Chess Mountain had risen thousands of years ago. Though it had weathered several cycles of prosperity and decline and was long past its prime, its accumulated reserves were still formidable.
Leaving everything else aside, the methods for refining Human-Weapon Living Soldiers and the enormous quantities of cultivation provisions required to forge them were beyond what Li Chen could produce all at once.
What Li Chen possessed now was momentum and future potential, but he lacked precisely this kind of tangible wealth.
Yet after this surprise assault cost Chess Mountain two Human-Weapon Living Soldiers, it had begun to show signs of vulnerability.
The ravages of a thousand years and the creeping decline inevitably revealed themselves.
At that moment, gloom hung over Chess Mountain. The elders of the Merchants' Association were holding urgent, secret discussions about the attack on Hidden Sword Valley, while privately consulting their various allies and strengthening ties in preparation for the total war that might soon erupt.
During the earlier engagements, Chess Mountain's leadership had ordered nonresistance, classifying them as minor clashes and attaching little importance to them. Even Li Chen's repeated fighter raids had amounted to no more than small-scale warfare.
Only after the battle at Hidden Sword Valley did they realize that their opponent was playing for keeps!
The people of Chess Mountain suddenly awakened to the possibility that they had misjudged Li Chen's appetite.
This war was anything but ordinary. He had not merely raised an army to punish past offenses, recover his dignity, and squeeze out a little money along the way. This was a far fiercer, far crueler act of plunder by force!
What Li Chen wanted was the freedom to take whatever he pleased, without limit-even to conquer Chess Mountain outright, reduce it to a vassal, and keep carving flesh from it