When Lin Fan came back from the night raid, it was quite late.
It hadn't been hard for him to clean up the Shark Den, but it had taken some time to get there and take care of everything.
There had been three Platinum Realm Experts there as the report had stated, but the leader was only in the mid Platinum Realm while the two vice leaders were only in the low Platinum Realm.
For Lin Fan who could already fight against those in the Legendary Realm, it was no problem for him to take care of these three Platinum Realm Experts. But he didn't even take care of them alone, he had sent out two of his pets who had also easily taken care of one low Platinum Realm Expert each.
Of course, Lin Fan didn't immediately kill them like he did the rest of the experts found in the Shark Den.
Rather he sealed up their cultivation just like Jiang Yu and had his men bring them to his intelligence network for information extraction.
These three were the leaders of one of the two main subsidiaries of the Jiang Family, so naturally they would have quite a bit of information. Even if they weren't as smart as Jiang Yu, they would still know quite a few things.
So why would Lin Fan give up something that was already in his hands?
After a long night, Lin Fan finally came home to find Angela was waiting for him.
Song Shu had tried to stay awake, but she had fallen asleep in Angela's lap while waiting.
When Lin Fan came in, Angela softly put Song Shu on the side before coming over to Lin Fan, looking him over. After a while, she pointed to a spot on his back and asked, "What is this?"
Lin Fan was confused by this since he didn't know what she was talking about, but when he used his spiritual sense to check his back, he found what she was referring to. There was a few drops of blood that stained the back of his shirt.
Lin Fan explained with a faint smile as a warm feeling filled his heart, "It's not mine, it's someone else's."
Then he didn't know why, but he suddenly teased, "Were you worried about me?"
Angela gave a soft snort and said, "I don't want anyone beating up my punching bag, that's all."
Lin Fan didn't know what to say in response to this since this was technically true.
If one had to describe Lin Fan in this relationship with one word, it would be 'whipped'.
Angela was the one person that Lin Fan couldn't go against. It wasn't just because she was much stronger than him, there were plenty of other reasons…
But Lin Fan still didn't know what came over him as he asked, "Then do you want to help me look over my wounds?"
There was a faint blush that appeared on Angela's face that made it even more beautiful. It was so beautiful that Lin Fan fell into a daze as he stared at her, almost missing her next words.
Angela just gave another soft snort and said, "You can go look over it yourself, I'm going to bed."
Angela softly picked up Song Shu and went into the bedroom they shared, firmly closing the door behind her.
Lin Fan looked at the door with a bitter smile on his face, but there was nothing he could do.
Even though Lin Fan and Angela were now in a relationship, they were taking things quite slowly. At most they only held hands and shared the occasional kiss, they hadn't gone further than that. While they did share a bedroom, mainly for Song Shu, they had separate beds.
Now that Angela had firmly closed the door to their bedroom, Lin Fan knew that he had been banished to the couch for the night.
Seeing this and knowing there was nothing else he could do, Lin Fan walked over to the couch with a smile on his face while shaking his head. Even though he had this expression on his face, there was actually a warm feeling in his heart.
After all, she had stayed up this late just to wait for him and she had been worried when she had seen the blood on his back.
It was a good feeling to have someone who cared.
…
The next few days quickly passed by in a flurry.
The Jiang Family had suddenly started sweeping across the city, looking for information. They didn't even hesitate to drag people out of their businesses and houses to take back for questioning.
After all, the Jiang Family had lost quite a few businesses under them, which was quite a heavy blow for them.
But the most important thing wasn't the financial loss since they were a Legendary Realm Family with quite a bit of history, which gave them more than enough stored funds to come back from this. The most important thing was the damage to their reputation.
Even if they wanted to suppress all news about this, there was nothing that was impenetrable in this world. The news about the businesses related to the Jiang Family being smashed quickly spread all over Rock Mountain City, causing people to think that the Jiang Family wasn't as powerful as before. Especially since they hadn't found who had smashed all their businesses.
For a large family like theirs, reputation was especially important since reputation made sure that no one challenged them excessively.
An expert couldn't fight an army alone and with how many enemies the Jiang Family had, if they were to all attack at once, they would be spreading their forces too thin and would inevitably suffer heavy losses. That was where the importance of reputation came in.
As long as they had their reputation shielding them, no one would recklessly attack them, allowing them to peacefully rule over their territory.
If they didn't wipe away this smear of their reputation and restore it, bad things might happen next if people thought they were becoming weaker.
So the Jiang Family swept over the entire city, but that didn't affect Lin Fan's shop at all.
Lin Fan had made sure that there would be nothing tying his store to these raids, so the Jiang Family never suspected them.
In the meantime, Lin Fan's store actually became much more popular after everyone saw the training abilities that it had.
On the second day, people had thought that the first pet training was a fluke, so they came back to see if the other pets would turn out the same and they were all shocked by the results.
That was because while the training results weren't as shocking since Lin Fan didn't personally train all the pets this time, they were still shocking enough since all the pets had learned new skills and were much stronger than before.
This firmly cemented the idea that Lin Fan's shop wasn't a fake and that just drew in more and more customers.
More and more people came to Lin Fan's store and that meant more and more popularity for his store.
There were even people who started paying others to line up for them because Lin Fan's store only had a limited number of training slots each day. Even before Lin Fan's store opened, there would be people already lining up outside the store waiting.
Lin Fan didn't stop this since he knew that this would draw in more attention to his store and that was what he needed the most right now. This was the city of an enemy, so sooner or later he would receive suppression from the Jiang Family.
He only needed one more store to finish his mission from the system…
Of course, it was also a good thing that his customers helped him advertise his store.
The first customer, Jiang You was the best example of this.
With the Rock Nibbler that Lin Fan had personally trained, he had easily claimed first in his year on the exam and had received quite the large reward from the Jiang Family for this accomplishment. He had immediately gone and spent that money at Lin Fan's store, training his pet again.
Naturally the people that he had beat to take first place would be doubtful about how his pet had suddenly become this strong, so they would investigate him.
With how much he was spending in Lin Fan's shop, it was clear where he had trained his pet.
Soon, more and more people from Jiang You's academy rushed to Lin Fan's store and every single one of them was rich since they were all juniors of nobles and royals.
As such, Lin Fan easily sold out the training spots each morning.
But it was too bad that no one bought any other things like pet food or elixirs from him just yet.
Still, that didn't discourage Lin Fan since he knew that even without it, his shop was gaining quite a bit of popularity.
But of course, popularity wasn't always a good thing.
There were some people that tried to sneak into the shop in the middle of the night to find Lin Fan's secrets, but none of them were able to get through the defenses of the system. They were even secretly infected with Brainy's parasite seeds.
None of them were even close to the Platinum Realm, so it was as easy as flipping a hand…flipping a vine for Brainy to infect them.
But nothing could stay the same forever and one morning, there was a sudden change that came to the store.