40: Two pieces of bad news

Long Aotian did not stay long in Feng Town. After inquiring about some major events concerning The Long family and even the Eternal Leaf Dynasty recently, he headed to Thunder Dragon Royal City.

The current situation in Thunder Dragon Royal City is very delicate. What was originally a three-way standoff between the three great Cultivation Families now lacks The Long family.

The portion of benefits belonging to The Long family should have been divided.

However, no one dared to touch it.

Clan Chief Wang Sisong of the Wang Family did not dare to touch it.

The Wang Family and The Long family had always coexisted peacefully. While dividing The Long family's benefits was good, the risk was too great.

The brutal Long Family dared to fight to the death with the Imperial City Shi Family. If they were truly provoked, the Wang Family's strength would likely be insufficient to repel the enemy, potentially leading to more loss than gain.

For the Wang Family to take such a risk and invest, they would need to see the possibility of The Long family's demise.

However, after nearly half a year of war between the Imperial City Shi Family and The Long family, it seemed they couldn't do anything to The Long family.

This matter clearly still required further observation!

Lei Zhen, the Clan Chief of the Lei Family's branch in Thunder Dragon Royal City, also did not dare to make a move.

Although the Lei Family branch in Thunder Dragon Royal City and the main Lei Family in the Imperial City belonged to the same Cultivation Family, there were still differences between them.

If Lei Zhen dared to kick The Long family while they were down, The Long family might not be able to defeat the main Lei Family in the Imperial City, but they could severely cripple his Lei Family branch in minutes.

He needed to be cautious, cautious, and even more cautious about an event that would gamble the entire Lei Family branch's future destiny.

It was better to sit back and watch the tigers fight, observing the development of the conflict between the main Lei Family and The Long family before deciding.

The City Lord's Mansion, representing the Imperial Family, also made no statement.

No other Cultivation forces in Thunder Dragon Royal City dared to try and replace The Long family at this time, especially not The Long family who dared to pull the tiger's whiskers of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty's Five Great Cultivation Families.

Especially since The Long family had given its Family industry and the portion of benefits belonging to The Long family to the not-weak Feng Family, and the Feng Family had recently suddenly produced a terrifyingly strong expert who killed an Ancestor of the Spirit Division Realm from the Shi Family with one palm, and injured a Mahayana Realm expert from the Imperial Family with another, not even putting the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty in their eyes.

Who would still dare to replace The Long family and divide the benefits that The Long family had given to the Feng Family?

No one dared!

Thunder Dragon Royal City, Long Aotian entered the city.

“Five Low-Grade Spirit Stones!”

The city guards collected five entrance Spirit Stones from him.

This was profit!

Profit jointly divided by the three great Cultivation Families of Thunder Dragon Royal City and the City Lord's Mansion representing the Imperial Family.

The three great Cultivation Families each took one-fifth, while the City Lord's Mansion representing the Imperial City took two-fifths, thereby obtaining a large amount of Cultivation resources by collecting Spirit Stones from entering Cultivators, in order to maintain their power and status.

It was a consensus that the City Lord's Mansion, representing the Imperial City, exclusively took two-fifths. The other three great Cultivation Families, whoever was stronger, would take turns to jointly divide the profits. This meant that even if the Imperial Family took the largest share, no one dared to say much.

They did not hog all the food!

They did not push things to the extreme!

Then they would not incite public outrage!

The three great Cultivation Families of the thirty-six Royal Cities often changed, but the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty would not!

Furthermore, Royal City Cultivation Families could only divide one-fifth of the benefits of one Royal City, while the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty extracted two-fifths of the benefits from all Royal Cities.

This was also the fundamental reason why the Imperial Family of the Eternal Leaf Dynasty could maintain itself as one of the top giant forces in the Eastern Wasteland forever.

They did not hog all the food and were willing to share benefits with various forces, but what the various forces shared was never more than what they obtained... As for the rules, Long Aotian still had to abide by them.

Previously, for every Cultivator who paid five Low-Grade Spirit Stones as an entrance fee, one Low-Grade Spirit Stone belonged to The Long family. Now, this benefit was given by The Long family to the Feng Family.

This was a considerable amount of Cultivation resources. Hopefully, the Feng Family, who received this Cultivation resource every month, would not blame The Long family too much for their lack of consideration in pushing them into a pit of fire!

After paying five Low-Grade Spirit Stones, he successfully entered the city.

He had excavated the small Top-Grade Spirit Vein underground in Immortal Severing Mountain. Besides possessing a large number of Top-Grade Spirit Stones, he also gained many Spirit Stones from the dozens of spoils of war storage rings. Among them, there were over two million Medium-Grade Spirit Stones and more than thirty million Low-Grade Spirit Stones.

Most of these Spirit Stones were from the storage rings of the Nascent Soul Realm and Out-of-Body Realm experts from the Imperial City Lei and Shi families who were killed by the five Void Annihilation Arrays.

A mere five Low-Grade Spirit Stones for an entrance fee was like a drizzle to Long Aotian, who was now rolling in wealth.

“...”

The city guards were also somewhat surprised to see Long Aotian, a child, casually pay the entrance fee.

This child should have some status!

As for harboring ill intentions towards Long Aotian?

Tens of thousands of people entered and exited the city every day. If they harbored ill intentions towards everyone who casually paid the entrance fee, then there would be no need to collect an entrance fee at all.

After successfully entering the city, Long Aotian silently released his Divine Sense to continue gathering information.

Even Tribulation Realm Experts could not use Divine Sense so recklessly.

Casually sweeping one's Divine Sense over others was extremely impolite and provocative. If one provoked a powerful expert with profound cultivation and a bad temper, that person might directly slap them to death.

Therefore, it was extremely rare for anyone in the city to use Divine Sense to scan around and pry into others.

Even when Divine Sense was needed, it was controlled within a certain range, doing its best not to offend others.

If one absolutely needed to search for something throughout the city, they would release their Divine Sense and quickly retract it, not leaving it out continuously.

These were the unwritten rules of the Cultivation world, the way of survival for Cultivators.

The Long family's Family Cultivation knowledge classes would also cover these minor details, lest Family Cultivation Disciples ignorantly invite fatal disaster and die unjustly.

And now, Long Aotian had clearly gone far down the path of courting death. With his Chaos Dao Body and cultivating the Chaos Dao Art, he was like the center of all the Great Daos of heaven and earth. His Divine Sense could infinitely integrate into any part of heaven and earth, making it impossible for people to detect the existence of his Divine Sense.

Using Divine Sense so recklessly also brought him immense convenience.

Under the prying of his Divine Sense, the every move of hundreds of millions of people was under his surveillance. A massive amount of various information converged towards him, and Long Aotian filtered it one by one.

Soon, he found two pieces of information about The Long family among these messages.

The first piece of news:

The Long family's three Great Ancestors were ambushed while ambushing two Nascent Soul Realm Family Elders of the Shi Family in Tiannan City. Dragon War God was injured and escaped, while Dragon War Emperor and Dragon War Sovereign were captured. The Shi Family announced that Dragon War Emperor and Dragon War Sovereign would be publicly executed in the central plaza of Great Stone Town in the Imperial City three months later!

This news was nothing short of a bolt from the blue for Long Aotian and the entire Long Family.

Two of The Long family's strongest fighters were about to perish, and the condition of Great Ancestor's injuries was still unknown... Long Aotian's heart was filled with worry.

Dragon War Emperor and Dragon War Sovereign were both at the Ninth Revolution Peak Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, and Dragon War God was at the Early Stage of the Out-of-Body Realm. For them to suffer such a fate—one injured and escaped, two captured—it was clear that the Shi Family had likely dispatched an Ancestor of the Spirit Division Realm, or multiple Soul Emergence Realm Family Protectors to gang up on them... The second piece of news:

Shi Jing, the eldest son of Shi Gandang, captured a Long Family girl named Long Aoxue in White Emperor Royal City. This girl was a peerless beauty, and Shi Jing declared that if The Long family did not surrender obediently in three months, he would make Long Aoxue perish in the Tianxiang Tower of Great Stone Town...