by <unknown>
"Also, Speaker Jiang's political career began from the Grand Desolate Plateau, but the city that he operated for more than ten years was demolished in the beast tide! Therefore, Speaker Jiang hates the demons' guts, and he certainly has a motive to join the Patriots Partnership!
"In conclusion, the assassination of the Speaker was a show directed and starred by Jiang Hailiu himself. He cleared all suspicion in such a way! It would be best if Lu Zui's plan went well. But if it didn't, he could still jump out and proceed with the backup plan!
"Now, Lu Zui has thrown out a batch of nests of the Patriots Partnership, which distracted most of the experts in the federation to the south and the East Ocean. The forces near the capital city are weaker than ever. All the representatives and experts are suspecting whether or not someone else is a remnant of the Patriots Partnership. It is a mess!
"At this point, if Jiang Hailiu has an unexpected force under his control, he will be able to do whatever he wants!
"As expected of the Speaker. What a well-played game. He can't possibly fail either way!"
Guo Chunfeng nodded quickly. "Very reasonable. Very reasonable. You are truly… Wait! There's a minor problem. Suppose Speaker Jiang is truly another leader of the Patriots Partnership, why would he go through the unnecessary trouble?
"If he and Lu Zui were the leaders of the Patriots Partnership, since Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao has always been a simpleminded hawk, they would've been able to wage a war three months ago when the capital city suffered a beast tide? Why the fuss?
"At that time, most of the representatives voted for the war. It was because of the insistence of the minority, including Speaker Jiang, and the endorsement of the allies from the Flying Star Sector that the two parties were at an impasse. Eventually, Lu Zui was forced to set a trap and assassinate the Speaker!"
"Well, the question—" Li Yao smiled and blinked, his face rigid. "—is a good one! How could I have neglected such a loophole!"
"…" Guo Chunfeng.
"…" Lu Zui.
"Wait!" Li Yao's nose flapped, as if he smelt something unusual from the air. His eyes shone as he asked suddenly, "Brother Guo, you mentioned a name just now… Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao!
"Right! Right! Right! I finally know why I always felt that something was off now!
"Before I returned to the Heaven's Origin Sector, Jin Tuyi told me that there were three key people for the peace negotiation, namely Speaker Jiang Hailiu, Director Lu Zui, and Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao!
"But during the incident, after Lu Zui and Jiang Hailiu both played their roles, Lu Zui being the villain, and the Speaker being blown up the moment he showed up, which was not his fault, where was Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao?
"The capital city was a total mess a while back. Why did the seasoned general not come here and calm everybody down? He didn't seem to exist at all, did he?"
Guo Chunfeng thought for a moment and said, "The entire federation was anxious after the Speaker was assassinated. The federal army was seething, too. To stabilize the military, the Iron Commander flew to the Grand Desolate Plateau in person that night to supervise the large-scale joint drill with the code name 'Furious Fist'."
Li Yao squinted. "The Speaker was assassinated during the day, and the Iron Commander went to the Grand Desolate and planned a drill at night? That was quite efficient!"
"Not exactly." Guo Chunfeng explained, "The 'Furious Fist' drill was planned three months ago after the incident in the capital city. Four crystal suit legions and more than twenty general legions were involved. For the drill, several war bases have been established on the Grand Desolate Plateau.
"Real soldiers and real bullets were used in the drill. The scenario of the drill was that, after a large-scale war broke out, the federal army would march through the Dark Desolate Domain into the Nine Voids in the Blood Demon Sector, where they would establish a base and a beachhead for the follow-up troops.
"Therefore, the drill had long been prepared. It was only activated several days earlier because of the attack on the Speaker.
Li Yao swallowed and felt that his throat was burning. "Four crystal suit legions plus twenty general legions? Real soldiers with real bullets? Supervised by Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao in person? It means that the drill can be transformed into… a real attack at any minute, right?"
"Not likely." Guo Chunfeng shook his head. "Although the drill is highly simulative, the ammunition and supplies that they bring will not be as many as in a real war. More importantly, the logistics department and the follow-up troops are not prepared at all.
"Even if so many legions march into the Blood Demon Sector, they don't stand any chance of winning without reinforcements."
"Is it possible that there are no reinforcements?" Li Yao looked at Guo Chunfeng gloomily. "Suppose the 'simpleminded' Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao really leads twenty legions into the Blood Demon Sector without caring about anything, will we simply wait and watch them to be killed?"
Guo Chunfeng shuddered and sweated hard. "Zhou Hengdao is truly a big shot in the military who enjoys unparalleled prestige, but the federal army is not his personal troop. It is the country that the soldiers pledge loyalty to but not a certain individual! All the soldiers know that it is a drill. How can Zhou Hengdao command all the legions to march into the Blood Demon Sector? Won't that be a mutiny?"
Li Yao scratched his head hard. "It does make sense, but I still feel that something is wrong. Right. You mentioned that it is a 'joint drill'. Who's joining the drill?"
"Burning Prairie, the best warship of the three Sectors! One of the purposes of the 'Furious Fist' drill is to hone the teamwork between the warship of the Flying Star Sector and the army of the Heaven's Origin Sector, as well as to integrate the two hundred thousand Grand Illusionary Soldiers into the federal army.
"Also, most of the marines on Burning Prairie are rookies as well, and the performance of Burning Prairie is not very steady itself. Both the crew and the warship have to be polished in a live drill!"
Burning Prairie used to be 'Heavenly Phantom', a crystal warship co-produced by the six sects of Heavenly Saints City and the Star Fighters' Alliance only to be taken over by Xiao Xuance, the leader of the Immortal Cultivators.
Heavenly Phantom was Xiao Xuance's biggest reliance in the insurgency. Naturally, he spared no efforts infiltrating Heavenly Phantom.
When the insurgency broke out, most of the marines on Heavenly Phantom had been Immortal Cultivators. The critical posts were almost exclusively controlled by them!
More importantly, the 'star brain', which was the mainframe crystal processor of Heavenly Phantom, had been under the control of the 'star child' from the Imperium of True Human Beings!
Therefore, after the insurgency was suppressed, the Heavenly Phantom left to the Flying Star Sector had been a mess. The mainframe crystal processor had been completely ruined, and most of the marines had been arrested and trialed. It was truly a sorry scene.
Heavenly Phantom was not recovered, repainted, and renamed as Burning Prairie until several years later.
However, it was much easier to repair a warship than to raise marines. It was also significantly more difficult to get a mainframe crystal processor that could replace the 'star child'!
To resist the Imperium of True Human Beings' invasion a hundred years later, the hundreds of sects of the Flying Star Sector united and established a new armed force named 'Burning Prairie Fleet', prepared to bring up a batch of best warriors from scratch!
Burning Prairie, as the first-generation flagship of the fleet, was naturally responsible for the education of the new soldiers.
Right now, half of the marines on Burning Prairie were veterans recruited from various space zones of the Flying Star Sector. They were experienced, but their cooperation was not yet flawless.
The other half of the marines were the boy scouts of Burning Prairie, who would grow up together with the super warship in the decades to come.
To match the
computational ability of the 'star child', the mainframe crystal processors from the Star Ocean Imperium were moved out of the Star Prier's House below the ground of Spider Den and made into a super computation array with more than ten state-of-the-art crystal processors produced in the Flying Star Sector.
Although the specifications were as good as the star brain, the stability was still a serious problem, and faults were occurring every now and then.
Therefore, Burning Prairie today did not have as a high combat ability as when Xiao Xuance was alive, especially in terms of stability and manipulability.
In light of that, the citizens of the Flying Star Sector delivered Burning Prairie to the Heaven's Origin Sector, hoping that it could be polished and regain its top combat ability as soon as possible.
"Brother Guo, I have a feeling."
Li Yao squatted slowly and scratched his hair hard. Staring at the expressionless Lu Zui in the corner, he mumbled, "Putting such a super warship, which is not stable enough and has half a crew of rookies, next to the veterans like 'Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao' who have been fighting bloody battles for two hundred years…
"… is like putting an ignorant, newborn tiger and a scarred, cunning wolf together. The former is definitely going to be tricked by the latter!"
Chapter 1136: Dual Cores! |
Guo Chunfeng's sweat congregated into two pools below his feet, and he seemed to lose several pounds all of a sudden. He tapped on his portable crystal processor quickly, projecting more than ten light beams.
"Take a look, young brother. After the 'expedition motion' was paused, the Speaker issued an 'ultimate order' as the supreme commander of the federal army, ordering all troops on the Grand Desolate Plateau to quit the preparation for war and stand by in their respective garrisons. The troops from the south of the Grand Desolate Plateau to the Giant Blade Pass are now being summoned. Those participating in the drill from the north of the Grand Desolate Plateau to the Dark Desolate Domain will finish the drill and return to the bases soon."
"How are you certain that the military will follow the ultimate order?" Li Yao asked.
"The ultimate order is directly sent to Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao and the commanders of every legion," Guo Chunfeng explained. "The Iron Commander expressed his shock and replied that Duanmu Ming—the commander of the Dragon Horse Legion, who is also a Child of the Nether World—was already arrested. The commanders of the legions all indicated that they would obey the order and not attack easily.
"Powerful as the Patriots Partnership might be, and high as Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao's prestige is, they are not enough to make dozens of commanders disobey the ultimate order at the same time!"
Li Yao thought quickly and asked, "How does the inland communicate with the Grand Desolate Plateau nowadays? As I recall, the Spiritual Nexus on the Grand Desolate Plateau has never been steady, has it? After the burn-everything-to-the-ground strategy was implemented, there are barely any towns on the Grand Desolate Plateau now. The only establishments left are military camps. How do you ensure the connection of the Spiritual Nexus?"
The communication between the inland and the Grand Desolate Plateau had always been a headache for the federation.
The Spiritual Nexus counted on the spiritual waves that were released by the spiritual towers, a type of special magical equipment.
The Grand Desolate Plateau had been given such a name because it was both 'grand' and 'desolate'. On such a vast, unpopulated desert, it would consume astronomical resources to set up enough spiritual towers to build a network and maintain their daily operation.
To make matters worse, the Grand Desolate Plateau was also plagued by disasters, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, and beast tides. Any disaster might cause serious damage to the spiritual towers.
Therefore, the Spiritual Nexus on the Grand Desolate Plateau was intermittent and unstable.
Ever since the federal army implemented the burn-everything-to-the-ground strategy, deciding to trade space for time, the Grand Desolate Plateau had essentially been abandoned, and the coalition army of demons had galloped on it without any obstacles.
The first things that the coalition army of demons destroyed were, of course, the spiritual towers, which were the most important nodes of communication.
Now, although the coalition army of demons had retreated to the Blood Demon Sector, the spiritual towers on the Grand Desolate Plateau had mostly been ruined and would not be reconstructed so easily.
In the north of the Grand Desolate Plateau, at the Dark Desolate Domain, which was the point of impact for the two worlds and boasted the most chaotic magnetic field, the situation was even worse.
Due to the tremendous spiritual waves that the spiritual towers released, they were like natural lightning conductors and always tended to attract all kinds of violent spiritual energy. Few spiritual towers were able to survive one month in the Dark Desolate Domain.
Therefore, the further one went north, the more difficult it would be to communicate. The Dark Desolate Domain was often off the network all year round.
Once upon a time, Li Yao had been trapped in the Thunderous Sound Mountain in the Dark Desolate Domain. It was exactly because of the absence of signals that he had needed to travel on his own for ten days and ten nights before he finally fled from the hunting squad of the silver-blood demons.
"For the joint drill, and to march into the depths of the Blood Demon Sector later, the federal army has developed a batch of highly-powerful, super-large spiritual towers on their own," Guo Chunfeng said. "Such spiritual towers have been established on the Dark Desolate Domain and the north of the Grand Desolate Plateau as 'communication bases'. Now, sixteen communication bases are working and responsible to relay messages."
"It means that, controlling the sixteen bases will be grabbing the throat of communication between the capital city and the frontline, and whoever controls the bases can block all messages sent to the troops performing the drill or fake the replies of all the commanders of said troops, right?" Li Yao asked.
Guo Chunfeng pondered for a moment and said, "It is very difficult even in theory. All the commanders of the legions in the drill have their unique identification code. Other than them, the only one—"
"The only one who knows it is Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao, right?" Li Yao's voice was cold.
Guo Chunfeng was silent for a long time. He shook his head slowly. "I don't believe that Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao is a schemer. It's not about his attitude but about his character.
"Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao is most famous for his valiance and straightforwardness in the federal army. He is definitely not sophisticated enough to prepare such a delicate trap!
"Don't say that he has pretended to be 'simpleminded' for a hundred years to realize his ambitions. It must be noted that, until one year ago, he couldn't have foreseen that the Imperium of True Human Beings would arrive at all or that a truce between mankind and the demon race would be struck. Was it necessary for him to hide his really personality for more than a hundred years?"
"The Iron Commander doesn't have to be a schemer." Li Yao nodded at the corner of the prison with his chin. "Because there is already a super schemer in the Patriots Partnership.
"Lu Zui is responsible for planning, and Iron Commander is in charge of the implementation and the desperate resort when the scheme is unveiled!
"For the two of them, one is good at thinking, and the other is good at fighting. They have their own disadvantages and advantages. Together, they are the two cores of the Patriots Partnership and the real guys behind the curtain!"
Guo Chunfeng's face was even more awful than before. "An hour ago, about the time you woke up, Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao just sent back a message from the Dark Desolate Domain, claiming that the troops in the drill were engaged in a rarely-seen super thunderstorm. Three communication bases were destroyed, and most of the spiritual waves were jammed. He said, they wouldn't be able to reach out to the inland for a lo
ng time. He asked us not to be anxious. The bases would be repaired soon. He would be sending signalmen to contact the rear in the meantime…"
Guo Chunfeng could not talk any more. They looked at each other and saw the shock in each other's eyes at the same time.
"If what you said is truth, we are now in a bad situation!" Guo Chunfeng gnashed his teeth. "Right now, no towns or sects are left on the Grand Desolate Plateau. The Cultivators scattered on the Grand Desolate Plateau almost all belong to the military. We don't know which of them work for Zhou Hengdao and which ones don't at all!
"All the elite forces inland have been dispatched to the south and the East Ocean. It will take some time for them to return even if they are summoned immediately!
"The communication with the troops in the Dark Desolate Domain might be under the manipulation of Zhou Hengdao. Because of the super thunderstorm, we cannot even reach out to Burning Prairie. Our message cannot be sent at all!
"It is very possible that the thunderstorm is the work of the 'weather troop' under Zhou Hengdao's command, which will last however long he wants it to last!
"Even if we send someone over right now, it will still take at least two to three days before they reach the troops—that is if the Iron Commander is not blocking them!
"Two to three days is enough for the Iron Commander to do a lot of things!"
Both of them trembled. They eyed Lu Zui as if he were a viper that had become all the more dangerous in its dying struggle!
Guo Chunfeng could not help but bellow, "What—what are you up to exactly?!"
"Hehe…" Lu Zui turned his face to them again. Cold brilliance was focused in his eyes again as he said casually, "Everything is just your speculation without any proof. I will not acknowledge anything. If you are capable enough, why don't you ask Iron Commander Zhou Hengdao on the Grand Desolate Plateau?
