This wasn’t as silly as Matt thought it was. The cultivators here had limited knowledge about experts at the Nascent soul level. Even though Zhang Zhi was back there in the secret ground, the whole fight was quite hectic. They didn’t have time to measure the power levels of those two masters that were fighting, so when Matt flexed his cultivation it could seem to be at the nascent soul level.
The other thing was the blind trust in the Patriarch that Zhang Zhi had. He would never think that Zhang Dong would take the form of an old man and just wander around the streets of this city. He thought that his Patriarch was busy cultivating or thinking about ten moves into the future of the clan.
This old man looked to have the same type of cultivation method as their Patriarch, but due to Zhang Dong increasing his expertise in all of his cultivation arts, he was stronger than he was back then in the secret ground. So this mistake wasn’t as far fetched if you considered how these people operated.
“Grandmaster…”
‘I guess I’ll roll with it… better than explaining to them why I’m pretending to be some old fart…’
He quickly thought back to the way a lofty master should act. Should he go with a more stoic approach, or act angry as the juniors didn’t give him any face. For now he just stuck his chest out proudly and played around with his long white beard, his eyes locked on the trembling core formation cultivator.
“Oh, I see that you have figured it out, little friend, took you long enough.”
Zhang Zhi just trembled and started sweating, his theory came true and he was speaking to someone that was even above the Patriarch. What if this show of disrespect from him would cause trouble to Zhang Dong, what if this old man punishes his disciple for having incompetent subordinates as him? There was only one thing he could do!
Matt in the form of Wei Hung hovered up in the air, not quite sure what he should talk about but he wanted to talk about this cultivator didn’t care for collateral damage at all. But before he could speak out again the man below him acted out, he drew his sword and stretched out his hand. His face was resolute and his will was unshaken as he looked at that hand of his.
“This junior has made a grave error, please let this junior offer up a hand to appease the senior’s anger!”
Matt’s eyes bulged out and went bloodshot as he saw the man going for a slice. He was going to sever off his entire hand a bit above the wrist, this was some devotion to the clan right there. Matt quickly activated all of his skills to get as much of a speed boost as he could, the other Zhang Clan members that were standing around the area only saw the elderly man vanish.
Zhang Zhi was aiming for his sword hand, he was quite devoted and wanted to let the old man know, that he was really apologetic. His swordsmanship was fast and decisive, but as he was feeling the cold dark blade against his forearm, it suddenly got stopped by something. This something was the elder man’s hand, he grabbed the entire blade it not even being able to nick his skin.
“You damn fool!”
SMACK!
Zhang Zhi got slapped by the old man, the man quickly tasting blood as he staggered to the side. The smack wasn’t serious, if Matt was serious he could probably smack the head off his neck with one hit.
“What do you think you are doing? Did you even ask if I wanted you to do this? Don’t you have a small child? What would your wife and child do if their father became a cripple?”
The old man started shouting at the samurai looking cultivator, who was back down on his knees and rubbing his cheek. The other Zhang clan members just looked one from the side, not being able to add anything to the conversation and being too afraid to even try.
They just looked as the old man started lecturing their Captain. Zhang Zhi perplexed and just nodding, not being sure why the old master was mad at him for trying to show him face by cutting off his hand. But after he heard him mention his child and wife, he shrunk back. He forgot that he had his own family besides the clan to think about, maybe he was too hasty in his actions.
“J-junior was wrong, please forgive me…”
“Enough, I’m not mad at you… but you must start thinking before you act… think about other people that will suffer from your actions…”
Matt wasn’t sure what he should do now, the dismemberment of limbs kind of made him forget what he was going for in this conversation.
“Listen up… those people back in the alley attacked me, they were probably related to the boy that you apprehended, think it was the Xing clan. If you are going to run this ‘Police force’ that your Patriarch created you need to do it right, you can’t just attack people randomly… also look at that…”
The old man pointed at a spot in the distance, there stood a destroyed building that Zhang Zhi sliced apart while he was chasing the old man. Some people were standing outside of it, tears in their eyes as their home was now destroyed.
“Go pay those people for that house, or repair it! Don’t forget to do the same with anything else that you destroyed!”
“Also!”
He turned to the sides, every Zhang Clan family member was trembling in their boots as the elder master swept his gaze through the area.
“Harming yourself just to give me face is forbidden! If Someone from you tries to do something like this idiot here, I’ll have my disciple banish you and your closes family members from your clan, is that understood?”
Everyone just twitched and dropped to their knees, they quickly shouted ‘Yes Grandmaster’ as a show of respect not wanting to get kicked out from this Clan of theirs that was on a fast rise. They were gaining momentum, their Patriarch was young and strong and he could only get stronger.
“Now, no word can reach that I’m in this city, so you must all swear under an oath that you will not tell this to anyone… but don’t die… dying is forbidden as well… old don’t kill anyone for trying to pry into my affair… still keep it a secret…”
Matt twitched, he was glad that he changed his statement at the end. He already imagined these cultivator nuts trying to silence anyone that was asking about this so-called ‘Master of the Patriarch.’ They might even try to kill themselves over it if they misunderstand a situation and try to keep his secret by taking it to the grave.
All the cultivators nodded in unison and swore that they wouldn’t bring this up anymore. They wanted to say that they would take this info to their death bed, but that was apparently forbidden by the elder master.
“Now… I bid you farewell…”
The man suddenly vanished, some static electricity left in the place he was standing just a moment before. The Zhang Clan members gave out sighs of relief, the old monster was finally gone and they could relax. They weren’t quite sure what the Senior wanted them to do, they shouldn’t talk about him which was fine, but they shouldn’t protect the secret with their lives. So it was fine to talk if someone smacked them around enough that it would threaten their lives? This was quite the lax secrecy oath.
The night came to an end and the sun was rising again, the Xing Clan patriarch was looking out through a window already realizing that his men had failed in their task.
“Damn useless bunch of fools…report!”
Some other clan member that had similar looking ninja clothes as the assassins from yesterday stepped out, made a small bow with his hands clasped and started talking.
“Reporting to Patriarch, all of the men have been captured by the so-called ‘Police Force’ of the Zhang Clan. The scouts report that they are held in a tightly guarded facility that is protected by a defensive formation. You would need a cultivator above the core formation early stage to hope of destroying this formation as it is very advanced.”
“The elder that is referred as ‘The witness’ is still alive, we assume that he was stronger than anticipated, probably in the core formation level. If not, then the Zhang Clan helped him and lured out men into the trap. I assure you, Patriarch, that those warriors would die sooner than speak any of this!”
Xing Deng waved the man away who in response dissolved into the shadows.
‘Guess I’ll have to offer them up my son…’
The man rubbed his chin, he still had his oldest son, he also had more of them so he didn’t worry that much. His fatherly love only went this far, if he had to choose between one of his sons and the family business he would choose the latter any day of the week.
“Time to wait it out, but damn Zhang Clan, you’ll regret this in the end…”
He was an old schemer and time was one thing that these cultivators had in spades, if he managed to reach the core formation level he would have even more. He could just wait for an opportunity to stab this clan in the back, or just hug some strong uncle’s leg if he needed to. He couldn’t really do much about it though unless he got the backing of the other two big families, even then the possibility, of winning was slim.
“With that Patriarch of theirs still out there, there is no hope of retaliation and they still have that Zhang Zhi, he took out that Cheng idiot.”
From what they knew the Zhang Clan only had three core formation experts at the moment, Zhang Zhi, Zhang Jin and Zhang Dong. If they were hiding more somewhere was unknown but it wouldn’t be odd if they had one or two more in reserve. None of these big families in Moonlight city even had one of those experts to spare.
“It’s just a small matter, as long as we have the pleasure district, our wealth is secured.”
The Xing Clan made their money mostly with slaves and prostitutes, they might have taken a blow with the slaves but they still had the women of the night. Those women didn’t fit the slave criteria even though they were being worked in a similar way. The Xing clan had another large venture, which was being loansharks.
How it worked was like this, the women would take out a loan due to various reasons, mostly lack of food or place to stay. Then the Xing clan would hike up the percentages of the interests that came with those loans. The longer the women weren’t able to pay up the interest, the longer they worked for this clan. So, it was kind of a legal way that you could keep the ladies slaving away.
They also made it sure that the women didn’t earn too much. If they received a lot of monetary compensation for their work they would be able to pay back the debt too fast, but every month the interest ticked down, the longer they took to pay the Xing Clan back the longer the family could suck them dry.
The prostitutes weren’t the only people that they pulled in with their loans, there were various other ‘loan slaves’ that they had, like ones that were used for arena fighting that was quite the popular betting addicts. He decided to at least wait till the so-called trial, wanting to see what it was all about, but just after a couple of days had passed some bad news arrived again.
“Bad news Patriarch! The Zhang Clan is buying out our loan slaves!”