Chapter 536: Before The Decisive Battle
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Three days later, Nie Yuan was fully satisfied as he left the Demon Suppressing Monument. He left Morality City and returned to the Greater Rat Underground Kingdom.
Royalty was royalty, and was different from humans on Earth. In the upper realm, the generals and officials had guts!
If one was not of a royal bloodline but wanted to occupy the leading position, even if one forced one’s way up with extreme difficulty, one would not last long!
Royalty bore the power of their bloodline and had numerous secret skills. A day of cultivation was equivalent to ten days of another person’s cultivation.
Even if there were not many sons of rich men, the appearance of one talent was enough to turn the tables around, and to revive their family businesses.
On the contrary, there were mult.i.tudinous normal bloodlines but they were like weeds, whereby an apple tree occasionally grew, and was also free for others to harvest.
He stood outside the south entrance of the Underground Kingdom as he looked at the rocky walls from afar. Rows of soldiers patrolled, all lean and strong. In the human world, they would belong to the prime combatants.
In the past, he was also afraid of these elite soldiers. After all, back then, he was only a weakling who was not even at Pond-level, and the wheel tactic 1 was the nemesis of a weak cultivator.
Since his magical powers were limited, after using them a few times, his blue bar would empty out. Furthermore, his pouch was quite deflated as he did not have many pills with him, and would run out of them in a short while.
If one was so powerful that one was out of the world, one could naturally neglect the problem of quant.i.ty. If one was at Vigilante A’s level, ineffective troops would not be able to guard against that person, thus it would be meaningless even if there were more of them.
Currently, there was also not much of a breakthrough in his cultivation base. Although he had formerly learned the Scripture of Great Wisdom from Zhi Nan, as he had too many thoughts, he did not learn it in depth. He only learned attempted half-heartedly, afraid of becoming obsessed with it, changed his aspirations, and could never go back to it.
Nevertheless, facing these elite soldiers now, he was confident and disdainful.
This was because he had already mastered the Royal Secret Skill taught by the elder ancestor, hence these fellows were just a piece of cake to him.
Of course, a sage was a sage, not a reckless man. He would not become full of himself just because he had his hands on a secret weapon, thinking that he could suppress everything.
After all, he was unsure of what other tricks he had up his sleeves. Besides, he needed to confirm if the secret skill taught by the elder ancestor was truly functional.
“Know yourself as well as your enemies.”
Truths were truths, it was universally known. Normal wars used it, battles of extraordinaires employed it too.
Nie Yuan recited this in his head. This was also taught by his cheap master, Bai s.h.i.+xin.
If he knew that he was using this principle to face his enemies, he would definitely look great.
One should always hold back when teaching someone. This was not about being overscrupulous, it was a lesson of blood and tears.
After observing for a moment, he quickly made a decision.
…
“What, another patrol team with a hundred elites went missing? What are they doing, even if it’s a hundred pigs that are caught, it wouldn’t just happen soundlessly, would it?!” Bai s.h.i.+fu was outraged.
For the past two days, he had been terribly battered.
Unknowingly, the elite troops sent out by him to maintain order had not been returning.
He swiftly looked for Bai s.h.i.+xin, the military advisor, to inform him of this, he then added with a troubled face, “Everything was going well previously, many people felt indignant but didn’t dare to voice it out. Ever since we’ve claimed the leading position, we’ve been kind, I believe they’ll surrender not long after. However, somebody is clearly forming a resistance, this is a huge problem.”
“Not only is it troublesome, but if we don’t manage this well enough, our provisional service base can’t go on either.” Bai s.h.i.+xin was clearer about the situation.
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody possesses a unique power but is afraid of an open challenge. He’s trying to agitate us by making these small troops go missing, and he’s fighting a long war with us.” Bai s.h.i.+xin went straight to the point.
Once Bai s.h.i.+fu heard that, he was instantly enraged. “Who could that be? Dig him out.”
“If I’m guessing this right, this person is my cheap disciple, Nie Yuan.” Bai s.h.i.+xin answered firmly.
Bai s.h.i.+fu was confused. “I don’t understand, what can that fellow do if he returns? It’s a hopeless situation, and one person won’t be able to save it. Instead of hiding far away, he’s here to interfere with this, he’s really just courting death.”
When Bai s.h.i.+fu was done expressing that fiercely, Bai s.h.i.+xin shook his head.
“I’ve encountered similar events in the upper realm. When somebody takes away the head’s position, the head sends a small army to make an easy counterattack.”
“Why is this so?”
“That’s because the head has pa.s.sed on the ability to control the whole clan to this person. The true power of a bloodline is something we can’t imagine.”
“Both of us are the clan leaders of the greater rats, is that not enough to push over the might of a royal bloodline?” Bai s.h.i.+fu was in disbelief.
Bai s.h.i.+xin shook his head then suggested, “Since you don’t believe in this, how about you go take a look at it yourself. Hmph, this game is really getting more interesting. Now that big V is out of the picture, little V is here to mess things up.”
Bai s.h.i.+fu pondered for some time, then decided to not seek death. He sent his strongest team equipped with various communication equipment, which guaranteed that any intelligence would be delivered to him in one piece.
…
One day later, Nie Yuan calculated in his heart as he looked at another troop that he managed to make take over. After a couple of days, he had already transformed thousands of elite soldiers.
While they gathered a hundred thousand soldiers into the city, and though his secret skill was formidable, he could not counter such a huge number of them at once. However, he could choose to destroy them one by one.
Therefore, he relied on the secret skill, subdued those solitary small troops, and strengthened himself little by little.
Despite the fact that the secret skill was strong, he had limited time. Even after working day and night, he had only induced defection in thousands of them.
Sure enough, there was a great disparity between the powers, but he could not rush into the decisive battle
After much thought, he left the Greater Rat City’s suburbs. Along the power transmission line, he located the Greater Rat Kingdom’s magmatic geothermal power station.
As soon as he dived in to take a look, people were seen anxious everywhere. Each one of them was powerless to produce, and most of the generators were already in a shutdown state.
Quite a number of rat demons had already escaped home, how cruel was the battle between the upper management? A river of blood, a great ma.s.sacre, these were inadequate to completely describe it.
Nie Yuan started to observe this magmatic geothermal power station carefully.
From the way he looked at it, power was generated through two ponds that were filled with magma. With one pond that had high magma level, and the other with a low magma level, it formed a stream.
By generating power through heat from the magma, magma that lost its heat would be filled back underground to be heated again, then extracted to be reused again. The theory was simple, but the construction process was awfully difficult, which was not easily achievable through normal human technology, and could only work by combining vitality formations.
This was truly the core of all cores. It was funny that Bai s.h.i.+xin did not send anyone to guard this place.
Did he not know of the importance of the resource issue?
This was impossible. Clearly, without energy, the Underground Kingdom would end up in chaos.
With the recycling industry brought to a halt, large amounts of trash would acc.u.mulate, and they could only be piled into mountains. This was still the simplest consequence as there were more dangerous ones.
No matter how he looked at it, Bai s.h.i.+xin probably had a way to obtain cheaper resources, which was why he did not send guards over to watch this place. He only treated this as another unit, so to save trouble from allocating more soldiers around.
“What a bunch of fools, the magmatic geothermal power station can be sold for a good price.” He greedily wondered.
A child would not feel bad for selling off a grandfather’s rice field since the child did not pour blood and sweat for it. Bai s.h.i.+xin would not understand the effort behind earning money, hence it was easy for him to spend money.
He needed to rope in manpower, and he needed to train armies, which naturally required money. Based on how he was before, he probably did not save much money.
At the end of the day, he was late to this. He was a fellow without any foundation, any family support, and not even the protection of his closest bloodline.
Currently, he fixed his gaze on this magmatic geothermal power station, hoping that it could bring him sufficient funds for him to rope in powerhouses, and expand his force. With that, he could battle it out with Bai s.h.i.+xin and the others.
As for the elder ancestor’s words that instructed him to ensure that his son would ascend the throne as king, he would do nothing about it.
To keep embroidering with bitterness year after years, and to continue sewing for other people’s wedding gowns 2 , a wise man like him would never think about doing something as foolish as that.