Chapter 147: Counterattack (6)

“Even Lian Yanyi and Luo Yu were arrested?”

Wang Peiyuan stared at the report in his hands, his expression stern.

The report was short but concise, giving off a ton of pressure.

The consequences of not killing Su Chen were now rearing their ugly heads. Su Chen had started his retaliation as soon as he had returned.

Actually, he wasn’t all that surprised that Su Chen would try and get revenge. But to do so in such a decisive and unstoppable manner had totally caught him off guard.

And even more importantly, Shen Yuanhong had been killed and Wei Pei was seriously injured.

The loss of these two peak existences had erased Su Chen’s fear and gave him room to start moving in a much bolder way.

Even though the Wang Clan still had Wang Zhanyu, An Siyuan’s existence nullified Wang Zhanyu’s usefulness, making it so that the success of this battle depended on those with lower cultivation bases, which was exactly what Su Chen was going for.

Wang Peiyuan felt his heart tighten whenever he thought of this. “We cannot allow Su Chen to continue tormenting us like this. Do you have any ideas on how to resolve this matter?”

An official to the side said, “You can either do things openly or shadily. At this point, Su Chen and we are like fire and water. Bribing him won’t be effective at all. Additionally, all his actions are done in the name of the Origin Bureau, and the people he is catching do indeed have crimes. Without proper justification, An Siyuan’s support effectively makes reporting him to the higher-ups useless. As such, any way we resolve this issue will probably need to be done secretly.”

Another person said, “Whenever Su Chen goes out, he always takes his guards with him so that he never has less than a hundred of them around him at all times. In addition, he won’t leave Clear River City for no reason, so killing him probably won’t be easy. Unless......”

He did not continue to speak, but everyone knew that he was about to say “unless Wang Zhanyu personally makes a move.”

Wang Peiyuan shook his head. They could come up with all kinds of ideas, but it always came back to his father. “With An Siyuan present, that won’t be possible.”

An official said, “We obviously can’t do anything publicly, but what if we try to catch him off-guard......”

Wang Peiyuan was stunned. “You want Father to do such a lowly thing and act like an assassin? How can that be?”

He stood up as he slammed the table.

Even though An Siyuan could protect Su Chen, he wouldn’t be able to stay at Su Chen’s side all the time. If Wang Zhanyu was willing to put down his pride and assassinate Su Chen secretly, Su Chen might not be able to escape.

But wasn’t that too embarrassing?

A Light Shaking Realm cultivator needed to secretly assassinate a Yang Opening Realm cultivator?

Wang Peiyuan could already imagine the beating he would receive if he were to suggest this to Wang Zhanyu,

“No way! Absolutely not!” Wang Peiyuan shook his head repeatedly.

The official sighed. Actually, when he had made this suggestion, he already knew that Wang Peiyuan most likely wasn’t going to agree. The nobility clans valued their faces, but oftentimes their face was their downfall. If Wang Zhanyu hadn’t cared so much for his face the first time he attacked and had continued to chase after Su Chen when he ran into the mountains, Su Chen might not have been able to escape, and no counterattack would be occurring now.

It was entirely because of face that Wang Zhanyu wasn’t willing to take the route of a secret assassination, giving Su Chen yet another opportunity.

If this continued, it wouldn’t be long before they wouldn’t be able to assassinate him even if they wanted to.

Truly, as soon as they suffered one setback, they immediately suffered several in a row.

This was how the real world worked. People would always hesitate to pay a price in order to resolve an issue. By the time the situation had degraded to the point that they were willing to pay that price, the price would already have grown quite a bit, causing them to hesitate again. This would repeat itself until there was no place for them to retreat......

This was what was happening to the Wang Clan.

When Su Chen’s main target of attack wasn’t the Wang Clan, Wang Peiyuan didn’t know any pain, so he continued to wait carelessly. But by the times the Shen and Wei Clans collapsed...... that official shuddered and didn’t dare think any further.

——————————————————

The situation degraded much faster than expected.

On the seventh day that Su Chen had officially returned, another matter occurred in Clear River City.

The Evil Tiger Gang had slaughtered their way through Plain Street.

Yes, the same Evil Tiger Gang that should have been ruined after Su Chen had killed off their leader.

The only reason the gang still existed was because Su Chen felt that controlling an Evil Tiger Gang in addition to the Long Clear Gang was a good idea.

Because of Su Chen’s support, the Evil Tiger Gang didn’t disappear. Rather, they had begun to develop at breakneck speeds.

The Long Clear Gang had wiped out the Red Eagle Gang and incited conflict amongst the Bloodline Nobility Clans over the Shen Clan’s businesses, but they had sustained some injuries. Su Chen didn’t want to expose the Long Clear Gang too soon and couldn’t have them take over Plain Street, so the Evil Tiger Gang had come into play.

The Evil Tiger Gang had never really crossed paths with any of the gangs on Plain Street, but they didn’t need to cross paths to get the job done. The Long Clear Gang had a valid justification, but the Evil Tiger Gang could do things purely out of greed. After all, criminal gangs were still criminal gangs; could you really consider yourself a criminal if you didn’t have any greed at all?

As such, the Evil Tiger Gang openly and brazenly slaughtered their way through Plain Street, massacring the gangs there and claiming the territory for their own. Plain Street had originally belonged to the Wei Clan. After the Evil Tiger Gang had taken over that territory, the Wei Clan’s helpless retreat exposed another vulnerable chunk of fat meat.

If the Long Clear Gang’s attack had aroused the greed within the hearts of the Bloodline Nobility Clans, turning them against their fellow allies, then the Evil Tiger Gang’s acts only whetted the appetite of these Bloodline Nobility Clans, causing them to tear off the masks of cordiality and revealing their true ferocious nature underneath.

From this day onwards, the Wei Clan’s influence came under attack, and they lost territory after territory. The shops they owned were bullied into capitulating, causing their prices to be so high that people could only shake their heads and cluck their tongues.

Wei Songlin originally planned on sacrificing some shops to regain the peace, but he quickly discovered that he needed to sacrifice much more than he had expected.

The Wei and Shen Clans were the first two clans amongst the ten Bloodline Nobility Clans to suffer a calamity and were being attacked from all sides. Even though Wei Songlin tried to convince the people again and again not to fight amongst themselves just for a bit of benefit, claiming that Su Chen was like a wolf waiting to devour them, what really happened demonstrated that any kind of alliance knelt in the face of profit.

Even though some Bloodline Nobility Clans stopped because of this, as long as a single clan continued, the strife amongst the Bloodline Nobility Clans could only continue.

As for An Siyuan and Su Chen...... Their enemies were there the whole time, but nothing was ever done to them. Throwing immediate profits away because of an enemy? What a joke! What person with any kind of influence would do this?

People often became greedy when the outward situation became chaotic. After all, the messier the external situation was, the more opportunities there were internally.

An Siyuan and Su Chen didn’t give most of the clans too much pressure. After all, they had been fighting for so many years, and neither side had been able to do anything to the other. None of them believed that Su Chen would be much of a threat to them even if he had killed Shen Yuanhong.

The Long Clear Gang and Evil Tiger Gang continued to attack, wantonly consuming the Wei and Shen Clan’s streets and businesses and stoking the fiery greed within the Bloodline Nobility Clans’ hearts. They officially kicked off the divvying up of these rich and powerful clans’ territories.

Even though the big Bloodline Nobility Clans called each other brothers outwardly, often saying that they weren’t the ones giving the order, they were all secretly eyeing the large amounts of profit, commanding the gangs under their control to attack and seize more and more territory.

This wasn’t very surprising either. History proved time and time again that as a kingdom fragmenting, countless noble clans would stall at sacrificing anything for fear of losing their own profits simply because “other people weren’t sacrificing much either.”

This kind of frightening standoff was more than enough to wipe away any sort of clear-minded judgement, resulting in a state that would only end in ruin.

The situation before their eyes was no exception. The Bloodline Nobility Clans had no awareness of the bigger picture. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the threat Su Chen posed; however, the attitude of “if I don’t grab what I can while others are also grabbing, I’ll lose out big” made everyone lose their calm and ignore the general situation.

In addition, their understanding of Su Chen was still lacking. Thoughts of getting lucky wreaked havoc in their hearts, making it so that everyone eventually put everything else aside to fight one another.

Like this, the Long Clear Gang and Evil Tiger Gang were like two sticks stirring a pot of feces, easily destroying the alliance amongst the Bloodline Nobility Clans and causing it to collapse.

When an entity was no longer whole, it was time to destroy it all in one blow.