Money Problem

Three days has passed since Li Fu's death.

Li Bai kept the matter of him obtaining his father's soul a secret. After all, he didn't want to give them false hope. He wasn't really sure if he could get a suitable body for his father in time. As such, only Jin He and him were the ones that knew about it.

Li Bao, upon hearing from his brother that their father was already dead, was one of the most grieving about her father's death. She regretted that she wasn't able to do anything to help in the battle.

Hence, in the past week, all she had been doing was nothing but cultivating, absorbing Earth energy and refining it.

Li Bai tried to call her but she never responded, since she was too focused on cultivation. Li Bai wanted to help by offering his sister to go into his ring as it would accelerate her training, but since he couldn't establish contact, he gave up on that idea.

Li Bai instead looked at the current problems. The Li clan exhausted a ton of resources to prepare for this battle, only for it to abruptly end once the clan head died.

In fact, the enemy clan head and the one who killed Li Fu, Liu Gong, actually felt remorse for his actions. He didn't even know what he was doing there when his rationality came back.

Liu Gong had done his best to compensate by providing money and resources to the Li clan, much to their vexation. For him to suddenly do a complete 180, it was determined that he was a psychopath, and they wanted nothing to do with him.

However, they couldn't afford to disrespect the Liu clan any further, not that they disrespected them in the first place. They could only reluctantly accept his support. Besides, they desperately needed some support anyway.

The position of clan head was temporarily transferred to the high elder. Since this elder was very old already, he needed an immediate successor.

Normally, it would be Li Bao who would succeed her father, but she was deemed too young to receive the position. Even if they did want to pass it onto her no matter what, there was also the fact that Li Bao was uneducated in these subjects. She would just lead the clan to ruin, at least more ruin than now.

This was being fixed by Li Bao herself, casting aside her carefree personality and becoming serious for once. Nonetheless, they didn't have that much confidence in her. She may be talented in cultivating, but in studies, she always did badly. This could be attributed to the airheaded character of hers that rooted from her being spoiled by Li Fu when Li Bai hadn't been born yet.

Even with all these pessimistic remarks that Li Bao overhears, she continued to do her best to make sure that this clan would not fall.

Meanwhile, Li Bai thought about solutions to the various problems in the Liu clan. The Backwater City Tournament was arriving soon, and that clan was in shambles.

The Liu clan sustained losses as well, although not as much as the Li clan's.

The news of the Liu clan cutting all ties with the other major clans during a meeting about the tournament had naturally already spread. This caused some people to be skeptical about the tournament. Would it still proceed as planned?

Everyone knew that every major clan played a part in organizing this tournament, no matter how little their contribution may seem at first.

If the tournament lost the support of one of the clans, would the other clans shoulder the burden?

There was also the matter of the clan head of the Liu clan, Liu Gong, being labeled as a psychopath. After battling it out with the Li clan, they instantly helped them out, which made everyone baffled.

All in all, Backwater City was in disorder as some of the commoners had the tournament as their only hope at getting to a higher place, rather than staying as a commoner.

.....

An unexpected development occurred within Backwater City. Except for the Li clan, all of the minor clans had joined together to form one major clan!

Individually, these clans weren't much at all. In the eyes of the major clans, these clans were just ants that they could crush anytime, but now that they joined up, these bugs turned into one giant ant!

They were now one of the major clans, the fifth even, replacing the Liu clan after what happened.

The Liu clan was greatly weakened, and so moved down in the major clan rankings two spots, being the seventh major clan now, with only three clans lower than them. The Guo clan, the Yang clan, and of course, the last minor clan, the Li clan.

This shook up the major clans!

.....

In the Li clan, things were not going well. Some were panicked over the fact that they were the last clan in the overall rankings, others panicked because they had no proper clan head yet.

Some of Li Fu's brothers were offered the position, but they refused, not willing to take responsibility for the dire straits the Li clan was in now. They would rather transfer to another clan.

Almost all of the renters in the Li clan's marketplace had already gone to another clan, with the ones that remained not being able to afford the hefty price of setting up shop somewhere else.

Amidst all of this, Li Bai was walking calmly walking towards the clan hall, where the elders, the high elder, and Li Fu's brothers were having a meeting.

All of them had grave expressions on their faces.

"What do we do?!"

Even though they were having a meeting, no one was communicating with each other, instead talking amongst themselves about how to deal with this situation.

Some even considered going to some other clan, while others already have. They were Fourth Level Mark cultivators, in the eyes of any other clan, they were all precious.

The door suddenly opened, and Li Bai walked in, much to the elders' surprise.

Li Bai was small, so after a while, most of the elders have already forgotten about him entering the hall. He climbed up the table and stomped on the table!

The stomp was carefully controlled by Li Bai, in order to not break the table, but also to fluctuate the energy flow enough that attention would be directed at him.

Sure enough, the elders heard the loud sound that came from the center of the table and turned their sight towards it! They saw the small Li Bai standing proudly.

The energy fluctuation was not only enough to grab the attention of the elders, but it was also enough for the elders, except for the high elder, to detect that he was in a higher cultivation level than them!

"This energy fluctuation... Is he in the Fifth Level Mark already?!"

The elders were in an uproar! How was this possible? The clan's renowned trash, Li Bai, being at the Fifth Level Mark realm? This was on par with his father!

"Wait..."

They felt something. It was stronger than that of his father's.

"This brat actually lit up 15 gems?!"

All of the elders in the room were amazed! Even the usually stern high elder had his eyes wide open.

"This brat, has he been hiding his abilities all this time?"

Li Bai didn't even give them time to react. The ring on his finger glowed with a greenish light that was so bright the elders shut their eyes.

The glow depended on how much the user was taking out of the ring, everyone knew this general knowledge about storage rings.

What astonished the elders even more was that not only because Li Bai owned a ring, but that he was taking out a ton of stuff!

Li Bai spoke up while the ring was glowing brighter and brighter.

"Here: money."

"""Money?"""

Based on this glow that even made the elders close their eyes, it was sure to be a huge amount of money! The elders were excited, never did they expect that this "trash" of their clan was actually a crouching tiger!

As the elders had their eyes closed, they felt the light fading, indicating that Li Bai has taken out all that he wanted to.

The elders opened their eyes, only to find a mountain of golden coins rapidly collapsing, falling down upon them!

"Ah! Too much money!"

After this move, Li Bai exited the clan hall shortly, leaving the elders to handle the money that he gave them themselves. A loud crash was heard throughout the whole area, accompanied by the screams of elders, whether happy, confused, or scared.

.....

Soon enough, the Li clan rose in rankings, becoming a major clan so suddenly. During the time that they were rising, the collective minor clan, now called the Jin clan, had already risen to the first rank, overpowering even the Zhou clan!

This unknown source of wealth and power made the people of Backwater City suspicious of the newfound Jin clan.

The Li clan obtained a source too, and theirs was more suspicious because it was known that all of the people that rented a place in their territory abandoned them once the clan head died. This was the case, so how come the Li clan got so rich, richer than before?