the Black Wind Fleet had sailed to the edge of the Star Ocean Imperium and encountered some barren worlds that were not worth developing at all. The disobedient barbarians were also living on the worlds. The helpless natives of the Black Wind Fleet were gnawing on the hard bones that did not have much value.
But they were not supposed to know how powerful the Federation was, how many secret treasures were hidden in the Ancient Sages Sector and the Kunlun relic, or the existence of Firefly in the Star Ocean Republic!
However, it was just a 'theoretical' knowledge after all. Who knew if the queen had other sources of intelligence?
Should it be exposed, with her bad temper, it would be useless even if she clung to her thigh and called her grandma!
Li Yao focused all his Cultivation that he had trained hard for a hundred years on his face and his eyes. He couldn't have been more anxious, but his face and his eyes couldn't have been more frank. Every wrinkle on his face was so deep that it could almost be described as' sincerity '!
Frowning, the queen stared at him in silence for a long time. Her eyes were like two vipers that were crawling into his brain through his eyeballs and swallowing all his memories. After staring at each other for half a minute, she finally said, "Go on. Tell me about your birth and growth on Firefly."
Li Yao took a long breath in relief, knowing that he had passed the second test again.
"I was born in the bottommost cabin of the garbage starship, the most ragged, lowest-level starship among the hundreds of starships that made up Firefly."
With ripples of memories flowing out of Li Yao's eyes, he said in a low and gloomy voice, "It was a dark world where the environment was harsh, smoky, difficult to survive, and the strong preyed on the weak. It was also known as the 'magical equipment graveyard'.
"Because Firefly was a space wanderer, during the most difficult time, we could not find the abandoned worlds or the relics of the space battlefields for decades. We could not get any effective supplies. Therefore, we could not waste the slightest scrap of magical equipment. Even the seemingly useless and broken garbage would be piled on the garbage starship and condensed into mountains of garbage. That was my home."
Li Jialing couldn't help but ask, "Smoky, smoky, and preying on the weak? Don't you call yourselves Cultivators? "
Li Yao's lips moved. He blushed and could not answer the question, but he looked at Li Linghai unpredictably.
The queen sniffed and said, "Are there any clear boundaries between Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators? When resources were abundant, everybody was a solemn, righteous Cultivator. When resources were insufficient, and more than half of the people were going to starve, hehe. The righteous men in the past would inevitably regard 'the strong prey on the weak, and the winner is the king' as a truth, too!
"Firefly has drifted in the sea of stars for almost a thousand years. Although it escaped the hunting of the Imperium, it was inevitable that it fled to the edge of the civilization of mankind, which was more and more barren and desolate. There were no supplies, communication, space, and resources. How could there be any Cultivators left? I'm afraid that the remnants of the Star Ocean Republic are even worse than the fake Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium today!"
Li Yao coughed, somewhat in embarrassment, and said, "Your Grace, you may have a point. All in all, I spent my childhood in the dangerous environment and the life-and-death battles in the magical equipment graveyard. The dark experience was perhaps similar to Li Jialing's growing up. It was also why I liked my younger brother the moment I saw him."
"Brother Yao …"
Although Li Jialing did not quite understand the real meaning of 'magical equipment graveyard' yet, he did know a thing or two about the Star Ocean Republic and Firefly from the history books and other reading materials.
Many specialists of the Imperium had speculated about the ending of Firefly. Their speculations were exactly the same as Li Linghai's. They believed that Firefly would certainly have collapsed in desperation due to the lack of resources, and the apocalyptic scene before the collapse must have been a hundred times more dreadful than the harshest slave mine of the Imperium.
Li Jialing had more subtle feelings for Li Yao when he realized that he was born in such a place.
Li Yao sighed and went on. "All in all, I, who had no parents and nobody to rely on, should've been killed in the dark and cruel magical equipment graveyard when I was a teenager. However, one day, I accidentally found a heavily wounded uncle in the magical equipment graveyard, which changed my fate, and maybe his, and yours!"
Holding his breath, Li Jialing asked in a shivering voice, "He — he was my birth father?"
"Exactly."
Li Yao nodded and was caught in the memories of a long time ago. But what he said was indeed the truth. "Nobody knew where the uncle came from or what he had been through. All in all, when I found him, he was already heavily wounded. Even his internal organs were exposed to the air …"
Li Yao noticed that Li Linghai's eyes were obviously shivering.
Even his breathing, which had been steady all the time, was disordered for 0.01 seconds.
For an unparalleled expert at the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage or even higher, such a loss of control was absolutely impossible.
Before the young man exclaimed again, Li Yao went on. "At that time, I thought that the uncle snuck onto our garbage starship because he had done something wrong on another starship or pissed off somebody. It was a common thing among the hundreds of starships that made up Firefly.
"I don't know what was on my mind, but I somehow had a subtle affection for the uncle. Perhaps it was because I never had a father, and he looked quite reliable.
"All in all, to put it simply, I saved the uncle. After he recovered from his wounds, he saved me multiple times. He even adopted me as his foster son and taught me all his arts in refining. He also gave me a weird rusty flying sword. Later, the flying sword exploded. Inside the sword was this sticky, soft, and elastic black ball. I named it 'Little Black'."
"You — you …"
The queen could not help but pace back and forth. Perhaps even she did not know what she wanted to ask. After a long daze, she asked, "Just the two of you? Living together?"
"Just the two of us. My foster father — my father was not a man of words. He maintained the magical equipment in silence in exchange for food to feed us and wine. His only hobby was polishing the scraps of magical equipment until they were as thin and translucent as the wings of cicadas. Then, he carved them into beautiful roses that looked like crystals."
Li Yao smiled and said, "Most of the time, metal roses were piled up in our tiny shed. It was uncomfortable even when we slept. I once asked him why he was making so many useless things. He said that they could not be sold for much money and that he might as well assemble some battle magical equipment. But he never gave me an answer.
"Now that I think about it, I understand it now. Perhaps, he spent his entire life carving 99,999 metal roses and carving all kinds of runes on them so that they were even more beautiful than real roses, just to give them to … a woman on the other side of the sea of stars, right?"
It was true.
Of course, the number of metal roses might not have been 99,999, but there must have been a lot of them.
After his father passed away, Li Yao drowned his ashes with the metal roses and piled them into a small hill. Then, they were buried together in the deepest part of the magical equipment graveyard. Later, they were completely buried by the mountains of garbage.
When Li Yao returned to the Federation after a hundred years of hibernation, the magical equipment graveyard in Floating Spear City had already been deformed beyond recognition.
But to this day, perhaps his father's ashes were still buried deep below the ground of the Heaven's Origin Sector together with the glamorous, glittering metal roses.
Li Linghai was in a trance. The invisible mask and armor of indifference around his body could not be condensed anymore.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
