The dark war between the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils and the Association of Demon Hunters had begun!
Since the ancient times, as long as a country set up an intelligence agency, there would never be only one. At the very least, two overlapping and incompatible departments would be set up.
If only one intelligence agency was set up, like the Xing Yao Federation more than a hundred years ago, where the "Secret Sword Bureau" was the sole authority in charge of intelligence and secret law enforcement, as long as the leader of the agency was ambitious, it would be very easy for the rulers of higher levels to be blinded and overruled, resulting in the most dire consequences.
The "Riot of Patriots" that Lu Zui instigated with the Secret Sword Bureau as his subordinates was the best example.
Therefore, in the age of the new Federation, the intelligence agency of the Federation was divided into Guo Chunfeng's Secret Sword Bureau and Jin Xinyue's Dim Moon Fund. They competed with each other and cooperated with each other. That was the only way to ensure that the national security would not be threatened no matter which party was ambitious.
It was the same logic in the Imperium of True Human Beings. Five hundred years ago, when the royal power was in its heyday, however favored the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils was, the emperor never thought of abolishing the Association of Demon Hunters. In the five hundred years that followed, however dominating the four Kurfürst families were, and however many contributions the Association of Demon Hunters made for them to seize power in secret, they failed to completely destroy the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils.
That was exactly the way of checks and balances. Whether it was the emperor or the four Kurfürsten in power, they would not completely trust the intelligence and special service agencies.
The two intelligence agencies had to be entangled in the gloomy fate and fight each other eternally, proving to the authorities that they were the colder, sharper, and more efficient sabers of darkness!
Right now, the operation of "Honor the Majesty and Settle the Rebellions" had reached the second step.
The Dongfang family had sensed the vague hostility of the other three families. They were even more scared that Lei Chenghu's Thunder Fleet would march into the heartland of the Dongfang family and sabotage it together with the enemy. Therefore, the main force of the family's fleet did not dare to act recklessly.
Neither Lei Chenghu nor the leadership of the other three families wanted a full-scale civil war. Unless it was absolutely necessary, none of them were willing to mobilize their fleets to fight a life-and-death battle in space.
Led by the influential people and the respected elders, the four families and the reformists reached a temporary tacit agreement. The table named "Imperium" could not be flipped. Whoever opened fire first would completely flip the table, smash everybody's cake, and become the enemy of all the other forces. They would certainly be attacked by all the other forces!
Now that all the forces on the surface were occupied, it was the best time for the dark forces showed their abilities.
With the support of the four families, especially the Dongfang family, the Association of Demon Hunters was much larger and stronger than the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils. By conservative estimation, the number of "demon hunters" was at least five times higher than that of "devil huntresses".
However, the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils had the advantage that the enemy was in the light and they were in the dark. In the past hundred years, they had been so low-key that they were almost like an insignificant government agency. Nobody knew that they had been secretly modified by the queen in recent decades. The devil huntresses who were trained with the unparalleled techniques in the mausoleum of the Supreme Emperor were as good as the toughest demon hunters in terms of combat ability. They were even better in terms of weirdness and brutality.
More importantly, the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils was on the offensive, and they could choose their "hunting targets" freely.
It must be noted that the dozens of Sectors around the Empyreal Terminus Sector were nominally ruled by His Majesty in person, but the bureaucrats in those places were all directly dispatched by His Majesty.
Of course, in today's decline of the royal power, "directly dispatched by the emperor" was no more than an empty phrase. The bureaucrats and administrative agencies in the dozens of Sectors directly under the emperor's command had long been infiltrated by the four families. More than half of them were controlled by them.
However, it also meant that a lot of Immortal Cultivators from the vassal families of the Dongfang family had to live and work in those places because of their high positions in the capital.
Those people had the Dongfang family as their backer. Naturally, they were not honest, upright officials who exploited the Immortal Cultivators and the bottom-level people of other forces under the guise of His Majesty. While they provided benefits for their family incessantly, they would also take advantage of the opportunity to satisfy their own selfish desires. It was a "convention" that they were used to.
Ever since Li Linghai made up his mind to "renew the Imperium", he had collected tremendous evidence in secret, which was also known as "cannonballs".
In the past, the Dongfang family's position was indestructible. Those cannonballs would've been resolved easily even if they were launched. Even the other three families would cover for the Dongfang family. Not a single piece of news would appear on the Spiritual Nexus.
But today was different from the past. The reformists had demonstrated their magnificent strength, and the Dongfang family had suffered a great loss in the previous phase. Everybody could vaguely see the weakness of the Dongfang family. That was why they had the support of the Li family and the acquiescence of the Yun family and the Song family.
Once those cannonballs exploded, the damage would definitely be shocking.
Most importantly of all, the Immortal Cultivators of the Dongfang family who occupied the high positions in the capital had to be captured!
There were thousands of such Immortal Cultivators. The Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils could choose who to capture at will.
However, the Association of Demon Hunters had to set up defenses everywhere. Every important person of the Dongfang family could not be missed and had to be protected.
However many demon hunters there were, together with the tough bodyguards of the Dongfang family, they were far from enough. It was not like every Immortal Cultivator of the Dongfang family would be protected by seventy battle-type Immortal Cultivators when they went to work, right?
It was even more impossible to evacuate the capital and return to the Dongfang family's own territory.
Such an act of fleeing without a fight would be considered by the Li family, the Yun family, and the Song family as a sign of weakness. Once the three wavering families took the reformists' side, the Dongfang family would truly be doomed.
Therefore, however difficult it was, they had to hold on until Dongfang Wang finished mobilizing his troops in secret and reached an unspeakable agreement with the other three families. Then, they would win.
It remained to be seen who would be the final winner!
In May, the hottest summer of the year came early to the Empyreal Terminus Sector.
The series of news that shocked the entire capital, no, the entire universe, was mixed with the intense smell of smoke in the dry wind.
On May 2, Dongfang Yu, the director of education of the military who was responsible for the seventy-one advanced military schools of the Imperium, was arrested by the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils when he was on his way to a meeting. The next day, the media under the Li family's banner exposed a shocking case of unfair distribution of military credits. Then, hundreds of members of the military education system were involved. Of course, most of the people involved in the case had the surname Dongfang.
On May 5, the CEO of the "Black Mountain Bank of the Imperium", which ranked among the top twenty banks of the Imperium, was arrested in his own residence. Although the bodyguards who had upgraded their defense and firepower resisted hard, the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils still captured him alive and took him away before the experts of the Association of Demon Hunters arrived. As for exactly where he was taken to? Sorry, nobody knew. The public headquarters of the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils had long been emptied. Only a few bottom-level clerks were still working. As for Yue Wushuang and her most elite devil huntresses, nobody knew where they were hiding or which target they had set their eyes on.
May 7 … May 8 … May 10 …
The officials of the Dongfang family and its vassal families were secretly arrested almost every day. Their crimes would be exposed on the media under the Li family's banner the next day or even at the same time. Some of them were corruption, and some of them were criminal cases that had been sealed for a long time. It was perfectly normal for the Immortal Cultivators to fight and kill each other. Even the families of the victims would not choose to settle it with the law but seek revenge through private punishment after practicing their techniques. However, theoretically speaking, the law could certainly punish them. It did not matter whether or not they were guilty. What mattered was to let everybody in the entire universe see clearly that the Dongfang family was not invincible!
The forces of Immortal Cultivators large and small within the Imperium were like sharks large and small. The blood of the Dongfang family would certainly drive them crazy. As long as enough blood was spilled, all the sharks would lunge at the Dongfang family without caring about anything.
Faced with the attack that the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils had been planning for a long time, the Association of Demon Hunters naturally counterattacked aggressively.
While countless officials and magnates of the Dongfang family were secretly arrested and put on the hat of "Demonic Cultivators", the Association of Demon Hunters took the initiative to attack and did the same to the reformists and the Immortal Cultivators of the Li family.
However, the Li family was not as strong as the Dongfang family, and not many people had infiltrated the capital. The reformists, on the other hand, had been acting stealthily all the time. How could it be so easy to capture them in such a hurry?
The Association of Demon Hunters, in their haste, became crazier and crazier, not caring about the damage to the Empyreal Terminus Sector at all. After suffering a few setbacks, they truly found quite a few secret bases of the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils. The competition in the darkness was a hundred times crueler than the competition of fleets in space!
Every day, countless demon hunters and devil huntresses would stab sabers and swords into each other's bodies in the shabby alleys below the ground of the capital. Then, they would hug each other and fall into the bottomless abyss, dying together.
Every minute, brilliant plays of schemes, frauds, bribes, betrayals, and counter-betrayals were being played out.
Every second, 100% of human beings would be branded as "demons" or "Demonic Cultivators" because of conflicts of interests and thrown into the bottomless dungeons.
Perhaps, the slaughters of human beings were always crueler than the wars of human beings against demons and extraterrestrial devils.
On May 19, in White Stone City on the west coast of the main continent …
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