Shen Hong 1

"Thum! - Thum! - Thum!"

My heart was beating like a drum giving a tact to my energy, hitting the mysterious barrier holding me back.

"Crack! - Crack! - Boom!"

Finally, I have broken through and decades of efforts were rewarded by a flood of experiences, information, senses, visions, knowledge.

It was a memory of another life in another world, a softer, happier place dominated by mankind and corrupted by Capitalism.

Being a black-gold rank cultivator, I have sorted all of the received memories within an hour.

There was both useful (science) and useless (porn) stuff there, but most importantly there was knowledge of "tales of demons and gods" a story about here and now.

And that is why I exited my isolation chamber to check things and prevent the collapse of my Sacred Family.

The story was right and our family has suffered a number of significant setbacks, starting with the loss of prestige over a pattern and ending with a loss of the 450 millions on gambling.

We have lost our best chance to kill Nie Li, soon he would enter the Heavenly Sacred Border and grow stronger, getting rid of him would be too much trouble now.

Instead, I congratulated the bastard on passing our family's test "to see if Nie Li was worthy of being the next City Lord and marry Ye Zi Yun and Xiao Ning'er".

That has caught him by surprise, yet he just expressed his gratitude, to which I responded that we would send people to negotiate on his behalf right away.

It was one thing to earn prestige and respect with your own merit, but having Sacred family pressing the issue on your behalf would sour the mood in both cases.

I have spent a few more hours on the arena observing the following matches.

These events were organized in collaboration with Demonic Spiritualists and Fighters associations to give young unaffiliated talents a chance to show themselves and win the favor of noble families.

In the end, I have rewarded two champions with five millions each and invited them to join Sacred family guards.

Ran Pao, tall, arrogant, male demonic spiritualist asked for a week to consider.

Feng Luoyang, a short, charming, female fighter accepted right away.

Once, the event was over and I got back to the family estate, I asked Shen Ming to pass the duties Shen Xiu and other elders.

"Patriarch, I have no excuse, but after so many years of loyal service, I ask to spare my family, at least."

The demotion was too light punishment for his failure, so he was wary of my intention and begged for the last favor.

I told him that Nie Li recognized Yan Hua as the Dark Guild member and knows about his ties to our family, that Ming should pose as a rouge elder trying to assassinate me and stage a public attack on me.

Failure meant culling and enslavement of the entire family (and a big loss for the Guild), so everything should go perfectly: deacon Hua with accomplices - for distraction, Ming - for backstabbing, it should be public with all of them dying in the process.

Then and only then, his family can "disappear without a trace".

He asked for five days to pass the duties and prepare everything.

"Fine, in five days, there would be a feast in the honor of Yan Hua, meant to reward him for saving Yue'er in the forest, that is when the attack would happen and I would receive an injury."

I gave him the time, I had things to do and to check during that time.

"It will be done."

He confirmed.

"Yeah, if things would go right, we would cast suspicion on Nie Li himself."

These words brought a smile to his face.