Chapter 531: Dao Yuan
"Ten years," Bai Mo said, pulling out a chair and sitting down gently, not making a single sound.
Although this was a meeting among the highest leaders, there were no attendants in the villa. The empty room felt exceptionally desolate.
Few could withstand the terrifying pressure in the hall; a dozen or so six-tier avatars, with even a slight movement, could inadvertently claim many lives.
"Yes, ten years have passed so quickly."
In these ten years of colonizing the Moon, the Federation's upper echelons had scoured the entire planet for spiritual material resources, attempting to shorten the unusually long accumulation period between the fifth and sixth tiers as much as possible.
For the upcoming space expedition, they advanced along the cultivation path that the pioneers had gradually perfected.
At the cost of nearly exhausting the Moon's precious spiritual materials, ten new cultivators with six-tier combat power were born within the Federation.
Including the eight individuals from before the Moon landing, these eighteen formed the Human Federation's supreme combat power group.
Among them were Spirit Energy cultivators, martial artists, arcane masters, paladins, witches, mages, and even gods.
"What brings you here this time?" Chen Bo, who had known Bai Mo the longest among them, was the first to speak.
There was no politeness in his words, for everyone knew it was a pure waste of time; feigning civility with him was utterly pointless.
Chen Bo was one of the leading figures in the monitoring project, responsible for locating and confirming Bai Mo's potential "eyes" left on the Moon. The bookstore owner was a key suspect among them.
Just minutes after Bai Mo truly "awakened," Chen Bo had already received the news.
To avoid widespread panic, even the soldiers on monitoring duty didn't know who their target truly was, only that he was a potentially dangerous individual who needed to be watched daily.
Bai Mo, along with the image of the Land of White, had been thoroughly demonized during the "forced relocation" ten years prior. The pain of being forced to leave their homes and venture to a foreign planet left an indelible memory in everyone's minds.
With the vastness of space separating them, this resentment couldn't be vented, only festering as bitterness in their hearts. But if news were to spread that he still had contingencies on the Moon, things could easily spiral out of control.
...
"How about we divide the solar system?" Bai Mo suddenly said.
His words, which sounded slightly insane, immediately drew everyone's attention.
Had such words come from anyone else, they might have dismissed them as a madman's ravings, but the Bai Mo before them was clearly no mere fantasist.
"Dividing at the asteroid belt, Venus and Mars within the belt go to you, and outside the belt, besides Jupiter, the other star systems are also yours." He spoke with the air of the solar system's true master.
"Are you proposing cooperation on the Star Net Project?" It was still Chen Bo who asked.
After clearing all resistance within the solar system, the second phase of the Star Net Project aimed to transform a portion of the inner planets into new planetary fortresses, or rather, armed, colossal, mobile human settlements, and then move as far away from Earth as possible.
They were unwilling to remain near Earth for even a moment longer, to live side-by-side with the monster that had merged with the entire planet.
The mere 380,000 kilometers between Earth and the Moon offered them little sense of security.
The Melt-Star Cannon's maximum output could only barely turn small asteroids into magma; there was still an enormous gap to destroying Earth, and they had no confidence of a single-strike kill.
"You only want Mercury and Jupiter?" Red Wizard King Duo La Ge also asked.
Ultimately, the Human Federation was merely a loose alliance, unified under a single banner by external pressure. Its constituent factions were fundamentally still the major powers from Earth's past.
As one of the former supreme leaders of the Latin Alliance, Duo La Ge naturally became one pole of the Presiding Council.
"Two are enough." Bai Mo replied a few seconds later, delayed by information transmission lag.
The council's experts naturally noticed this. With a full few seconds of information transmission delay, it wouldn't be difficult for them to collectively capture this avatar of Bai Mo.
But it was meaningless beyond reigniting war; the loss of an avatar was roughly equivalent to an ordinary person losing a few strands of hair to a high-tier cultivator.
"When you wish to break free from Earth's orbit, I can temporarily neutralize the Earth-Moon gravitational pull." Bai Mo stated another astonishing condition.
"..."
"If the Earth-Moon gravity is temporarily neutralized, the Moon God fortress would only need to overcome the Sun's gravity to fly to Mars, and the plan to overload the fusion engines could be halted."
"While there's plenty of Helium-3 fusion fuel on the Moon, our engine technology isn't good enough. We'd need self-destructive overloading to increase power, just to have a chance of escaping Earth's gravitational sphere.
If he can truly temporarily neutralize the Earth-Moon gravity, we could depart at least a year earlier."
"Neutralizing Earth-Moon gravity... that's too unimaginable."
A six-tier entity might be invincible on a planetary surface, capable of flattening a city with a full-power strike, but at the scale of planetary masses, they remained utterly powerless.
The gravitational force between stars, if wielded by a person, would be enough to casually flatten a major nation on the surface like spreading cement, or with a gentle flick, splash half the Pacific Ocean's water across various corners of the Eurasian continent.
"So, what's the price?"
This was a transaction where gains and losses were far from equal. No one believed Bai Mo would stop here; there were certainly other conditions to follow.
"Price? How about changing the calendar? Starting today, replace the Gregorian calendar year."
"???" They never expected this answer.
"Could it be that 'causing trouble' is a cultivation method for subsequent seventh-tier realms?"
"Perhaps he needs to cultivate an extremely powerful Spirit Art, requiring immense fame, so that everyone recognizes him? But his notoriety is already more than sufficient, isn't it?"
"Power of obsession, power of fear... Did that kid Ha Si Ta guess correctly? Will these originally ethereal things become a driving force for strengthening under the blessing of primal force, and has that man developed a way to utilize them?"
Without Bai Mo's intentional or unintentional interference, Ramdo, who had barely regained his godhood over the past decade, leveraging his extraordinary natural talent and countless contingencies, had finally once again reached the forefront of the Divine Path, becoming a member of the Presiding Council.
After hearing Bai Mo's words, he naturally thought of himself and the research directions of the genius Ha Si Ta, who had escaped his control.
"What do you want to change it to?" Eighteen voices, slightly out of sync, echoed through the empty hall.
"Change the calendar to the Dao Yuan Era. Today is the first day of the first month of the first year of Dao Yuan."
"Why?" After hearing the name, some even wondered if he was having a chuunibyou episode, insisting on changing the perfectly fine Gregorian calendar to Dao Yuan.
Bai Mo did not answer.
They did not ask again.
The air suddenly quieted.
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