As the Zong Consortium’s battle continued in the north, an off-road vehicle was speeding towards the Central Plains. The sky was vast and blue while the ground stretched endlessly into the horizon. As the vehicle drove on, it resembled a comet shooting across the sky with an exhaust trail.
It was as though getting here made it feel like the troubles of the war were cast far away.
But instead of taking the main road, this vehicle suddenly made a detour at some point and drove into the extensive mountain range.
The young man deliberately parked the off-road vehicle in an extremely remote place and got out. He took out all of his belongings before pushing them over into a ravine.
He probably did this so no one would discover his whereabouts. This young man was extremely careful and took so many precautions to hide his tracks. In fact, to avoid whatever he was trying to avoid, he even planned to trek across the treacherous mountain range.
The young man wore a backpack. The water and food he had inside were enough for him to trek all the way to the Central Plains on foot.
Suddenly, this young man turned his head and looked at his homeland with a hint of nostalgia and hatred on his face. He promised himself that he would return someday.
But when he turned back around, someone on a small hill in the mountain range ahead smiled at him and said, “What are you looking at?”
The young man was shocked. He turned around and drew a pistol from his waist, ready to shoot. He reacted like a bird startled by the twang of a bow.
But as he turned around, the man sitting on the hill chuckled and snapped his fingers. Then the young man’s face turned blank.
“Let’s play a game.” Li Shentan said with a smile, “The game is called ‘Twenty Questions.’ So, what’s your name?”
“Zong Cheng, Zong Xiang,” the young man answered.
Li Shentan was stunned. “Why do you have two names? Besides, Zong Cheng doesn’t look like you.”
“I used to be called Zong Xiang, but now I’m known as Zong Cheng,” the young man answered. “I planted a seed within Zong Xiang with my superpower and turned him into a puppet.”
Li Shentan was a little surprised. Even he did not expect that Zong Cheng would possess such a power. Thinking about it, wouldn’t this mean that Zong Cheng would be as good as immortal as long as he planted a part of his consciousness in others?
Furthermore, the Zong Consortium’s members had probably not realized this was something that could be done.
Within the Zong Consortium, both Zong Cheng and Zong Xiang could be considered competitors. Since there could only be one patriarch of the organization, there would have to be clearly defined winners and losers.
Both Zong Cheng and Zong Xiang were from the main branch of the family. Previously, some people from the third and fourth ancillary branches tried to sow discord between them, but little did they know that Zong Cheng had put Zong Xiang under his control a long time ago.
Moreover, Zong Xiang continued living in the Zong Consortium like a normal person, so no one discovered that something like that could have happened.
This power was way too strange. If the other organizations’ leaders were to also fall under Zong Cheng’s control, wouldn’t it be extremely easy for him to bring them down?
Although Zong Cheng could only control a small number of people, Li Shentan had not expected this power could actually get branched into a different power.
Li Shentan asked, “Do you have any other ‘seeds’ out there? Is it the same for everyone you gain control over?”
“No.” Zong Xiang said, “The seeds are extremely rare. Only by controlling a fixed group of people for an extended time can I draw on their mental strength to create the seeds. There was supposed to be another seed out there, but I didn’t have the chance to use it.”
“That’s good.” Li Shentan said with a smile, “It’s such a disgrace that I have a similar power as someone like you.”
At this point, a flash of anger and struggle appeared on Zong Xiang’s face. It was as though he was trying to break free from Li Shentan’s control. But before he could really react, his consciousness was once again suppressed by Li Shentan.
Li Shentan’s superpower seemed to be a natural “nemesis” against other mind controlling supernatural beings such as Zong Cheng.
Li Shentan posed a few more questions to him regarding the Zong Consortium’s war efforts and found out that the Zong Consortium was plagued by multiple crises and could no longer resist Fortress 178.
He also found out about how the 131st Brigade had gone back to Stronghold 146 and caused a huge ruckus there.
Li Shentan said with a helpless smile, “To think that rather than helping, I nearly got in his way instead? But what happened sounds quite interesting.”
To someone like Li Shentan, interesting things had become something he looked forward to in life.
“Alright!” Li Shentan thought for a moment and said, “That’s it for my questioning. You can end your life now.”
When he said that, Zong Xiang’s expression suddenly distorted. It seemed like there was a constant struggle between unacceptance and anger within him. Li Shentan sighed and said, “It seems that I’m still not strong enough to make a supernatural being choose between life and death.”
Then Li Shentan picked up a stone and flicked it between Zong Xiang’s eyes. Only at this time could Zong Cheng be considered truly dead.
Off to the side, Si Liren looked at Zong Xiang’s corpse, used to seeing things like this. “Big Brother Shentan, where do we go now? To Fortress 178?”
“No.” Li Shentan shook his head and said, “I think Ren Xiaosu will probably leave the Fortress 178 troops very soon. That’s not where he wants to be, at least not for now.”
“Then where are we going?”
“We should go and do something more interesting,” Li Shentan said with a smile. He looked at the case on Si Liren’s back and teased, “When they said you were a carrying pole back then, I didn’t believe it at first.”
Si Liren wrinkled her nose. “I’m not a carrying pole. Stop calling me that.”
“Sure, little carrying pole.”
Li Shentan turned around and headed off in the direction of the Central Plains. Hu Shuo was nowhere to be seen, and no one knew where he had gone.
…
The war in the north continued. Zong Ying, the commander at the front lines, immediately summoned all of the Zong Consortium’s generals at the battlefront to a meeting after receiving news that Stronghold 146 was in trouble.
But the moment the generals stepped in to the headquarters, they were immediately arrested. Then Zong Ying arranged for his trusted aide to carry out the consolidation process.
Of the generals here, Zong Ying had the most troops under him. The other generals had not expected Zong Ying to be so ruthless and decisive to arrest them immediately after trouble broke out back at Stronghold 146.
Zong Ying said to them, “The Zong Consortium is currently facing a crisis, so we need to be united.”
What he meant by “united” was that they should submit to Zong Ying and let him lead them. And since everyone was arrested, they could not refuse his proposal to unite together.
The Zong Consortium’s generals looked at one another. They were not expecting Zong Ying to immediately bare his fangs now that the majority of the Zong Consortium’s higher-ups had been taken out or injured.
But one of the generals could not understand. “We’ve already been defeated in the war. Even if you control all of the frontline troops now, you still can’t win against Fortress 178, isn’t that so?”
“We’ll head north.” Zong Ying said, “We have to continue marching north of Stronghold 146. This place isn’t safe anymore. We can rebuild when we get farther north and wait for our chance to make a comeback.”
The generals were taken aback. Was Zong Ying planning on bringing everyone to the Northern Steppe? Were they supposed to completely abandon everything they currently had?
Not only that, Zong Ying was even planning to take these frontline troops on a pillaging expedition as they made their way north. They would take whatever valuable items from the Zong Consortium’s strongholds and turn them into ruins.
As for what would happen to the stronghold residents after that, it was something for Fortress 178 to consider.
Someone asked, “How should we shake off the pursuit from the Fortress 178 troops?”
“I’ll have Zong Xing to help me deal with them, of course. If we head another 170 kilometers north, we’ll arrive at Fuzhi Bridge. After we cross it, we can blow up the bridge. Since it will take several days for Fortress 178 to build a pontoon bridge, there’ll be enough time for us to make our retreat,” Zong Ying explained.
Zong Xing was one of the few veteran generals left in the Zong Consortium. When everyone started to withdraw from the front lines, Zong Xing still held his ground and fought for every inch of territory.
Normally, neither the younger generals nor the veteran generals were too fond of each other. The veterans always felt that the young ones did not feel a sense of belonging to the clan.
But what Zong Ying uttered here decided the fate of Zong Xing.
Zong Ying looked at the Zong Consortium’s generals and said with a smile, “There’ll always be a need for sacrifices in war. Of course, what I mean is the sacrifice of others.”
