by <unknown>
"Also, I believe that a lot of people are interested in the Imperium and will come with me."
Ding Lingdang glanced at the Colossi behind her that were driven by the twelve experts of the Ancient Sages Sector. One of them was measuring the Nuwa warship in the sky with its longsword, as if it were considering if it could cut the Nuwa warship into halves.
It was exactly the Colossus controlled by Yan Liren, the Sword Maniac.
Ding Lingdang's smile was even more brilliant.
"How I look forward to it!"
She mumbled, "The future federation, the future universe, and the future civilization of mankind!"
Chapter 2679: Gods' Mausoleum! |
At the same time, in a military hospital in the Empyreal Terminus Sector at the center of the cosmos…
Before Li Yao met Li Linghai again, he never thought that the queen of the Imperium would be painting butterflies in a small garden under the warm sun.
Judging from her vivid work, she seemed to be as good as a professional painter.
Her body had been greatly weakened, but she did not look very fragile. Instead, warmed by the sunlight, even her white hair and her transparent skin did not seem as chilling as before.
"Well…"
Standing behind Li Linghai for a long time, Li Yao watched her dye the wings of a butterfly with glamorous colors, not knowing what he should say. He finally said, "Your Highness, have you decided to get rid of this body and turn into a spectral Cultivator? If you have, I can make an artificial body for you in person. After all, I'm still your special refiner, haha!"
"Thank you…"
Li Linghai finished the last stroke and smiled. "… For everything."
"Everything…"
Li Yao was even more embarrassed, feeling that his head was itchy.
When he fought Wuying Qi, he was too focused on his enemy to feel anything wrong. But several months later, after he calmed down, when he thought about what happened in retrospect, displaying Wuying Qi's porn videos and singing "Mom Is the Best" were both humiliating.
Even Vulture Li Yao did not love losing face. This battle was the greatest taint of his glorious life. He was not brazen enough to accept Li Linghai's gratitude.
Noticing his awkwardness, Li Linghai smiled and continued, "Believe it or not, no matter how I feel about the emperor and the four Kurfürsten, this is my homeland, and I never meant to destroy the Imperium. Thank you for stopping me and Wuying Qi. Thank you for saving the Imperium!"
"It was nothing. As long as you still believe in renewing the Imperium and fulfill your earlier promise, I would save the Imperium again if I have to."
Li Yao paused for a moment and couldn't help but ask, "I've been curious about one thing. Were you threatened by Wuying Qi, allured by power, or deceived by the bright future that Wuying Qi painted? That day, I said to Li Jialing that Wuying Qi threatened you with your other kids. Am I right?"
"Threat, deception, or allurement… Who can tell it precisely?"
Li Linghai smiled and murmured at the dancing butterflies, "Admiration in Wuying Qi, resentment at my family and the emperor, love for my kids, lust for power, and the curiosity about the universe beyond our universe… I think they all played a part."
"Fine."
Though Li Yao was not entirely satisfied with the answer, he knew that it was probably the truth. Taking a long breath in relief, Li Yao asked again, "Your Highness, there's another question that's more private. You can refuse it if you would rather not answer it. Did you… really fall in love with my foster father? Or rather, how did you awaken an emotionless person of the Covenant Alliance and turn him into a normal man?
"Please don't misunderstand me. I just think that your answer will be helpful for us in resisting the Covenant Alliance's attack."
"I loved him."
After such a long silence that Li Yao thought that she would not reply, she finally said, "Also, you're wrong. Even the people of the Covenant Alliance have feelings and desires, except that their feelings and desires are suppressed. However, feelings and desires are in the nature of human beings. How can they be completely suppressed?
"On the contrary, if you find an appropriate way to provoke their feelings and desires, it will be like a starving man who finds delicious food or a desert that has rain after decades of drought. It's so unforgettable that even Blackstar the Great could not completely wipe it out!"
"So, it's like the harder you press a spring, the higher it will bounce back later?"
Li Yao mumbled, "If we find the trick, we may be able to finish the Covenant Alliance without any soldier by waking up their feelings and desires…"
"How could it be so simple?"
Li Linghai was amused. "If it were so simple, the Covenant Alliance wouldn't have been the Imperium's headache for a thousand years. I was able to wake up your foster father because of many fortuitous factors and even Blackstar the Great's unspoken help. It's hardly duplicable."
"It does make sense."
Seeing that Li Linghai was in a good mood, Li Yao pressed further and asked, "Your Highness, can you tell me my foster father's real name and the details when you were together in the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum?"
"No."
Li Linghai shook her head and let the gentle sunlight gather into a butterfly on the back of her hand. She smiled. "It's a memory that only belongs to me. I won't tell it to anyone, especially not to you."
"You can keep it a secret."
Li Yao said, feeling embarrassed, "But why 'especially not to me'?"
"I do not want to tell you my privacy, but as compensation, I can tell you something else."
Li Linghai smiled. "You've known a thing or two about the coordinates of the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum and its secrets from Wuying Qi 3.0, but do you want to know more?"
"Of course I do!"
The Supreme Emperor's mausoleum was an important location for Li Yao in the next phase. He pricked his ears and said, "Please, Your Highness. I'm all ears!"
"In the past thousands of years, the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum has been a top-secret for all the experts. Everybody tried to find it, but until a thousand years ago, nobody had any success."
Li Linghai introduced, "The reason is very simple. That's because the entrance to the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum is not fixed but moves randomly.
"To put it simply, the world fragment where the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum is located is not entirely in the three-dimensional universe. Instead, it's floating in the 3.5 dimension between the three-dimensional universe and the four-dimensional one.
"If we break the void luckily and place us between the three-dimension and the four-dimension, we may be able to see the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum and its trajectory accurately, but from the three-dimensional perspective, it will always be wandering among dozens of Sectors without any pattern.
"Years back, your foster father and I were blown to the entrance of the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum by a space storm by accident, but Wuying Qi had a special equation that he learned from the Blood God, which allowed him to calculate the location of the entrance of the mausoleum in every cycle.
"Later, Wuying Qi taught the equation to me, and I'm teaching it to you today. Then, in a few special time windows in a year, you'll be able to find the entrance to the mausoleum and enter the mysterious world fragment!"
"That sounds amazing."
Li Yao was astonished. No wonder nobody had ever found this world fragment in the past thousands of years. Its entrance turned out to be unpredictable!
"However, there won't be any use even if you can go to the world fragment."
Li Linghai suddenly said, "Because most of the valuable things in this world fragment have been excavated by me in the past decades as resources to unite the reformists. There can't be better treasures in the world fragment than what you've already seen in my base."
"What?"
Shocked, Li Yao realized what she meant. "Are you saying that we cannot get the real secre
t until we open the core of the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum and find out the Supreme Emperor's remains?
"Right, the key! The key that is divided into two parts can open the core!"
"Yes and no."
Li Linghai said, "The key can open the core, but the core is not a simple tomb but probably another world fragment. The Supreme Emperor's mausoleum is like a cave within a cave. The world fragment on the outside is only a platform to the internal world fragment, which is a mausoleum of gods."
"A mausoleum of gods?"
Li Yao keenly sensed Li Linghai's different choice of words. "What do you mean? Isn't it the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum?"
"It's both the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum and a mausoleum of the gods."
Li Linghai's eyes turned sharp. She grabbed her painting and declared resolutely, "It's the Gods' Mausoleum!"
Chapter 2680: Neither Alive Nor Dead! |
"The Gods' Mausoleum?"
Li Yao gasped hard.
In the language of mankind, "gods" only referred to the ultimate experts of the thirteen carbon-based lives in the primeval age.
"Is it the place where the ultimate experts of the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, the Kuafu Clan, the Houyi Clan, and other primeval species were buried? Is it an ultra-huge prehistory mausoleum?"
Li Yao found it hard to believe.
"That's right. If you think about it, the Supreme Emperor and the Blood God met each other by accident below the ground of the capital planet. Neither of them was ready to die with each other. Where did the Supreme Emperor have the time to prepare a mausoleum for himself?"
Li Linghai asked, "After he went missing, the Star Ocean Imperium was falling apart. Who would build a mausoleum for him?"
Li Yao realized that it did make sense. The Supreme Emperor's and the Blood God's troops mostly ran loose after their commanders went missing. The Supreme Emperor's mausoleum would've been torn down by them even if it had been built.
Could it have been built before the Blood God's rebellion? At that time, the Star Ocean Imperium was still expanding. Li Yao did not think that the Supreme Emperor would've devoted a lot of resources to build a mausoleum for himself.
So, while people called the place the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum, it couldn't have been the Supreme Emperor's at the beginning. It belonged to somebody more ancient and powerful than the Supreme Emperor, the primeval experts!
"Are you not curious about the Supreme Emperor's rise?"
Li Linghai continued, "Neither the Star Ocean Republic nor the Imperium of True Human Beings solved the puzzle of the Supreme Emperor's rise. When the prospect of mankind was still gloomy, the Supreme Emperor shined like a shooting star and accelerated the renaissance of mankind almost purely on his own.
"Nobody knows how he picked up his unparalleled strength and his unbelievable commanding arts.
"In many legends, the Supreme Emperor became the strongest Cultivator in history because of three volumes of the Book of Revelation. But where did he get the three volumes of the book?"
Intrigued, Li Yao asked, "The Supreme Emperor found the three volumes of the book from the Gods' Mausoleum and passed them on to mankind? Everything makes sense now!"
"Yes."
Li Linghai said, "The Blood God told that to Wuying Qi, and Wuying Qi told it to me. As a person who sort of experienced it in person, the Blood God is definitely more trustworthy than the scholars outside.
"The Supreme Emperor was only a gladiator caged in a bloody arena at the beginning. He escaped in an uprising and accidentally found the Gods' Mausoleum on his way of escape. He grasped unparalleled arts in the Gods' Mausoleum and found three volumes of the Book of Revelation. It was the beginning of his glory.
"At that time, he still lacked the personnel and resources to develop the Gods' Mausoleum.
"But after he united the sea of stars again, he mobilized tremendous starships and engineering legions to the external world fragment, ready to open the gate of the Gods' Mausoleum.
"However, the rebellion of the Blood God disrupted the Supreme Emperor's development plan, and the magic equipment of the engineering legions were left in the world fragment. Those gears were what the reformists were based on at the beginning.
"After the Supreme Emperor had a battle with the Blood God and nearly got himself killed, he had to escape into the Gods' Mausoleum, ending exactly like the primeval experts hundreds of thousands of years earlier!"
Li Yao rolled his eyes and keenly noticed a problem. "The Supreme Emperor fled to the Gods' Mausoleum when he was dying, and the place was where the primeval experts were buried. Is there something wrong with the place? Why did the Supreme Emperor have to die there?"
"You're very smart to see the key."
Li Linghai smiled and said, "Maybe you're right. It is said that the Gods' Mausoleum is not bound by natural laws. Time is even frozen inside. While the Supreme Emperor would die for sure because of his heavy wounds, he would remain in a mysterious state of 'neither alive nor dead' in the Gods' Mausoleum."
"Not bound by natural laws?"
Li Yao was at a loss. "What do you mean? Also, what do you mean by 'time is frozen'?"
"I have no idea. Those were what the Blood God told to Wuying Qi before Wuying Qi forwarded to me."
Li Linghai said, "While the Blood God was the Supreme Emperor's strongest clone, he only had the Supreme Emperor's parts on battle, exploration, and conquest, and he had few memories except fighting. Also, I'm not sure he told Wuying Qi everything, or that Wuying Qi told everything to me.
"All in all, my understanding is that the Gods' Mausoleum is even more distant from our three-dimensional universe. If our three-dimensional universe can be compared to a planet, the Gods' Mausoleum will be a satellite that is very far away from us and may be under the attraction of another planet, which gives it unbelievable laws!
"As for 'neither alive nor dead', Wuying Qi also forwarded to me something the Blood God said to him: 'Until an external observer opens the Gods' Mausoleum, the Supreme Emperor will be in the state of superposition where he's neither alive nor dead'. I don't know what it means. Maybe you can find it out and explain it to me one day."
Li Yao thought for a long time.
The intensity of spiritual energy in the different parts of the universe varied, resulting in the different natural laws. It was nothing to be surprised at.
However, another thought that popped up in his head made him shiver.
"Hold on a second…"
Li Yao mumbled, "Assuming that the Blood God did not lie to Wuying Qi and Wuying Qi did not lie to you, and time is really frozen in the Gods' Mausoleum, making all the creatures inside neither alive nor dead, wouldn't it mean that countless primeval experts are still 'neither alive nor dead' in the Gods' Mausoleum besides the Supreme Emperor?"
"I'm afraid so."
Li Linghai smiled bitterly and said, "Why else do you think Wuying Qi never had the courage to set foot in the Gods' Mausoleum?"
Li Yao was going to say that it was because Wuying Qi lacked half of the key.
However, on second thought, half of the key was controlled by Li Linghai, and the other half was controlled by his foster father. Those two were together in the world fragment a hundred years ago.
In other words, Li Linghai, his foster father, and Wuying Qi could've combined the parts into a complete key!
Even though Wuying Qi was terribly weakened back then, he must've been irresistible for Li Linghai and his foster father.
If he weren't concerned for what was in the Gods' Mausoleum, he probably wouldn't rob them of the key and enter it.
"No wonder Wuying Qi 3.0 kept reminding me that I was not worthy enough to explore the Gods' Mausoleum."
Li Yao said in fear, "He said that I must not open the gate to the Gods' Mausoleum until I reach the Divinity Branching Stage."
"Yes. Nobody knows what will happen if the gate to the Gods' Mausoleum is opened."
Li Linghai said, "The worst-case scenari
o is that hundreds of primeval experts who were 'neither alive nor dead' are woken up after the Gods' Mausoleum is opened. Who can bear such a consequence?"
Li Yao sweated hard in fright.
He remembered the member of the Pangu Clan he executed in Kunlun. That creature could fight a Colossus bare-handedly!
Besides, that member of the Pangu Clan must've been a common officer or a noble, instead of an ultimate expert in his age.
Nobody could tell whether those experts would be alive or dead when an external observer opened the Gods' Mausoleum and terminated the superposition state!
If he explored the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum only to unleash hundreds of living primeval experts, he would be the greatest criminal for mankind.
"We'd better not rush into anything yet!"
Li Yao wiped his cold sweat and said, "Let's finish the four families and the Covenant Alliance first. It will be best if I can reach the Divinity Branching Stage first before we do anything. Wuying Qi left a secret chamber in the Gold Crystal Pyramid for his training. After all this mess is done, I'll train myself in seclusion for a while to make another breakthrough. I would be embarrassed if I get beaten up by Li Jialing in a couple of days, wouldn't I?"
Li Linghai chuckled and nodded her head. "You're not too tempted by the mysterious mausoleum to notice the danger in it, which is great! However, while we can't rush into anything, we cannot make preparations all the time either. As far as I know, the Covenant Alliance is also searching for the Gods' Mausoleum, and they're attacking the Imperium partly for the Gods' Mausoleum too."
Chapter 2681: After the Divinity Branching Stage! |
"W-What?"
Li Yao stammered again, "How is the Covenant Alliance related to the Gods' Mausoleum?"
"Opening the Gods' Mausoleum has been one of the Covenant Alliance's purposes since it was established!"
Li Linghai said, "Think about it. The people of the Covenant Alliance believe in the Path of Ultimate Benevolence under the boundary of the three fundamental laws. They consider themselves as the simple tools of the primeval civilizations. So, the only significance of their lives is to wake up or resurrect the primeval civilizations.
