"Wait a moment, wait a moment. Let me think about it …"
Li Yao blinked quickly and said suspiciously, "Why does the ideology of Nepenthe sound more and more like the beliefs of the Holy League? It's almost a mini copy of the Holy League!"
"Yes, you're absolutely right!"
Long Yangjun nodded heavily and said with grievances, "That's why I said that Nepenthe was not established by me at all, and their core ideology was not taught by me. I'm really innocent in the whole thing, alright? It's all the work of the spies of the Holy League! "
"Spies of the Holy League?" Li Yao was immediately alarmed.
Long Yangjun told Li Yao that the Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium of True Human Beings ruled the lower classes cruelly, which naturally raised the intense resistance of the lower classes. The ideas of the Cultivators had decayed a thousand years ago, which gave the spies of the Holy League an opportunity to take advantage of.
The spies of the Holy League were everywhere in the Imperium today. They had their own methods to simulate feelings perfectly and passed the "Ring-Tu Test" that the Imperium used to distinguish human beings from "demi-humans". Then, they disseminated the ideology of the Holy League in the Imperium, which was exactly the same as the theory that "desire is the greatest enemy of a civilization. There have never been any Immortal Cultivators but only Demonic Cultivators. Only by completely purging and erasing them can a civilization and the universe live in peace".
Such absurd ideas had absolutely no market in a place like the Xing Yao Federation where the country was thriving, the society was orderly, and the people had independent will and healthy ideas.
However, under the cruel governance and suppression of the Imperium, countless people, including a lot of Immortal Cultivators, were living in excruciating pain and suffering. Also, they could not see any future for the country where the strong preyed on the weak and brutalized each other like wild animals in a jungle. They had actually abandoned the true path of immortality and embraced the Path of Ultimate Benevolence, which believed in the truth instead of human desires.
Li Yao had once met a colonization team of the Imperium in the Kunlun Mystical Land. Tang Qianhe, the navigator, was a spy of the Holy League who had abandoned the true path of immortality and joined the Path of Ultimate Benevolence.
Of course, Tang Qianhe, who was at the peak of the Core Formation Stage, was one of the rarely-seen high-level spies. She would not expose her identity easily. Instead, she lurked like a ghost in the deep ocean. She would not show up on the surface of the ocean without bothering to hide her identity until she encountered a major event such as the possibility of resurrecting the member of the Pangu Clan.
However, there were still a lot of low-level spies, as well as chess pieces who did not know that they were being used, who were active in the worlds under the Imperium's control, spreading the Path of Ultimate Benevolence fearlessly.
Those people's feelings were highly suppressed. Naturally, they had no fear of death but only infinite loyalty to the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. No matter how the Immortal Cultivators suppressed them, they were not scared of death at all. Even if ten thousand of them were killed today, they would pop up again like inexhaustible weeds the next day.
The Empyreal Terminus Sector was a power vacuum where the four Kurfürst families kept each other in check. The Immortal Cultivators' reign over the bottom-level people was relatively weak. Naturally, the underground world was the best place for the spies of the Holy League and the believers of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence.
The techniques of the people of the Holy League were of the same origin as the heritages that Long Yangjun received. They shared a high commonality and complementarity. Even the spies of the Holy League knew secret arts similar to the Serenity Arts, except that they were incomplete and not as good as Long Yangjun's.
It was the same for the techniques of telepathy. The people of the Holy League could communicate with each other, too, but their techniques had been changed multiple times. Naturally, they were not as marvelous as Long Yangjun's first-hand techniques.
In any case, when the underground hominoids practiced the Serenity Arts and the techniques of telepathy under Long Yangjun's tutelage, they were like a giant magnet that attracted a lot of spies of the Holy League and believers of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence.
The governance at the bottom level of the Imperium of True Human Beings was extremely corrupt, but the spies of the Holy League and the believers of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence were deeply rooted at the bottom level. They were dedicated to helping the poor people resolve their difficulties, and they were even willing to soothe their wounded hearts if they could not resolve their problems. Therefore, the spies of the Holy League and the believers of the Holy League were quite popular at the bottom level. No matter how the Imperium brainwashed the people, part of the people still sympathized with and even supported the spies of the Holy League and the believers of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. That was the best soil for the blossoming of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence.
Now that there was already a ready-made path, it was naturally unnecessary for the believers of Nepenthe to create a new path. Under the bewilderment of the spies of the Holy League and the believers of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence, the doctrines of Nepenthe became a simplified version of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. It was only natural.
If nothing was done, it wouldn't be long before the so-called "Nepenthe" completely became a branch and a forward base of the Holy League in the Imperium, which was highly probable.
Li Yao thought of something when he heard that. "So, there are still spies from the Holy League in Nepenthe right now? The real people of the Holy League?"
Long Yangjun shook her head with a smile and said that Li Yao had misunderstood her. "Spies from the Holy League" and "spies from the Holy League" were two different things. It was true that there were some spies from the Holy League in Nepenthe right now, but they were all natives of the Imperium who were only brainwashed by the Path of Ultimate Benevolence.
Those who brainwashed them were not necessarily real "spies from the Covenant Alliance" but also believers of ultimate benevolence born and raised in the Imperium.
The war between the Imperium and the Holy League had lasted a thousand years. As early as seven hundred years ago, the people of the Holy League had slowly and persistently infiltrated into the Imperium. After hundreds of years and dozens of generations of development, they had completely rooted themselves in the Imperium and become part of the Imperium.
"You shouldn't regard the Alliance of the Holy Covenant as a hostile country from outside."
Thinking for a moment, Long Yangjun said, "Let's take the Ancient Sages Sector as an example. You should regard the Holy League as a combination of an enemy country's invasion and a peasant uprising in your own country. If the Imperium is the Great Qian Dynasty, the Holy League will be the Ghost Qin plus the White Lotus Cult plus the Heaven Battering Army. That's why it is so difficult to annihilate."
Long Yangjun told Li Yao that, after discovering that some of the stealthy guys approached the miners whom she had enlightened, she had captured a few of them and interrogated them with great interest, but she did not find much.
It was not because the spies of the Holy League were too organized. On the contrary, their organization was so loose that there was barely any organization at all. It was impossible for Long Yangjun to trace back to their leader.
"The Holy League's activities in the Imperium are not based on a certain 'organization' but on the 'ideology' of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. The organization can be detected and executed, but the ideology can hardly be destroyed."
Long Yangjun said, "The ideology of the Path of Ultimate Benevolence is like a ghost that wanders in the sky and the earth of the Imperium, tempting a lot of people to 'awaken' spontaneously. The spies of the Holy League that I captured were just common workers, farmers, and students in the beginning. They gave up everything for eternal tranquility because they could not stand the cruel oppression and the dark life. What can I do to them?
"Even if I find their 'superiors', who teach them the arts of telepathy and the ways to suppress their feelings, they are just other common workers, farmers, and students. What can I do to them? As for their 'superiors' again? It is very likely that they have been suppressed by the Immortal Cultivators! There's nothing I can do about it, right? "
Faced with such a complicated situation, even Long Yangjun did not know what to do.
However, she naturally wasn't a pushover either. She couldn't bear to watch others erode her followers and possibly even pry into her secrets.
At first, she was focused on intelligence collection and her own training. By the time she noticed it, Nepenthe already had a certain scale and its own doctrine. Many spies of the Holy League were even asking about her everywhere, wondering if the "Serenity Seraph" was a high-level spy from the Holy League who had been sent to teach them how to disseminate the Path of Ultimate Benevolence and purge the entire Imperium.
Long Yangjun immediately broke out in a cold sweat. She was unwilling to be involved in the war between the Imperium and the Holy League. If the leadership of the Imperium mistakenly thought that a high-level emissary of the Holy League named "Serenity Seraph" had appeared in the capital, wouldn't she be asking to be killed?
Long Yangjun quickly took care of the talkative spies of the Holy League and the believers of Ultimate Benevolence. Then, she grasped Nepenthe in her hands and modified their doctrines so that they were at least not as extreme as the Path of Ultimate Benevolence. She also made up some random rules to restrain them.
She had experience in establishing "Ghost Character", an intelligence and assassination organization. Together with 'Mother White Lotus' Wan Mingzhu, she was a good friend of the "Four Rapscallions" too. It was more than easy for her to manipulate a tiny Nepenthe.
Those rules could be summed up in one sentence. After all, it did not matter what the Nepenthe believers did, as long as they kept it a secret and kept it a secret. Most importantly of all, her identity as the "Serenity Seraph" was not exposed, and she would have to clean up after them if anything went wrong!
Long Yangjun had thought that Nepenthe was just a pure burden and trouble.
However, when Nepenthe was really active below the ground, she discovered that it was not entirely without benefits.
First of all, like a giant magnet, Nepenthe had always attracted a lot of spies of the Holy League and believers of Ultimate Benevolence who shared the same interests.
Through the interaction between those people and Nepenthe, Long Yangjun would be able to study the origins of the Holy League. She suspected that the Holy League at the beginning had developed slowly from a young age just like Nepenthe.
If she could figure out the origins of the Holy League, it would be much more convenient for her to sneak into the Holy League in the future. That was exactly what she meant by "social experiment".
Also, the spies of the Holy League and the believers of Ultimate Benevolence all grasped certain secret arts of brainwashing and telepathy. Although those secret arts were incomplete and crude, they were of the same origin as Long Yangjun's techniques after all and could make up for the shortcomings of her fuzzy, broken heritage that was awakened deep inside her genes.
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.
