Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1686
The gift from Wuying Qi 3.0 surged in his brain in information streams. The overwhelming information crashed and raised colorful tides whether or not he was willing to accept it.
Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!
Reality and illusions interchanged before Li Yao's eyes.
He seemed to be watching Wuying Qi modify the Gold Crystal Pyramid on a large scale in the past months.
He also saw how Blackstar the Great made plans to upgrade the Gold Crystal Pyramid based on the remains of the Book of Revelation left by the Nuwa Clan.
He seemed to be even going back to hundreds of thousands of years ago, when infinite black beetles, in a life form that resembled jellyfish, polished rocks, established high towers, carved rune arrays, and built their final weapon.
The information of Wuying Qi, the Blood God, the Nuwa Clan, and even the Houyi Clan exploded inside Li Yao's head, making him feel that this place was his home and his fortress.
The whole Gold Crystal Pyramid was an extension of his body and mind. It was part of him, and he was the master of the Gold Crystal Pyramid!
In only half a minute, he found a secret channel to the control center and appeared before the mental devil.
Even Long Yangjun and Li Jialing could barely keep up with him. They exclaimed in shock, wondering why he grew so familiar with the Gold Crystal Pyramid all of a sudden.
The mental devil's exclamation, however, was even sharper than theirs, not because it was surprised at Li Yao's familiarity with this place, but because it detected the abnormal energy deep inside Li Yao's head.
As one of Li Yao's two personalities, the mental devil had always been particularly sensitive about the unusual energy that invaded Li Yao's brain.
"What's wrong with you?"
Light of blood crawled out of the mainframe crystal processor of the Gold Crystal Pyramid and re-entered Li Yao's brain. "So many things have entered you—my head when I'm away!"
"Too much debt is no debt."
Li Yao said, "I'm used to being possessed by people anyway. Those things will be digested soon. Tell me the situation of the Gold Crystal Pyramid first. Can you shut it off with your power?"
"That's impossible."
The mental devil displayed thousands of graphs and illustrations in front of Li Yao by stimulating his retina. "Look, the central database of the Gold Crystal Pyramid is defended by a dozen flawless firewalls. I have to unlock all of them at once. If any one of my guesses is wrong, their passwords will be changed at the same time. They will also be completely locked down after three failed attempts, and the state to infuriate the sun won't be changed!
"Also, I haven't found the central component of the Gold Crystal Pyramid yet. Even if I do, I have no doubt that it's heavily protected from the outside. It will be impossible to break the central component unless we can bombard it for half an hour with a super warship!
"But we're running out of time. The Gold Crystal Pyramid has sent powerful electromagnetic waves to the sun, and the intensity of the solar storms is close to the tipping point. Based on current data, if we cannot turn off the Gold Crystal Pyramid in half an hour, the solar activities will lead to a chain action and eliminate all the creatures within the radiation range of the sun. This apocalyptic state might last five or ten years, or maybe forever. Nobody knows the answer!"
"Oh? Is that so?"
Li Yao scratched his hair and sighed. "Then we don't have a choice now. First things first. Let's leave the future trouble to the future!"
Li Yao closed his index finger and his middle finger and rubbed his forehead, completely unlocking the gift that Wuying Qi 3.0 just implanted in his head.
This unlocking was a hundred times more painful than the passive absorption just now. Li Yao's hair was all standing up, and a gray mist was rising around him. Very soon, the gray mist turned into countless runes that were attached to his body.
Before him, the crystal processors left by the Houyi Clan from hundreds of thousands of years ago also showed countless runes. Every rune on the crystal processors seemed to have a match with a rune on Li Yao's body. A virtual bridge was established between them.
Li Yao had transformed himself into the core of the mainframe crystal processor of the Gold Crystal Pyramid.
His brain was the key to unlock the highest clearances of the Gold Crystal Pyramid.
Li Yao's face was so solemn that he almost seemed to be somewhere else.
His eyes were rolling fast, indicating that he was conducting calculations at a high speed.
His ragged clothes were torn apart by the fire of spiritual energy, but the fire and the gray mist weaved into an armor and a cloak for him. His hair and his cloak were moving although there was no wind. Gradually, he got rid of the boundary of gravity and rose to the center of the ancient crystal processors.
"This guy…"
Long Yangjun looked at Li Yao in disbelief. She might be envying Li Yao's luck, but she saw the price that Li Yao was paying.
"Brother Yao…"
Li Jialing also murmured. It seemed that Brother Yao had also obtained something extraordinary like he did.
"The passwords and the highest clearances of the Gold Crystal Pyramid are ours!"
The mental devil exclaimed in Li Yao's head, "The Gold Crystal Pyramid is under our control now! It's ours!"
"Exactly."
Li Yao smiled in exhaustion and struggled to say, "Now, you've gained all the permissions of the Gold Crystal Pyramid. Stop it now!"
"Got it!"
The mental devil exclaimed in delight and rushed out of Li Yao's brain towards the depths of the mainframe crystal processor of the Gold Crystal Pyramid along thousands of virtual wires.
Different from just now, it was identified as the master of the Gold Crystal Pyramid this time. The barriers and firewalls that blocked it earlier were all opened, and the closed areas were now fully open. It could reach every corner of the Gold Crystal Pyramid and read any information it wanted freely.
Shutdown! Shutdown! The modules that were running so fast that they were almost exploding were all shut down!
The quakes deep inside the Gold Crystal Pyramid finally died down, and the pillar of light that was shot to the sky dimmed and withered, until it vanished into nothingness like a river that had run dry.
…
In the space battlefield, the black spots on the violent sun, which had been proliferating, finally lost their momentum after the last failed attempt to swallow the sun. The fire that the sun darted out was shortened and shortened, and the high-energy particles and radiations emitted by the sun were also declining at an astonishing speed.
Many starships of the ace fleets of the four families had lost their spiritual shields, and their plate armor was about to be pierced through by the high-energy particles. Everybody on those starships was about to be destroyed from the genetic level.
However, when the starships were on the verge of destruction, the fury of the sun slightly ebbed, preventing them from being killed.
However, the dizzy soldiers and Immortal Cultivators did not know that death had just knocked on their door. Because of the powerful reverberation of brainwaves, they were either dizzy or crazy or still haunted by nightmares. However, since the source of their problem had been taken care of, they would wake up from the nightmares very soon.
…
The surface of the capital planet was the same.
Previously, tides hundreds of meters high had taken shape in the ocean and was about to scourge the coastal towns in a destructive tsunami.
Hundreds of volcanoes were all exploding and fuming with intense black smoke, ready to block the sky with magma and turn the places near them into burning infernos.
Animals were escaping from forests. Many rivers were uncannily dry, leaving the dying fish patting their tails at the bottom. Shocked birds were swooping among the skyscrapers in cities until they hit the glass windows and crashed.
Even the most inert person could tell the anomaly of the sun. The ever-expanding black spots turned the sun into a cold and heartless eye, marking the beginning of a millennial eclipse.
However, everything died down when people were caught by desperation.
The surging tides in the ocean collapsed to twenty meters high before they reached the coastal towns. They were easily shattered by the defense rune arrays deployed at the shore.
The seething volcanoes were mostly tranquilized. Some of them erupted, but their magma only covered several square kilometers around the volcanoes, instead of being thrown hundreds of kilometers away.
The shocked birds soared again and returned to their homes like other animals. The rivers were running again. The water of the rivers was dirty at first, but it became as clear as before very soon.
On the orbit of the capital planet, the Fist King managed to reach out to Xiaoming and Wenwen as the solar storm was ebbing. He sent a signal to the Seven Seas Space Zone again, reporting that the environment was good enough for a space jump with enough electromagnetic protection.
Twisted vortexes immediately appeared in the vast cosmos. The three-dimensional universe seemed to have been twisted by a gigantic, invisible hand, which opened a channel to the four-dimensional world.
The Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet finally arrived.
Chapter 2670: Deterrent |
By the time the Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet arrived at the Empyreal Terminus Sector across the space turbulence, the battle in the capital had approached the end.
At this moment, 20% of the starships of the four families had been destroyed by solar storms, ending up as burning coffins, and another 30% could not move anymore because their crew had been killed by the radiation or each other.
As for the other half starships, even though their crew members had got rid of the nightmares, they were still too dizzy to fight. It was barely possible for them to fly their starships away.
Normal troops would collapse after 10% of them were lost. The elite troops such as the four families' fleet could handle 20% to 30%. However, now that more than 50% of the soldiers could not fight anymore, nothing could possibly support the remaining soldiers to continue the battle.
As a result, they simply waited to be captured, without any determination to resist the Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet.
For the Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet, the trickiest thing was not to "defeat" the ace fleets of the four families, but to control all the miserable, ragged, and panicked starships of the enemy when they were terribly outnumbered.
They had to be fast because plenty of starships did not suffer any substantial damage although their crew was still under immense mental shock.
Once their crew was back to normal, they would definitely flee even though they dare not attack the Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet.
Although they had foreseen the difficulty and complexity of the mission, Lei Chenghu and Boss Bai still found it tricky.
Only with the reliability of Lei Chenghu and the precision of Boss Bai could they accomplish the seemingly impossible mission step by step.
They separated the ace fleets of the four families, which were a mess, as soon as possible, before they locked onto most flagships and powerful warships and installed tremendous crystal bombs to the engine compartments of those warships. They also blocked all the cannons and wrecked the turning units on the turrets.
In such a way, 90% of the combat ability of a warship would be sealed, and the warship would be completely captured.
The process took a very long time.
Thankfully, the mental shock caused by the solar storm was too powerful, and most soldiers of the ace fleets of the four families weren't back to themselves so quickly. Even though some of them did, they knew that it was impossible to turn things around when they saw the messy starships on their side and the well-organized battle formations on the enemy's side.
Only the hardcore supporters of the four families on a few starships woke up in time and led their starships to escape from the battlefield before the arrival of the Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet. They had run to the edge of the Empyreal Terminus Sector, ready to run home after they had fully recovered.
Lei Chenghu and Boss Bai did not stop the rebels, partly because they did not have enough men to catch every enemy, and partly because the solar storms had seriously damaged the shells of those starships. The chances were small that those starships could run back home through space jumps without being destroyed in the four-dimensional storms.
So, Lei Chenghu and Boss Bai simply let them go.
The whole capture operation lasted three days and three nights before the flag of the reformists was finally raised on every starship of the ace fleets of the four families.
The Battle of Seven Seas was over, and the battle in the capital was about to be. However, another war that was more subtle and complicated had been started without anybody realizing it.
…
In the Gold Crystal Pyramid below the ground of the capital planet.
In the past three days, while the Astounding Thunder Fleet and the Arsonist Fleet were seizing every moment to deal with the remaining soldiers of the ace fleets of the four families, Li Yao had been absorbing all the information on the Gold Crystal Pyramid and reestablishing the defense system and the control modules that solely belonged to himself.
The old firewalls were gone in the wind, replaced by new ones that were safer and more unnoticeable. The silent defense rune arrays were activated again, releasing dazzling electric arcs. The thousands of battle puppets around the Gold Crystal Pyramid opened their eyes warily again. They had resumed their patrol in more complicated and meticulous routes. They were the extension of Li Yao's will. Immortal Cultivators would not be allowed to enter this place without Li Yao's permission.
"Should I hibernate the central modules of the Gold Crystal Pyramid?"
At the last step, the mental devil asked Li Yao, "It will be safer and steadier if the central modules hibernate, but if we want to infuriate the sun again, we'll have to preheat the system for a long time, so…"
"So, we might not have enough deterrence?"
Li Yao immediately understood what the mental devil meant.
"That's right."
Over the past three days, the mental devil had figured out what Wuying Qi 3.0's legacy was.
As Li Yao's dark personality, it did not resist the identity as the master of the Gold Crystal Pyramid at all. In fact, it was actually very interested in threatening the whole Imperium of True Human Beings on its own. It couldn't wait to become the next deterrent.
The mental devil couldn't care less about turning into a vicious dragon. It might even feel that the dragon scales looked awesome!
It seemed that splitting his soul so that his dark and evil personality would mess up the mainframe crystal processor of the Gold Crystal Pyramid and that his righteous personality would deal with Wuying Qi 3.0 was the best decision that Li Yao had ever made. Otherwise, he might have been absorbed by Wuying Qi 3.0 on the spot.
"That is indeed a problem, but I will never use the lives of all the residents in the Empyreal Terminus Sector as bargaining chips, not even if I'm at my most insane, desperate, and angry state of mind!"
Li Yao declared resolutely, "Even though I'm not destroying the central units of the Gold Crystal Pyramid, I have to hibernate them in case anything goes wrong.
"However…
"The lack of deterrence is truly a problem. How about this? Can you create a simulation system that will make the central units of the Gold Crystal Pyramid seem to be functioning when we have actually turned them off?"
"That's possible, but it will transform 'strategic deterrence' into 'strategic deception'."
The mental devil snorted, "I feel that it's much less awesome. Also, I need to remind you that successful strategic deterrence must be based on the premise that all your enemies and allies believe that you are an insane lunatic who will make use of the deterrence when necessary. But in fact, you do not boast this convincing power.
"For the Immortal Cultivators who are as determined as Lei Chenghu, they might ignore your strategic deterrence and even construe it as strategic deception. In such a way, they would simply continue whatever they're doing without caring about what you do or say.
"After all, not that I'm blaming you, but you've tricked too many people for people to trust you."
"What are you talking about?"
Li Yao glared at him. "What do you mean by 'you've tricked too many people'? We did it together, alright?
"But you're not wrong. I'm indeed a righteous and benevolent person in public. It's indeed rather difficult to convince Lei Chenghu and other Immortal Cultivators that I will not hesitate to destroy the Empyreal Terminus Sector if they cross the line."
"That's right. Strategic deterrence is a battle on determination and madness."
The mental devil said solemnly, "You're obviously not as crazy as Lei Chenghu. How are you going to play strategic deterrence with him?"
"Fine. That's truly a problem. How can I convince an iron-blooded militarist like Lei Chenghu that an innocent Cultivator like me may be even more brutal and insane than he is?"
Li Yao sighed as he watched the mental devil hibernate the central units of the Gold Crystal Pyramid. Scratching his hair, he left the control room. "I need to think about it…"
Long Yangjun and Li Jialing were both waiting anxiously. Seeing Li Yao, they immediately approached him and scanned him both concernedly and warily.
"What are you doing? Checking if I've turned into a vicious dragon?" said Li Yao unhappily while frowning.
"That's right. I have to say that Wuying Qi 3.0 has truly played a sordid move on you!"
Long Yangjun rubbed her fists and said concernedly, "In this situation, you have to become the master of the Gold Crystal Pyramid to deter the Imperium. But who knows whether or not you will be lost in front of such immense power? We certainly need to keep an eye on you so that we can 'wake you up' when you're about to be corrupted."
