Basic Table Manners

Keisha had already gathered some information about the number and size of the Human Federation's fleets, and had formed a preliminary understanding of them.

Judging by the surface data detected by the Sacred Knowledge Treasury, even a single fleet of the other civilization seemed far more powerful than their Heavenly Blade Battleship fleets.

Keisha knew this, but she hadn't told the Angel Warriors under her command.

Because she was afraid.

Why were these little angels under her command daring to clamor for sanctions against the Human Federation by launching a Nebula-level War?

Their fearlessness came from genuine ignorance.

But Keisha couldn't afford to be as ignorant as they were.

She could no longer sit still. If her warriors learned the truth about the Human Federation, a storm would surely erupt within the Angel Civilization.

As the Angel King of the Merlot Heavenly Court, Keisha had the courage and resolve to reveal the truth and face the fear alongside her warriors.

She chose to keep the truth hidden for now only to prevent unnecessary panic from throwing them into disarray.

Going to war with the Human Federation was inadvisable, but accepting the other civilization's diplomatic extortion was just as inadvisable.

Either could expose the Angel Civilization to the threat of utter destruction in the near future.

Keisha racked her brains for a third option, hoping to reach some kind of reconciliation with the Human Federation and avoid conflict, but she found no way forward.

The other civilization had blocked off every other channel of communication, leaving them with only two diplomatic options: fight or submit.

With no other choice, Keisha could only order her forces to prepare for war and send for Heavenly King Hexi to discuss the matter with her, hoping they could "choose the lesser of two evils."

If the Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs on United Star knew what Keisha was thinking, they would have looked down on her with utter contempt.

They had seen countless alien vermin like this.

In the vast sea of stars, weak interstellar civilizations had never had any real diplomacy.

Their willingness to negotiate with the Angel Civilization was nothing more than a little trick.

The Angel Nebula had little strategic value. It wasn't even in the Milky Way, and it lay tens of millions of light-years away.

Conquering the entire Angel Nebula and occupying it completely would take a great deal of time and resources.

The spoils might not even make up for the cost of sending a single Federation fleet tens of millions of light-years away.

They might as well spend that time developing more of the Milky Way's native Star Systems and speeding up the Great Expedition.

This so-called diplomacy was nothing more than a simple ploy to confuse them.

They wanted to see whether the other civilization would stick its head out to be chopped off, or tuck it in and be chopped off anyway.

If diplomacy let them extort a batch of Dark Matter resources from the other civilization in advance, then the other civilization would effectively be paying for the invasion. That was the true malice behind the Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs' actions.

If they couldn't extort anything, there was no need to dwell on the loss.

The Federation had an old saying: "No matter how far away, they must be punished."

The Angel Civilization had offended the Federation twice, and it was one of the few interstellar civilizations in this universe capable of posing a threat.

The Federation could never coexist peacefully with them.

Even the weakest civilization had a chance of growing into a behemoth.

And the angels were supposedly the King of Gods. No matter how weak they were, they still had some ability to deploy forces across the cosmos and the potential to develop further.

If they encountered a civilization like that, they had to do everything they could to wipe it out—even if it cost ten times as much!

The Federation had no record of leaving its enemies alone. Any fool capable of attracting the Federation's attention was worth their full effort.

Besides the Angel Civilization, the Lieyang Civilization also had to be destroyed.

To be honest, from the perspective of the Human Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these God-level Civilizations were all utterly bizarre.

They had never seen an interstellar civilization with faster-than-light travel, capable of crossing star systems throughout the universe, manage to make such a complete mess of itself.

In some ways, angels and Lieyang were even worse than certain pre-faster-than-light native civilizations they knew of.

Their social structures and philosophies of development were severely warped.

The Known Universe supposedly had only five God-level Civilizations, including the angels and Lieyang.

Yet the total population of all five combined apparently didn't even reach ten billion!

The Angel Civilization had a million Angel Warriors, which sounded impressive. But they had only female angels and no Male Angels.

A civilization with a population of just a million, and a real territory no larger than fifty light-years across.

Yet they had the gall to go around shouting about cosmic justice, constantly proclaiming themselves sacred.

To the Human Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, such behavior was practically indistinguishable from insanity.

Where did they get that delusional confidence?

Forget the entire universe. Did the life in the Milky Way's roughly 400 billion star systems really need their paltry justice?

Would the whole galaxy stop turning the very next second if it lacked this so-called justice?

Their so-called Order of Justice sounded grand and imposing.

In reality, it was just a ramshackle house with a nicely decorated facade. One light kick from the Federation would bring the whole thing crashing down.

The Lieyang Civilization was even more bizarre.

More than ten thousand years ago, their homeworld, "Lieyang Planet," had been split in two. Yet despite having the ability to travel between star systems, and an entire universe they could roam freely, they had insisted on clinging to a planet that had been reduced to half a world for ten thousand years.

When they finally considered relocating their people, they chose to set their sights on Planet Earth.

When they saw this news, none of the Human Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials could understand what the other civilization hoped to accomplish with this baffling move.

The latest data gathered by the Federation Sentry Array showed that—

The Known Universe had a maximum diameter of over ten billion light-years, a maximum width of over seven billion light-years, and a maximum thickness of over one billion light-years!

There were hundreds of millions of galaxy-scale structures in the universe, each like the Milky Way, with a diameter of more than a hundred thousand light-years!

And yet Lieyang had somehow picked the Milky Way out of hundreds of millions of galaxy-scale structures with astonishing precision.

Then, from the Milky Way's roughly 400 billion Star Systems, they had somehow singled out the Solar System with equal precision, set their sights on Planet Earth, and stubbornly refused to give up.

A thousand years ago, they had fought a monkey here to the death. A thousand years later, they still wouldn't give up their designs on Earth.

Was it really that difficult to find a suitable star system somewhere in the universe over the course of a thousand years, or even ten thousand?

The leaders of the Lieyang Civilization would rather watch their people struggle to survive on half a planet than give up on Earth.

No, this wasn't just clinging to a single tree anymore.

It was like a little fish in the sea, nearly dying of thirst because it couldn't drink a single drop of the seawater it longed for.

If such a bizarre civilization's leaders and ruling class had been in charge of the Human Federation as Grand Marshal, they would have been hanged as a group long ago. Yet they had managed to rule Lieyang for tens of thousands of years.

Aside from the other God-level Civilizations and the so-called "Ultimate Fear," was there anything in this universe that could threaten them?

The universe's resources were practically endless, and these God-level Civilizations could take almost anything they wanted. How had they managed to make life so difficult for themselves?

Was Planet Earth in this universe some kind of coveted cosmic orb? Why were so many God-level Civilizations vying for it?

The Human Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials were so alarmed that they stayed up all night checking the data.

After working for most of the day, they confirmed that Planet Earth was just an ordinary, unremarkable little rock.

Only after confirming that these God-level Civilizations had no unusual names resembling "Constantinople Planet" in their languages did they finally breathe a little easier.

The officials of the Human Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs then collectively labeled the "Lieyang Civilization" an "extremely stupid civilization."

As for the Angel Civilization, it was two levels below that: moderately stupid, just one step away from severely stupid.

These genius God-level Civilizations were like people guarding an unlocked treasury and nearly starving themselves to death.

Five such geniuses, rarer than any seen in ten thousand years, had appeared in this vast universe all at once!

Who knew whether that was a blessing or a curse for the universe.

The universe couldn't speak. Perhaps it didn't care.

The Human Federation, for its part, welcomed them all.

This universe was a calm sea, and its civilizations had no real ability to compete for survival.

A calm sea might not produce many excellent sailors, but it could certainly produce plenty of stupid fish willing to bite the hook.

Then again, even the stupidest fish could still taste good. Carefully prepared and served at the table, each one made a fine dish.

Respecting every dish was basic table manners.

After all, one had to despise the enemy strategically and take them seriously tactically.

After the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials handed the relevant information over to the Armed Forces Department, the two sides held a thorough discussion and decided to use the "angels" and "Lieyang" to test the firepower of a new type of battleship.

At the behest of the Federation's Grand Marshal, this new battleship was named—

"Sky Burning Divine Weapon"!

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