Big Data Cultivation

Chapter 2561: Chapter 2553: A Straightforward Man

In fact, the investigation by the Luo Family had already reached its limit; they really couldn’t dig any further.

Even though they ranked second among the Minor Realm Families, Lingmu Sect was one of the Eighteen Paths.

Even if Lingmu Sect and the Spirit Plant Path had been fighting too fiercely and weren’t particularly dominant, it was still not something the Luo Family could afford to provoke.

If the Luo Family emptied the nest and went all-out against Lingmu Sect, they might be able to fight to mutual destruction, but the Seven Gates and Eighteen Paths would never sit by and watch them do that. And although the Luo Family deeply resented that someone had offended their ancestor, they still couldn’t possibly wage a full-scale war against Lingmu Sect over this.

It wouldn’t be worth it; this wasn’t some irreconcilable blood feud. Slaughtering the Xiao Family was already enough. Even if the Luo ancestor were reborn, he wouldn’t support them in retaliating against a member of the Eighteen Paths. Clan Practitioners value bloodline inheritance above all—how could they risk annihilation of the clan over such a minor grudge?

That said, the Luo Family did state that if Mountain Master Feng needed any help during his investigation, they were willing to provide it unconditionally. They even said that when he sought revenge, he could ask Luo Family cultivators to lend a hand—the Luo Family couldn’t take the initiative to attack Lingmu Sect, but joining in after someone else started was no problem.

Feng Jun calculated for a bit and felt that there was no way he could rely on Wei Sancai for this—Luo Shiqi had to be cautious and avoid taboos as it was, and Wei Sancai would have even less justification. A True Sage from a Clan Practitioners’ background really wasn’t in a position to stick his neck out in a matter like this.

He could, however, try and see if he could enlist Luan Xiong True Sage.

Two more days passed, and the agreed-upon date arrived. Feng Jun went to the Blazing Flame Plate to see how many people Luan Xiong True Sage planned to take over.

Luan Xiong had actually gathered a hundred Golden Cores from the Jinwu, most of them at the initial and Intermediate Level; there were Nascent Souls too, but only two.

Interestingly, Luan Xiong had also assembled a hundred Golden Cores from the Seven Emotions Path, with three Nascent Souls among them—this was at Tuotuo True Sage’s request, asking him to notify the Seven Emotions Path that a batch of disciples was needed for resource collection.

Tuotuo could have come back himself originally, but if he returned, there would be no True Sage sitting in town at the Third Battlefield. So he simply gave Luan Xiong a token and asked him to make a trip to the Seven Emotions Path.

The Seven Emotions Path itself was quite interesting: joy, anger, worry, thought, sorrow, fear, and shock, representing seven kinds of emotions. Because each emotion had its own "path," their disciples weren’t particularly united.

Of course, it wasn’t like they were plotting against each other or anything; they just didn’t get very close, worried that other emotions would interfere with their own.

Back when Tuotuo True Sage accepted the invitation from the two Paths, he hadn’t deliberately helped his disciples fight for many quotas.

Now that he basically understood the Insect World, he saw that everyone else was fighting for benefits for their own side, so he came forward to compete as well—only, by this point, it was inconvenient for him to come back in person.

So at the moment, Luan Xiong True Sage was essentially leading two hundred Golden Cores and five Nascent Souls and wanted Feng Jun to help transport them over.

Feng Jun hesitated for a moment, feeling that Luan Xiong had things to忙 himself with; for the time being, it was better not to trouble him with a trip to Lingmu Sect.

After waiting another half a day, Wei Sancai also arrived at Blazing Flame with a hundred Golden Cores, accompanied by five Nascent Souls.

Back then everyone had agreed to rendezvous at Blazing Flame, but if Luan Xiong weren’t sitting in town, it wouldn’t have been that easy for Wei Sancai, a True Sage, to even leave the Transmission Array.

Feng Jun sent them to the Luan Jiu Galaxy and didn’t ask any more questions. Disciples from the two Paths naturally came over to collect fees and register identities.

There wasn’t much need to inspect the Storage Bags, because those who came were sure to have brought only living and combat supplies, so when they left, it would be enough to inspect whatever other materials they had.

Since it wasn’t convenient to bring this up with Luan Xiong, Feng Jun started pondering whether he could ask Han Hai True Sage for help, and headed back to the front line.

However, once he set foot on Xingzheng Star and thought of summoning Han Hai, he suddenly felt it would be a bit abrupt—after all, Han Hai was a Great Sage, and they weren’t that familiar. For a Small Golden Core like him, was it really appropriate to just summon the other party casually?

Previously, Han Hai had been willing to help him investigate; that had already been a True Sage’s favor. If he took that for granted, that would be downright immature.

Still, since he’d come, he couldn’t just leave with nothing. He teleported to Youjing, wanting to see how Xuan Gao was doing now.

The Starry Splendor Group really wasn’t ordinary in its strength. Last time, they’d provided Youjing with a large amount of energy stones and other supplies. Normally they ought to have been subjected to a thorough investigation, but after Feng Jun observed carefully for a while, he realized there truly hadn’t been any.

Even around headquarters and the shipyard, there weren’t any suspicious personnel watching.

It wasn’t just that the Big Bosses hadn’t noticed anything; Feng Jun even pulled up a "nearby people" search to check and confirmed that there really were no watchers.

There were a few more monitoring devices, but that was normal; if the military showed no reaction whatsoever, that would be the strange thing.

More amusingly, the route Feng Jun had used to enter the shipyard last time still had the same loophole; no one had patched it up at all.

This was clearly a gesture of goodwill! Feng Jun didn’t let them down either. When night fell, he once again entered through that route.

Coincidentally, it was raining in Youjing again that night. In the fine, scattered drizzle, Feng Jun appeared in the shipyard plaza without wearing a mecha.

The guards spotted him instantly; a searchlight swept over him once, then moved away.

Before long, Xuan Gao’s shrill laughter rang out. "Sir, long time no see."

"Doesn’t feel that long," Feng Jun answered casually, then asked, "How come the military hasn’t increased surveillance?"

"They have, actually. Put in several cameras," Xuan Gao’s burly figure appeared as he spoke with a grin. "At least they have to make a show of it."

Feng Jun chatted back just as casually. "Looks like your relationship with the military is indeed pretty good."

"A bit better than those two," Xuan Gao replied naturally. "Loans for Splendid Starry Sky usually go through Vanguard Bank; if you’re dealing with that, your ties to the military won’t be too bad. The key thing is... with Zuo Jing and Xiajing taking the flak up front, the pressure on Youjing’s military side is much lighter."

That did make sense. Feng Jun nodded. "Recently the intensity of the bugs’ attacks feels a bit lower?"

"It’s dropped a lot, actually," Xuan Gao admitted. "Mainly because you people killed quite a number of commander-level bugs, and our firepower’s gone up a lot too. Those bugs aren’t completely brainless—they can obviously guess we’ve replenished our energy stones."

Feng Jun nodded, saying with a hint of emotion, "Looks like these bugs really can’t hold out much longer."

"What do you mean?" Xuan Gao’s eyes lit up. "You’re saying... they’re about to retreat?"

As for the bugs’ next move, it wasn’t just the Administrative Planet where masses of people were speculating; across the whole Federation, countless people were studying it. But he very much wanted to hear this side’s view—as powerful as this faction was, their predictions were unlikely to be far off.

"Whether they’ll retreat soon, I can’t say for sure," Feng Jun didn’t give a definite answer. "But the bugs’ losses are extremely heavy. Roughly estimated, the bugs that have died since they started attacking this galaxy... would be enough to take five similar galaxies."

He wasn’t the one who came up with that; it was intel obtained by a Nascent Soul from the Beast Taming Path through communication among the bugs. The Insect Race’s way of communicating is very hard to crack, and Soul Search isn’t suitable, but Beast Taming Path cultivators deal with alien beings year-round, and are relatively good at sensing the emotions of non-humans.

"And isn’t that all thanks to you?" Xuan Gao didn’t hide his guess. "I heard you’ve killed some King-Level bugs?"

"We killed three," Feng Jun didn’t really like beating around the bush; he preferred dealing with straightforward people. "But the Federation reinforcements also played a huge role; that part can’t be denied."

If the Federation hadn’t continuously sent reinforcements to help divert the bugs’ attention, Tianqin cultivators would basically have needed to go all out to achieve such results—and that would have exposed them too early.

"Three King-Level?" Xuan Gao was stunned at the words. He had connections in the military and could get plenty of sensitive intel; he knew that during that eruption of the mysterious forces, they might have killed a King-Level bug—but three... that was over the top. "What weapon did you use?"

He wasn’t being rude; he was just too curious. Under normal circumstances, for the Federation to kill a King-Level bug, they usually needed to use core-orbit cannons or even planet-killer warships.

A planet-killer warship can basically wipe out a King-Level bug; a core-orbit cannon, as a defensive weapon, isn’t necessarily enough to kill one, but if fired unexpectedly, it can definitely repel or heavily wound a King-Level bug.

However, core-orbit cannons are hard to manufacture and consume huge amounts of energy, so they’re strictly regulated by the military—not every planet has such an installation.

Still, having them and having many of them are two different things. Ever since core-orbit cannons started to show their might and blew away several King-Level bugs, out-of-body-stage bugs rarely showed up inside the Federation’s planetary defense perimeter.

Anyway, firing one of those things even once is a big deal, and it’s extremely uneconomical to use them to kill commander-level bugs. Many planets won’t fire their core-orbit cannons even if they’re overrun by bugs; in many cases, the bugs discover that the cannons have never been fired—but they’ve already been sabotaged.

That’s actually a form of deterrence, a warning to King-Level bugs not to casually approach planets.

As for killing Emperor-Level bugs, that’s even rarer. In all its history, the Federation has only ever slain two Emperor-Level bugs, with utterly horrific casualties. It’s said they first threw in every kind of warship and human lives, then all sorts of self-destruction attacks, and ultimately used the classified ultimate weapon "Ultimate Annihilation."

That kind of super-weapon is top-tier classified in the Federation; no information on its principles has ever leaked.

But supposedly, the second time the Federation used "Ultimate Annihilation," they’d improved it a lot compared to the first time.

The bugs originally thought they could completely wipe out the Federation with Emperor-Level combat strength, but once they realized the Human Race had terrifying learning capabilities, they worried the Federation would find effective means of dealing with Emperor-Level bugs. As a result, Emperor-Level bugs rarely showed up afterward.

In fact, right now commander-level bugs are the highest combat strength being used against the Human Race; even King-Level bugs are seldom seen.

Having heard they’d killed three Kings, Xuan Gao really wanted to know how they’d done it.

There was no way Feng Jun would answer that question, so he just smiled. "You asking that... is over the line."

"It definitely is over the line," Xuan Gao was quite brave about admitting fault; he gave an apologetic smile. "I was just surprised and lost control for a moment... Sir, this time you came to me, are you looking to buy a warship?"

He really was a straightforward guy.

(Updated to here, summoning monthly tickets.)

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