Chapter 267 - 246: The Xuanfeng Alliance is Up to Something Again?

Chapter 267: Chapter 246: The Xuanfeng Alliance is Up to Something Again?

"Fall back!" Li Chen knew something was wrong the moment he saw the scene unfold.

This was all part of their plan. He gave the order decisively.

He wasn’t a good-for-nothing like Li Kai, whose only qualification was being sent here to keep an eye on Qingfeng Base.

But the words had barely left his lips when a fireball slammed into him. The explosive impact sent him flying, and he tumbled across the ground.

"Zheng Lin!" Li Chen’s eyes flew wide open. He understood at once. The man had betrayed them.

Then, he saw figures emerge from all sides, closing in on them.

It was a trap.

He scrambled to get up, but a figure was already standing over him.

It was Lu Feng, clad in his mecha. Before Li Chen could even react, Lu Feng had him pinned.

The mecha’s immense strength made it impossible for Li Chen to resist.

He struggled with all his might, but it was utterly useless.

He was considered a powerful ability user in the City East Alliance, but against a mecha, he was completely helpless.

The barrels of the mecha’s multiple laser guns were already aimed at him.

"Run! Get back and tell the Patriarch what happened!" Li Chen could only scream in despair, his loyalty to the Li Family evident to the very end.

Several laser beams lanced out, striking his body and killing him instantly.

Seeing this, the other Li Family members didn’t dare hesitate. They all turned to flee.

Wang Cheng, who had been waiting at the side, had already activated his speed ability. Aided by his mecha, he quickly charged into the fleeing group.

At the same time, the small figure of Jinwen appeared.

Its speed was terrifyingly fast, even faster than the Li Family’s ability users.

Immediately, a series of agonized screams rang out.

The Li Family’s ability users’ knees exploded in sprays of blood, and they collapsed, stumbling to the ground.

Jinwen’s claws were thick with blood.

"Don’t kill me! I surrender! I’m not actually part of the Li Family, I’m just affiliated with them!" one of the ability users yelled as Wang Cheng closed in.

Wang Cheng gave the man a passing glance before charging toward the next Li Family member, taking him down with two laser shots.

Soon, forces from Qingfeng Base appeared, surrounding the area. They were led by Chen Fei and Lin Nan. After Red Leaf Base was merged into Qingfeng Base, they had become high-ranking members under Lin Jiao.

They were now completely in awe of Mr. Lu. They had personally witnessed him take the East Suburb Fortress, and now he was even moving against the Li Family.

Under these circumstances, the Li Family members had nowhere to run. The ability users merely affiliated with the Li Family surrendered at the first opportunity. As for the actual Li Family members, none were spared.

In the end, only four of the surrendered ability users affiliated with the Li Family were left alive.

Lu Feng looked at the four men, then activated his speed ability, knocking all four unconscious in a flash. "Lin Jiao," he said coldly, "they’re all yours."

"Yes, Boss," Lin Jiao nodded. ’For ability users like these, if we want to ensure their loyalty, we’ll just have to implant them with Pulse-Rend Chips.’

After all, they were ability users. Even as cannon fodder, they would be immensely useful.

Lu Feng glanced at the corpses of Li Chen and his men, then instructed Zheng Lin, "Record a video and send it to the Li Family. It’s only right to return their gift, isn’t it?"

"Understood, Mr. Lu." Zheng Lin nodded, breathing a huge sigh of relief.

After tonight, no matter how slow the Li Family was to react, they would know he had betrayed them. Fortunately, with the loss of more than a dozen ability users, the Li Family wouldn’t be able to spare anyone else for a while, at least not until that other matter was resolved.

In other words, Qingfeng Base was completely safe.

Mr. Lu asking him to do this was also a way of giving him time to get his family out.

MEOW!

Jinwen’s high-pitched cry sounded out. The creature sat on the ground, holding its two front paws out toward Lu Feng. The claws were still bloody, and the message was clear: it wanted them cleaned.

Lu Feng was taken aback. ’Something’s not right,’ he thought. ’Why would a leopard be so obsessed with being clean?’

He had no choice but to turn to one of his men. "Help it get cleaned up."

...

「Time passed.」

「The next day.」

News of the Li Family’s punishment spread quickly throughout the City East Alliance.

At the same time, word got out that the Li Family had been lining their own pockets by concealing a large area of arable land.

This caused the Li Family’s prestige and reputation within the City East Alliance to plummet.

Members of the Li Family were met with strange looks whenever they went out.

At the Li Family estate, Li Sheng’s rage was still simmering. He had spent the entire morning cursing out everyone in the family.

A member of the Li Family ran up to Li Sheng in a panic. "Patriarch, there’s news from the East Suburb!"

"Is that Lu Feng dead?" For the first time all day, Li Sheng’s mood improved slightly.

The Li Family was in this mess all because of that Lu Feng. ’I should have had him killed the moment I heard he took out Gray Wolf,’ he thought.

But the family member quickly shook his head, holding out a small data sphere to Li Sheng. "Patriarch, just this data sphere. There was a note saying it was from the East Suburb. I haven’t looked at it."

"Play it," Li Sheng said with a frown, a sudden sense of foreboding washing over him.

The man didn’t dare hesitate, immediately playing the contents of the data sphere on the hall’s large multimedia screen.

When the video began to play, Li Sheng’s expression turned incredibly grim. With a furious roar, he swiped a hand at a nearby chair, shattering it into splinters.

"Damn it all!" Li Sheng roared.

The video showed a field of corpses. It was Li Chen and his men.

In other words, the more than ten powerful ability users the Li Family had sent were all dead, killed by that Lu Feng.

’If he has this kind of power, how could he have had any trouble with One-Eyed Tiger?’ he wondered.

He desperately wanted to go and kill Lu Feng himself, but he knew that taking action personally would only further enrage the Flame Emperor. Besides, the Li Family couldn’t spare the manpower right now.

’Why has it come to this?’

The thought sent Li Sheng into a blind rage, and he began to frantically smash everything in the hall.

「A short while later.」

「Flame Emperor’s Mansion.」

The Flame Emperor was sipping a glass of milk, remarking with appreciation, "The milk from these mutated cows is getting better and better. Have our people continue breeding them. Once production is up, perhaps everyone will be able to drink milk like this."

Just then, a man rushed in to report, "Flame Emperor, word has come from the Li Family. It seems the dozen or so ability users Li Sheng sent to the East Suburb are all dead."

The Flame Emperor nodded. "That’s reassuring," he said. "It means the East Suburb has the means to protect itself. For now, we need to focus all our resources on investigating the Beastman Race. Just give the Li Family another warning. Tell them to stay in line at this critical juncture."

Letting Lu Feng take charge of the East Suburb was a natural decision. It was a reward for him, and a message to everyone else.

But the prerequisite was that he had to be strong enough to hold it. After all, the food supply for the entire City East Alliance depended on it.

Since he could take out a dozen of the Li Family’s ability users, Lu Feng’s strength was more than sufficient—at least stronger than the Guard Officer the Li Family had assigned there before.

This way, he too could focus all his energy on the matter of the Beastman Race.

...

「A night passed.」

The morning sun rose as scheduled, its rays illuminating the Wind Capital.

On some of the Wind Capital’s streets, cordons had been set up.

There were also signs written in the languages of both the Eastern Dragon Country and the Xuanfeng Alliance.

The infrastructure company from the Dragon Country, tasked with developing the Wind Capital, had already begun work. It was standard practice for large engineering projects to start construction while simultaneously hiring local labor.

Wind Manor was the largest and most luxurious estate in the Wind Capital, and it was also Lu Feng’s residence. Its previous name had been a mouthful, so it was renamed Wind Manor.

Lu Feng woke up early and checked his game screen. After confirming there were no issues at the East Suburb Fortress, he picked up his phone and started scrolling through the Xuanfeng Alliance news.

He’d been focusing on the game world for some time; it was time he caught up on the Xuanfeng Alliance’s development.

The Xuanfeng Alliance’s news agencies were crude, not at all up to the standards of larger nations. Even the news content was dry and uninspired.

However, Lu Feng did notice two interesting news items.

One was about the Xuanfeng Alliance acquiring and consolidating wineries to create the Qingfeng Winery, which was now on a massive hiring spree.

The other was about the Alliance purchasing large quantities of materials like sweet potatoes, Qiuzi Grass, and Drunken Beauty Root.

These were all ingredients for brewing Dream-Returning Wine.

Lu Feng wasn’t the only one who saw this news. Many citizens of the Xuanfeng Alliance saw it as well. Moreover, Baguda had issued an order that every town and village was to be notified, and that dedicated personnel would be sent to purchase the materials.

This left countless people puzzled. Sweet potatoes had never been worth much, and things like Qiuzi Grass and Drunken Beauty Root grew wild all over the mountains.

「Rai’Er Village.」

Quelda ran back to the village first thing in the morning and found his father and wife. "Quick!" he said. "Grab your sickles and come up the mountain with me."

His father looked at him, confused. "What’s the rush?"

His wife also asked, "Quelda, what is it?"

Quelda said urgently, "The Alliance is buying a lot of things! The Qiuzi Grass on the mountain behind our house is selling for 250 yuan a jin!"

This 250 yuan was, of course, in Xuanfeng Coins. Thanks to the Xuanfeng Bank, 250 Xuanfeng Coins from the Xuanfeng Alliance could now be exchanged for 25 yuan from the Dragon Country.

An exchange rate of 10:1.

Of course, if the Xuanfeng Alliance developed well, that ratio would improve, and the Xuanfeng Alliance Coin would become more valuable.

"Is this true?" his father asked, his face a mask of astonishment.

He knew just how much Qiuzi Grass grew on the mountain behind their house. If they harvested and sold it, they could earn a lot of money—enough to build a new house. And it seemed the Dragon Country construction teams could build houses very quickly.

"Of course it’s true!" Quelda said immediately. "The Alliance is also buying up huge amounts of sweet potatoes, Drunken Beauty Root... all kinds of things. We can sell them right in town."

"Let’s go! Get the sickles, quickly!" the father immediately shouted to his daughter-in-law.

He knew they had few opportunities to earn money here. Most of the time, they could only grow enough crops to feed themselves. An opportunity to earn extra cash like this was unheard of.

The daughter-in-law didn’t hesitate, immediately fetching the sickles. The whole family then hurried up the mountain and began harvesting Qiuzi Grass.

The father didn’t forget to add, "Remember to collect the seeds! We can plant them ourselves later."

Clearly, he was a man with foresight.

The family quickly harvested several hundred jin of Qiuzi Grass. They found a flatbed cart and began dragging it to town. They couldn’t transport any more than that; they would have to sell this batch before coming back for another.

As they were leaving the village, they saw other families doing the exact same thing, which spurred them to quicken their pace.

Sure enough, there were dedicated buyers for Qiuzi Grass in town. Their total of 412 jin sold for 103,000 Xuanfeng Coins.

This brought huge smiles to the faces of Quelda and his family.

The small town was bustling with activity. Crowds of people selling sweet potatoes, Qiuzi Grass, and other goods gathered together, chatting happily.

"The Xuanfeng Alliance is really great. We never had opportunities like this to make money before."

"That’s right, and the Xuanfeng Alliance is helping to build roads, too!"

"I hope the Alliance keeps getting better and better. I’m going to work hard and grow more sweet potatoes to sell to them."

"..."

Clearly, the common people were simple. As long as you gave them a way to make money, they would remember you fondly.

This also showed just how poor the region had been before.

Similar scenes were playing out all across the Xuanfeng Alliance. Lu Feng had asked for a large-scale operation, and Babuda had truly delivered on a massive scale.

Selfishly, he truly wanted his people to earn a little more money.

’As for all these materials we’re collecting... His Excellency the Governor must have a plan for them, right?’

While the Xuanfeng Alliance was frantically buying up ingredients for Dream-Returning Wine, an invitation issued by the Xuanfeng Bank on behalf of the Alliance quickly spread across the international community.

Upon seeing the invitation, everyone had the same subconscious thought: ’Is the Xuanfeng Alliance making another move?’