112 The Diplomat Wen Bao

Wang Lu didn’t give the other side the time to think.

The Seven Stars Sect’s Sect Leader was indeed a talent, but in the end, however, he was just an unhappy loose Immortal in the Immortal Cultivation World, not yet deserved to be asked twice by Wang Lu.

Therefore, the Seven Stars Sect’s Sect Leader, in desperation, chose the only path that was opened to him, which was to submit. He then took a Great Heart Devil Oath, and henceforth, he would work under Wang Lu, willingly submitted to be a lackey.

Since then, the title of Seven Stars Sect’s Sect Leader, whose name was Ye Chuchen, changed into Vice Leader of the Intelligence Revenue Service.

Removed from the title of Sect Leader, Ye Chuchen appeared like a forty to fifty years old man—an average middle-aged man. After being appointed as the Vice Leader of the Intelligence Revenue Service, Ye Chuchen could only force a smile, knowing that he has no choice in the matter.

Wang Lu’s first task for Ye Chuchen was to win over his former subordinates. With a disappointed wry smile, Ye Chuchen turned around and walked away. While thinking about his Primordial Spirit which was bound by the Great Heart Devil Oath, he was also wondering what should he say when he later meet with his former subordinates.

Watching Ye Chuchen hopped on the cloud and left, Wang Lu stood in the woods for a while before he sighed. “Acting cool indeed takes a lot of effort.”

“Ha, who forced you to pretend?”

Little Ling’Er’s voice, without warning, sounded right behind him.

For a cultivator who was used to perceive the change in the spiritual energy, this girl has always been so elusive—it was also because of this virtue that she could easily sneak attack Ye Chuchen, a dignified Xudan Stage cultivator.

“Alas, just now seeing your calm face, which looks like a proud dragon soaring in the sky impassionately passing judgment on everything, it really was unsettling.”

Wang Lu laughed. “I feel unsettled too, like I am pregnant or something… However, this is the self-cultivation of an actor; if I want a character like Ye Chuchen to willingly submit, my acting skills must be top notch.”

Little Ling’Er coldly snorted. “Beating him black and blue should suffice.”

However, the girl obviously didn’t mean that word to be taken seriously. After a moment of silence, she looked at the rising smoke from the Wang Family Village and then sighed. “Your play this time is really not small. I guess no Elders in the sect would ever expect that you would complete your experiential learning like this.”

Wang Lu scoffed. “This is the gap between a professional adventurer and mere mortals. It was a rare chance to descend the mountain, so to run around like a headless chicken, wait for the so-called opportunity to present itself and then obtain the so-called growth after repeated failures and mistakes; don’t you think that that is really stupid?”

Little Ling’Er turned around and cast a glance at Wang Lu; on the youth’s face hung a cynical smile, but it was not an annoying one.

From their first meeting, Wang Lu had always been a confident and full of himself person. Some people thought that this person was arrogant and unbearable, but little Ling’Er found it to be very interesting.

As long as she was around Wang Lu, there would always be a variety of unexpected fun things. Like those crazy ten million taels of silver when they first met at the Spirit Creek Town or his unexpected performance at the Immortal Gathering. This time’s experiential learning was also the same. When most of the disciples of the Spirit Sword Mountain earnestly tried to look for opportunities in accordance with the map provided by the Elders, Wang Lu has started the struggle for world’s ascension… this was too ridiculous!

Thinking to this, little Ling’Er couldn’t help but ask out the long-buried question in her heart.

“Hey, Wang Lu, I want to ask something.”

“By all means, Sister Ling.”

“Are you really serious with this Wisdom Sect?”

Wang Lu curled up his lips. “I’ve already used up hundreds of thousands of spirit stones, and you think I’m not serious?”

“... Then you must think. Clearly, this is a game that you can’t indulge too deep because the sect’s experiential learning is only for one year, so it’s impossible for you to be the Wisdom Sect’s Sect Leader forever, unless you…”

Wang Lu interrupted her, “One of the basic qualities of a professional adventurer is that there is no need for the electric shock to guard against over indulgence. I descend the mountain just for the experiential learning, not to abandon my main business. In the end, my interest is Immortal Cultivation, rather than levying the IQ tax on the illiterates.”

“Really?” Little Ling’Er was half believing half doubting. Although Wang Lu’s words were pretty, during this time period, his devotion to the Wisdom Sect was too deep; it was highly unlikely that he could just let it go. However, since he said so...

“Have I told you that recently, there are signs of a breakthrough on my Non-Phase Heart Sutra? Perhaps in two months, I will advance into middle-level Qi Cultivating Stage.”

“What the! How can you be so quick to reach the middle-level Qi Cultivating Stage?” Little Ling’Er looked at Wang Lu in surprise. “It’s rather inconsistent with your status as a loser Immortal Cultivator.”

“Come on, don’t look down on my Void Spirit Root… Compared with Great Ancestor De Sheng’s Void Spirit Root, my progress is too slow that it makes people cry. Great Ancestor De Sheng took twenty years to become a True Immortal, and his entire Qi Cultivating Stage took less than one year. As for me, I need to cultivate for three years before I reach the middle-level Qi Cultivating Stage, which is exactly like a turtle crawling. Moreover, this is the result of the recent repeated stimulations—first when I established the spiritual energy tide, then forcing myself to fight a Xudan Stage cultivator. Thus, it’s natural if I have a breakthrough. However, some of my achievements here can be accounted for when I return to the mountain.”

Little Ling’Er rolled her eyes; she had caught the main point in Wang Lu’s words. “Are you not going to say anything about the Wisdom Sect?”

“Nonsense, why would I say about this? If old man Fang knows about this, Divine Tribulation Lightning will strike me down into ashes, okay? Well, since I have you, Sister Ling, I don’t need to worry about it too much, ha!”

“Damn! Don’t expect to take me as your meat shield. My relationship with old man Fang is quite good; if he really comes, the first thing I would do is to bring you out to him! Alas, it’s actually good if you don’t say anything about this. If this thing gets out, the entire sect would be implicated by you. Although your theory can sway people, on the basis of using the Heaven Burning Blood Technique alone, the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals will never recognize you.”

Wang Lu just smiled without saying anything.

Correct, Heaven Burning Blood Technique was the Wisdom Sect’s Achilles Heel. Although he could dupe Ye Chuchen by saying pretty things about “hot blood” and “enthusiasm”, but in the end, it was never an upright technique. Even if there was more enthusiasm to burn, it was impossible to have many positive results based on mere Six Harmonies Spirit Root. Ultimately, the Wisdom Sect was in the initial accumulation stage; perhaps Immortal Path has miracles, but they did not belong to mortals.

However, so what? Even the always easy going little Ling’Er didn’t realize the intrinsic nature of this colossus that was the Union of Ten Thousand Immortal.

Thinking to this, Wang Lu shook his head; his line of thoughts had actually run way off the track. In any case, the present Wisdom Sect has yet to enter the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals’ eyes. In the future, when the sect was large enough, only then would he solve the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals problem.

——

Ye Chuchen’s defection crumbled the last resistance of the Seven Stars Sect and the sect was naturally annihilated. The more than ten Elders who followed him on the showdown against the Wisdom Sect have been given amnesty by Wang Lu, and all of them have a change of heart and came under the Wisdom Sect’s roof.

This was just the beginning for the Wisdom Sect. With a huge amount of excess talent and Wang Lu sitting as the Sect Leader to oversee them, what could possibly go wrong. When the Seven Stars Sect’s Elders joined the Wisdom Sect, they weren’t scattered but were placed in the same newly created department called Seven Stars Department, which would be solely managed by Ye Chuchen.

As for their work, it was neither to rob nor extortion, but to absorb the legacy of the Seven Stars Sect as fast as possible.

Before their Sect Leader Ye Chuchen’s surrender, among the several sects within the Great Ming Country, the Seven Stars Sect’s influence was quite huge. In addition to their headquarter at the Eastern Way Prefecture, they have their force spread around within the five big prefectures in the Great Ming Country.

After a month, most of these sites were already in the Wisdom Sect’s bag. And using these places as the basis, the Wisdom Sect’s influence continued to radiate in all direction. After another month, the number of believers of the Wisdom Sect has exceeded one hundred thousand, and at the same time, at the original headquarter of the Seven Stars Sect in the Eastern Way Prefecture, Wang Lu personally undertook a task; using Ye Chuchen’s previous altar as the foundation, he established a new altar—mobile type Fierce Wind Altar. Although it was only eighth rank, it was a veritable mobile type altar, and among the other eighth rank altars, it was nothing short of the best. When the altar was built, many of the original members of the Seven Stars Sect burst into tears—not long ago, the people of the Seven Stars Sect dared not imagine to have this kind of altar.

As a result, the biggest destabilizing factor in the Wisdom Sect was gradually eliminated. Although the original members still have a little nostalgia towards the Seven Stars Sect, in the past few months, the Wisdom Sect had neither oppressed nor exploited them; they were not put in the cold either. On the contrary, they felt relieved that Wisdom Sect boldly entrusted them with a lot of critical works; this kind of behavior truly made people speechless.

At the same time, with the establishment of the mobile type Fierce Wind Altar, the development speed of the Wisdom Sect further accelerated. In Wang Lu’s words, the sect had entered the double mining era. Two altars continued to provide them with resources, especially the eleven-spurt-in-one-shake Primal Chaos Altar. In Wang Lu’s operation, it frequently spurted out the best spirit objects; based on the wealth alone, Wisdom Sect was even better than some of the ninth rank sects within the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals; it could even be said as bountiful—of course, taking into account of Wisdom Sect’s hundreds of thousand followers, on the per capita basis, it still could not amount to something. In Wang Lu’s words, this was still the initial stage of the World’s Ascension.

And so it went, in one month, the Wisdom Sect would reach six months old since its establishment. More than half of the Great Ming Country territory was imprinted with traces of Wisdom Sect, with numbers of followers close to a million. As for those who were attracted to the Wisdom Sect, there were countless more. Yet, such a rapid expansion hasn’t dragged down the sect, but because of the increase in the number of followers, the accumulation of resources was growing faster.

When the Seven Stars Sect occupied a prefectural capital, they got a huge windfall of wealth. However, the wealth accumulated from that city was the result of the tributes from the ordinary people. Once millions of people were mobilized, the spirit stones accumulation speed was jaw dropping.

No wonder the previous generations mentioned in the “Nine Regions Geographical Records” that the Nine Regions’ resources in the forms of veins only accounted for one-third of its total; the rest were scattered across the Nine Regions. However, it was difficult to collect; the cost to mine them was too high, so it was often overlooked. However, now it seemed that those great masters of geography also underestimated the spirit stones reserve in the Nine Regions. At the meeting of the Wisdom Sect’s six months of establishment, Sect Leader Wang Lu got the latest statistical report: the number of spirit stones that the Wisdom Sect gathered in a day had surpassed five thousand...

Despite knowing that this crazy speed was based on unsustainable exploitation—basically, it was impossible to maintain—but when he received the report, Wang Lu still sighed. Currently, Wisdom Sect’s sphere of influence still largely stayed in the Great Ming Country, yet their wealth production capacity was already as such, which was not that far from their initial most optimistic expectation. If their expansion continued like this, it would not take them too long to pass the initial accumulation stage. Then, as long as this amazing wealth was properly used, there would be a qualitative leap for the Wisdom Sect.

Of course, in Wisdom Sect’s leap period, naturally, there would be inevitable disputes with other sects. However, from the beginning, Wang Lu was very careful to avoid the sects in the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals, and at the same time, used Ye Chuchen, Xie Chi and other Elders to continue to act as public relations officers so that the sect didn’t receive too much pressure from the top. As for those unpopular sects, if winnable, the sect would court them; if not, the sect would just destroy them. With Ye Chuchen acting as the sect’s Xudan Stage thug, as well as the one-punch-can-knock-down-a-Xudan Holy Maiden, the Wisdom Sect never feared anyone.

However, Wisdom Sect’s swift and fierce development momentum finally met a bottleneck in the eight months since its establishment.

The Great Ming Country’s court had already noticed the existence of the Wisdom Sect.

Actually, from the perspective of the Wisdom Sect, the Great Ming Country’s reaction was somewhat slow. Despite the fact that the Wisdom Sect had always refrained from challenging the authority of the government during these eight months, or causing mass incidents—in fact, because of the existence of the Wisdom Sect, the overall public security across the Great Ming Country had been greatly improved.

However, no matter what, when a sect has been able to influence the lives of tens of millions of people in the country, the court would eventually be aware of its existence.

And since the other side had noticed them, they couldn’t be without a representative. Thus, Wang Lu soon dispatched a diplomatic envoy to the capital of the Great Ming Country, to make contact with the ruler of the country.

“Then, we will put the heavy responsibility of being the diplomatic representative of the Intelligence Revenue Service in the Great Ming Country to you.”

“Wang… oh, wrong, Director, this task is a bit difficult for me,” the interim envoy desperately protested.

“Well, appointing you as a diplomatic envoy from your previous post of the head of the infrastructure department is indeed somewhat difficult, but I am sure you will be able to overcome it. Okay, that’s enough, no more chit chat. Brave youth, go and create miracles.”

Then Mr. Director kicked the new diplomatic envoy out and set him on a long journey.

Wen Bao, who embarked on this long journey, only felt that he was cheated.