Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
As Lin Sheng came out from the temple ruin alone, plumes of black smoke dissipated from the courtyard behind him.
He flung his backpack on his back and looked up at the sky. The clouds were puffs of white in acres of blue extending beyond the horizon. The dense woods before his eyes pervaded a musty, moist, and herbaceous scent. The air was refreshing yet bone-chilling cold.
“Khadula should be able to buy me some time and kept Redwin from doing anything stupid.” Lin Sheng knew that stability was Redwin’ priority, and they imposed night curfew to conserve their resources while in conflict with Xilin. From now on, it depended on how well Khadula held up against Redwin’s Darksiders.
Lin Sheng was not sure of the combat strength of Khadula. After years of holing up in the vault, no one knew his actual condition. Even Lin Sheng had only killed him with tricks and the divine ax; it was not real combat.
“Let’s see how it goes.” He let out a sigh.
The blue-haired female Redwin military officer who came in an armored vehicle that day had made a deep impression on him. He did not want to be in a confrontation with the Defense Affairs Division of Redwin. Otherwise, Yan Mingsha, the female military officer, who bulged into the Ironfist Society, would have been dead.
“Things changed too quickly and too unexpectedly.” Lin Sheng tightly clutched his backpack and bolted down the mountains. The damp forest floor felt soft and cold under his feet. The pounding of Lin Sheng’s feet on the ground occasionally scared away the birds that chirped like melodious choruses on the trees.
Had he not been in the summoning ceremony, Lin Sheng would still feel like any typical high schooler who came jungle trekking in the mountains. The stark contrast of the ordinary forest and the mythic reality was surreal.
Once out of the woods, Lin Sheng headed straight back to the Ironfist Society on his bicycle. Since the summoning of Khadula was a success, so too the others, it was time to create a smokescreen. It was a wise move to using Khadula’s identity as cover while keeping himself stay under the radar.
….
The clinking of the coffee mug and spoon jolted Elba out of her thought. The coffee in the Defense Affairs Division was bland and lack of unique aroma. It was a typical characteristic of on-the-shelf coffee.
“Run-of-the-mill… absolutely terrible…” Elba hissed, tidying her long blue hair and getting to her feet. “Vice Minister Stitz, have you found the rats of the Heart of the Ocean?” She picked up the phone on the table and asked impatiently.
The empire needed more suppressive-level forces to break through the stalemate. Instead of biding her time here only to guard against the bugs of the Heart of the Ocean, she would rather fight in the frontline and win herself some recognitions.
The person on the other end was silent for a second. “Apologize, Minister. The Heart of the Ocean had many hidden strongholds along its long coastline. Especially at the shallow water where large-scale search operation is difficult.” Stitz got his knickers in a twist.
The Heaven’s Spire was divided into six wings; the more the wings, the higher the position and power. Elba, nicknamed the Pale Viper, was a four-winged Darksider who was powerful enough to rule an area as large as a province. But that was not the reason for Stitz’s headache. Elba was restless. She was not content just to stay at the rear of the battlefield. She wanted to prove herself in action in the frontline. This was the reason why everyone in the Defense Affairs Division was in trepidation. People were afraid of agitating Elba, who was already a grumpy bull.
“Minister, you might want to check out things that have happened in Anduin recently, if you feel bored,” Stitz said as he recalled the information he had just received. “Several Darksiders from the Starfury Clan of the spire had landed near the shallow water of Huaisha. Our intelligence shows that the Darksiders have entered the city, but we still couldn’t make out their intention.”
“The Starfury Clan?” Elba scratched her chin thoughtfully. “That’s interesting. It might be a good one to kill time. Anything else?”
Stitz cursed quietly, frustrated at serving a boss with her temperament as high as her ability. He had sacrificed his polo session every afternoon just to keep his hard-to-please boss occupied. He was either on official duty or on grappling with the whimsical ideas of Elba, for fear that she might cause unnecessary trouble outside. Then a thought suddenly came to his mind.
“By the way, as the situation in Huaisha is becoming more volatile, the intelligence has begun to train their eye at an organization called the Ironfist Society. My aide-de-camp used to work on a mission in pursuing Utiya there and had a brush with the Ironfist Society, the attitude of which was inexplicably unyielding.”
“And then?” Elba’s interest was aroused. Although there were at least a couple of disturbances that occurred in the colony every day, most of it was the work of an underground organization called The Revivalists in Xilin. The members of the Revivalists were elusive and rarely in direct confrontation with the Defense Affairs Division, which no one would ever wish to challenge.
“We have gone there to investigate and found that the Ironfist Society has nothing to do with the Revivalists nor the Heart of the Ocean. It’s an unknown group,” Stitz said as he sorted the information in his mind. “Unlike Yinlan Chamber of Commerce, the Ironfist Society claims to have a headquarters. They even have locked horns with a military officer of the Azure Heart earlier. Their political leaning is unknown…” He paused for a second with his brows knitted together. “They also master a kind of strange dark-energy cultivation technique that uses a special symbol to meditate and gain abilities that transcend human limit.”
Elba cocked an eyebrow in curiosity. “How powerful are they?”
“Not bad… enough to make an average martial art practitioner a level-three Darksider within a month. There is more to this Ironfist Society than meets the eye.” Stitz continued. “Based on intelligence, my take is that the Ironfist Society has a relatively complete set of cultivation systems, of which the experience and skills displayed are rather mature. Not something developed recently.”
“And then?” Elba could not help asking.
“This means they have a background that is much more powerful than what we already know. I didn’t intervene earlier because Olro had stepped into the picture,” Stitz said frankly.
“You wanted to avoid a dispute?” Elba could see his concern.
As Xilin has fallen into disarray, foreign powers began to intervene, wanting a slice of the action. It was just that Redwin was the first to come to the party. But Olro was no slouch either. It was said that they had quietly made a move. The biggest concern was whether the Ironfist Society had any alliance with Olro. If this were true, it would be bad news to the frontline forces of Redwin.
“Of course, Minister…” Stitz nodded. “Lin Sheng, the president of Ironfist Society, was only an ordinary high schooler. He magically moved up in the world and rose to become a Darksider. I don’t believe that he has no one teaching him anything if you ask me.”
Elba rubbed her chin impatiently.
First came the Heart of the Ocean, the Revivalists, the Yinlan Chamber of Commerce, and now the Ironfist Society. The emergence of so many rats in this shithole was puzzling.