In an alley in the capital, the door to a small courtyard opened, revealing a canopy of a century old walnut tree.
During the early spring, it was still chilly in the capital as Nie Ting, donned in a black cloak and in deep thought, sat opposite Shi Xuejin. And Shi Xuejin was busy like a normal person.
Four plates of snacks were placed on the stone table between them and under the table was a small stove, warming a pot of wine.
Shi Xuejin checked the time and added ginger and plums into the pot and closed the lid once again, before shaking off the ginger froth on his hands.
He looked up at Nie Ting, "It's a pity that we didn't obtain the relic this time. Li Yixiao suspects that the spy took advantage of the ghosts not attacking him to obtain the relic. But this still requires confirmation."
Shi Xuejin finished his sentence and saw that Nie Ting didn't voice out any opinions and continued, "We can tell the danger of spies from this incident and must take extreme measures against them, or else things would only turn for the worse. All the experts at the border had taken action but did not find any trace of the spy. The long spear that Li Yixiao obtained had been checked and it isn't the relic. We have no idea what the real relic is… Li Yixiao said that he heard the ghost general say, "How dare you steal my seal of lands?!"
Nie Ting heard the three words 'seal of lands' and suddenly opened his eyes. Shi Xuejin smiled, "Yes, you know about the mountain river seal too. Although we don't know how much power this ancient item still possesses, it has fallen into the hands of the spy. This is really frustrating, what if it could be activated? Li Yixiao… is really unreliable…"
At this point in time, the only knowledge the heavenly network had about the relic was its name… After exiting the remains, Li Yixiao started his report on the whole process and Shi Xuejin found out that Li Yixiao didn't even know who took the relic- he was too caught up with evading the attacks of the terracotta soldiers to notice what was happening in the main hall!
Nie Ting calmly said, "The seal of lands can tap into the magical energy of the world and this is a characteristic we both know. Send two experts that are receptive to magical energy over to Luo Cheng to wait for orders. Let's see if this spy would slip up. But we shouldn't have too high hopes. Compared to the whole situation, a seal of lands is insignificant and this incident would just be a small mishap in our entire plan."
Shi Xuejin sighed, "But that's still a seal of lands…"
But from Nie Ting's perspective, no matter how powerful a single treasure was, an overall victory was still the priority.
From today onwards, the appearance of subsequent remains inside the country would apply a greater pressure on them. It was like monopolizing a piece of cake and not letting anyone else have a bite.
Although Li Yixiao lost the relic, he managed to kill all the Indian practitioners and even the Japanese had only one surviving spy.
As for the Indians, out of the only thirteen known Class Cs, eleven had died this time. Practitioners weren't an unlimited resource and India had tried their luck by sending people here. But they were all lost and India wouldn't be acting so presumptuous in the future.
And this incident was a message to the rest of the experts in the world by using the Indians as an example.
As Nie Ting said, compared to the bigger picture, a mere seal of lands was insignificant. This didn't mean that the seal of lands wasn't important, if not he wouldn't have bothered sending those experts to Luo Cheng.
Shi Xuejin nodded and didn't say anything else. He flipped through the report details from Zhong Yutang and there was a small part talking about how unreliable Li Yixiao was…
Flipping to the end, Shi Xuejin suddenly looked up, "The number of student casualties is still being compiled and I'm afraid it isn't a small number. What should we do?" In between words, he poured Nie Ting a cup of the warm wine and used a bamboo chopstick to pick out the plums into his own plate. He had a liking for these things.
"Those who wish to quit can do so, and we will provide compensation. There will be an uproar but it will die down eventually. We can't back down now but we should lay low for a while. There will be many criticisms against the heavenly network," Nie Ting finished the yellow wine in a gulp, "The people thought that training was a smooth-sailing process but now they all want out. They don't know that the road of training had always been filled with deaths. It was like this when magical energy was scarce, and nothing changed after the recovery of magical energy… Those afraid of death shouldn't take part in this. I think that the daoyuan class teacher-student system should be changed. The performance this time is too disappointing. I think we're being too lenient."
Shi Xuejin placed the plums inside his mouth and said, "The compensation is going to strain our budget…"
At the Mt Beimang camp, before the students left, the heavenly network notified them to cooperate with a headcount first. Lu Shu acted natural and assured himself that no one knew he obtained the relic. After all, only the ghost general had witnessed it.
The seal of lands was suspended motionless in midair inside his vision, and within the space inside the seal of lands, there were twelve long spears that Lu Shu took from the terracotta soldiers.
Frankly speaking, under the circumstance that Lu Shu didn't know the powers of the seal of lands, the convenient storage space that it provided was what he fancied the most!
The five spears that Lu Shu brought out were collected by Zhong Yutang and so did the rest of the people's weapons which they obtained in the remains. But Zhong Yutang also took down their names and the number of weapons they obtained for future reference when it came to rewards.
Lu Shu wasn't displeased at all. Thinking that he had secretly hidden twelves of the best long spears, he felt a sense of satisfaction.
Although he couldn't casually take these long spears out, spear throwing was one of his unique techniques and having these twelve long spears was a huge boost to his killing abilities!
Lu Shu estimated that he could easily throw a spear one kilometer but a long distance would affect his accuracy. The distance of throw which he could retain precision would be about 300m.
This was already very powerful!
The numbers were compiled and the number of daoyuan students casualties was 311. This was considered a major incident.
It was predicted that the parents wouldn't be let this matter go easily. The first conflict between society regulations and the heavenly network was going to be incurred by this incident.
But how the parents were going to react did not concern Lu Shu. He was still alive after all.
Lu Shu looked back at the peak of the mountain and saw Li Yixiao holding onto the long spear and standing at attention atop the mountain, with a disappointed expression...
It was at this moment when Lu Shu suddenly thought of checking his distress points records. Logically, him obtaining the relic should have incurred a lot of distress…