Hearing that Lei Chenghu was getting more and more outrageous, Dongfang Bai couldn't help but interrupt him. "Marquis Liaohai, the so-called 'gamble' is just your speculation, isn't it? Do you have the slightest proof?"
"No."
Lei Chenghu pointed at his head and said frankly, "It's just a guess. Based on my intuition."
Dongfang Bai was amused. "A guess? Intuition? "
"War is an art of speculation. Any commander can win every battle when he has all the intelligence, but only the keenest and most excellent commanders who have been through hundreds of battles can guess the enemy's capabilities and strategies in advance when the enemy is in the dark due to insufficient intelligence."
Lei Chenghu said casually, "My intense intuition is stabbing my brain like iron needles every second, telling me that the main force of the Holy League is coveting us in the darkness of the universe and that they will lunge out and bite our throats the moment we slack off for a moment.
"This is … a dangerous aura that can't be described with words. 'Summer insects can't talk about ice'. It's impossible to explain it to someone like you who has never been on the battlefield."
Dongfang Bai clenched his teeth again. "You …"
Lei Chenghu eyed Dongfang Bai up and down for a long time. Suddenly, he put on a mysterious smile. "However, looking at your ignorant idiocy, I'm more or less convinced that the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance was not a scheme of yours.
"That's even worse.
"If the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance was not caused by certain guys in the Council of Elders with ulterior motives, it must have been done by the Holy League.
"The spies of the Holy League have infiltrated the base of the expedition army and even the Council of Elders unimaginably deeply. They can both plan the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance and fool the idiots like you."
"W-What?"
Dongfang Bai's face was as pale as paper. "Are you saying that the Holy League is behind the Blood Oath Alliance?"
"What else could it be?"
Lei Chenghu sighed and said, "At such a critical moment, who benefits the most by intensifying the contradiction between the frontline and the rear and creating a gap between the expedition army and the Council of Elders?
"Think about the question carefully. If you are really blinded by your greed and do something that will hurt your friends and please your foes, I guarantee that the main force of the Holy League will march to you the second after you celebrate!"
"Hehe …"
Dongfang Bai narrowed his eyes in suspicion.
"I suddenly regret leaving the Thunder Fleet and returning to the capital with you, hoping to convince the Council of Elders."
Seeing the look on the face of the head of special agents, Lei Chenghu sighed and said, "I realized that I made a great mistake, a mistake that countless commanders in the frontline have made since ancient times, which is that I greatly overestimated the wisdom of the lords in the court in the rear and underestimated their insatiable greed.
"Humans always see what they want to see and believe what they want to hear. A lot of people in the Council of Elders hate my guts. As long as I'm alive, they will never be able to eat or sleep in peace. I'm afraid that they've been hoping for me to retire or even 'unfortunately perish' for a long time, haven't they?
"For such elders, even if they are faced with a piece of intelligence about the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance that is full of loopholes, they will still turn a blind eye to the loopholes and choose to believe it unconditionally.
"With everything coming to this point, I have nothing else to say. I will never make a public statement. I can't provide any convenience to help you control the Thunder Fleet, either. Whatever happens in the future will be at the mercy of the Council of Elders. If you are not going to drag me out and execute me in secret, you don't need to waste my time here anymore!"
Indifferently, Lei Chenghu crossed his arms, as if he were seeing the guests off.
The three investigators looked at each other in bewilderment, all of them somewhat cowering.
After hesitating for a long time, Dongfang Bai gnashed his teeth and said, "Marquis Liaohai, if you insist on not making a public statement and are unwilling to help us persuade the radicals in the Thunder Fleet to leave the frontline and return to the rear for investigation, it is possible that some very unpleasant and intense conflicts will break out. Wouldn't it be an opportunity for the Holy League to take advantage of? Or even … like you said just now, the entire Imperium will be doomed forever?
"Is that what you want to see? By then, will you be as calm as you are right now?"
Lei Chenghu stared at Dongfang Bai, the intensity of his eyes increasing. In the end, they were shining like the clusters of light that were condensed before the main guns of the super heavy warships were bombarding.
His voice was as hard as iron and as indifferent as ice, but it was also as clear as the bullets of an anti-materiel rifle. "I, Lei Chenghu, will do my best to defend my motherland and the Imperium of True Human Beings! Even if all the soldiers of the Imperium's army are sacrificed and I am the only one left, I will still raise my saber and charge at the enemy's starships without any hesitation!
"However —
"Survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle, the winner is king! Isn't that the belief of the Immortal Cultivators and the 'truth' of the Imperium of True Human Beings?
"If my warriors and I really do try our best, but we are still unable to save the corrupted, decaying country, and the army of the Alliance of the Holy Covenant sweeps across the entire sea of stars, we will be wrong.
"It will prove that the path we have chosen is wrong. The people and the system of the Alliance of the Holy Covenant are more advanced than the Imperium's. The people of the Holy League, as well as the Pangu behind the people of the Holy League, are a more excellent species than the human beings of the Imperium. They are more qualified to enjoy the abundant resources at the center of the cosmos and to create a new-generation Pangu civilization that is more brilliant than the civilization of mankind.
"If that is the case, I will have nothing to say. What can I do except to admit my failure and pay the highest respect to my opponent peacefully? Burst into fury like a clown?
"In the boundless, eternal battlefield of space, 'accepting defeat' is perhaps the last dignity of a civilization. Victory and defeat are commonplace in a war. I'm ready to accept any outcome."
Faced with "God of War" Lei Chenghu's eyes that couldn't have been more frank, the three inspectors were all uneasy.
The filthiness and insignificance in their hearts seemed to have been illuminated by Lei Chenghu's brilliance that was even more dazzling than a star.
Their attitude was entirely different from when they just came in. They had truly been awed by Lei Chenghu.
"I-I understand," Dongfang Bai said in trepidation.
Dongfang Bai said in fear, "This is the end of the investigation. We will submit everything that Marquis Liaohai said just now to the Council of Elders for discussion. In any case, I have absolute faith in Marquis Liaohai's loyalty, and I will handle the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance prudently. Please rest here for a few days. We'll take our leave now."
The three inspectors bowed deeply at Lei Chenghu again before they backed off and left the quiet, elegant prison cell.
Even after they closed the door softly, Lei Chenghu did not waste any time looking at them but switched the crystal processor to the input interface again.
Crossing his hands, he was deep in thought, as if he did not care about the investigation at all and was about to continue writing the interrupted chapter.
However, after he turned on the light beam, he maintained the posture of a dry tree in silence for ten minutes without moving at all. He did not input a single word into the crystal processor, either.
After ten minutes of silence that resembled that of a withered tree, a clay statue, and a lump of ice, the sound of a deep breath suddenly came from the deathly still air.
The old general's eyebrows, wrinkles, lips, and Adam's apple shivered at the same time.
Two drops of murky tears flowed along the crisscrossing ravines and slid down the face that had been eroded by wind, frost, snow, and rain.
"God of War" Lei Chenghu covered his chest and moaned in the feeble voice, "Imperium …"
…
Billions of stars away, in the Deep Sea Palace, the secret base of the reformists …
Li Yao and the mental devil were discussing the legendary "God of War" Lei Chenghu.
"Over the past two days, while you were repairing the Crystal Suit, educating Li Jialing, and studying the treasures from the Empyrean Transcendence Sector with the queen, I snuck into the Spiritual Nexus and collected the files about Lei Chenghu. Tsk, tsk, tsk. How shocking!"
The mental devil clicked its tongue in amazement. "The old man is not the kind of man that we heard about when we first met him. Yes, he is selfless, fair, and loyal to his country … Those are all true, but his methods are truly brutal. I like it!
"Let's take the battle line of the Black Wind Sector for example. A hundred years ago, when the Black Wind Fleet fled with the remaining soldiers of the five Sectors, the Imperium was greatly shaken, and he came out to save the day.
"Our queen only told us that Lei Chenghu resisted the attack of the Holy League in the end and defended the second defense line after the Black Wind Sector. He built an iron wall and fought the Holy League for a hundred years. But she did not mention how Lei Chenghu did it, did she?
"Let me tell you, the moment Lei Chenghu arrived at the frontline, he announced that quite a few habitable planets and resource planets in the battle area were under 'military control'. All the properties of the 'hominoids' and most of the 'true human beings' were forcibly purchased with 'military tickets'. It was essentially confiscation.
"Those who disobeyed were all sent to the 'glory camps', which were the harshest labor camps that he invented. It was said that they were even crueler and darker than the slave mines.
"In such a way, he collected tremendous resources in the shortest amount of time and stopped the panic and riots that spread across quite a few planets. Everybody is under his' military control 'now. What's the point of riots?"
"So ruthless?"
Li Yao was greatly alarmed.
He knew that 'hominoids' and 'slaves' were not the same in the Imperium of True Human Beings. Many hominoids were free people who had property rights, too.
After all, the simple slavery system was not very efficient in the long run. Today, even the slave mines of the Imperium had to stimulate the enthusiasm of the miners with slaughter platforms, energy pills, and other methods.
Therefore, no matter how the hominoids were oppressed and exploited, at least theoretically, most hominoids were free, and their private property was protected by the law.
It was needless to say that Lei Chenghu had confiscated the properties of the Immortal Cultivators and was even bold enough to throw the Immortal Cultivators into labor camps.
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