"You are still shameless enough to contact the family?"
The old man, who looked very similar to Li Linghai, bellowed, his lips shivering. "What have you done?"
"In the official statement of the four families, I am already a dead person. Had it not been for the accident, you would've announced the queen's death to the outside world in a few days, wouldn't you?"
Li Linghai said with a smile, "What can a dead person and a wandering ghost do? They can't do anything except for revenge, can they, Father?"
"You —"
Li Linghai's father, Li Mingxuan, was beyond infuriated. His eyes were almost condensed into two burning charcoal, as if he were going to burn his daughter's body and soul across the distance of several Sectors. He gnashed his teeth and said, "You still remember that I am your father! Do you know that your unscrupulous actions have practically caused the death of everyone in our bloodline? "
"Of course I know that you are my father, but I wonder if you still remember that I am your daughter, Father?"
Li Linghai said gloomily, "When my stand-in was attacked in the capital, you didn't know that it was just a stand-in and thought that it was myself, did you? What were you thinking at that time? Did you just watch your daughter die without doing anything?"
Li Mingxuan was immediately rendered speechless. The wrinkles and muscles on his face were cramping hard.
A second ago, he seemed to be venting all his hatred and fury on his daughter, but the next second, he lost all his motivation and hope. He said in frustration, "Tell me, what happened to Ah Feng? Why was there no news about him after the Riot of Martial Meritocrats? Was it you … Was it your doing?"
"Father, do you know why you are still a minor elder of the Li family after more than a hundred years, but you can't even touch the edge of being the leader of the family? Is this how you will be for the rest of your life?"
Li Linghai said with a smile, "Your biggest problem is that you are both blind. I really don't know what you see in a guy as stupid as Li Lingfeng that you have invested so many resources on him!
"I've already warned you time and time again that this pig is not worth investing in. It will only waste the resources that our lineage has painstakingly accumulated for hundreds of years. In the end, we will not be able to make a comeback and will even implicate you and the other brothers and sisters.
"But you just wouldn't listen to me. Great. The war to annihilate the Cultivators in the Martial Meritocrats Sector has been crushed by him. We have even become the greatest laughingstock in front of the entire Imperium. The Li family, especially your bloodline, has been utterly humiliated!
"What right does such a pig have to continue wasting the clan's resources? Even if someone really comes out to clean up the mess, it will be considered as helping us to stop our losses in time. Why do you have to be so concerned?"
"You, you, you really did it!"
Li Mingxuan's eyes instantly turned purple, and his finger that was pointing at Li Linghai trembled. "You're crazy! You're really crazy!"
"That's right. From the moment you poisoned my substitute, I've already gone mad. I've gone completely mad."
Li Linghai continued to smile. "Don't provoke a lunatic, because lunatics never care about the consequences of their actions, and they don't have the slightest bit of logic."
"I regret it very much."
Brutality beamed out of Li Mingxuan's eyes, but there was nothing he could do. "I shouldn't have sent you to the royal palace. I shouldn't have …"
"Then, go somewhere else and regret it. You are as much a pig and garbage as Li Lingfeng. You are not worth wasting my precious time on."
Li Linghai said casually, "I know that all the uncles and elders of the Li family are monitoring this line of communication right now. Also, the leader of the family must be behind you, too. Instead of grinding your teeth with a guy who can't make the decision, why don't you ask the leader to talk to me in person?"
Narrowing his eyes deeply, Li Mingxuan declared, one word after another, "That's impossible. You have committed the most unpardonable crimes and become the greatest traitor and enemy of the Li family. Even if you are lucky enough to invade the Divine Rain Sector, so what? The elites of the family will march back to the Divine Rain Sector very soon and mince you into pieces for the family law!"
"Is that so?"
Slightly frowning, Li Linghai covered his mouth and sneezed softly. "Achoo!"
Li Mingxuan's face immediately changed color.
It was because Li Linghai had sent a brief video over when he sneezed, which had been seen clearly by the big shots of the branches of the Li family.
In the video, a starship whose spiritual shield had been drained and whose plate armor was riddled with holes was blown into smithereens under the collective attack.
In only 0.1 seconds, before Li Linghai's sneeze was over, the starship had been completely obliterated into glittering dust under thousands of dazzling pillars of light.
At a corner of the video, there were also almost a hundred small pictures. Inside each of the pictures was a captive caged on the starship. Every captive was pale, sweating hard, and couldn't have been more panicked.
As the starship exploded, the captives were all consumed by fire. Before they had the chance to scream, they had already turned into ivory nothingness.
"I don't like your tone, Father. So, I've given you some minor punishments."
Li Linghai said with a smile, "The starship of the Divine Rain Fleet seems to be the core descendants of the Li family. They are all the bloodlines of the elders and uncles here. As to which branch they belong to, I don't have the time to identify them. Why don't I send the detailed video to you later and ask you to confirm it for me, Father?
"Listen, Father. I don't want to see your stupid face that looks like a pig anymore, nor do I want to hear your utterly unconstructive voice.
"I've captured more than a hundred starships like the one just now. From now on, I will blow up a starship and everybody on it every minute until the leader of the family is willing to talk to me.
"If you make any meaningless sound again, I will blow up another starship until all the starships and all the captives are killed. Do you understand?"
Li Mingxuan almost burst into fury. "You —"
With a cruel smile on his lips, Li Linghai slowly raised two fingers. "Two starships. You've killed two starships of the Li family's descendants. Please continue.
"I don't care. I'm a dead person in the first place. What else can a dead person want except to drag more people to die with her?"
Li Mingxuan was completely stunned.
Then, the colorful bubbles covered him.
When the bubble dispersed again, the slightly blurred figure deep inside the light beam had turned into a hunchbacked old man in a black suit who looked like a gatekeeper of the netherworld with mountains of wrinkles all over his body.
Li Mingxuan was a silver-haired old man himself, but the old man in black seemed to be five hundred years older than him. He was almost a breathing fossil that might or might not be able to walk anymore.
Even though he looked like a rock that might fall apart at any moment, and even his facial organs were drowned by the wrinkles, when the two glittering eyes deep inside the wrinkles were revealed occasionally, they would still make even the Yuanying experts shudder in fear and sweat hard, as if a soul that had swallowed thousands of devils was hiding inside the shell that might be blown away by the wind at any moment.
The old man was Li Jiande, the leader of the Li family, one of the four Kurfürsten of the Imperium of True Human Beings, and the dominator of the universe who could shake dozens of planets with a cough!
Li Jiande was the oldest of the four Kurfürsten. He was a celebrity of the previous generation of Dongfang Wang, the current Prime Minister of the Imperium. A hundred years ago, he had served as the Prime Minister of the Imperium for thirty years.
When he was in power, he had controlled all the affairs in the military, politics, and the royal palace on his own. When Li Linghai became the Crown Princess and even the queen, he had been the one who made all the decisions and arrangements on his own.
In his prime years, he had once advanced into the legendary "Divinity Branching Stage". With the computational ability a hundred times more powerful than the super crystal processors, he managed all the affairs of the Li family neatly and expanded in various fields. He even led the Li family to challenge the Dongfang family, which was the most powerful force in the world.
It was a pity that his ambitions were too great, and the comprehensive capability of the Li family was much lower than that of the Dongfang family. The result of all the scheming and scheming was that his soul was burnt too much, and his life was seriously drained. He fell back to the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage after only a few decades in the Divinity Branching Stage.
It was said that there were a lot of sequelae because of the excessive use of his brain. He had to rely on the drugs made of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures to maintain himself. He was no longer as glamorous as when he was in his prime years.
Even so, even though he had quit the politics of the Imperium in the decades that followed and did not hold any post in the court, everybody knew that Li Jiande still had the power in the military, politics, economy, media, minerals, and other fields of the Imperium under his control. He was one of the well-deserved "four uncrowned kings".
Today, a hundred years later, Li Jiande seemed old and even dying, and even a gust of cold wind might blow out his incomplete soul. But as long as his small, snake-like eyes were still glowing, nobody inside or outside the Li family dared to challenge his authority.
It was because everybody still remembered clearly how sordid, cruel, and terrifying "Silver Fox" Li Jiande dealt with his enemies a hundred years ago!
Li Jiande, the leader of the Li family and one of the four Kurfürsten, versus Li Linghai, the queen of the Imperium.
The grandfather and the granddaughter looked at each other in silence.
"Your Grace."
In the end, it was Li Jiande who opened his mouth first. Taking a long breath, he finally said, intermittently and vaguely, "Forgive me for being too old and feeble to perform the full etiquette. Cough, cough. Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough."
He coughed weakly.
Li Linghai smiled. "Ancestor, the queen has already passed away. The one standing before you right now is just a random member of the Li family and your biological granddaughter. Is there any need for such a great etiquette?"
"Oh?"
Li Jiande waved his hands, and a muscular, tough attendant immediately delivered a bucket of phlegm. After coughing for a long time and catching his breath, the "Silver Fox" in the past finally continued, "Then, why is my dear granddaughter here?"
"For the future of the Imperium and the future of the Li family."
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.
