Qinggan Palace
Chen Beixun soaked in the stone tub. The water had turned pale red. He slowly let out a breath, a wineglass in hand, as he sensed the ninth crystal in his sea of consciousness.
"My soul's strength and comprehension have improved quite a bit. Now I can vaguely sense those elusive laws."
"I'm starting to see them through a fog." Chen Beixun rose. The water on his body seemed to lose its gravity and lifted into the air, gathering into pale red droplets. "Gather." Chen Beixun controlled the droplets with interest.
"It's time to practice with the Tianqu Cone," Chen Beixun said.
Behind the Suanling Divine Palace stood a square metal room. It wasn't very large, but could accommodate a hundred people in training. At that moment, the room was empty and seemed especially bleak.
"This room is made of C9 Rank metal. It's sturdy enough." Chen Beixun sat in the very center of the room, with forty flying blades floating around him.
Following the diagrams in the secret technique for amplifying telekinetic power, Chen Beixun carefully controlled the flying blades. They immediately split into three rings, like well-trained cavalry: twelve blades in the first ring, twenty-four in the second, and four in the third. They flew clockwise, occasionally shifting as they sped up and formed strange patterns, changing formations roughly every six seconds.
Seven days later...
Chen Beixun now controlled the flying blades at more than a hundred times their previous speed. The turbulence caused by their flight alone was enough to kill someone at the Planetary Level.
"That's enough." At a thought from Chen Beixun, the forty blades seemed to freeze in place. He waved a hand, and they transformed into a cone-shaped object, which he stored in his Space Ring.
It wasn't that Chen Beixun didn't want to visit the Slaughter Arena. It was just too expensive. At the Star Level, he could barely afford to maintain his visits, but at Universe Level, the Slaughter Arena's prices were outrageous.
He could only blame his lack of wealth. Back then, he'd been too busy fleeing for his life to turn his treasures into money.
Chen Beixun rose and walked out, his mind filled with thoughts.
"Chunqiu said an unknown life-form was detected around the star that Tianwen Planet orbits."
"It might be a Flame Star Behemoth."
"The Flame Star Behemoth is probably still young. Otherwise, with the temper Starry Sky Behemoths have, it would've turned this place upside down."
Chen Beixun clenched the Gold Soul Stone and flew into the air. A chill instantly spread, turning dozens of miles around him into an icy hell.
He hovered in the air, his gaze cold as he looked down at Suanling Palace. He thought, I've completely taken control of the Suanling Divine Palace. As for the Longbai Kingdom... what a rotten mess!
"Ah... I'll have to use a few little tricks to set things right."
The Longbai Kingdom had nine survival bases. The largest covered 40,104.3 square kilometers. Take the capital, for example: it covered 35,484 square kilometers. Outside its residential districts, tens of billions of pipes crisscrossed in every direction, including sewage and water pipes. Beneath them, rivers of corpses, excrement, and industrial waste surrounded the settlement. The stench hit you like a blow to the head.
The residential districts were divided into levels one through eight, arranged like a pyramid.
The lowest levels, seven and eight, could be called a paradise for criminals. With no one to govern them, they were lawless lands.
Ordinary people working and living here had lives no different from those in hell. If there was any difference, even Satan would have called it "ridiculous." A bag of food could buy you a person to keep as a slave. In short, the bottom here was terrifyingly low.
The highest level was, without a doubt, the center of power and a place of absolute indulgence. Its depravity was even more outrageous than the radiation on Tianwen Planet's surface.
Hedonism reigned at this level. It was utterly rotten, and the powerful spent every night carousing like maggots feasting on the empire's decay.
It was because of this that Chen Beixun had taken control of the empire so easily.
What was so difficult about ruling a country dominated by a rotten people whose very spines had been eaten away by worms?
The upper class ignored the lower class, while the middle class busied itself serving the upper class. The lower class cried out to the middle class for help, but the middle class only thought about how to squeeze the lower class and curry favor with the upper class.
Ancient Emperor Longzun had done everything she could. She had tried every possible way to save the Longbai Race, but the weakness and "decay" of this frail race seemed to be etched into its DNA. No matter how she tried to save it, nothing worked. After all, she had been born into the nobility, and her gaze had always been fixed on the nobles.
After Chen Beixun took control of the Longbai Empire, he immediately purged its upper ranks.
He then started from the bottom, gathering high- and low-level apprentices and Planetary-level warriors to form a security force and maintain order.
He centralized the allocation and distribution of supplies. People still couldn't eat their fill, but their lives were far better than before.
He also abolished the assorted useless titles, such as Earl and Marquis, to make the distribution of supplies easier to manage.
He couldn't govern particularly well, but at least everyone had food to eat. With Chen Beixun's formidable strength, no one dared to object.
The star system was now known as the Heaven and Earth Xingluo Field, and it was now called the Xingluo Star System. One of its stars was nearing the end of its life; in a few hundred years, it would expand enough to swallow Tianwen Planet.
There were countless races in the universe, some strong and some weak. Powerful races could rarely do without territory; territory meant a race's future. A race without an influx of fresh blood was often doomed to perish. This small, enclosed world was like a miniature of the universe. The major powers on Tianwen Planet each had their own designs, and no one knew whether Chen Beixun's arrival would be a disaster or an opportunity for this little world.
Beneath Tianwen Planet were ninety-eight survival bases—not including the palaces and inheritance sites—fifteen agricultural bases, three industrial zones (one for light industry and two for heavy industry, all controlled by the three great inheritance sites), one interstellar spacecraft factory (jointly controlled by the eight great palaces), and ten integrated power zones (controlled by the six great kingdoms, responsible for producing fuel and electricity, purifying water, and so on).
Ordinary people on Tianwen Planet lived in a world of darkness. Most were low-level apprentices or hadn't even reached the apprentice level. They worked all day for a pitifully small amount of food.
Despair and hardship filled the lower classes. It wasn't that Tianwen Planet's upper class had never considered moving to Dili Planet or another world.
The surface of Tianwen Planet showed that its resources had been almost completely exhausted. Nine thousand years ago, driven to desperation, people had frantically exploited the planet's surface resources to build interstellar spacecraft.
Tianwen Planet called Dili Planet a place of exile, where social criminals were banished. They had wiped out its native inhabitants and taken their place. The people of Tianwen Planet considered this perfectly reasonable.
The proud people of Tianwen Planet never imagined that their fate would be death.
Their fleet had lost contact.
It had simply vanished in the strangest way.