Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1009
"The strike complex not only seriously damages the Earthly Brute and turns the decent workers into useless cr*p—it also corrupts our entire civilization and destroys what we have established if it is left undealt with! Therefore, once discovered, the disease must be treated at once!"
"Is that so?" Long Yangjun asked. "How exactly do you treat this… strike complex?"
"The strike complex can be classified into different levels," Fei Qi explained. "Generally speaking, 'Happiness Serum' of different intensities will be enough to heal them. However, if a patient is diagnosed by psychiatrists to possess a severe strike complex, they will be hopeless and can only be delivered to the hospitals at the forsaken mines in the deepest part below the earth for lifelong quarantine. Or, they can try routine, forced labor and see if there's any chance to wake up the genes of diligence and devotion in their body so that they can be transformed from saboteurs and takers to someone useful to society and the whole civilization.
"Because the intensity of the latest strikes was unparalleled, we sent a medical team of a fairly large scale. Also, the situation was quite urgent. The strike complex was quickly spreading in the crowd. Our civilization was in peril, so we were forced to resort to some radical medical approaches.
"The idiotic members of the Earthly Brute did not know that we were rescuing them. They were resisting and even killing our 'doctors' while we were performing the mandatory therapy sessions!
"Just like that, the strikes turned into riots!
"We were not scared of the riots of the Earthly Brute before. Most of the magical equipment was under the control of the Heavenly Light. Also, the members of the Heavenly Light had been taught the most elegant and graceful battle techniques since they were born. How could the members of the Earthly Brute be a match for us with nothing but their bare hands and their physical strength?"
"Wait!" Heaven Battering King Qi Changsheng said solemnly. "Shouldn't a lot of excavation magical equipment be involved during the exploitation of mother lodes? Vibration pickaxes, blast drills, crystal dynamites, and other large magical equipment can all serve as weapons. They can dig open even the hardest rocks. Can a person's skull be harder than those rocks? How on earth could the members of the Heavenly Fiend be 'barehanded'?"
"You might now know this, senior, but the Uranian Ring Planet was a military base of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago," Fei Qi explained. "The shallow mother lodes that were suitable for large-scale exploitation had all been drained with nothing left back then.
"Right now, if we want the minerals, we can only move down deeper underground.
"The environment there is harsh. The air is dirty, the tunnels are narrow and ragged, and there are all kinds of ferocious animals that can sabotage the large mining magical equipment. The minerals there are often lousy, full of impurities, and cannot be exploited on a large scale. They can only be dug out from the soil manually through labor.
"Therefore, in our underground mines, large mining magical equipment has never been used, and even the small mining magical equipment such as blast drills and vibration pickaxes are barely used.
"In most cases, the members of the Earthly Brute simply collect the resources with their hands and their brute force.
"Those members of the Earthly Brute have more brawn than brains in the first place. The scholars and doctors of the Heavenly Light have also spent thousands of years building up their bodies. Through the refinement and modification of various secret techniques, they have all been transformed into beings as tough as iron with infinite strength.
"We have also optimized and improved some fundamental Cultivation arts, such as the 'Iron Body Arts', 'Copper Arm Arts', 'Eagle Claw Arts', and so on. The members of the Earthly Brute are asked to practice them from a young age. As a result, their arms and palms undergo mutations and replace the mining magical equipment such as blast drills and vibration pickaxes. The excavation has a higher efficiency and is more adaptive. The cost is lower, too.
"After thousands of years of mining underground, their bodies have been getting stronger and stronger, and their hands are more and more powerful. Deep below the mother lodes, with the radiation of the crystals and the scourge of the ferocious animals, some highly dangerous rogues can emerge. They are often the carriers of the latent 'strike complex'!
"If that was all, everything would've been under our control.
"How could the abnormal bodies and claws, resulting from the crude, beginner-level techniques such as 'Iron Body Arts' and 'Copper Arm Arts', be a match for our crystal suits and warships?
"Before, many large-scale outbreaks of the 'strike complex' and even the following insurgencies had been 'cured' by us easily.
"But we didn't know that it was not a spontaneous riot this time—it was one fomented by the most dangerous she-devil from the Star Glory Federation!
"The she-devil Ding Lingdang had long snuck into the underground mines among the oblivious, gullible members of the Earthly Brute!
"She claimed to be bringing dignity and hope to the Earthly Brute. She instigated the desire to sabotage and destroy hidden deep inside the blood of the Earthly Brute with the bizarre theories that she had brought from the Star Glory Federation!
"What—what—what was even more horrendous was that she brought brand-new training techniques to the Earthly Brute. The techniques that did not require any magical equipment to trigger the maximal damage possible, the techniques that belonged to the 'body fundamentalists'!"
Heiye Lan, who had been holding her breath listening just now, could not help but exclaim, "Body fundamentalists!"
Body fundamentalism was a concept generated after the modern Cultivation civilization was born. Meng Chixin, Qi Zhongdao, and other Cultivators from the Ancient Sages Sector did not know what 'body fundamentalist' meant exactly.
However, Heiye Lan, with her knowledge from the Imperium of True Human Beings, naturally knew the horror of such a type of Cultivator.
How terrifying the body fundamentalists, who were too proud to use any magical equipment or weapons and were bold enough to challenge any enemy with their bare hands and tough body, could be!
"Nobody foresaw that the Earthly Brute and the techniques of the body fundamentalists would fit so well!" Fei Qi said desperately. "The most petrifying, destructive power had already been hidden deep inside their blood after thousands of years of modifications and radiation. The only problem was that they did not know how to trigger it in the beginning.
"Ding Lingdang brought an entire system of the body fundamentalists' training techniques and publicized them for free. After only a few years, they spread to every corner of the Uranian Ring Planet like wildfire!
"In just five years, more than a hundred thousand 'body fundamentalists' who mastered extraordinary battle skills and trained their hands into lethal weapons had emerged in the Earthly Brute!
"Those body fundamentalists established a resistance organization in secret, and Ding Lingdang was the leader of the organization. When we were 'curing' the riot, we did not expect the assault of thousands of body fundamentalists at all. They captured a hundred shuttles that were used to commute between the Uranian Ring and the ground, and they launched an attack on the Uranian Ring, the very symbol of our civilization!"
All the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators and Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators were listening attentively.
Heaven Battering King Qi Changsheng, who had spent his entire life slaying authorities and rebelling, was beaming with great interest. He slapped his thigh and said to everybody through a discrete technique, "Good one! What a she-devil Ding Lingdang is! This woman is tougher than most men!"
Li Yao swallowed and calmly asked, "Did Ding Lingdang succeed in assaulting the Uranian Ring with thousands of body fundamentalists?"
"Not in the beginning." Fei Qi shook his head and said, "The Heavenly Light had lived on the Uranian Ring for thousands of years. It had been modified to the extent that it was impenetrable. Also, a lot of crystal suits and starships were stationed there. It was not something that a few thousand beginner-level body fundamentalists could take down. They occupied a certain section of the circular orbit for only ten days before they were driven away by our government!
"However, to this moment, we still failed to realize that Ding Lingdang was a federal Cultivator from a foreign land with ill intentions.
"There were a lot of rumors in the Earthly Brute, depicting her as a three-headed, six-armed almighty. Naturally, we would not believe such folly easily. We thought that she was also a member of the Earthly Brute, locally born and raised, except that she was lucky enough to find the legacy of the body fundamentalists below the earth!
"We also failed to realize that she had led thousands of body fundamentalists to attack the Uranian Ring not in order to completely occupy the Uranian Ring but to seize the enormous antenna arrays on the Uranian Ring so that she could send the precise coordinates of the Uranian Ring Sector to the Star Glory Federation and guide the way for the first fleet from the federation!
"When the riots on the ground were about to be completely 'cured', the first fleet from the federation appeared at the periphery of the Uranian Ring Sector out of everyone's expectation. We—we were truly caught unprepared!
"The five-year war between the Star Glory Federation and the Uranian Ring Sector thus broke out!
"In terms of starships, the Uranian Ring was originally a super large dock of the Star Ocean Imperium. Our starship technology was reasonably good, too. Although we had yet to launch cross-Sector space voyages, we should've been more than capable of defending the homeland of the Uranian Ring Sector.
"However, our enemy was not just the fleet of the federation, which was jumping from the foreign land incessantly, but also the rioting and rebelling members of the Earthly Brute on the ground!
"The fleet of the federation bombarded from space, and all the minerals and resources on the ground to be shipped were sabotaged by the mobs. More and more mines were taken over and began transporting resources to the enemy instead. We were under attack from both inside and outside!
"Just like that, after five years of war, we finally couldn't hold out any longer. The mobs of the Earthly Brute, those filthy, humble, stinky, and stupid miners, under the lead of Ding Lingdang and the support of the Star Glory Federation, completely took over the Uranian Ring, the symbol of the glory of our civilization!"
Chapter 1556: Jin Xinyue, the Venomous Witch! |
After saying that, Fei Qi seemed to have been greatly stimulated. Although Long Yangjun was piercing his acupoints and soothing his nerves, his facial organs were still wry, and there was excitement all over his face. "Those filthy, lowly miners conspired with the wicked people of the federation and marched into the Uranian Ring, the most spectacular and splendid hall of our civilization. They burnt, killed, plundered, and sabotaged, destroying all the art and culture that the Heavenly Light had accumulated for thousands of years. It was an apocalypse. The Uranian Ring civilization was done and done for good!
"The rebels of the Earthly Brute and the fleets of the Star Glory Federation attacked and occupied the Uranian Ring. The Heavenly Light lost our most important base. Our last remaining fleets wandered at the edge of the galaxy, without the support of resources or a base anymore. We became rootless duckweeds.
"We were unable to take back the Uranian Ring. The ammunition, spiritual energy, food, and other assets were all running dry. The sordid people of the federation were infiltrating us on a large scale, too. They divided us through all kinds of cunning and crooked methods, luring a lot of traitors on our side over to them. Our morale was lower than ever.
"Unable to fight the war anymore, we had no choice but to surrender.
"Although the Star Glory Federation had won the war, we still had a rather powerful fleet under our command. With whatever was left of our spiritual energy and the ammunitions, although it was impossible for us to take back the Uranian Ring, we were still capable of dealing heavy damage to the expedition army of the federation if we chose to die together with them.
"Under such circumstances, the Star Glory Federation couldn't risk suffering such great damages just in order to annihilate each and every one of us. They accepted our surrender, but on one condition, we must accept the new government of the Uranian Ring Sector and all the decisions that it made. If we found them unacceptable, we would be asked to leave, meaning that we would be exiled!"
Long Yangjun waved her hands again. "A new government?"
"Yes. The Star Glory Federation is a highly hypocritical country." Fei Qi gnashed his teeth. "They have been in the business of expansion and robbing this whole time as out-and-out invaders, but they have always been fond of varnishing their actions and righteously claiming that they were serving justice!
"Even a three-year-old knows that the federation had a war against the Uranian Ring Sector because it wanted to swallow the Uranian Ring Sector and occupy the super-large orbit dock that we inherited from the Star Ocean Imperium. However, in the federation's propaganda, the war became a civil war of the Uranian Ring Sector!
"The officials of the Star Glory Federation described the insurgency of the Earthly Brute as an 'uprising' and the rebels of the Earthly Brute as a 'revolutionary army'. It was supposedly at their invitation and request that the Star Glory Federation intervened in the war. So, the actions of the Star Glory Federation were justifiable as a so-called 'Interstellar Law'!
"The Star Glory Federation claimed that it had no intention of colonizing the Uranian Ring Sector whatsoever and that our future would be decided on our own. Once the war was over, the government that was exclusively made of the Heavenly Light naturally had to be reshuffled. The new government would be elected and established through a referendum consulting all the people of the Uranian Ring Sector, including both the Heavenly Light and the Earthly Brute."
Deep in thought, Long Yangjun said, "That doesn't sound like a very harsh requirement to me."
"Not very harsh?" The most painful memory in Fei Qi's mind seemed to have been triggered. He bellowed, "This is an out-and-out trap, a blatant scheme! The population of the Heavenly Light is very small. It is less than one percent of the population of the Earthly Brute. If a new government was to be established according to the ratio of the population or through a referendum, we would have no power at all!
"To make matters worse, even our pitiful one percent of the power was stolen by the members of the Heavenly Light who surrendered to the federation in advance!
"Those traitors also belonged to the Heavenly Light, but they were among the bottom class of our people in the beginning. They were mostly workers who lived outside of the Uranian Ring and were responsible for the maintenance of the shell of the Uranian Ring!
"Those black sheep in the Heavenly Light were the first to surrender when the Earthly Brute and the Star Glory Federation assaulted the Uranian Ring. With their familiarity with the structure and weaknesses of the Uranian Ring, they sold our civilization to win the favor of their new masters. Right now, their cause has been justified, and they have become the spokespersons of the entire Heavenly Light, the mascots of the new government!
"Just like that, under the manipulation of the Star Glory Federation, an organization named the 'Referendum Committee' was founded to 'help' the people of the Uranian Ring Sector establish a new government. Jin Xinyue, the witch who is as venomous as a viper and a scorpion, was nominated as the president of the committee."
"Wait!" Li Yao frowned again and asked, "Who is this… Jin Xinyue? Weren't you talking about Ding Lingdang a moment ago?"
"Jin Xinyue is another notorious she-devil who is as infamous as Ding Lingdang in the federation," Fei Qi explained. "They are both powerful, brutal beings. Many people even say that the two women have divided most of the power of the federation!
"The two she-devils each have their specialties. Ding Lingdang is tough, cruel, and bloodthirsty. She conquers free worlds like ours with pure strength. In comparison, Jin Xinyue is best known for her shamelessness, cunningness, and mercilessness. People say that when she smiles at you, you should be prepared to be devoured without any bones left! Half of the plots and schemes of the federation have been planned by this she-devil.
"During the war, Ding Lingdang, the Blazing Tyrannosaur, naturally took the lead. Once the war was over and the Uranian Ring civilization was to be chewed and digested, it was certainly the turn of Jin Xinyue, the Venomous Witch!
"Under Ding Lingdang's lead and Jin Xinyue's manipulation, it shouldn't be hard to imagine what the new government of the Heavenly Brute rebels and the traitors of the Heavenly Light is like.
"The very first decision that the new government made after it was established was to reorganize the 'Referendum Committee' into the 'Accountancy Committee', which would still be directed by Jin Xinyue and specifically focus on holding the Heavenly Light's 'oppression' over the past thousands of years to account.
"The second decision was that the Uranian Ring Sector would be merged into the Star Glory Federation and become a participant of the federation!
"It was a sign that they did not bother camouflaging their purpose any longer but were desperate to swallow our world!
"The righteous members of the Heavenly Light such as us couldn't do anything at all while our lovely civilization was ravaged and devoured by the Star Glory Federation, because we could barely protect ourselves at that time. Under the shameless scheming of the wicked Jin Xinyue, most of our properties were confiscated. Some of the less fortunate ones even went bankrupt and lost everything overnight with a huge debt!"
Li Yao scratched his chin and asked, "Your properties were confiscated? Well… Under what ruse did this Venomous Witch confiscate your properties? Just because you lost the war?"
"Not exactly. As an extremely hypocritical and vile country, the Star Glory Federation certainly wouldn't resort to such a simple and straightforward excuse to achieve their purpose," Fei Qi said bitterly. "The witch Jin Xinyue brought tremendous skillful… lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and insurance specialists from the Star Glory Federation. They analyzed and calculated the 'oppression' that the Earthly Brute had suffered when they were collecting resources below the ground over thousands of years.
"Is that so?" Long Yangjun asked. "How exactly do you treat this… strike complex?"
"The strike complex can be classified into different levels," Fei Qi explained. "Generally speaking, 'Happiness Serum' of different intensities will be enough to heal them. However, if a patient is diagnosed by psychiatrists to possess a severe strike complex, they will be hopeless and can only be delivered to the hospitals at the forsaken mines in the deepest part below the earth for lifelong quarantine. Or, they can try routine, forced labor and see if there's any chance to wake up the genes of diligence and devotion in their body so that they can be transformed from saboteurs and takers to someone useful to society and the whole civilization.
"Because the intensity of the latest strikes was unparalleled, we sent a medical team of a fairly large scale. Also, the situation was quite urgent. The strike complex was quickly spreading in the crowd. Our civilization was in peril, so we were forced to resort to some radical medical approaches.
"The idiotic members of the Earthly Brute did not know that we were rescuing them. They were resisting and even killing our 'doctors' while we were performing the mandatory therapy sessions!
"Just like that, the strikes turned into riots!
"We were not scared of the riots of the Earthly Brute before. Most of the magical equipment was under the control of the Heavenly Light. Also, the members of the Heavenly Light had been taught the most elegant and graceful battle techniques since they were born. How could the members of the Earthly Brute be a match for us with nothing but their bare hands and their physical strength?"
"Wait!" Heaven Battering King Qi Changsheng said solemnly. "Shouldn't a lot of excavation magical equipment be involved during the exploitation of mother lodes? Vibration pickaxes, blast drills, crystal dynamites, and other large magical equipment can all serve as weapons. They can dig open even the hardest rocks. Can a person's skull be harder than those rocks? How on earth could the members of the Heavenly Fiend be 'barehanded'?"
"You might now know this, senior, but the Uranian Ring Planet was a military base of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago," Fei Qi explained. "The shallow mother lodes that were suitable for large-scale exploitation had all been drained with nothing left back then.
"Right now, if we want the minerals, we can only move down deeper underground.
"The environment there is harsh. The air is dirty, the tunnels are narrow and ragged, and there are all kinds of ferocious animals that can sabotage the large mining magical equipment. The minerals there are often lousy, full of impurities, and cannot be exploited on a large scale. They can only be dug out from the soil manually through labor.
"Therefore, in our underground mines, large mining magical equipment has never been used, and even the small mining magical equipment such as blast drills and vibration pickaxes are barely used.
"In most cases, the members of the Earthly Brute simply collect the resources with their hands and their brute force.
"Those members of the Earthly Brute have more brawn than brains in the first place. The scholars and doctors of the Heavenly Light have also spent thousands of years building up their bodies. Through the refinement and modification of various secret techniques, they have all been transformed into beings as tough as iron with infinite strength.
"We have also optimized and improved some fundamental Cultivation arts, such as the 'Iron Body Arts', 'Copper Arm Arts', 'Eagle Claw Arts', and so on. The members of the Earthly Brute are asked to practice them from a young age. As a result, their arms and palms undergo mutations and replace the mining magical equipment such as blast drills and vibration pickaxes. The excavation has a higher efficiency and is more adaptive. The cost is lower, too.
"After thousands of years of mining underground, their bodies have been getting stronger and stronger, and their hands are more and more powerful. Deep below the mother lodes, with the radiation of the crystals and the scourge of the ferocious animals, some highly dangerous rogues can emerge. They are often the carriers of the latent 'strike complex'!
"If that was all, everything would've been under our control.
"How could the abnormal bodies and claws, resulting from the crude, beginner-level techniques such as 'Iron Body Arts' and 'Copper Arm Arts', be a match for our crystal suits and warships?
"Before, many large-scale outbreaks of the 'strike complex' and even the following insurgencies had been 'cured' by us easily.
"But we didn't know that it was not a spontaneous riot this time—it was one fomented by the most dangerous she-devil from the Star Glory Federation!
"The she-devil Ding Lingdang had long snuck into the underground mines among the oblivious, gullible members of the Earthly Brute!
"She claimed to be bringing dignity and hope to the Earthly Brute. She instigated the desire to sabotage and destroy hidden deep inside the blood of the Earthly Brute with the bizarre theories that she had brought from the Star Glory Federation!
"What—what—what was even more horrendous was that she brought brand-new training techniques to the Earthly Brute. The techniques that did not require any magical equipment to trigger the maximal damage possible, the techniques that belonged to the 'body fundamentalists'!"
Heiye Lan, who had been holding her breath listening just now, could not help but exclaim, "Body fundamentalists!"
Body fundamentalism was a concept generated after the modern Cultivation civilization was born. Meng Chixin, Qi Zhongdao, and other Cultivators from the Ancient Sages Sector did not know what 'body fundamentalist' meant exactly.
However, Heiye Lan, with her knowledge from the Imperium of True Human Beings, naturally knew the horror of such a type of Cultivator.
How terrifying the body fundamentalists, who were too proud to use any magical equipment or weapons and were bold enough to challenge any enemy with their bare hands and tough body, could be!
"Nobody foresaw that the Earthly Brute and the techniques of the body fundamentalists would fit so well!" Fei Qi said desperately. "The most petrifying, destructive power had already been hidden deep inside their blood after thousands of years of modifications and radiation. The only problem was that they did not know how to trigger it in the beginning.
"Ding Lingdang brought an entire system of the body fundamentalists' training techniques and publicized them for free. After only a few years, they spread to every corner of the Uranian Ring Planet like wildfire!
"In just five years, more than a hundred thousand 'body fundamentalists' who mastered extraordinary battle skills and trained their hands into lethal weapons had emerged in the Earthly Brute!
"Those body fundamentalists established a resistance organization in secret, and Ding Lingdang was the leader of the organization. When we were 'curing' the riot, we did not expect the assault of thousands of body fundamentalists at all. They captured a hundred shuttles that were used to commute between the Uranian Ring and the ground, and they launched an attack on the Uranian Ring, the very symbol of our civilization!"
All the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators and Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators were listening attentively.
Heaven Battering King Qi Changsheng, who had spent his entire life slaying authorities and rebelling, was beaming with great interest. He slapped his thigh and said to everybody through a discrete technique, "Good one! What a she-devil Ding Lingdang is! This woman is tougher than most men!"
Li Yao swallowed and calmly asked, "Did Ding Lingdang succeed in assaulting the Uranian Ring with thousands of body fundamentalists?"
"Not in the beginning." Fei Qi shook his head and said, "The Heavenly Light had lived on the Uranian Ring for thousands of years. It had been modified to the extent that it was impenetrable. Also, a lot of crystal suits and starships were stationed there. It was not something that a few thousand beginner-level body fundamentalists could take down. They occupied a certain section of the circular orbit for only ten days before they were driven away by our government!
"However, to this moment, we still failed to realize that Ding Lingdang was a federal Cultivator from a foreign land with ill intentions.
"There were a lot of rumors in the Earthly Brute, depicting her as a three-headed, six-armed almighty. Naturally, we would not believe such folly easily. We thought that she was also a member of the Earthly Brute, locally born and raised, except that she was lucky enough to find the legacy of the body fundamentalists below the earth!
"We also failed to realize that she had led thousands of body fundamentalists to attack the Uranian Ring not in order to completely occupy the Uranian Ring but to seize the enormous antenna arrays on the Uranian Ring so that she could send the precise coordinates of the Uranian Ring Sector to the Star Glory Federation and guide the way for the first fleet from the federation!
"When the riots on the ground were about to be completely 'cured', the first fleet from the federation appeared at the periphery of the Uranian Ring Sector out of everyone's expectation. We—we were truly caught unprepared!
"The five-year war between the Star Glory Federation and the Uranian Ring Sector thus broke out!
"In terms of starships, the Uranian Ring was originally a super large dock of the Star Ocean Imperium. Our starship technology was reasonably good, too. Although we had yet to launch cross-Sector space voyages, we should've been more than capable of defending the homeland of the Uranian Ring Sector.
"However, our enemy was not just the fleet of the federation, which was jumping from the foreign land incessantly, but also the rioting and rebelling members of the Earthly Brute on the ground!
"The fleet of the federation bombarded from space, and all the minerals and resources on the ground to be shipped were sabotaged by the mobs. More and more mines were taken over and began transporting resources to the enemy instead. We were under attack from both inside and outside!
"Just like that, after five years of war, we finally couldn't hold out any longer. The mobs of the Earthly Brute, those filthy, humble, stinky, and stupid miners, under the lead of Ding Lingdang and the support of the Star Glory Federation, completely took over the Uranian Ring, the symbol of the glory of our civilization!"
Chapter 1556: Jin Xinyue, the Venomous Witch! |
After saying that, Fei Qi seemed to have been greatly stimulated. Although Long Yangjun was piercing his acupoints and soothing his nerves, his facial organs were still wry, and there was excitement all over his face. "Those filthy, lowly miners conspired with the wicked people of the federation and marched into the Uranian Ring, the most spectacular and splendid hall of our civilization. They burnt, killed, plundered, and sabotaged, destroying all the art and culture that the Heavenly Light had accumulated for thousands of years. It was an apocalypse. The Uranian Ring civilization was done and done for good!
"The rebels of the Earthly Brute and the fleets of the Star Glory Federation attacked and occupied the Uranian Ring. The Heavenly Light lost our most important base. Our last remaining fleets wandered at the edge of the galaxy, without the support of resources or a base anymore. We became rootless duckweeds.
"We were unable to take back the Uranian Ring. The ammunition, spiritual energy, food, and other assets were all running dry. The sordid people of the federation were infiltrating us on a large scale, too. They divided us through all kinds of cunning and crooked methods, luring a lot of traitors on our side over to them. Our morale was lower than ever.
"Unable to fight the war anymore, we had no choice but to surrender.
"Although the Star Glory Federation had won the war, we still had a rather powerful fleet under our command. With whatever was left of our spiritual energy and the ammunitions, although it was impossible for us to take back the Uranian Ring, we were still capable of dealing heavy damage to the expedition army of the federation if we chose to die together with them.
"Under such circumstances, the Star Glory Federation couldn't risk suffering such great damages just in order to annihilate each and every one of us. They accepted our surrender, but on one condition, we must accept the new government of the Uranian Ring Sector and all the decisions that it made. If we found them unacceptable, we would be asked to leave, meaning that we would be exiled!"
Long Yangjun waved her hands again. "A new government?"
"Yes. The Star Glory Federation is a highly hypocritical country." Fei Qi gnashed his teeth. "They have been in the business of expansion and robbing this whole time as out-and-out invaders, but they have always been fond of varnishing their actions and righteously claiming that they were serving justice!
"Even a three-year-old knows that the federation had a war against the Uranian Ring Sector because it wanted to swallow the Uranian Ring Sector and occupy the super-large orbit dock that we inherited from the Star Ocean Imperium. However, in the federation's propaganda, the war became a civil war of the Uranian Ring Sector!
"The officials of the Star Glory Federation described the insurgency of the Earthly Brute as an 'uprising' and the rebels of the Earthly Brute as a 'revolutionary army'. It was supposedly at their invitation and request that the Star Glory Federation intervened in the war. So, the actions of the Star Glory Federation were justifiable as a so-called 'Interstellar Law'!
"The Star Glory Federation claimed that it had no intention of colonizing the Uranian Ring Sector whatsoever and that our future would be decided on our own. Once the war was over, the government that was exclusively made of the Heavenly Light naturally had to be reshuffled. The new government would be elected and established through a referendum consulting all the people of the Uranian Ring Sector, including both the Heavenly Light and the Earthly Brute."
Deep in thought, Long Yangjun said, "That doesn't sound like a very harsh requirement to me."
"Not very harsh?" The most painful memory in Fei Qi's mind seemed to have been triggered. He bellowed, "This is an out-and-out trap, a blatant scheme! The population of the Heavenly Light is very small. It is less than one percent of the population of the Earthly Brute. If a new government was to be established according to the ratio of the population or through a referendum, we would have no power at all!
"To make matters worse, even our pitiful one percent of the power was stolen by the members of the Heavenly Light who surrendered to the federation in advance!
"Those traitors also belonged to the Heavenly Light, but they were among the bottom class of our people in the beginning. They were mostly workers who lived outside of the Uranian Ring and were responsible for the maintenance of the shell of the Uranian Ring!
"Those black sheep in the Heavenly Light were the first to surrender when the Earthly Brute and the Star Glory Federation assaulted the Uranian Ring. With their familiarity with the structure and weaknesses of the Uranian Ring, they sold our civilization to win the favor of their new masters. Right now, their cause has been justified, and they have become the spokespersons of the entire Heavenly Light, the mascots of the new government!
"Just like that, under the manipulation of the Star Glory Federation, an organization named the 'Referendum Committee' was founded to 'help' the people of the Uranian Ring Sector establish a new government. Jin Xinyue, the witch who is as venomous as a viper and a scorpion, was nominated as the president of the committee."
"Wait!" Li Yao frowned again and asked, "Who is this… Jin Xinyue? Weren't you talking about Ding Lingdang a moment ago?"
"Jin Xinyue is another notorious she-devil who is as infamous as Ding Lingdang in the federation," Fei Qi explained. "They are both powerful, brutal beings. Many people even say that the two women have divided most of the power of the federation!
"The two she-devils each have their specialties. Ding Lingdang is tough, cruel, and bloodthirsty. She conquers free worlds like ours with pure strength. In comparison, Jin Xinyue is best known for her shamelessness, cunningness, and mercilessness. People say that when she smiles at you, you should be prepared to be devoured without any bones left! Half of the plots and schemes of the federation have been planned by this she-devil.
"During the war, Ding Lingdang, the Blazing Tyrannosaur, naturally took the lead. Once the war was over and the Uranian Ring civilization was to be chewed and digested, it was certainly the turn of Jin Xinyue, the Venomous Witch!
"Under Ding Lingdang's lead and Jin Xinyue's manipulation, it shouldn't be hard to imagine what the new government of the Heavenly Brute rebels and the traitors of the Heavenly Light is like.
"The very first decision that the new government made after it was established was to reorganize the 'Referendum Committee' into the 'Accountancy Committee', which would still be directed by Jin Xinyue and specifically focus on holding the Heavenly Light's 'oppression' over the past thousands of years to account.
"The second decision was that the Uranian Ring Sector would be merged into the Star Glory Federation and become a participant of the federation!
"It was a sign that they did not bother camouflaging their purpose any longer but were desperate to swallow our world!
"The righteous members of the Heavenly Light such as us couldn't do anything at all while our lovely civilization was ravaged and devoured by the Star Glory Federation, because we could barely protect ourselves at that time. Under the shameless scheming of the wicked Jin Xinyue, most of our properties were confiscated. Some of the less fortunate ones even went bankrupt and lost everything overnight with a huge debt!"
Li Yao scratched his chin and asked, "Your properties were confiscated? Well… Under what ruse did this Venomous Witch confiscate your properties? Just because you lost the war?"
"Not exactly. As an extremely hypocritical and vile country, the Star Glory Federation certainly wouldn't resort to such a simple and straightforward excuse to achieve their purpose," Fei Qi said bitterly. "The witch Jin Xinyue brought tremendous skillful… lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and insurance specialists from the Star Glory Federation. They analyzed and calculated the 'oppression' that the Earthly Brute had suffered when they were collecting resources below the ground over thousands of years.
