by <unknown>
Li Lingfeng's soul trembled hard as he demanded loudly, "What do you know exactly?"
"I know that you stole your sister's child."
In a chuckle, Li Yao said, "That Li Jialing must be Li Linghai's biological son and your biological nephew, but he can't be His Majesty's son. I do not need to bluff you; it is an undeniable fact!"
"It's impossible!"
Instead of giving an answer, Li Lingfeng simply bellowed, "It's impossible that you work for the queen or learned everything from her!"
"That's true. I certainly did not learn everything from the queen, because even the queen is not necessarily aware of the whole truth, is she?"
Li Yao said in a hurry, "However, it doesn't matter where I learned everything exactly, and what matters is whether or not I will release the secret to the public and make you bathe in the infinite wrath from the queen!"
"This… this is the greatest scandal for the queen. Once it is set to public, the queen will be the first to take the hit and be doomed forever!"
Li Lingfeng sneered and said, "As the queen of the Imperium of True Human Beings, she should be an example of all the mothers in the world, and yet, she had a bastard in secret. Once the issue is exposed, the Li family will be the first to punish her. On what basis do you think she can possibly deal with me?
"You are too naïve if you think you can blackmail me with that!
"I will be really naïve if I believe your bulls*it!"
Li Yao chuckled, "Anybody with the slightest wisdom can figure out the truth easily. It's been more than a decade since you stole Li Jialing and refined him in secret. If you truly wanted your biological sister dead, or to protect the honor of the Li family, you should've submitted the boy to the leader and the elders of the Li family and asked for their discretion. For the interests of the Li family, they would've killed Li Jialing without any mercy!
"After all, as your biological sister, the queen is from the Li family too. Her scandal would've been the Li family's scandal. Once the issue is exposed, it would've been an unprecedentedly heavy blow for the Li family. How on earth would Li Jialing have been tolerated in the Li family?
"But as it turned out, Li Jialing is still vigorously alive even today. He has also received all kinds of procedures from you and is raised into a highly-dangerous super warrior. I assume that you must've been doing everything behind the leader and the elders of the Li family, didn't you?
"Yes. That must be the case. Otherwise, you wouldn't have sent him to such a distant place as 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky' for strengthening, when there were bound to be tremendous secret techniques within the Li family that Li Jialing could've been refined with, would you?
"Therefore, you had your own plans in the matter too. You were hoping to blackmail your sister with Li Jialing to achieve a certain purpose, a purpose that is not necessarily in the best interest of the entire Li family.
"If we get to the bottom of it, Li Lingfeng, Lord Li, your loyalty to the Li family is rather suspicious for me!"
Chapter 2116: Rapid Fall! |
The telepathic thoughts of the two parties collided hundreds of times like the edges of blades.
The two Colossi were still rushing and changing their locations nonstop, one running and the other chasing.
However, no matter how crazily he bombarded, Li Lingfeng achieved absolutely no result except for causing greater damage to "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" and accidentally hurting more Immortal Cultivators.
Li Yao's insightful and penetrating criticism made his face pale, his heart frozen, and his soul tremble violently.
Sensing the panic in Li Lingfeng's heart keenly, Li Yao knew that his deductions were correct.
The Divinity Transformation Stage was indeed marvelous. Not only had the damage been improved to an unprecedented level, but his computational ability was now also as quick as a lightning, allowing him to sort out the general picture of the picture from the broken, incomplete clues!
While holding his head and running like a rat, Li Yao dodged Li Lingfeng's attacks in seemingly dangerous but actually riskless ways and laughed aloud. "Let me continue my guess. What do you want to blackmail the queen for? The biggest possibility is the place of the leader of the Li family and the Kurfürst, isn't it?
"As you said yourself, the tallest tree in a forest tends to be destroyed by the wind first. Although you are one of the best of the prime generation of the Li family, there must be innumerous competitors who covet your position within your family. The Immortal Cultivators are all ambitious and ravenous. Not one of them is not greedy about the place of the leader of the family and the 'Kurfürst', right?
"It may be hard for you to defeat all the open and clandestine competitors on your own, but if the queen has a certain weakness in your hands that forces her to listen to your command, your chances of being the future Kurfürst will be very close to a hundred percent with your influence and the queen's influence combined!
"Therefore, in order to be the future leader of the Li family and the future Kurfürst, you ignored the best interests of the Li family and kept 'Li Jialing', a highly-dangerous, unstable factor, in secret. Instead of informing the elders and leader of the Li family, you have carefully built him into a slaughter machine with great potential as the greatest leverage in your game with the queen in the future! Lord Li, am I right?"
"Who are you? Who are you exactly?"
Li Lingfeng truly felt more or less crept out this time, wondering how the mysterious Divinity Transformation Stage expert even knew such covert issues.
He hadn't put all the cards on the table yet. Even his sister, the queen of the Imperium of True Human Beings, shouldn't have known much about it yet!
For a moment, Li Lingfeng was even suspicious that the mysterious guy in the Divinity Transformation Stage had been following him for a long time, and that he was some sort of weird existence like a ghost.
"It doesn't matter who I am."
Waving the half saber, Li Yao blocked Li Lingfeng's another hasty and unorganized attack. He cackled, "I have no interest in the filthy issues in the power struggles within the Li family, and the ethical drama between you and your sister has nothing to do with me either. What appears to be a great secret in your eyes is not worth mentioning at all in mine.
"However, if you continue pushing forward aggressively and have to kill me, don't blame me for dragging you into the mess with me, Lord Li!
"Think about it, with the fuss that I have caused in 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky', your epic quest of 'Dying Light' is now completely disrupted. The entire Imperium has 'seen' clearly the pictures of my blatant sabotages and insane massacres. I believe that new fleets of the Imperium will soon be mobilized from the frontline to clean up the mess.
"Also, since the accident was caused by you, the newly-arriving fleets of the Imperium will mostly be the Li family's, or at least be mixed with abundant private troops of the Li family, in order to wipe your a*s for you, right?
"Hehehehe. If the two of us are to fight on, naturally, I will be caught in the end by tremendous Immortal Cultivators of the federation. But take a guess. Will I tell them everything I know under their 'interrogation'?
"The epic quest of 'Dying Light' that you were certain about turned out to be a mess, which is indicative of your inability. Hiding such a dangerous factor like Li Jialing behind the back of the big shots of the Li family suggests that you are not loyal enough to the family.
"If you are only not capable enough, there will still be chances for you to learn from your lessons and continue your training. But if your loyalty to the family is questionable, how do you want the big shots of the family to continue supporting you? Even if some of them are willing to support you, other people will lambast you with the issue. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Incapable and disloyal, how are you going to be the leader of the Li family and the future Kurfürst?
"Therefore, I have nothing to lose except for my worthless life, and I have enjoyed it enough. It doesn't matte
r even if I die!
"I'm only sorry for you, Li Lingfeng, Lord Li, whose promising future will die with me!
"Hahahaha. For somebody as ambitious as you, the deprival of your power and strength will be more miserable than killing you, right?"
Lost for words, Li Lingfeng could only cover the panic and uneasiness in his heart with the furious flames each higher than the last.
That was because Li Yao was right. He had indeed done everything regarding Li Jialing behind the back of the big shots of the family!
Once the issue was exposed, it would be even more grave than the failure to annihilate the Cultivators.
The failure of the annihilation of the Cultivators was only a matter of abilities at best, but hiding the existence of Li Jialing was certainly a matter of attitudes and suggested ill intentions!
Li Lingfeng somehow regretted why he kept Li Jialing for refinement years ago.
But with everything coming to this point, there was already no retreat for him at all!
"Lord Li, I have an offer to make."
Seeing that he was speechless, Li Yao continued saying solemnly, "Nobody wants things to turn as ugly as this, but what is done is done. There's nothing you can do about it however furious you are. Why don't we give each other a smile and forget our history? You will allow me to escape without alarming anyone, and I promise that I will not tell the issue to anybody else. In that case, you will have more time to clean up the mess and figure out how to respond to the chastisement of the competitors within your family and the wrath of the big shots of various aspects, right?"
Li Lingfeng: "…"
Li Yao: "Why, you don't trust me? Rest assured. If we ever have the opportunity to get to know each other, you will realize that I am best known for my honor and integrity. When I say that I'll keep something to myself, I will never say a word that is relevant to the matter! How about it? If you are okay with it, I'll be off."
Li Lingfeng: "…You want to go? I'll be damned today if I allow you to leave in one piece!"
The intensity of the tornadoes raised by his saber was ten times higher than before. Li Lingfeng had already been too infuriated by Li Yao to care about "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" and simply blew out his ultimate skill again.
No kidding. If the enemy could escape through such fancy talks, he would be too disgraced as an Immortal Cultivator in the Divinity Transformation Stage to hang around in the Imperium anymore!
At this moment, they had already crashed into the atmosphere together with "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky"!
The space fortress had activated the forced landing program at the beginning. Whatever left of the anti-gravity rune arrays were going at full strength, and the buffer rune arrays around also unleashed twisting force fields, reducing the speed of the fall to a bearable level.
However, the boost when the starships of countless Cultivators crashed into the space fortress heavily, as well as the great damage caused by Li Yao and Li Lingfeng's huge fight within the space fortress, greatly disturbed the normal functionality of the forced landing program.
"Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" was falling faster and faster while dismembering on the way. It was like a meteor shower that had covered half of the sky!
Han Te, Liu Li, the Fist King, Zuo Jingyun, Xiahou Wuxin, and Xin Xiaoqi, who had just escaped from the underground trap, as well as all the sinners living on the Land of Sins, saw the dream-like scene that they would never forget for the rest of their lives.
The lofty, inviolable "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" that had controlled every aspect of their lives for hundreds of years was truly falling. It was almost like half of the burning sky was collapsing together with it too!
On the collapsing sky, two shadows as enormous as gods could be vaguely seen, one red and the other blue. They continued crashing and passing by each other, disrupting the stability of the world and raising super enormous ripples!
"That is—"
Holding their breath, Han Te and Liu Li observed the sky in disbelief, feeling the urge of bursting into tears.
"Very strong!"
The Fist King analyzed the combat ability of the two phantoms of gods. His crystal cameras were glittering in the most dazzling brilliance.
"The… The City in the Sky has collapsed. Manjusaka has been shot down. Was… Was it done by the two things?!"
Countless sinners grabbed their hair, overwhelmed and in confusion!
Even the most inert sinners had vaguely sensed that the fall of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" marked the end of an old era, and an unpredictable new era with infinite possibilities was arriving at full speed!
"Hurry up! Let's loot it!"
Looting all the assets that had fallen from the sky was a natural instinct that was deeply buried in the veins of every sinner on the Land of Sins.
Only those with the most intense instincts could've survived the cruel eliminations in the past hundreds of years.
Very soon, somebody already realized that infinite resources must be stored in the remnants of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky", which would be a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times more than what was offered in every "Bliss Ceremony" in the past!
All the sinners danced in ecstasy and swarmed to where the meteor shower was crashing, fully armed.
In order to minimize the force of the crash, the landing point of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" had been automatically set to the seashore.
However, the speed of the fall was now three times higher than the safe landing speed.
Before the main structure at the core hit the land, countless pieces and remnants that were dismembered from the main body already bombarded the surface of the ocean in advance. The high-temperature torrents of flames immediately boiled the ocean and raised a great amount of mist, as if it were the most bizarre dream.
The water pillars raised by the collisions of the remnants, however, swallowed the mist in the next moment. They soared to an altitude of almost a hundred meters, forming a weird forest of seawater!
Chapter 2117: Li Yao's Ambush! |
The sinners living in the seashore area all witnessed the apocalyptic scene to their astonishment.
The ever-rising tides far exceeded the most enormous tsunamis that they had seen in their entire life. Roaring like spears and ferocious beasts, they overlapped with each other and charged at the shoreline relentlessly.
Countless remnants also hit the shore directly, raising a splendid ocean of fire!
Mushroom clouds were rising to the sky and raging in the dim sky, as if it were another "Judgment Day"!
Before they realized what was going on, the largest remnant, which was the main body of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" that Li Yao and Li Lingfeng was at, had already landed heavily.
The blast had already pressed the ocean into a dent thousands of meters in diameter before it touched the ocean. The tides rising at the edge of the dent reached an altitude of hundreds of meters. Even the sky and the sun were almost blocked!
BOOM!
The collision of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" and the ocean raised such an explosion that the eardrums of countless sinners living ashore were directly ripped apart. Blood zigzagged out of their ears, making them unable to hear the rumbling sound when the surging tides swallowed the shoreline. They could only see an azure highwall devouring the sky and the earth and coming at them unstoppably!
It was a great collision that could've been observed by the naked eye outside of the atmosphere!
The tides that spread out in circles did not die down until almost half an hour later.
The waves in many places even scourged to more than a hundred kilometers into the land, resulting in a rampant flood.
Both the Immortal Cultivators and prisoners within "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" and the sinners living near the shoreline were consumed by the waves. Some were even brought a hundred kilometers away in the moment. Everybody was mired in chaos.
Li Yao was certainly among them.
He had been waiting for the moment of the crash of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky".
The immense collision at the moment, the hazy mist when the seawater was vaporized by the scorching spiritual energy, and the ubiquitous explosions and blasts were his best cover.
The moment the space fortress hit the ocean, Li Yao who had been preparing it for a long time retreated his Colossus at the highest speed. He did not even put on a crystal suit as he reduced his breath, heartbeat, pulse, secretion of adrenalin, and the waves of his soul to the minimum, pretending to be a dead body that was everywhere to be seen while the surging tides consumed him and tossed him to the depths of the land!
Despite Li Lingfeng's Cultivation in the Divinity Transformation Stage, he was also faced with the shock and chaos when "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" crashed into the ocean heavily.
When his Tempest God leaped out of the tides hundreds of meters tall and scanned the whole field with his telepathic thoughts, how on earth could he possibly locate Li Yao?
Even someone in the Divinity Transformation Stage could not find a drop of water from an ocean.
Besides, Li Yao's "heartfelt advice" was still ringing in his ears.
When he thought of the troubles that he was about to be faced with, Li Lingfeng felt such a great headache that he almost jumped to his feet in fury and vomited blood hard!
"I won't let go of you! I absolutely won't let go of you!"
From deep inside the rampant ocean, Li Lingfeng's desperate and crazy roars were coming over.
…
Ten minutes later, in the flooded area near the seashore, among the ragged reefs, Li Yao, who was heavily wounded all over his body, lay in the mud with all his limbs stretched out, as swollen as tea leaves that had been overly soaked in the pot. He stared at the pieces of "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" that passed the sky while leaving black flames behind now and then and laughed while vomiting blood.