Chapter 1564 - Genius Squad
"Old Master, you"re still incredibly fit," Tianming said.
"I don"t have a choice. With all the ladies that need my attention, I need to stay in shape," Shengui narcissistically said.
"Stop pulling his leg. If you can still get it up, I"m your grandson," Gong Xiong said.
"You little.... Are you asking for a beating?!"
"Come on then!"
The two of them were completely shameless.
"By the way, Tianming, are you sure you"re immediately going to fight Ye Chen?" Shengui asked.
"Yeah."
"What’re the chances of you winning?"
"I honestly can"t say, but it can"t hurt to go in and test the waters. Winning or losing doesn"t matter. It isn’t like it"s a fight to the death." It was clear that he had no intention of completely crus.h.i.+ng Ye Chen at all.
"Alright. Either way, we"re bound at the hip now. How you perform greatly affects us. Even though I"ve lived a glorious life, I came from a common background. Now that I have so many descendants counting on me, I still have to work hard to keep all of this afloat. You’re my hope... I"m telling you all this so that you don"t treat us as strangers. Feel free to consider us one of your own."
"Old Master, you"re overthinking it. When I return from the Observatorium, you"ll learn how direct and forthright I can be when I make requests," Tianming said.
"Very well! I like direct people like you. As long as you ask for it, I"ll even bring all eighteen of the sovereign"s unmarried daughters for you to bed!" said the old man as he thumped his chest. "Alright, we"ll call it a day here. I still need to make some preparations before sending you off to the Observatorium with fifty thousand elites. We"ll pick you up from Violetpeak. This is your first fight since joining the Violetcloud Imperium, so make it a banger, alright?"
"Definitely. Even though the sovereign said that I could ask for anything, I still have to prove myself to the ma.s.ses either way." The resources of the imperium belonged to every subject, after all, and the top clans were competing for them as well. As such, there were complex relations.h.i.+ps behind the scenes. Even though the Gong Prime Clan was in power right now, it still wasn’t able to just grant Tianming whatever he wanted without consequence, given the complex political realities in the imperium.
Tianming had spread Yin Chen to see how he was received by the public. Even though it’d only been a day, he already had a rough idea. There were some who praised him, some who suspected him, and others who were itching for him to fail. While the current sovereign was from the Gong Prime Clan, their clan wasn"t the largest and the imperium was far from a monolith.
"Waiting for me to fail, huh?" Tianming would shut them up with his performance. By then, they would have to give him the best resources.
......
After he bade the old master farewell, he returned to Violetpeak, where everyone had settled. Ying Huo and the rest had only started playing, yet they would immediately have to set out.
"Are we going to mess with that Chaos Dijiang and the rest again? So we can get anything we want if we beat them up?" Ying Huo"s eyes shone as it charged into the lifebound s.p.a.ce.
Lingfeng and the rest also wanted to see what the Violetglory Star had to offer, so they would follow along.
"Alright, let"s go there together then." By the time they were ready, more than fifty thousand people were waiting outside Violetpeak. All of them were subordinates of Gong Xiong and Shengui, with most of them being solarians, though they were only there as a deterrent. Tianming"s real protectors, the Starchasers, were always by his side, and they were peak-level solarians, all of whom were stronger than Jiang Qingliu.
"Whoa, you"re bringing those four with you? Are you the genius squad?" Shengui could immediately tell that Feiling and Qingyu were more than met the eye. He already knew about Feiling"s wings; even if she wasn"t a primalwinger, she was comparable to a rare talent never before seen among them! Shengui didn"t dare to imagine how powerful all of them would be once they were a few centuries old. He even began wondering if the imperium would be able to accommodate all five of them. Fortunately, he approved of Tianming"s character and didn"t think too much about it.
"Let"s go!" The group departed for the Observatorium, and it wasn"t just fifty thousand. Many more in the city tagged along to watch the match. Eventually, millions of people were on the road.
"Now this is what I call charisma! I never would"ve thought that a junior would be capable of mobilizing so many people...." Even as old as Shengui was, life was still full of surprises.
But for Tianming, it wasn"t just about charisma. If this works out, I can still earn a lot of Omnisentient Will to raise my Imperial Will! Maybe even the imperium will be part of my dynasty! The Flameyellow Continent was one such success story. He had tried to do the same at the Azurecloud Continent and Myriaddragon Mountains, but he was too young and there were still the celestial orderians to deal with. Perhaps the Violetcloud Imperium would be a chance for him.
I have to get them to accept my rule by becoming their sole pillar of faith. His goal was clear, and it was time to carry it out. The huge crowd flocked across the sea of stars toward the border, chanting his name as they went.
......
"Wanwan, come see this!" Liu Xuanxuan said as she waved toward another girl from the top of a hill. The girl with long, light green hair at the bottom of the hill had it bunned up. It was a rather refres.h.i.+ng hairstyle. She flew above and looked into the distance. "Look, Wanwan! It"s the imperium! They"re going to the Observatorium!"
"I see...." Liu Wanwan seemed a little dazed.
"Lin Feng—oh, it"s Li Tianming now. He"s far too impressive. I heard he even defeated a first-level solarian genius at Primary." Liu Xuanxuan had also lost to Tianming, but now she was his fangirl.
Liu Wanwan widened her eyes, but she couldn"t spot Tianming in the crowd at all. She recalled all that had happened back then. Never could she ever have imagined that it would come to this.
"Wanwan, do you think he’ll be Ye Chen"s match?"
"I think Ye Chen"s thousands of times weaker."
"Surely that"s an exaggeration!"
"If you don"t believe me, let"s see for ourselves!"
"Alright." The two of them joined the crowd of spectators. By now, they numbered in the hundreds of millions. Fortunately, a nova source world like this was big enough to accommodate so many people. Given the sheer number of people waiting to witness the battle, it was sure to be an occasion without parallel.