These past two years had been more or less peaceful, but Matt knew that it wouldn’t take much to break this illusion of peace. He didn’t know what happened to the Dark Palm sect members back in the secret ground, they had some spies in the nearby cities to scout things out. But they weren’t giving them any good reports, the area was still on lockdown. No way to know if those guys found that immortal technique back there that they were hoping for or not.
He had to stay vigilant, there was a small run-in with their force not long after they escaped that secret ground. But they were mostly just interested in the things that happened transpired at the secret ground. He wasn’t sure what the other clan’s said to them, but Matt thought that the Zhang Clan wasn’t strong enough to go against that sect just yet. But that could change soon after he obtained those ten million points.
There was contradicting intel about how many nascent soul cultivators that sect had, but it shouldn’t be that many. It wasn’t one of the giant sects that had their headquarters in the most spiritual energy-rich locations on the continent but it wasn’t the weakest either. One thing was clear, the only way he could hope to resist them was to reach the next level of power.
He was somewhat confident in fighting a nascent soul expert at the early stage. If he compared that monster to the elder that greeted him before they went into the secret ground, then the monster was stronger. The Sin of Pride was also a dual cultivator, those regenerative and defensive capabilities were only beaten thanks to his new holy attribute being the bane of demons and devils.
He had gotten a lot stronger since then, the condensation skills and his avatar form were all trained up to the expert levels which let him last in that empowered state for a lot longer now. But that wasn’t the answer, at most he could hope to take out one nascent soul expert in a fair bout. But if there were two, or if they knew his weak point and stalled for time he would probably lose.
‘Ah, if I didn’t train my Tranquil Mind up to the Master level I’d probably be a shaking mess by now.’
The life of the glorious Patriarch wasn’t that easy, he was constantly reminded that thousands, no millions of people’s lives depended on him. Sure he could be like the other rich and powerful cultivators and not care about the general populace. But that just wasn’t him, he couldn’t just abandon everyone and flee when things got tough.
‘Well, I guess I should check up on the others and see how they are doing with the next stage of the plan.’
He strode to one of the larger rooms of the old Cheng Clan compound, they had started setting up their base of operations here. His retainers were already waiting for him, ready to give their report.
“So, how are things proceeding Kuo?”
The man was holding a communication jade in his hand and then looked to the Patriarch, he was already reporting while preforming his perfect graded bow.
“Reporting to the Patriarch! Captain Zhi has apprehended the Cheng Clan Patriarch and is heading back here, we also managed to capture the rest of their clan members but a couple of them fled into the surrounding forest and are hiding.”
Matt rubbed his chin while listening to the report.
“Oh? Weren’t they fleeing in a flying ship, shouldn’t it be easy to just capture them all on it?”
Zhang Kuo fixed his glasses slightly while a tiny bit of sweat formed on his forehead.
“Captain Zhi destroyed the ship and sliced it two halves before the rest of the pursuing team could give him support…”
Matt blinked and scratched his cheek slightly, thinking back to what he said to the man before he charged off to battle.
‘Hm… guess I shouldn’t have told him to bring them back at any cost… or the part with whacking them good if they resisted…’
Zhang Zhi was a powerful cultivator, already in the core formation stage and at a fairly young age. His only bad trait was, that he would take everything literally. He would follow up on any order with the utmost care, from Matt’s point of view the man had kind of a Patriarch complex. The way he bowed and how his eyes shined whenever he ordered him to do something, was slowly giving him the creeps.
‘I bet if I ordered him to wear a pink tutu, he would think its some powerful spiritual treasure that I’m gifting him to further his cultivation. Though it was surprising to hear that he was getting married that time, he even has a kid already.’
Matt wasn’t in the tower defense section for too long, but a certain power couple was born from it. It was Zhang Zhi and Feng Daiyu, the woman was truly massive the word Amazon perfectly describing her, those chiseled abs were quite astonishing. Supposedly the two hit it off back in the training ground, he didn’t know anything specific but whenever he asked about how Zhang Zhi met his wife he looked depressed.
Later on, it would be revealed that the woman sneaked into his bed chambers after one of the more hard-fought battles. She didn’t take no for an answer and devoured the poor Zhang Zhi’s chastity the man was still pure and innocent even at forty, his only purpose in life being cultivation. The child was born out of wedlock and they only found out after the woman’s belly was already large. Zhi was quite an honorable man, so he decided to get engaged to the amazonian woman that became Zhang Daiyu and was back with their daughter in Spirit Spring City.
“That’s troublesome, but he made this mess so he should clean it up. Tell him to form a search party and bring the other Cheng Clan members back, we need to show the people how we treat criminals like them.”
Normally what happened in this kind of world would be a clan cleansing, every member of this clan would be captured and killed. Matt wanted to change that, he wanted to gather evidence and then put people up on a trial. The death sentence wouldn’t be the only thing they could do, sentencing to hard labor was also an option. Making someone a criminal slave wasn’t out of the question either, they would work with a slave collar slowly paying back their debt to society.
‘Luckily we have spiritual treasures that can tell if you are telling the truth, this makes the whole thing a lot easier.’
Thanks to treasures like these he didn’t really need to create occupations like lawyers. The process would be nice and smooth, but others could still temper with those treasures so they still had to watch out for swindlers. Thanks to his new gained crafting potential he could come up with various new treasures that could emulate things that he knew back from Earth.
One such item was making its way into the City Square, the common people were looking at the Zhang Clan that used to be the rulers here, quite interested in what they were doing. There was a chubby statue being removed that was a spitting image of the man Zhang Zhi whacked today. It was being torn down to make way for a large fountain, or at least that was what it looked like.
Thanks to spatial technology that was also improved by Matt’s crafting knowledge, they could set up the new magical fountain.
The fountain was circular shape at the base, inside of it were four pillars with dragon heads coming out of them. On those pillars was a smaller cauldron, the water inside of this fountain was radiating blue light and even the regular people felt that this thing wasn’t simple.
“What is that, a fountain?”
“Are they from the fabled Zhang Clan? Think their Patriarch is here, maybe he’ll sign my manuscript?”
“Why would he do that?”
The area was abuzz while the Zhang Clan cultivators finished up, they inserted something shiny into a slot in one of the pillars which made the whole thing glow for a moment. The spectacle subsided soon after, the dragon heads spitting out water after the magical item got activated.
Suddenly something happened, the cauldron that was smaller in size than the whole fountain but still quite large began to light up. The water inside it gave off a deep blue coloring which soon lit up the whole place. The people gasped as a pillar of light shot up into the sky, everyone within the square could see the bright beam of light.
This wasn’t over though, inside the beam of light they saw a person. It was a rather handsome man, due to the coloring of the water he was in a shade of blue. He was standing up straight, his hands behind his back making him look like a seasoned veteran cultivator. The commoners gulped as the man looked quite lifelike as if he was going to jump out and give them a throughout thrashing.
“Greetings people of Moonlight City, my name is Zhang Dong and I am the Patriarch of the Zhang Clan that you see before you.”
To the people’s surprise, the man in the fountain started to speak, it was even the widely talked about Zhang Clan Patriarch! Everyone moved closer, their ears perking up as they gathered, they felt truly blessed for having such an expert talk to them.
“Fear not, My Zhang Clan isn’t like the previous Cheng Clan, we will treat you right.”
He reached out with his hand, gesturing to the Zhang Clan members that were dressed in the new police uniforms.
“These members from my clan will keep order in the streets, they will be stationed in a separate building soon.”
“Even while I’m speaking to you, they have rescued countless good people from slavers and hooligan’s alike.”
The man moved his hands behind his back and struck a valiant pose, the people not really knowing how to react to the whole spectacle as they didn’t expect anything like this.
“I’ll leave you with my Junior Sister, she will be the one delivering the news in the future. May you live long and prosper.”
The so-called Zhang Clan Patriarch then moved to the side and bade his farewells to the masses, in his place appeared quite the lovely lady. She had quite the nice curvature, was wearing glasses and had a strange form-fitting robe. It was just an ordinary female business suit, with a miniskirt that Matt fashioned after the image of newscasters from his old world.
The woman bowed to the people, looking quite professional while doing it.
“Greetings this sister’s name is Zhang Meifen, I’ll be reporting the news in this city from now on.”
The people of this world had no idea what was going on, the motion of daily or weekly news was something that they didn’t know about. Most information was distributed by word of mouth and there were some information agencies doing it for a steep price.
“Following the capture of the Cheng Clan members, we will be conducting a trial…”
The woman started talking about the new trail system, about how slavery would be forbidden and anyone that took part in it would be sentenced to hard labor, you could even have your cultivation crippled. While the lady was doing her thing, Matt moved back to the side he knew that he needed to throw in some words there as the leading figure, he even thought he did a good job all things considered.
‘Hm, think I’m getting less stressed from these public appearances, when I did this back at home it was scarier.’
This was something he came up in his free time, what was better than a television to bring your message across. He fumbled around in his crafting fort, trying to make something that would produce an image with sound and finally was able to produce this fountain-like hologram. This would be a great propaganda tool as well, he could slowly bring his clan’s image up while diminishing the image of other powers if there was a need for it.
This was just a prototype that burned way too much spirit energy, but he was planning to set up more portable TV like items into the people’s homes. Maybe he could make something like the internet in the future. They just needed to expand their infrastructure, he had two options. Either to supply the spiritual power with something like cables, or fashion them in such a way that the treasures would absorb the residual Qi in the surroundings.
He wanted to go with option two, but he would need to lower the energy requirement first and make the items more compact. For now, this would do. The Moonlight city restoration project had just taken off and it was going well for the Zhang Clan, but they still had some pesky mice to take care of.