Chen Chuan stepped into the bamboo hut and looked around. He saw only a simple sitting cushion and a few daily utensils, though even these appeared rarely used.
A semi-aberrant Longevity View martial artist had little need for food and had to battle mutation day after day; at most, the bamboo hut served merely as shelter.
After a brief glance, he looked down toward the ground.
Stirred by his field power, the bamboo branches creaked and twisted aside. The earth beneath churned open down to a depth of five or six meters, revealing a black metal box.
The box drifted slowly up before him. It bore no lock or clasp, simply fitted together and fused into a single whole by spiritual fire.
A spark of light glowed at his fingertip. With a simple stroke, the top and bottom of the box separated, revealing stacks of specially treated documents, receipts, vouchers, and several gold drafts. Beneath them lay a thick booklet resembling a diary.
Seeing nothing immediately extraordinary, he did not plan to scrutinize them here, intending to inspect them after returning. He turned and stepped out of the bamboo hut.
Once outside, his gaze dropped, and the two weapons rose from the ground, flying to his side.
Both were realm-melded weapons, and fine specimens at that. Quite pleased, he admired them briefly before willing them to dissolve into thin wisps of vapor that merged into his field.
Then, within the crater where Luo Xiao had perished, the dirt churned, and the jade fragment flew out, settling neatly into his hand.
As expected, it was virtually identical to the piece of the Jiuhe Gui he had seen before. The moment it made contact with his field, it became weightless as air, its surface inscribed with intricate ancient seal script.
He nodded. It was indeed the genuine article.
Yet he had not known before that it could actually suppress mutation.
As for why the Federation had never taken it from Luo Xiao, an isolated fragment held no research value—a fact the Federation had already confirmed through detailed research data shared by Norland.
Moreover, having once shattered, even piecing it back together would never restore it to its original state. Aside from suppressing mutation, its greatest value lay in its symbolic significance. While that might matter greatly to Great Shun, it meant almost nothing to other nations.
In fact, the Federation—or rather, Center City of Vea State—had handled the matter quite cleverly.
Instead of seizing the item from Luo Xiao, they left it with him, forcing Great Shun to negotiate directly with Luo Xiao as an individual if they wanted it back. Yet Luo Xiao could never truly leave Center City of Vea State, which indirectly kept him subject to Federation constraints.
Consequently, Great Shun had to deal not only with the Federation, but also meet certain demands set by Luo Xiao.
That Chen Chuan could claim it today was only because Great Shun and the Federation government had already reached an understanding, tacitly permitting him to retrieve it. Naturally, whether he could actually take it depended entirely on his personal ability.
After stowing the items inside his duster, he sheathed the Xuejun Saber and turned back the way he had come.
Behind him, under the influence of his field, the bamboo hut detonated with a roar. The bamboo stalks and splinters were swept by a scorching wave of light, instantly bursting into flames.
A moment later, he emerged outside, where Gui Zihan was waiting. Though Gui Zihan had been unable to see the details of the clash from outside, he had distinctly felt the violent collisions of fields and spiritual fire.
Even so, his demeanor remained steady. Their journey together had given him immense confidence in Chen Chuan, leading him to believe that even facing an ancient martial artist would end no differently than any previous battle.
Seeing Chen Chuan walk out, the outcome was indeed just as he had expected. He asked, "Section Chief Chen?"
Chen Chuan nodded to him. "Everything is settled. Let's head back."
Gui Zihan nodded and walked back alongside him.
Meanwhile, inside the White Rock Hall Building, the screen finally flickered back to normal, accurate to the very second of Alula's projection.
Yet when Ryan looked over, he saw that an entire section of the bamboo grove appeared scooped out. Where the bamboo structure had once stood, only a massive crater remained, veiled in smoke from the blaze.
Alula spoke up, "Mr. Chen and Mr. Gui of the Great Shun delegation have already descended the hill. Analysis of the site indicates that Luo Xiao has been killed by them and his body entirely destroyed."
Ryan paused, startled. He glanced at his watch. Barely two minutes had passed. In just over two minutes, Luo Xiao had been... No, the time might have been even shorter, since the field readings showed that Chen Chuan and his companion were already out of the grove.
He asked, "How long did they fight?"
Alula replied, "Inferred from the residual combat traces at the scene, the total duration of the fight did not exceed ten seconds."
Ryan's expression turned grim. He was a fighter himself, as well as one of Vea State's administrators; he was far from ignorant about martial artists.
Their internal assessment ranked Luo Xiao in the upper-middle tier among Longevity View practitioners, even if not at the absolute pinnacle. Yet the battle had concluded in under ten seconds.
Their assessment of Chen Chuan would have to be revised upward once more.
Such a person was indeed worthy of an invitation. More importantly, he might very well represent a variable.
He said, "Alula, arrange an appointment with Mr. Chen for me. I need to meet with him to discuss something important."
"Understood. Arranging it now."
After walking down from the hill, Chen Chuan and Gui Zihan boarded the rail sightseeing car and departed.
Inside a certain estate, Mr. Mo rose from his sofa. He watched the two departing figures and the boundary marker on their car, then glanced at the black smoke rising from the hill. He remarked with feeling, "Young people these days really are remarkable."
He suddenly felt that leaving the Eastern Continent might have been the right choice after all. Chuckling softly, he thought that, either way, with one less lunatic on the hill, he could sleep a little more soundly.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Wei Dong, Luo Kaiyuan, Feng Xiaoqi, Wu Han, and several other members of the delegation were watching matches inside an arena.
Center City of Vea State was dotted with fighting arenas and rings. It was scarcely an exaggeration to say that the entire Center City was composed of combat venues of various sizes.
Most of the combatants here were not Federals, but fighters flocking in from across the globe. In the ring at this moment, one of the fighters hailed from the Albion Strait Alliance, while the other was from the Sanmawojia Continental Association.
To soak in the atmosphere, they were sitting in a hundred-person hall spacious enough to accommodate a hundred spectators watching and moving about freely.
After a match concluded, a man walked up to them and said, "Are you from the Great Shun delegation? I'm Chai Lai, a reporter from Vea State's Starfish Report. Here are my credentials and verification badges."
He lifted the badge hanging around his neck. "I would like to conduct an interview with you, if possible. Of course, if there is anything you wish to know, I can share information with you in return."
Wu Han asked, "Reporter Chai, are you of Eastern Continent descent?" When the man nodded, Wu Han continued, "We aren't permitted to answer questions individually. If you want to ask anything, you can talk to him." He pointed to a staff member accompanying the delegation.
Delegation members could not answer media questions carelessly; a single misspoken word could be exploited or trigger a diplomatic incident, so such matters had to be handled by designated personnel.
Chai Lai seemed somewhat disappointed, knowing that anything from an official spokesperson would strictly adhere to the official line. Still, it was a channel of communication, so he conversed with the diplomatic liaison first.
Once their standard Q&A ended, he turned back to Wu Han and the others. "I've asked what I needed to ask. As agreed, if there's anything you would like to know, feel free to ask me."
Pausing, he added, "You're all fighters. Aren't you curious about how fighters live in this city?" He looked down at the arena, where the victor was basking in the crowd's cheers. "What you see down there is only the surface."
Wu Han took a sip of his hot drink. "Go ahead and tell us, then. We've got time to kill anyway."
Chai Lai said in a low voice, "I'll tell you what I can. About what happens in these arenas every single day..."
He gave a concise overview: Vea State gathered fighters from all over the world. The elites among them might be recruited by the government or corporations, but for the vast majority, the only path forward was entering tournaments.
The moment they signed with an arena, they were bound to harsh contracts. Entry fees, trauma care, protective gear, pharmaceuticals, coaching—all of it had to be secured by mortgaging their own organs and mutated tissue. Winning kept them afloat, but after just a few matches, most fighters found that practically nothing from head to toe belonged to them anymore.
From then on, all sorts of 'free' implants were provided to replace their mutated tissue and native organs. Every day thereafter, they worked, fought, and even breathed under the surveillance of those implants.
According to him, Center City of Vea State appeared orderly on the surface, but behind that order lay a ruthless meat grinder that dragged everyone into its gears, grinding flesh to pulp and crushing bones to dust to fuel its relentless operation.
Wu Han and the others listened quietly. In truth, similar things happened every day in Great Shun as well, and they had witnessed plenty of it before. The difference was that here, people were truly squeezed and exploited to the absolute limit.
In closing, Chai Lai said, "This is only what I can speak of. As for the rest, I cannot say more—it is far more venomous and cruel than any of you could imagine."
Having spoken with evident indignation, he gave them a nod, turned, and walked away.
Wu Han watched his retreating back and commented, "It feels like he came over specifically to tell us that."
The diplomatic liaison remarked, "That's how it is. These reporters have always said such things to outsiders like us, hoping to prick our consciences so we might change things for them. But if they won't rise up and fight back themselves, do they really expect anyone else to do it?"
Wei Dong suddenly turned to Luo Kaiyuan and said, "That guy knows you."
Luo Kaiyuan looked at him in surprise. "Knows me?"
Wei Dong replied naturally, "Yeah."
Luo Kaiyuan knew Wei Dong's intuition had always been sharp, and now that Wei Dong was a fighter of the third limit, his powers of observation far exceeded their own. Luo Kaiyuan glanced toward where the reporter had walked off, only to find that in just this short time, the man was already gone.
Chapter 1113