by <unknown>
On the last day of July, the second impeachment proposal targeting Dongfang Wang was finally raised by a renowned elder of the Li family who had a lot of followers in the Council of Elders. It demanded for Dongfang Wang's resignation, the previous "special investigation committee" to be disbanded, and a new, fairer special prosecution team to be established and investigate the relationship between the prime minister and the assassination.
Except for the few elders of the Dongfang family who were too close to Dongfang Wang to get away from him, most of the elders were involved in the impeachment against Dongfang Wang.
Many of them were actually the elders from the Dongfang family.
Very ironically, it was actually the elders of the Dongfang family who stood on the side of the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils firmly and even offered abundant evidence to prove that Dongfang Wang, Dongfang Renxin, and the rest of them had long been corrupted by the extraterrestrial devils into Demonic Cultivators.
After the final attack, Dongfang Wang's fall was almost inevitable. There was no chance of a comeback now.
…
On August 4, deep inside the Silver Moon Ocean to the east coast of the main continent of the capital, a hundred warships were flying at a low altitude, almost sticking to the surface of the ocean. The tides that they raised were like a hundred iron sharks that had grown wings.
The warships were in different shapes. It could be easily seen that they had been produced for different purposes. However, they were equally brutal and aggressive. All the turrets had been activated. The spluttering electric arcs and mystic arcs were dancing around themselves, vaporizing the tides into colorful mists that were both splendid and fatal.
On the dozens of warships that were marching forward in parallel, the emblems of the Li family, the Song family, and the Yun family could be found. Some of the warships also carried the sign of the Astounding Thunder Fleet. On the few warships at the edge, there was even the sigil of the Dongfang family.
It turned out to be a coalition fleet that included the major forces of the Imperium right now!
In his crystal suit, Li Yao sat cross-legged at the front of a warship of the Astounding Thunder Fleet, faced with the raging sea wind while the warship rushed forward.
Li Jialing stood behind him, swallowing nervously.
He was not nervous about the upcoming battle but the fact that he was about to meet the theoretically supreme His Majesty of the Imperium of True Human Beings!
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Li Yao tapped the helmet of his crystal suit softly and searched the brief of the mission again.
Yesterday, the impeachment on Prime Minister Dongfang Wang had been passed. Dongfang Wang was displaced from the office immediately. The ten or so elders of the Imperium who were involved in the "cannibal training" and the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance were restrained too.
A new special prosecution team had been set up too, which was mostly made of the reformists and the members of the other three Kurfürst families. There was also a group of members from the secondary branches of the Dongfang family. It would be easier to locate all the evidence with the help of the insiders.
So far, the reformists' goals before the operation had been half accomplished.
However, Dongfang Wang fled one step in advance before the new special prosecution team arrived.
He had a rather huge secret base deep inside the Silver Moon Ocean to the west of the Blackstar Continent. There were even enormous space jump facilities similar to "cosmic slingshot" that could allow his starship to be launched to space from the bottom of the ocean immediately.
He had kidnapped the emperor and intended to jump to space from the undersea base before he jumped to his hometown, which he thought was the only place that still supported him. Then, he could use Emperor Shenwu as his last resistance.
It was a shame that Dongfang Wang overestimated his prestige as the prime minister of Iron and Blood and underestimated the ambitions of the people of his hometown and the speed of their betrayal.
So, before he put his escape plan into practice, the intelligence already came from the Dongfang family. Massive troops immediately flew to the Silver Moon Ocean, blocking all the ways of escape.
The mission of the battle was to capture former Prime Minister Dongfang Wang alive and rescue Emperor Shenwu!
Chapter 2301: The Experience of Showing Off |
The ocean up ahead seemed peaceful and tranquil, but it was in the color of devastating redness under the illumination of sunlight.
The redness soared up into a crimson pillar of smoke that could be seen clearly from hundreds of kilometers away.
It was exactly the location of the undersea base that had been accurately marked by the reconnaissance troops who had come in advance. The base was right below the pillar of smoke.
At this moment, the fastest warships had already reached the smoke. Abundant bombs were released from the warships and sank into the ocean, not exploding until they submerged for almost five hundred meters.
The bombs were so powerful that the blasts raised splendid tides on the surface passing through the seawater hundreds of meters deep. The entire ocean seemed to be boiling.
According to the intelligence, Dongfang Wang's undersea base was constructed in the undersea mountains more than two thousand meters below sea level. Naturally, those bombs could not damage the base at all.
However, they could trigger overwhelming undercurrents below the ocean, which could disrupt the teleportation arrays and stop the starships from being directly launched to space.
Dongfang Wang's last retreat had been completely blocked.
A hundred warships, with almost a hundred thousand elite soldiers on board, flew to the top of the bloody pillar of smoke. A gory hunting was about to begin.
Dongfang Wang in the undersea base seemed to have realized that he had nowhere to go anymore. Even if he was lucky enough to run to space, there would still be no place for him in the enormous Imperium.
But it was absolutely impossible for him to give up and surrender as the former prime minister of the Imperium and the leader of the Dongfang family, to be tied up, tried, and butchered like a pig later.
Resisting in hopelessness and fighting to the last moment was his only outcome.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A hundred serial explosions suddenly echoed from the bottom of the ocean. Then, water pillars as thick as dragons rose abruptly to an altitude of a hundred meters.
From the water pillars, thousands of flying swords and ten times more grenades were shot at the warships overwhelmingly.
Ripples in various colors were spreading out on the spiritual shields of the warships under the barrage. Many of the spiritual shields were shot through, and the power units and the anti-gravity units were badly damaged. Hideous smoke popped up on the starships one after another.
However, more warships had already locked onto where the assault came and counterattacked with the cannons on board. The vast ocean was immediately riddled with holes. The seawater weighing billions of tons was vaporized immediately into a stinky storm of blood.
After a prolonged mutual shooting, the two parties gradually slowed down. Then, tremendous crystal suits and Colossi leaped off from the warships into the ocean.
Both the crystal suits and the Colossi were the best anti-pressure models. They had also been installed with the fin kits for the undersea battle. Even under the pressure of the water thousands of meters deep, they could still carry out at least 60% of their combat ability.
In a moment, the previously dirty water turned translucent under the illumination of the light of the crystal suits and the Colossi. It was almost like a colorful crystal that was emitting gloomy coldness with a weird sense of beauty.
"Let's go now. If we can successfully rescue His Majesty, it will be a major accomplishment!"
Li Yao grinned and said to Li Jialing half-jokingly. Then, he rose and warmed up his limb
s, before he sprinted and leaped from the front of the warship!
While he was still in midair, his crystal suit was already glowing, outlining a cluster of glamorous wings, as if an enormous golden-winged bird was flying out of his body and enshrouding him. His Colossus Gold Vulture showed up again!
BOOM!
The Gold Vulture dived deep into the ocean and swooped to the dark, deep bottom of the ocean.
The battle in the deep ocean was entirely different from those on the ground or in space.
The ocean water was a natural barrier that would significantly disrupt and slow down the transmission of spiritual waves.
Even the weapons such as flying swords and bullets would be terribly decelerated in the water.
It was needless to say that the senses of human beings would be mostly blocked once they entered the deep ocean.
The most terrifying of all was the pressure in the ocean. At the bottom of the ocean thousands of meters deep, the pressure of the seawater was enough to press a crystal tank weighing dozens of tons into a flawless iron ball by brute force. There would not even be a hole that a needle could stab in on the ball.
The battle in such an environment was extremely treacherous even for the experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage who were protected by the super anti-pressure crystal suits and Colossi.
The reason was simple. The experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage could not stay in the Divinity Transformation Stage every second and every minute. It would be quite impressive if they could unleash the intensity of the Divinity Transformation Stage a couple of times in a fierce battle. Most of the time, they would only keep themselves in the Nascent Soul Stage or the Core Formation Stage to lower the consumption on the life and the soul.
The turrets of the latest warship cannons of the Imperium of True Human Beings had a longevity of about three minutes, which meant the addition of all the moments when the cannons were fired.
The same logic applied to the experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage.
No turrets could stand opening fire for dozens of minutes continually, and no experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage could stay in the Divinity Transformation Stage for dozens of minutes by burning their lives incessantly.
The heavy pressure of the seawater, on the other hand, was endless without any gap. Unless one had escaped into an undersea base, it would be impossible for them to relax for a single moment.
From that point of view, Dongfang Wang, who had an undersea base as a shield, was in a much more advantageous position than the attackers.
When Li Yao dived to five hundred meters deep, the entire undersea world was already a mess.
Chaotic currents, turbulences, and dazzling electric arcs triggered by invisible barriers were everywhere. Flames were squeezed into all kinds of bizarre shapes by the water, before their gloomy fluorescence swallowed the lives of countless people.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
The mainframe crystal processor of the Gold Vulture let out alarms nonstop. The entire undersea mountain had almost been built into a forest of flying swords, and a thousand of them darted at Li Yao's face without a sound along with the undercurrents!
While dodging the attacks unhurriedly, Li Yao boosted his telepathic thoughts to the maximum and observed the layout of the undersea base.
At this moment, the elite warriors of the two parties had already clashed. Dozens of Colossi and tens of thousands of crystal suits raised the craziest tides at the bottom of the ocean. One side was determined to capture Dongfang Wang, and the other side was resisting hard because they had no retreat. The battle had entered the most heated phase the moment it started!
"Li Jialing!"
Locking onto a position, Li Yao called the golden-haired lion in the point-to-point private channel. "This way, follow me!"
Evading the last flying sword as agilely as a shark, the Gold Vulture moved to the dark bottom of the ocean.
"Huh?"
Following Li Yao, Li Jialing found it strange. "This… does not seem to be the direction to the main battlefield. The undersea base is that way!"
"Of course I know this isn't the direction to the main battlefield. That's why we are heading this way!"
Li Yao replied matter-of-factly, "Hurry and switch your crystal suit to stealth mode. Turn off all the units except for the anti-pressure ones in case other people discover us!"
While talking, Li Yao turned off the light around the Gold Vulture first. The Colossus now looked like a piece of rusted bronze.
"What are you doing?"
Li Jialing was astonished. "Aren't we supposed to rescue His Majesty?"
"That was just a joke. There are countless loyal and devoted patriots in the Imperium of True Human Beings. It's inappropriate for us to do everything in person, right?"
Li Yao said matter-of-factly again, "Young man, you must keep a low profile and never show off easily!"
Li Jialing: "… B-but you've been showing off in your every battle in the past, Brother Yao!"
"Here, allow Brother Yao to teach you a life lesson about when you can show off and when you can't."
Li Yao said solemnly, "Before, when I showed off in the battles, I had run careful evaluations in advance and foreseen that the difficulty of the battles was not high and the enemies were not determined to resist but likely to collapse at the first sign of failure. If you are engaged in such battles, of course you need to show off, or you won't deserve your hard training, right?
"There is another scenario. The battles are terribly difficult, if not life-blighting, but you have no retreat at all because all the responsibilities are on your shoulders. Then, there is no other way except to try your best. In that case, you might as well die a cool death if you have to be killed!
"But today's battle is different.
"Dongfang Wang used to be the prime minister of the Imperium after all, and he certainly has tremendous extraordinary talents under his command. This place is also the last nest that he has carefully operated on for years with all kinds of traps, barriers, and arrays. This is definitely one of the most dangerous places in the world!
"The experts deployed here are all Dongfang Wang's last trusted subordinates whose lives have been completely tied to Dongfang Wang. There is no way for them to surrender at all. They are just the most ferocious rabid dogs that have no plans of escaping alive. They will feel worth it if they can kill one enemy.
"Also, the water pressure here is so high. Even an expert like myself might have an accident after one moment of carelessness. Is there any reason why we should fight hard with the rabid dogs?
"Furthermore, the four Kurfürst families have all sent experts in the Divinity Transformation Stage for the operation to arrest Dongfang Wang. This place has been beleaguered by so many crystal suits and warships too. It is impossible for Dongfang Wang to get away at all. So, it won't matter whether the two of us join the battle or not.
"Therefore, we will just keep a low profile, hide at the periphery, and clear the small fries who intend to break out of the siege while we cheer for the experts who fight in the front!"
Li Jialing was dazed for a long time, before he said, "But the queen said…"
"Please, don't be so rigid. Just forget what the queen said!"
Li Yao said, "Just sense the experts of the Divinity Transformation Stage on the main battlefield carefully. Can't you tell that 'our' Divinity Transformation Stage experts are all sluggish as if they haven't woken up yet? They are all planning the same, and none of them is willing to lead the vanguard to fight the enemy. Even the main forces of the four families and the reformists are thinking that way. Why do the two of us need to work so hard when we only joined the cause halfway?"
Rendered speechless, Li Jialing followed Li Yao to dive further into the ocean.
Li Yao nodded his head in satisfaction. He was about to teach the boy more life lessons when the Gold Vulture suddenly received a familiar signal from the depths of the dark, bound
less ocean.
Chapter 2302: Battle in the Deep Ocean! |
Bo… Bo… Bo… Bo… Bo…!
The feeble pulse signals were only the meaningless waves of the undersea turbulences or animals for other people, but Li Yao could vaguely distinguish the familiar pace in them.
The pace was the signal of communication that he and the Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector agreed upon when he returned to the Heaven's Origin Sector ready to resist the Black Wind Fleet.
Considering that all methods of communication could be interrupted, they had set up almost twenty different ways of communication. Such signals were exactly one of them.
In the Imperium of True Human Beings, only two people would have known the signals. Besides him, it was Long Yangjun.
So, you are hiding here?
Li Yao's eyes glowed.
As the saying went, "when a tree falls, all the monkeys on it will run away". When Dongfang Wang's cabinet was about to collapse, the Association of Demon Hunters naturally would not cling to their reliance, which was already shaking, anymore.
After all, their loyalty was never to Dongfang Wang himself but to the four Kurfürst families.
When the cannibal training and the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance were exposed and fermented, a series of power struggles burst out within the Association of Demon Hunters. The faction loyal to Dongfang Wang was purged. The whole organization was in a panic and on the brink of collapse.
What was weird was that "Dongfang Mingyue", president of the Association of Demon Hunters, disappeared in advance as mysteriously and unpredictably as she landed on the organization.
Li Yao had been searching for Dongfang Mingyue—or Long Yangjun—to no avail. He thought that the erratic, androgynous guy had long escaped. It never occurred to Li Yao that she was so "loyal" to Dongfang Wang that she was staying by his side to this moment.
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao decided to go to Long Yangjun.
Long Yangjun was definitely not a good guy. She was even possibly a malicious alien species.
