Chapter 294 - Rising Storm
The news that the Sha family had been beaten up spread across the whole of Peace City as if it had wings.
The undercurrent surged in Peace City. It was apparent from the number of property transactions that close to seventy percent of houses in the city had new owners. The power of money, fist and authority were displayed vividly through different ways. Lucky home owners could earn a big sum of money and unlucky ones would find themselves in a worse situation. While it wasn’t to the extent of becoming bankrupt or losing lives, injuries were common.
Peace City was like a feasting place, fertile and repleted.
Peace City was a small place and played no impressive roles. It couldn’t provoke fellows that had a strong background. As for other matters, it was fine as long as they did not go overboard. Going overboard would bring shame to the family and they still wanted to keep their reputation. Most families would choose to offer a pretty decent price along with some threats in order to achieve their goals.
A little bit of money meant nothing to big families. There was no need to complicate matters over such an insignificant amount of money.
While there were many undercurrents in Peace City, it was buzzing with activity on the surface and there was no sensationalized news. As such, the news of the Sha family getting beaten up created such a big stir.
Some felt rueful over the Sha family’s decline.
The Sha family from three years back had still been a well-celebrated family in the Avalon of Five Elements. Yet, in just three years they fell into poverty and were taken over by a small and remote training hall. The whole affair would make you sigh.
The occupation of Yellow Corner Sand was a devastating blow to influential earth elementalist families. It only took three years for the Sha family to lose their power and fall into such decline. In another three years there might not even be a Sha family anymore.
It was no wonder the Sha family was so desperate. They had no choice.
A pity the Sha family wasn’t in luck and had stumbled.
The news of Wang Han and the swordsman school had already reached the desks of respective homeowners. There wasn’t anything noteworthy about the news other than the interesting nickname, ‘King of Anglers’, given to Wang Han.
It was said that Wang Han had just attained elemental externalization so how great could he be?
Could it be that the Sha family’s abilities had already reached such a frail state? Some people were secretly affected. Although they couldn’t make sand puppets without sand, there were still many good things about the Sha family. At least the manufacturing method was invaluable.The Elders Guild would absolutely disallow only metal and water elements to exist long term. It was evident from the establishment of the small Avalon of Five Elements that Elders Guild was trying. Their determination was apparent as well.
One could tell, from the construction of the small Avalon of Five Elements, that Elders Guild had already realized that regardless if it was the Fire Prairie and Yellow Corner Sand, occupied by Blood of God, or the independent Jadeite Forest, none would return to the hands of the Avalon of Five Elements any time soon.
The war would not end soon and once the small avalon succeeded, the rebuilding of the Avalon of Five Elements would immediately begin.
As long as the Elders Guild pushed through the challenging phase before them and gained strength, the situation would improve greatly.
The difficult situation faced by earth, fire and water elementalists was only temporary. They would recover their elemental energy upon the reconstruction of the Avalon of Five Elements.
These families were at their weakest right now, which meant that now was the best opportunity to swallow them up. If these weakened families were taken over now, the spoils of war during the rebuilding of the Avalon of Five Elements would earn them a large sum.
Quickly, many families became restless and threatening.
Evergold Enterprise.
"Four essence elemental beans?" asked the Fu family’s elder sister.
Fu Yonghao replied angrily, "Yes, Sister. This man is crazy about money! Treating me as a fool? I was so angry that I almost quarreled with them."
"So did you give them to him?" the lady asked while looking at him.
Fu Yonghao felt weak from his sister’s gaze but answered firmly, "Of course not! I’m not stupid!"
His sister shook her head. "Four essence elemental beans in exchange for a fair chance to get close to him. What’s bad about it?"
"In any case, I don’t want to be slaughtered like an idiot!" Fu Yonghao stiffened his neck and repeated indignantly.
The Fu family’s elder sister asked directly, "Then have you seen the Sha family’s battle process?"
"I’ve seen it." Fu Yonghao felt at ease upon seeing that his sister wasn’t angry. He continued, "I left the alley and saw them not far away. I heard the housekeeper mumbling something about buying over the training hall and immediately knew that they were going after Wang Han."
His sister asked hurriedly, "How?"
Out of curiosity, others looked over as well.
Fu Yonghao had a strange expression. "Wang Han did not look very impressive, but his sand puppet was pretty capable. The guards’ Earth Dragons were all defeated by Wang Han’s sand puppet.
"Taken down by Wang Han’s sand puppet?"
This outcome was surprising.
"Yeah." Fu Yonghao was puzzled too. "Isn’t the Sha family well-known for their sand puppets? While Earth Dragons are not considered first-rate sand puppets, they are pretty good at combat. How did they get defeated by a single sand puppet so easily? Has the Sha family really fallen into such a sorry state?"
Fu Renxuan couldn’t help but ask, "Where’s Wang Han’s sand puppet from? Isn’t he a metal elementalist?"
Fu Yonghao spread his hands out.
"Regardless, the Sha family can only brace themselves." the Fu family’s elder sister added, "If they cower now, they will have to succumb to their fate of getting swallowed up. Not only do they have to win, they have to win beautifully in order to intimidate those greedy fellows."
Fu Yonghao’s eyes lit up. "A good show’s coming up!"
Swordsman Training Hall.
"Ai Hui, am I really going to start upgrading my body? It’s going to require a very long time." Lou Lan spoke.
"How long?"
"Six to eight days."
"Oh okay, start as soon as possible once you’re ready."
"But what would you do if enemies appear?"
"Hah, don’t worry, what’s there to be afraid of? We’re in school!"
Ai Hui really wasn’t worried. He wouldn’t be so sure if they were in some other place, but since they were in Swordsman Training Hall, he was highly confident.
This was his home ground.
As someone who was always cautious, he placed much more importance on his nesting place as compared to most people. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to sleep in peace.
Ever since he left Central Pine, he had accumulated a significant number of Heaven Merit Points. He was supposed to get an inherited manual but with additional points, he exchanged it for an absolute art manual for training sky palaces.
He then used the rest of his points to obtain all sorts of uncommon ingredients.
And he used most of these ingredients to make elemental food for upgrading Lou Lan’s body and for Dragonspine tempering. For Ai Hui to be able to progress steadily in spite of the Life and Death Flower Sacrificial Technique Art, these ingredients played an important role.
The remaining ingredients were used in his training hall.
All the resources were taken away by the Elders Guild for Wang Shouchuan’s [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] plan during the war of Central Pine City. Even Wang Shouchuan’s daily notes that had been found were kept safely. The Elders Guild saw these pieces of information as treasures and were highly secretive about them.
No one would’ve thought that there was still someone who remembered the complicated and meticulous proposal from that time.
And that person was Ai Hui.
He had been in touch with Teacher’s ideas on a regular basis, and when the proposal was out he visited Teacher, who explained it all to him without stopping. As such, Ai Hui had a much deeper understanding of the whole plan since he’d been following up with it from start to end.
The plan was so grand and full of complex scenarios, things that Ai Hui wasn’t able nor required to try. Thus, he specially made smaller scaled, simplified versions to fix up the hall and increase security.
As his understanding of sword mastery and Teacher’s theory deepened steadily, he continued improvising the installations.
No one would’ve thought that this shabby-looking training hall had its own mysteries.
Even people like Su Qingye, who practiced here regularly, did not sense anything abnormal.
When Ai Hui knew that there might be danger, he informed all the students that classes would stop for half a month so as to prevent getting involved in this affair.
Lou Lan started upgrading his body and the hall quieted down.
Ai Hui did not waste any time as well. He had just broken into external externalization, which was the best time to train. The change in elemental energy offered him a different revelation.
Attaining elemental externalization meant that elementalists could directly engage Nature’s elemental energies, precisely the reason for their formidability.
For example, currently, Ai Hui could engage elemental energy from within a radius of fifty feet. As he upgraded his level of training, this range would widen as well.
Attaining elemental externalization was merely the beginning. There was a huge difference between being able to engage elemental energy from within a radius of fifty feet versus from within a radius of thousands of feet.
Along with a deeper understanding of elemental energy, elementalists would not only be able to increase their control over a larger area, they would even be able to engage elemental energy that was not of their own element.
The finest thing about the five elemental energies was how they affected one another.
Nature’s elemental energies in itself resided in circulations. Those Masters were able to convert other elemental energies into the one that they needed.
This was also the reason why although Han Yuqin’s combat abilities weren’t as strong as Yu Mingqiu, she was able to complete the [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] plan. When one’s base level was high enough, elemental energy was no longer divided. In her hands, any type of elemental energy could be converted easily.
Of course, this was the ultimate goal for elementalists. None had been able to achieve it so far.
According to recent rumors, the person closest to reaching this goal was grandmaster Dai Gang.
To Ai Hui, these were beyond his reach. He had just attained elemental externalization and was a thorough rookie. Many experiences were still very foreign to him.
He could feel the elemental energy in the ground beneath his feet dragging him along.
The elemental energy flow was completely different from before. Ai Hui was full of curiosity, his eyes flickering brightly.
As he moved, the Dragonspine started operating slowly.
Within these three years, if there was one area which he improved the greatest, it would have to be his sword mastery.
He had already attained a higher mastery level when he was still in Central Pine. Three years of perseverance, fumbling and bitter trainings really refined his swordsmanship.
He did not use Heaven Merit Points to exchange for the sword techniques. He did not care for those.
But Karakorum’s swordplay really made his eyes light up.
Nevertheless, his own fighting style had started to infuse with his swordplay. Learning swordplay from others would instead be disadvantageous.
He could borrow them as references but could not completely imitate them.
What he needed to do now was to persevere.