Not just the yaksha squad, even Li Yao was slightly dazed after hearing the answer.
What a coincidence. Wasn't the Eternal Light one of the 'laboratories of humanity' of the Holy League that Chu Zhixiao told him the day before, which was a place to test the evolution of human beings' social form when the resources were abundant and inexhaustible?
He did not know that the Puppet King was hiding there.
However, on second thought, it did make sense.
Right now, the Alliance of the Holy Covenant's main mission was the struggle against the Imperium of True Human Beings. Most of the computational ability of the Ultimate Benevolence Masters had to be devoted to the battlefield. The 'laboratories of humanity', on the other hand, were just explorations at the frontier after all. Until the Imperium was completely destroyed, the Ultimate Benevolence Masters would not pay much attention to it. Therefore, it was safer for the Puppet King to hide there.
On the other hand, most of the residents on the Eternal Light did not know the truth of the outside world and were in the state of 'isolation'. Their social form and the environment of the Spiritual Nexus were independent, which made it easier for the Puppet King to lurk and manipulate.
More importantly, if the Puppet King was really Lu Qingchen, the 'country of Cultivators' on the Eternal Light might remind him of his hometown, the Xing Yao Federation. Perhaps, it was one of the reasons why he chose the 'experimental starship of humanity' as his nest.
With Guan Qixing's foreshadowing, Li Yao revealed the address that he had locked onto frankly.
The address that the two of them traced was almost the same, except that Li Yao was more precise. He was almost as precise as a certain crystal processor on the Eternal Light.
Of course, being too precise did not mean much, because the Puppet King was not stupid enough to launch the invasion with only one crystal processor. After a large-scale operation, he would certainly destroy the evidence and replace it with a new one that had not been exposed.
All in all, as long as the Puppet King was confirmed to be hiding on the Eternal Light, everything would be easy to handle.
As it turned out, Chu Zhixiao did not suspect the spider tank. Li Yao's performance had suddenly improved. He simply praised the tracking mode that Guan Qixing developed recently for its usefulness. Then, he sent tremendous data back to the Inquisition through the communication room of the Channeling Temple.
Half an hour later, when the yakshas finished their rest and filled themselves and their magical equipment with enough food and ammunition, new orders were delivered.
The large-scale chaos in the Channeling Temple proved that the Puppet King was already suspicious. There was no time to lose. To prevent him from escaping again, the Yaksha squad immediately set off for the Eternally Radiant Cruiser to destroy the Divine Heart Society and capture the Puppet King!
The difficulty of this operation was not whether or not they could destroy the Divine Heart Association. Instead, they had to block every single path that the Puppet King could take to escape before he noticed anything.
It was very likely that the Puppet King had planted spies in the Holy League's main battleships and the most important star fortresses. A large-scale mobilization would definitely be detected by him.
Besides, the decisive battle between the Holy League and the Imperium was about to begin. At such a delicate moment, it was impossible to disrupt all the arrangements at the frontline just for the Puppet King.
Therefore, the yakshas were still the main force to capture the Puppet King. Of course, most of the Purgers and Cleaners under the Inquisition, as well as a few special forces in the Army of God's Blessings who were good at boarding battles, would jump to the vicinity of the Eternity Light and support the yakshas.
In the end, if possible, the five Ultimate Benevolence Masters did not want the capture operation to disrupt the normal order on the Eternally Radiant Cruiser. It was because the large-scale experiment on human nature had lasted three hundred years and obtained countless interesting data. Their superiors wanted to let the ignorant small world continue to develop and see to what extent the desires of human beings could grow and to what extent the spirituality of human beings could be corroded.
If it was swallowed by the fire of war, all their previous efforts would be in vain. Another three hundred years of accumulation would be required.
Of course, what was more important was the safety of the Puppet King. He had to be captured alive. He could not escape, and he could not commit suicide for fear of punishment. That was because the leaders shared the same opinion as Li Yao. They all believed that the Puppet King could not have appeared out of nowhere. Perhaps, the Puppet King was the puppet of a certain mysterious existence, and the 'mysterious existence' was the most dangerous enemy of the Covenant Alliance!
The codename of the operation was' Ghost Catcher '.
An hour later, the ghost catcher operation was officially launched.
With such an arduous mission, all the members of the yaksha squad, together with a team of elite cleaners and the elite soldiers selected from the 'Blessed Army', boarded an assault warship in the shape of a tusk and slowly sailed into the space most suitable for a space jump at the edge of the Golden Lion Sector.
Sensing that the vast sea of stars outside of the cabin was getting more and more unpredictable, Li Yao suddenly had a weird feeling.
Fast. It was too fast.
Ever since he learned of the Puppet King's existence, he had transformed into a spider chariot, infiltrated the Yaksha team, and participated in the mission to capture the Puppet King. He had jumped from the Heresy Inquisition to the Channeling Temple, and was about to jump from the Channeling Temple to the Eternal Light. He had traveled through several Sectors, but only a few days had passed.
Carrying out missions in the Holy League was entirely different from when he was in the Federation and the Imperium.
There was no need to mention the Xing Yao Federation. Even in the Imperium of True Human Beings, the people he was faced with were all living, fleshy, and full of personalities.
Queen Li Linghai, Prime Minister Dongfang Wang, Jin Yuyan, Director of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, and even Blackstar the Great were all concrete people with their own ideas, ambitions, and desires.
However, in the Holy League, except for the outliers such as the 'Devil's Child' and the 'yaksha', the soldiers and workers at the bottom level, the priests who were the Ultimate Benevolence people, the director of the Inquisition of Heresy, and even the Ultimate Benevolence Masters who just showed up in the holy light of the portable crystal processors had no features or personalities. Their faces were blurred, and they did not look like concrete human beings at all. They were more like a symbol, a masked ghost without a mask, or a component on an enormous machine.
Imagine a gigantic, precise, and solid machine the size of a planet made of a hundred trillion components. Everybody, including the director of the Inquisition of Heresy and the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, was an insignificant screw in the machine that could be replaced at any time. That was Li Yao's feeling when he carried out the mission.
Drifting in the vast sea of stars with a starship as the carrier for eternity made one feel insignificant and lonely.
One starship, on the other hand, was not enough to maintain the most fundamental resource circulation. One had to rely on the unpredictable Spiritual Nexus to receive missions and supplies from an unknown place. It also deepened one's faith and admiration for a certain supreme power. Without knowing it, one's personality and self would be deprived, and they would be mutated into a tiny part of the enormous machine.
As a result, any random order sent over from the portable crystal processors would become a law that was enough to make people dedicate and sacrifice without any hesitation. There was no need to figure out who sent the order or consider the truth behind the order.
That was exactly what the Covenant Alliance was. It was an out-and-out "national machine" that had been activated to the maximum in the literal sense.
However …
Behind any machine, there was always a manipulator.
Even if there wasn't one right now, somebody would've set up the programs and tasks of the machine a long time ago.
Who was the manipulator of the enormous machine that was the Holy League? Was it the five Ultimate Benevolence Masters whose faces were blurred and who did not have any personality or features, the sleeping Pangu, or … something else?
While Li Yao was pondering, he sensed the soul ripples that the mental devil spread over.
"Hey, don't you feel that something is not right?"
The mental devil asked.
"What is not right?"
Li Yao was slightly dazed and asked back.
"The fact that the Puppet King was locked onto by us so easily," the mental devil said.
The mental devil said, "Think about it. The Puppet King shattered all the surveillance videos and data that he used to activate Gao Huan. He deleted them again and again. It's almost impossible to recover them. Had we not been gifted and familiar with his methods, it would've been impossible for us to recover them.
"It is obvious that he does not want anybody to discover him and track him down, right?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
Li Yao said, "Of course the Puppet King does not want anybody to find him. Finding him means death. What's wrong with that?"
"Don't be hasty. Listen to me."
"The problem is, if the King of Puppets really did not want anybody to find him, why did he keep the senior priest under his control, the loophole, or 'mouth', alive?"
"Huh …"
Li Yao thought quickly and realized what was going on. After being reminded by the mental devil, he realized that something was not right, too. "Fair enough. On the surface, the fierce battle that took place in the Channeling Temples just now was truly soul-stirring. A large batch of infected people were raging, and the high-level priests were fleeing in panic before they were killed by self-detonation in the end. Also, there was the special skill of the big players on the Spiritual Nexus. Their telepathic thoughts were flying crazily among the seventy or so Sectors, making it seem like a thrilling movie.
"However, it was unnecessary for the Puppet King to go through so much trouble. It was unnecessary for him to keep the priest alive in the first place. After completing the quest to 'activate Gao Huan', he could've simply killed the priest to silence him. Wouldn't everything have been settled once and for all? Even the deities would not know that he was hiding on Eternal Light at all.
"Alright. Even if the senior priest was an important chess piece that he arranged in the Channeling Temple and he was reluctant to kill the senior priest at the beginning after he corrupted him, he should've killed him in advance when the yakshas came to investigate the Channeling Temple, shouldn't he?
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