Chapter 752: Secret Training Room!
Covering his face, Bai Kaixin said through the gaps between his fingers, "In fact, I should've come earlier. I notice several suspicious points a long time ago and vaguely guessed the answers.
"But I didn't dare. I did not have the courage!
"I was scared that my guess was wrong and that Bai Xinghe was really an inhuman animal who killed his own wife and son!
"I was even scared that everything had been faked by him. He did not kill his own wife. Everything was meant to send his son away from Spider Den to a place where his son could live a good, peaceful life. If so—
"How was I supposed to face him?
"He was an unpardonable space pirate with blood all over his hands. There was no reason why I should let him go.
"But in the meantime, he was my father. If he had really never done anything wrong to me and my mother, could I kill him personally?
"Therefore, I've been hesitating and debating with myself all these years. I couldn't make up my mind. So, I simply buried the whole thing deep down in my heart. I pretended that I knew nothing of it!
"I was too timid, and even shameless, was I not?"
Lei Dalu plucked his beard hard but gave no reply, so Bai Kaixin continued, "When the Temple of Immortals rose and the Immortal Cultivators showed up, I stopped thinking about confronting him, because everybody thought that the space pirates and the Immortal Cultivators were the same thing. I thought that Bai Xinghe was an Immortal Cultivator, too.
"In the debut of the Immortal Cultivators, the Great Horn Exo Society was their target. They meant to destroy all of us!
"If Bai Xinghe did send me out of Spider Den intentionally years ago, he must have known that the advisor of the Great Horn Exo Society was his son, Bai Wuxin!
"But the Immortal Cultivators started the battle anyway!
"It was evident enough that, whether I knew the answer or not, he did not care about me. My life and death did not mean a damn thing to him.
"After I figured it out, I was no longer in a dilemma. I felt less sad when I did not have any expectation.
"It was not until the news that Bai Xinghe and the Temple of Immortals were on bad terms and would go to war came over that I realized that the space pirates and the Immortal Cultivators might not necessarily be the same thing!
"Old Lei, you were right. The odds of Bai Xinghe's success in the war against the Temple of Immortals are slim. If he is killed, I won't know the answer for the rest of my life!
"That was why I decided to sneak into Spider Den without thinking about anything else. I want to ask him face to face whether or not my mother was killed by him and I was delivered out of Spider Den on purpose!"
Lei Dalu uprooted a grey hair suddenly. His eyes were clearer than ever before as he grinned. "Old Bai, you are not telling the whole truth. In fact, the answer has already been obvious since the moment Bai Xinghe started a total war against the Temple of Immortals. There is no need to ask.
"You left the Great Horn Exo Society and snuck into Spider Den because... you want to save your father, don't you?"
Bai Kaixin was speechless. He was dazed for a long time, before he lowered his head deeply and said, "With the crimes that Bai Xinghe committed, he should be punished, after a trial of justice by the Cultivators and the victims, instead of being killed by the Immortal Cultivators."
Lei Dalu patted his good friend's shoulder and said, "Alright. I totally got you, buddy, but why are you so sure that Bai Xinghe fled to the underground fortress after he was heavily wounded? And where can we find him?"
"I lived in the depths of the underground fortress from the day I was born," Bai Kaixin said. "This is my home. Of course, I knew a lot of secret tunnels.
"In the diary that my mother left, some of the information about the underground fortress was recorded, too, including the locations of Bai Xinghe's secret bases.
"He will definitely come to this place when he is too heavily wounded and has nowhere else to run because..."
After pausing for a moment, Bai Kaixin's voice became clear and tough again. "Because this place is his home!"
...
In the meantime, inside the palace of stars, Li Yao listened to Bai Xinghe's story quietly and concluded, "Therefore, in order to keep the secrets of the Star Prier's House to yourself, you killed your wife to shut her mouth, and in your fury, you killed your own son, too. But your son was lucky enough to survive and escaped from Spider Den after a series of coincidences, only to become Bai Kaixin, the advisor of the Great Horn Exo Society in the end.
"Now, you are too old, and your attitude has changed. You feel sorry for your son and you want to save him?
"Boss Bai, do you believe such a flawed story yourself?"
Bai Xinghe was rendered speechless.
"When you mentioned that you killed your wife, you looked to the top right corner, and your pupils expanded slightly. These are both signs of lying," Li Yao said. "It is not strange that you were lying. In fact, I wonder if you have ever spoken truth.
"But when you were lying before, even the tiniest muscle on your face wouldn't twitch. I was never able to notice anything abnormal.
"Based on that, I think it's safe to say that even killing your wife in your imagination was insufferable for you.
"Your wife must not have been killed by you. Your enemies, or somebody else, did it, right?
"Now, I finally understand why you waged a war at the Immortal Cultivators without caring about the cost.
"Two years ago, in the first battle of the Cultivators, they targeted the Great Horn Exo Society and meant to kill your son. If I hadn't shown up in time, there was a good chance that Bai Kaixin would've become dust in the universe.
"You paid such a high price to help your son out of Spider Den far away from space pirates so that he could live a good, peaceful life, even at the cost of your son hating you for the rest of his life. It was clear that you loved your son profoundly.
"The Immortal Cultivators, on the other hand, chose your son as their target and almost killed him. Naturally, you burst into fury and were determined to destroy the Temple of the Immortals without caring about the consequences even at the cost of your own life."
Ruthlessness beamed out of Bai Xinghe's eyes, as he said coarsely, "You talk too much!
"I have confessed everything now. Will you help me or not?"
When 'not' came out of his mouth, the floor ten square meters around Bai Xinghe's feet turned into ruins completely. It was pressed down more than half a meter by his spiritual energy!
For a moment, dust filled the palace.
"I will! Of course, I will!" Li Yao replied unhesitatingly.
Both Lei Dalu and Bai Kaixin were his friends. When he was trapped on Iron Plateau, the Great Horn Exo Society, knowing that the planet was a 'forbidden area for Cultivators', had still marched to Iron Plateau at great risk in order to save him.
Right now, their life was endangered. How could Li Yao stand by and watch?
However, Li Yao found something confusing. He asked, "Boss Bai, I've been in touch with Bai Kaixin for a while. His strategies and computational ability are as good as yours. Although he is not a battle-type Cultivator, he certainly has the capability to protect himself after all these years of struggle.
"Besides, right now, he is with Lei Dalu, who is a Cultivator in the Core Formation Stage.
"Over the past year, the Great Horn Exo Society has been a close partner of the Glorious Sunlight Group. We have produced a batch of powerful crystal suits for their use. They should be both carrying the crystal suits and other magical equipment with them.
"Their identity hasn't been seen through by the Immortal Cultivators yet. They shouldn't be in too much danger right now. Why are you in such a rush?"
Bai Xinghe smiled bitterly. "It is not the Immortal Cultivators that I'm scared of, but the traps in the fortress, which are already activated!"
"What?" Li Yao was bewildered. "Is it possible? Like you said, the traps from ten thousand years ago should've been damaged already. You couldn't have installed new traps. What's there to be activated?"
Bai Xinghe hesitated for a moment. Glancing at his son on the light beam, he made up his mind and said, "The traps deployed by Yan Xinjian!"
Li Yao was dazed. "The supreme space pirate, Yan Xinjian, who defeated the coalition fleet of the Cultivators and established 'Ten Sword Rules' five hundred years ago?"
Li Yao suddenly thought through many things.
It was said that Yan Xinjian was the first space pirate to enter the core area of the underground fortress.
Also, according to Bai Xinghe, Yan Xinjian was the first to discover the Star Prier's House. He had activated the defense rune array on Spider Den with the super crystal processors, which caused a major problem for the incoming coalition fleet of Cultivators and eventually forced them to retreat.
Rumor on Spider Den had it that Bai Xinghe was the successor of Yan Xinjian's knowledge!
If it was Yan Xinjian, it was quite possible that large-scale traps could have been established underground.
The title of 'supreme space pirate' did not come from nothing. When the coalition fleet of the Cultivators had just been defeated, Yan Xinjian's power reached the peak on Spider Den. He took the opportunity to perform purges on Spider Den by eliminating the dissidents and driving away the disobedient. All the while, he collected tremendous resources and wealth!
At that time, Yan Xinjian's prestige on Spider Den was ten times higher than Bai Xinghe's today!
It was also told in some tales that Yan Xinjian reached the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage only several decades after defeating the coalition fleet of the Cultivators. He was the well-deserved best expert of the Flying Star Sector at that time!
Yan Xinjian had enough manpower and resources to fully modify the underground fortress and deploy multiple traps, before executing all the workers and sealing the news when all the jobs were done.
However...
Li Yao frowned. "Why was Yan Xinjian setting up traps down here?"
"Because he established a secret training room in the deepest part of the underground fortress," Bai Xinghe explained.
Li Yao was baffled. "A secret training room ten thousand meters below the ground? Why?"
"Because he was planning to break into the Divinity Transformation State, something nobody had ever done in the five thousand years after the apocalypse!"
A Divinity Transformation Cultivator!
Li Yao gasped. He quickly thought through the whole thing and shouted excitedly, "I got it!
"Since Yan Xinjian was the first to discover the Star Prier's House, naturally, he learned the truth of the apocalypses through the legacy of Liu the Prier.
"It was clear to him that he might be struck by an apocalypse when he broke into the Divinity Transformation Stage from the Nascent Soul Stage. But the apocalypses all required a process of 'perception' and 'activation'.
"That was why he built a secret training room ten thousand meters below the surface. He was going to hide here while he attempted to break through to the Divinity Transformation Stage!
"Such a plan had two merits.
"Firstly, blocked by the rock stratums as thick as ten thousand meters, the spiritual energy he released when he was breaking the threshold of the Divinity Transformation State might have escaped the attention of the 'minor apocalypses' that were floating in the universe. In such a way, the 'minor apocalypses' that were meant to exterminate the experts would not be activated!
"Secondly, even if a 'minor apocalypse' was truly activated, it might not be able to pierce through ground and exterminate him!"