Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
This collaboration request from someone they suspected was a descendant of the Long clan actually didn’t carry any risk. They just needed to prepare and bring in the transmission crystals beforehand and set them up, which would be a piece of cake for these heads of Sky-level sects. Most importantly, they didn’t have to get their hands dirty in this operation, so they could avoid direct conflict with the Office of Strategic Deception.
Lu Youming had always been conservative, which was one of the reasons why he had advocated for the establishment of Sky Light Alliance in the beginning.
It was true that forming a faction would certainly attract criticism, but at the very least it ensured that Lu Youming’s sect stood on the same side with the other sects who were willing to join the Sky Light Alliance and unanimously agree to work together. They might face many obstacles to their advancement in the future, but as long as the Alliance existed, the sects’ rankings wouldn’t drop.
The Alliance was a line of defense which these seventeen Sky-level sects had joined hands to create, and could be described as an iron wall. Most of the sects in the Alliance were at fifth class, and a handful were at fourth class, but they were able to preserve a happy balance of overall strength.
As long as they were part of the Alliance, no sect would easily drop out of fifth class.
If a sect wanted to advance to fifth class, it had to go through the Alliance.
Lu Youming thought he had planned it all out properly, but he never expected this Office of Strategic Deception to suddenly show up now…
After Sect Leader Sun put forward his opinion, Lu Youming pondered for a long while.
Moments later, Lu Youming nodded. “Sect Leader Sun, please convey the message that our Alliance can only guarantee that we will put some pressure on the high school, but we won’t do anything to harm it. After all, we don’t have any grudge against that high school. If we go too far, we might draw fire instead. If that senior is fine with this, then I will agree.”
Sun Hanzhe nodded. “Alright!”
Lu Youming’s decision came as no surprise to anyone. Their president was conservative, and would never let things go too far.
Another main reason why Lu Youming was being so prudent was that he didn’t know where things stood for real with this senior, a suspected descendant of the Long clan.
The other side had actually been able to find Sun Hanzhe to convey his message for him, which meant that he must have done his research on the Alliance. However, there were a total of seventeen Sky-level sects in the Alliance. To figure out the current difficulties the Alliance was facing, and to grasp the heart of the conflict so easily… The other side clearly wasn’t a simple person.
Intuition told Lu Youming that…
This senior, a descendant of the Long clan, perhaps wasn’t the key figure – it was likely that there was someone more powerful working behind the scenes.
…
It was August 8th on Tuesday in the sixteenth week of the semester.
The Heavenly Dao horoscope read:
Do: Start a business, set up a sect, marry, travel, breathe in the smell of cats, look for a job, confess your love, delay chapter updates, cast monthly votes, cast recommendation votes…
Don’t: Nil
Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal had thus planned for this day early on. This was a rare auspicious day for this year; if they missed it, they would have to wait for another six years.
As for conceptualizing the Office of Strategic Deception, he had been constantly making all sorts of plans since the day he launched the cultivation forum. Now that the day it was going to become a reality had finally arrived, he was very excited.
On this day, eighty li away from the Wang family’s small villa on East Huang Road, the Office of Strategic Deception would finally be set up. This was a sect set against the mountains – surrounded by them on all sides, the Office of Strategic Deception was like a glittering gem set into the mountain range.
To ensure that the founding ceremony proceeded smoothly, Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal had specially hired a number of sect guides. These sect guides completed all their training in just one day; all of them were college graduates from famous universities, and each of them was the best of the best.
Many of the sect bigwigs who arrived at the designated venue with their invitations were dumbstruck, because the person who greeted them was a very young, bright and handsome cultivator… This was Yang Bingchuan, the youngest professor at Beiyang First Cultivation University in Beiyan city!
Professor Yang even won the National Cultivation Gardener Award last year… Many people remembered him well!
But this person who was renowned outside, and a Void Refinement hotshot professor to boot, had actually come here to work as a tour guide???
You had to know, Professor Yang was one step away from becoming an Itinerant Immortal!
“Welcome, sect representatives, to the founding ceremony of the General Office of Strategic Deception, known in short as the Office of Strategic Deception.” Professor Yang smiled slightly. “I am Yang Bingchuan, leader of the patrol and guide team for the Office of Strategic Deception. Perhaps many of you recognize me?”
“Why is Professor Yang here…” Yang Bingchuan’s appearance made Lu Youming shiver.
“Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal is a good friend of mine. His new sect fervently invited me to be a visiting official, and also offered me a large salary which I could not refuse. Naturally, I wasn’t in a position to reject it. Besides, as group leader, I can leave a lot of things to my subordinates to handle. Although Beiyan city is indeed a little far from Songhai, it actually won’t interfere with my teaching in Beiyan.”
“I see…”
Lu Youming and all the other sect heads nodded.
But even then, this was pretty excessive!
Given the list of names which they had received before, they had no idea that Professor Yang would be taking part… Did that mean that they might see other big shots at the sect’s founding ceremony today?
Professor Yang was all smiles as he said, “As all of you are leaders of large sects, the sect head specifically asked that I greet you in particular. Please follow me, and we will now take the Office of Strategic Deception’s exclusive sightseeing bus.”
“Sightseeing bus… haven’t we already arrived at the sect entrance?”
“This is just a sect relay station. The Office of Strategic Deception covers a very large area, and you’ve only arrived at the relay station stated in the invitation. There are a total of 1600 relay stations for receiving visitors within range of the entrance to the Office of Strategic Deception,” said Professor Yang, the leader of the patrol and guide team.
“With all due respect… how large is the Office of Strategic Deception?” Lu Youming swallowed.
“Five thousand square kilometers.”
While they were already prepared mentally, the jaws of these sect leaders still dropped open in alarm when they heard Professor Yang’s words with their own ears.
Five thousand square kilometers – that was comparable to the size of a second-tier city district in Huaxiu… the area which the Office of Strategic Deception occupied was practically unprecedented!
Actually, the sect was only going to cover an area of a hundred square kilometers according to the initial plan, but after Huaxiu Alliance’s intervention, the sect approval division directly increased the size of the territory to this extent… Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal only found out after the fact.
Maybe he could open several broccoli farms?
That was what Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal thought when he saw the sect approval document.
But since the Office of Strategic Deception had only just been established, they couldn’t use so much land. Currently, the Office of Strategic Deception only occupied a core area around the mountains of about twenty square kilometers.
Even so, this initial momentum of the Office of Strategic Deception frightened a lot of the Sky-level sect big shots.
Lu Youming was already wondering whether to proceed with the matter which that descendent of the Long clan senior had entrusted to him. He somehow felt that even if their seventeen sects exhausted all their foundations… they couldn’t provoke the person standing behind the Office of Strategic Deception!
