The aftermath

"Li Xian."

Zhou Juechen stepped forward.

He glanced over Li Xian's body...

Not only were patches of his skin flushed red, but traces of blood were faintly seeping through.

"You used a secret burst technique!? You're not in good shape right now!"

"No!"

Li Xian said, "I'm in very good shape right now."

Then, with a hint of yearning, he added, "I haven't felt this good in a long time."

Zhou Juechen froze for a moment.

Li Xian looked at his hand.

He had used Vibrating Force to shatter the saber in Blood Eagle's hand, but his own palm had split open as well. The blood had already clotted.

But...

This felt wonderful.

This world truly hadn't disappointed him.

"I'll head back first. Sorry to trouble you with the cleanup."

Li Xian spoke.

"All right!"

Zhou Juechen nodded.

In today's battle, although he had tied down most of the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang at the start...

Li Xian had handled all the truly difficult fighting.

He himself hadn't really suffered any injuries.

With the ceaseless renewal of a warrior's blood and qi at the Impervious Body stage, he had already recovered by now.

Seeing Li Xian turn to leave, Zhou Juechen hurriedly asked, "What do you plan to do about the Prince's Mansion and the Marquis's Residence?"

Then he made a killing gesture. "Should we tonight..."

"The Marquis's Residence and the Prince's Mansion should have more resources than this. If they could hire the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang this time, they can hire stronger experts next time."

Li Xian said, "I'll be waiting."

"Stronger experts?"

Zhou Juechen looked rather strange. "Do you know what it means that you slaughtered the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang today, then immediately killed Four Absolutes Saber Zhang Shuheng, along with Blood Exchange and Marrow Washing martial masters like Zhao Tianming and Bai Yup an?"

"What?"

Li Xian didn't understand.

"The Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang ran rampant around Luoyang, committing countless crimes, yet no one intervened to uphold justice or right their wrongs. Partly because they never provoked anyone they couldn't afford to offend, and partly because they came and went like the wind, making them hard to intercept. But the most important reason was their strength."

Zhou Juechen said, "With all thirteen working together, no one short of a major sect's leader-level expert who has reached Refining the Void into Reality and cultivated true qi could wipe them out."

"There should be quite a few leader-level experts who've cultivated true qi in Great Zhou, shouldn't there?"

Li Xian said, "Can't the Marquis's Residence and the Prince's Mansion hire them?"

"Hire them?"

Zhou Juechen felt he needed to give Li Xian a thorough grounding in common knowledge. "What could the Marquis's Residence and the Prince's Mansion possibly offer to hire them!? Which leader-level expert who has cultivated true qi doesn't hold sway over an entire region?"

He said bluntly, "Take the Canglang Sword Sect, for example. It commands two hundred li of Canglang Mountain, with over a thousand disciples and tens of thousands of dependents. Its influence reaches a million people in the surrounding area, and its annual income amounts to hundreds of thousands of taels of silver."

Li Xian paused.

He vaguely began to realize something.

"Even if the Marquis's Residence and the Prince's Mansion exhaust every resource, a hundred thousand taels of silver is the most they could scrape together. Under those circumstances, would a true qi expert who serves as his sect's sea-calming pillar need to take an enormous risk to ambush and kill a prodigy with limitless potential like you for those hundred thousand taels?"

Zhou Juechen said, "If you escaped alive, then five or ten years later, once you've cultivated true qi, the Canglang Sword Sect would face annihilation. Even if not everyone could cultivate true qi in the future like you, how much damage could an Impervious Body expert cause the Canglang Sword Sect through covert ambushes and sabotage? If that continued for eight or ten years, the hundred thousand taels from the Prince's Mansion and the Marquis's Residence wouldn't even make a ripple in that bottomless hole!"

Things gradually became clear to Li Xian.

It seemed he had been thinking along the wrong lines.

This world wasn't ancient Blue Star.

This was a world of warriors who gathered myriad mighty powers within a single body.

Even across Great Zhou's territory, six thousand li from end to end, the imperial clan couldn't make every word carry the weight of nine cauldrons.

The marquises who served Great Zhou and its enfeoffed commandery princes might not wield as much power as he had imagined, either.

In a sense, the relationship between the major sects and the imperial clan was more like that between warlords and a government. In name, they all honored the Great Zhou Imperial Clan, but in practice, every major sect was a state within a state.

When necessary, they could easily raise an army of tens of thousands, with their core disciples forming its backbone.

If the imperial clan disregarded the rules and wantonly dispatched troops to encircle and suppress the sects, it would inevitably send rival powers rising everywhere and plunge the realm into chaos.

Those so-called marquises and princes?

They were merely the equivalent of major sect elders.

In transcendent powers like the Tai Xu Sword Palace, the Sacred Martial Tower, and the Heavenly Treasure Pavilion, the commandery princes, who numbered over a hundred, wouldn't even count as elders. At most, they would be equivalent to stewards with impeccable pedigrees.

Blood Exchange and Marrow Washing and Impervious Body were already the limits of the power they could reach and mobilize.

As for leader-level experts at the higher stage of Refining the Void into Reality...

They had no need to take such people seriously at all.

Only a handful of highly favored imperial princes, officials of the first rank, and generals commanding tens of thousands of soldiers had the standing to speak with them as equals.

"Fists are power."

Zhou Juechen's earlier words took concrete shape at that moment.

"So neither the Marquis's Residence nor the Prince's Mansion can hire anyone else?"

Li Xian spoke.

"The Dingfeng Marquis Estate certainly can't hire any more experts of real standing. They only managed to bring in the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang because that woman stirred things up with the Blood Jade Art. As for Prince Yue's Residence..."

Zhou Juechen paused briefly. "Prince Yue's Residence is different from the other Commandery Prince's Residences. They... have established ties with that Immortal Seedling. It's just..."

He looked somewhat puzzled. "There's one thing I've never understood... Yan Kaigui was already going to marry the Immortal Seedling, yet after receiving the promise of a Dragon Gate Token, he still kept mixing with Liu Yanran from the Marquis's Residence... Is that Immortal Seedling really so easy to fool?"

Li Xian understood.

Prince Yue's Residence still had some potential to tap.

As for the Marquis's Residence...

Was there nothing left?

Li Xian considered it for a moment, then decided he should be patient.

"The Marquis's Residence must be waiting for news from the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang right now. I'll go there and give them an update. I'll tell them I'm not dead and the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang failed, and see whether they can scrimp and save enough silver to hire a martial master at the greater mastery stage of Leakless."

He said, "Even if they can't hire someone in the true qi realm, there should still be hope for someone at greater mastery of Leakless, right?"

After all, this was the Dingfeng Marquis Estate, with a century-long legacy.

Seeing this, Zhou Juechen was rather speechless.

Still, he didn't try to dissuade him again.

"As you like."

Zhou Juechen replied, then quickly handed over a fine saber. "Zhang Shuheng was known as Four Absolutes Saber. He was best known for his saber techniques and this Black Iron Saber. See whether it suits your hand."

"Saber techniques..."

Li Xian hadn't thought much of Zhang Shuheng's saber techniques.

But he still accepted the Black Iron Saber.

With a fine saber like this in hand, when he used moves such as Sword Sweeps the Three Thousand Worlds in the future, he would be able to shake weapons out of his opponents' hands more efficiently.

He could even...

Use Vibrating Force to shatter their weapons outright and seize the initiative.

"Aside from the saber, I also found some good things on the Thirteen Eagles of Luoyang, including quite a few banknotes. You won't need to worry about the expense of working on Blood and Qi Mastery for a while. There's plenty of silver to buy qi-boosting and blood-nourishing medicines."

Zhou Juechen spoke with a smile.

"Good."

Li Xian nodded slightly.

Attempting Blood and Qi Mastery required keeping his blood and qi circulating at high frequency, which consumed enormous amounts of energy. Naturally, he needed medicine to replenish it.

In addition, he needed to replenish what he expended while improving the Heavenly Demon Disintegration Technique.

"Are you going to the Marquis's Residence now? Would you like to rest and change your clothes first?"

Zhou Juechen asked.

Li Xian glanced over himself.

There was blood on a few places...

But it wasn't much of a problem.

He wasn't a clean freak and didn't mind. Taking care of business mattered more.

"I can't be bothered to make an extra trip. I'm only going there to give them the news anyway. I'll bathe after I get back from the Marquis's Residence."

With that, Li Xian headed toward the Marquis's Residence, carrying his spoils of battle, the Black Iron Saber.

(End of chapter)