by <unknown>
Li Yao looked around. The crystal processors, the blood pools, and the broken limbs on the ground all turned into translucent entities, but the water drops and the nerve clusters were more and more eye-catching and real.
He did not know whether he was on the boundary of reality and illusion, or if he was inside the realm that Blackstar the Great built with his massive mental power, or maybe his soul had been absorbed into Blackstar the Great's head.
When he turned around, Queen Li Linghai, whose long hair was half black and half white and whose eyes were the same, was standing in the depths of the mist and staring at him with a mysterious look on her face.
The nerves extending from the black water drops were all connected to her long hair. No, they were even simply part of her hair!
Her long hair dancing like water plants, Li Linghai walked toward him unhurriedly.
After her every step forward, the black water drops floating in the air would be stimulated and grow even more nerves.
On Li Linghai's pale skin, interconnected black cracks were showing up too. Her skin fell apart like a broken vase, with the pieces splashing everywhere. Enshrouded in dark flames, she went through such drastic changes that it was like a rebirth.
After she walked the thirty meters, the shell of "Li Linghai" was completely broken, and a tall, majestic man was revealed.
The man whose long black hair was waving crazily had a deeply hollowed face that left the impression that his whole mouth was a ravenous mouth that could swallow the whole cosmos and all the living creatures in it.
When an ordinary person stood before him, it was like standing before a cliff that was inclined to them and could collapse any moment, smashing them into pieces.
Li Yao had seen the unique soul-stirring face on countless occasions—say, from the overwhelming statue in the Emperors' Mausoleum in the capital.
It was Blackstar the Great!
Li Yao confirmed that he had suffered Wuying Qi's attack without him knowing it and entered a certain illusionary realm that was controlled by Wuying Qi.
That was because Wuying Qi's soul was still trapped inside Li Linghai's shell in reality. It was impossible for him to reveal his real appearance just yet.
However, for the experts in Li Yao's level, when their lives were under threat, their cells and their souls would have intuitional reactions, resulting in intense stimulations that would get him away from the illusion.
It was one of the reasons why Wuying Qi dare not attack him in the real world.
The other reason was perhaps that Wuying Qi was confident of his brainwashing abilities. Now that he had a chance to have a mental communication with Li Yao face to face, he believed that he could transform Li Yao into his own subordinate, and therefore, he was unwilling to waste a "talent" like Li Yao.
"Don't come any closer!"
Thinking of what the mental devil said, Li Yao frowned so hard that his eyes almost popped up. The muscles on his face rose like boas, and the flames of spiritual energy over his body soared to the maximum. He shouted, "If you get any closer, I'll cry for help!"
Chapter 2615: Treatment and Purge |
Wuying Qi smiled.
The smile of the ancestor of the Immortal Cultivators was like a narrow gap on a whole sky of clouds, but what was revealed in the gap was not the light of stars but the darkness that was even deeper.
"You are about to die, and yet you still have such a good sense of humor. I really don't know whether I should hate you or if I should admire you, Vulture Li Yao!"
Wuying Qi did stop. Although there was no difference whether he stopped or not in the illusional realm, it was at least a gesture of kindness. He opened his arms at Li Yao and complimented in a seemingly sincere way, "From my personal perspective, you are like a cockroach that simply cannot be killed. You've stood in my way again and again and almost disrupted my whole plan. I truly hate your guts.
"But I'm not just the supreme sovereign of the Imperium of True Human Beings but also the leader of mankind in the next ten thousand years. From the perspective of the Imperium and the civilization, you are a one-of-a-kind genius, and since you know a thing or two about the secrets of the grand universe, you will be very helpful for the magnificent plan for the civilization of mankind to march toward the infinite universe.
"Therefore, I really can't bear killing you, Li Yao!
"Ever since our meeting in the Seven Seas Grand Market the other day, I've been thinking how the two of us became enemies. Weren't we very close to each other when I cooperated with you under the name of Li Linghai? How did we become so hostile and incompatible later?
"We have more things in common than we do with the 'false Immortal Cultivators' of the four families, who are shortsighted, selfish, and corrupt. Neither of us cares about our personal gains. We both want to dedicate all our wisdom and courage to our country and even the civilization of mankind. We both more or less know the massiveness of the universe and the narrowness of the world we are in. We both crave to break out of the cage whatever it may take, like the fish reaching for the continent and the monkeys walking out of the forest in the beginning. We want to escape from this dark dungeon and silent graveyard!
"Why can't we collaborate and vanquish our common enemies—the 'false Immortal Cultivators' in the four Kurfürst families, the puppets of the Covenant Alliance who worshipped the fake gods, and the infinite alien civilizations lurking in the depths of this boundless universe—when we have so many qualities in common?
"Our enemies should be them, but not each other. The 'Blackstar the Great' in your knowledge has been highly twisted and slandered by the propaganda that was under the control of the four Kurfürst families. You don't know what the real me is like and what my ambitions and dreams are, and you are betting your everything recklessly to destroy my efforts, the hope of the Imperium, and the future of all human beings including your fellow Cultivators?"
As Wuying Qi talked, more and more black water drops floated upward, and more and more thread-like nerves proliferated from the water drops. Interconnecting with each other, they constructed a delicate net and even attacked Li Yao tentatively, attempting to crawl into Li Yao's pores.
"Cut the crap!"
Li Yao scorned. Flames of spiritual energy burst all over his body, congregating into a solid wall that prevented the black nerves from attacking. "It's true that I don't know what the real Wuying Qi looks like, or whether you are the 'real' Wuying Qi instead of something more evil and horrible than the original Wuying Qi after being contaminated by god knows what in your thousand years of hiding. I don't care what you say and think; I am only interested in what you do. You are going to perform a super-massive brainwashing on the whole Empyreal Terminus Sector in order to transform everybody in the four families' ace fleets into your puppet! Is that any different from the Covenant Alliance's doing?
"Isn't free will the most precious thing that makes human beings human beings, the boundaries that all the Cultivators and Immortal Cultivators fight for, and even the 'cover' for your Immortal Cultivators to exploit the ordinary people blatantly? The only Immortal Cultivators I've respected are the warriors who wielded their weapons at the revived members of the Pangu Clan for free will. However, as the leader of the Immortal Cultivators, you are even erasing the free will of mankind. You don't deserve to be an Immortal Cultivator. You are even more 'false' than the four Kurfürsten. Are you even qualified to talk about the future of mankind?"
"I didn't know that you'd learned everything about the whole 'Next Sun Plan'. I underestimated you yet again. Or rather, your look and your behavior are too misleading and tend to make people underestimate you."
After a gloomy and brief silence, Wuying Qi said, "However, you have misunderstood the real significance of the 'Next Sun Plan'. The word 'brainwashing' is highly biased. I am not 'brainwashing' anyone. I'm merely 'awakening' the citizens. I'm going to awaken the guys who have forgotten their honor and responsibility and make them realize the importa
nce of loyalty, patriotism, and selfless devotion again. I will transform them from rusty firesticks into the sharpest sabers of mankind again!"
"But you are going to deprive them of their free will and their right to choose!"
Li Yao roared, "You are going to stamp your belief, your will, and your authority on their brains!"
"So what? For 99.9% of the people, 'free will' has never existed in the first place."
Wuying Qi said coldly, "Look at the selfish, false Immortal Cultivators of the four Kurfürst families. Driven by their genes and their lust, they wasted abundant resources on meaningless stuff. Money, power, position, women, hatred, jealousy, vanity… Eventually, they rotted in physical entertainments or were killed by each other miserably.
"Even the seemingly powerful elders or the Kurfürsten themselves are nothing more than the slaves to their families, their descendants and fellows, and their genes and desires. It is needless to mention the ignorant, illiterate ordinary people who live like ants.
"Ordinary people never have the right to choose. They are already exhausted every day just in order to survive. It is their greatest delight and purpose to find a suitable female and give birth to a child so that their genes can be extended. Their simple brains cannot accommodate complicated thoughts about the significance of higher levels. They are some sort of fully-wound machines made of flesh and blood in the first place. What choice and what freedom do they have?
"Even though they think that they boast 'free will', it is just an illusion that was inculcated into their heads when they were young, something that they used to deceive themselves. Every civilization teaches certain illusionary truths to the next generation and demands the individuals to follow certain social doctrines. Generally speaking, such inculcation is conducted through decades of education. However, due to the emergency, I do not have enough time. Therefore, I have compressed the decades of education into a one-time 'brainwashing' session. What's wrong with that?
"Tell me, Vulture Li Yao, are the ignorant little children taught how advanced the ideas of the Cultivators are and how evil the true path of immortality is in the country of Cultivators?
"Have you not built a social atmosphere where children believe that the ideas of the Cultivators are a matter of fact since little?
"Are hypotonization procedures that are similar to brainwashing not adopted in your prisons on the stubborn criminals in order to cleanse their crimes?
"I know that the approaches have been adopted since the Star Ocean Imperium that parts of the areas in the brains of certain atrocious sex criminals are cut to cut their proclivity to crimes. Such approaches have proved useful for both the criminals themselves and even the whole society. Yes, by doing so, their 'free will' in committing crimes are gotten rid of, but is there anything wrong?"
"They are unpardonable criminals!"
Li Yao couldn't help but shout, "In the country of Cultivators, the minimally invasive procedures and hypnotization procedures are used very prudently only on the unpardonable felons who are highly violent. They are barely adopted!"
"Exactly. What we are facing right now is a bunch of unpardonable and dangerous criminals."
Wuying Qi said casually, "According to the law of the Imperium and my will, all the soldiers in the four families' coalition fleet have committed the most severe treason by rebelling and attacking the capital planet. Vulture Li Yao, you wouldn't deny that, would you?
"It is only reasonable to punish such rebels who have committed treason by mincing them into pieces or even executing their whole families. However, for the sake of the Imperium and the civilization of mankind, I am lenient enough to give those people an opportunity to be reborn. As long as they succumb to my will, they will be able to make up for their mistakes by continuing to contribute to the civilization of mankind.
"In doing so, the meaningless blood-shedding will be lowered to the minimum. It is the most humanitarian approach possible. I truly don't know what you are thinking. Will you be happy and satisfied as you watch me kill the best soldiers of the civilization or mankind, or when those people kill me and everybody else on the capital planet because 'free will' has been defended?
"Think about it, Li Yao. You and I both agree that the false Immortal Cultivators of the four families have walked too far on the wrong path and are too sick to be rescued. Their beliefs have been tarnished and twisted. It is impossible to wake them up through regular approaches. Am I going to watch them walk further down on the wrong path, eventually hurting other people as well as themselves? Should I turn a blind eye to them when I have a way to cure them, the Imperium, and all human beings?
"Do you understand it now? I am going to treat them, awaken them, and purge them. I will completely erase the selfish, immoral thoughts in their heads and implant the correct ideas of devotion, purity, and sacrificing for the civilization of mankind. Isn't it the right thing to do?"
Chapter 2616: The Only Way to Prevent Decadence |
Together with Wuying Qi's "tutelage", the nerval network that looked like black spider threads infiltrated Li Yao's flames of spiritual energy and crawled into his body through his pores.
No matter how he boosted his flames of spiritual energy and waved his arms, it was impossible to get rid of the clinging parasites. Instead, he felt that Wuying Qi's words seemed to be echoing from inside his own brain, prompting him to think in a completely different way and from a new perspective.
"You… are completely out of your mind!"
Li Yao tried his best to resist the black nerve strands that had invaded his brain, and he managed to say, "The catastrophe that will result in the death of so many people and even the destruction of a whole Sector is nothing more than a 'treatment' in your eyes?"
"That's exactly how a treatment goes. You can't perform an operation with no bloodshed or prescribe a medicine that has absolutely no side effects. Or rather, when a patient is too seriously ill to be rescued, it will be a helpful choice to excise most of the organs on the body and replace them with artificial ones."
Wuying Qi smiled and said in an even more sincere voice. Gentle brilliance was even emitting from his body. Had it not been for the weirdness of the black water drops and the nerval network around, he would've truly looked like a caring doctor. "The only reason why you find it unacceptable is the gap in your knowledge. It's like if an ancient person living in tens of thousands of years ago watches a modern doctor cutting the guts of a patient with a scalpel, removing the pathological tissues, or even plucking the skull with a saw in an operation, he will definitely be so shocked that he considers the doctor to be a devil that feeds on the heart and the brain. However, for the modern people who have elementary medical knowledge, they will naturally know that the doctor is treating the patient. Even though the patient may bleed, get hurt, or even die in the operation, and even though there may be sequela after he recovers, such operations are still acceptable.
"Don't refute hastily. Please calm down and think carefully about everything you've seen after you come to the Imperium. Think about how you agree with Li Linghai's judgment on the four families. Admit it, Vulture Li Yao. The Imperium of True Human Beings today is at the end of its era. It is corrupted and haunted by both internal and external problems. A reform of a minor scale will not help at all. Without thunderous approaches, the vast Imperium will fall apart instantly, and the billions of citizens will be blown into smithereens!
"The central government is bloated and useless. The warlords rise and fight each other. The men in power control the politics but only consider their own interests. Even the four Kurfürst families have been filled with selfish and hilarious conflicts. The open, fair, and just method to select the elites and the channel for the elites at the bottom level to rise, which I devised for the Imperium a thousand years ago, have been blocked, rotten, and riddled with holes. They do not even bother to make them look functional on the surface!
"The Imperium has the most fertile planets, the most abundant resources
, and the largest number of talents in the entire universe. However, it has been crumbled into a tray of loose sand by those pests. They cannot defeat the Covenant Alliance or the reformists. They are barely capable of dealing with the stinky merchants of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. They cannot even extinguish a few insignificant Cultivators. What kind of Imperium is this exactly?
"Shame! This is the greatest shame of the Immortal Cultivators, of the Imperium, and of myself! After I returned to the Imperium and saw that the glorious Imperium that I established arduously after all the difficulties a thousand years ago had been reduced into such conditions by my worthless offspring, I hated it so much that my fury couldn't have been put out with all the water in the universe!
"Since then, I have sworn to the stars that I will cure the Imperium no matter what it takes so that it will recover the vigor it had in the past and truly be qualified to represent the great civilization of mankind.
"As long as the responsibility and glory of every Immortal Cultivator can be awakened, and as long as the Imperium and the civilization of mankind are rejuvenated, I am willing to try any treatment!"
More and more black nerves crawled into Li Yao's pores and slithered under his skin like worms, making black air pop up from all over his body and his face.
The black air even attacked Li Yao's eyeballs and danced weirdly around his pupils.
Li Yao gradually lost the ability to fight back. His face gradually became tranced and hesitative while he listened to Wuying Qi's preach.
"I spent decades thinking why the Imperium has been corrupted to what it is today. Who is guilty of it? What is the source of the problem?
"Are the four Kurfürst families to blame? Of course. They are all ravenous, shortsighted, and insatiable guys who do not deserve to be called Immortal Cultivators at all. However, it is just the surface. Everybody is selfish. Selfishness is the source of disasters as well as the most powerful impetus to push a civilization forward. It is the sharpest double-edged sword.
