Chapter 537 - 324: The Beginning of Yulin, Ye Shuping’s Shock

Chapter 537: Chapter 324: The Beginning of Yulin, Ye Shuping’s Shock

Gao Yang scratched his head. "If I’d run into Yan Sea before meeting Honglian," he said uncertainly, "I probably would have killed him on a whim."

"Heh... That Yan Sea... he’s Yu Fei’s first martial arts teacher."

Gao Yang’s pupils contracted. A chill ran down his spine.

"I... uh..."

He couldn’t help but swallow. According to the files, the young man named Yu Fei was terrifyingly powerful and had already set a new martial arts record. ’If I’d really killed the man’s first teacher...’

Luo Guan’s questioning continued.

"If you had killed Yu Fei’s first teacher, what would you have done? Would you have gone after Yu Fei too?"

"Would you dare?"

Gao Yang’s mind was in turmoil. He was slowly realizing that every single thing he had done today had been a death wish.

Luo Guan took a sip of his tea. "Gao Yang, let me lay out the power structure of the Martial Saints in our Yu Kingdom for you. There are some people you can’t afford to provoke. Listen closely."

"Truth be told, at our level, fame and power are meaningless. It’s actually quite easy to live a comfortable life; there’s plenty of room to just enjoy things.

"We do what the boss says, whoever that may be. But we just do our jobs; we don’t pick sides. They won’t give us any trouble, and besides, it’s not like they think much of us anyway. Don’t be stupid and stick your neck out. Understand?"

...

Zhuo Feiming recalled her Divine Power and landed, walking straight toward Zhou Xing. The old man, however, looked a bit uncomfortable.

"Chief Zhuo."

Zhou Xing gave a slight, casual salute.

"Zhou, why was Yan Sea looking for you? Are you hiding something from me?"

"Chief, please, don’t ask. Just let it go."

A nostalgic look appeared in Zhuo Feiming’s eyes. She sighed softly. "Fine. You take care, then."

Zhou Xing saluted once more, then turned and vanished into the Cross-Border Black Fog.

"Miss Zhuo, you two know each other?"

Yu Fei asked, unable to contain his curiosity.

"We were classmates."

"Huh?"

"So, Senior Zhou Xing was one of the Celestial Pride too?"

"He was."

Zhuo Feiming suddenly added a warning, "Don’t think that just because you’re a Celestial Pride, you’re guaranteed to make it to the end and become a Martial Saint. The path to becoming a Martial Saint is far more difficult than you can imagine. For a Celestial Pride, becoming a Grandmaster is a near certainty. More than half become Great Grandmasters. Yet, less than five percent ultimately achieve the rank of Martial Saint."

Yu Fei watched Zhou Xing’s lonely retreating figure. ’To think that someone like him, a former Celestial Pride, is stuck as a dispatch vanguard in the Celestial Phenomenon Corps, never breaking past the Grandmaster Realm... There must be a story there.’

He and Miss Zhuo had been in the same graduating class. Zhuo Feiming was still in her prime, radiant as ever, while Zhou Xing was already a stooped old man.

Lost in thought, he too left the area.

Thus, the events in the Demon Mountain Realm came to a close. Yu Fei and Miss Zhuo agreed to meet in three days at the Profound Bright Palace. He would bring the Cyan Lotus Broken Sword with him; Ye Shuping had to be consulted on the matter.

Zhuo Feiming had explained that in the ten-thousand-year history of the martial path, there had never been a way to bring someone back from the dead. Even methods like the one Yu Fei described—using some kind of infestation to create puppets—were exceedingly rare. Sima Hong’s case was full of questions and demanded a thorough investigation.

Back in Shenhan, he reunited with Feng Hua and the others. Liu Ze’s group had fully recovered from their injuries. Having broken the shackles imposed on them by Yu Wen Baji, they were all in high spirits. Many had found their spiritual will greatly tempered by the experience, leading to significant progress. They were a completely new group.

Yu Fei officially registered their organization as a war band of the Yulin Army. For now, they didn’t have a Great Grandmaster among their ranks, which meant they didn’t qualify as a Class-B corps. They could only participate in the war as a war band.

As for the next level down, Class-C corps, it wasn’t a good fit for Yu Fei’s group. Class-C corps were also known as standing corps and belonged to a different system entirely.

The Yu Kingdom’s requirements for corps management were crystal clear: if you don’t have a Great Grandmaster, you stick to being a war band. Don’t even think about calling yourself a corps.

In war missions, the tasks that war bands and corps could undertake were worlds apart, as were the potential rewards.

On the day Yu Fei founded the war band, Feng Hua and Qingshan joined, bringing 72 members with them. It wasn’t a hundred percent of their people, but to each their own. After four years of training, many of the Martial Artists had built networks beyond the academy, with their own commitments to teachers and friends.

Still, this number already represented eighty percent of two entire classes. Gao Nianzhen also joined, bringing 12 people with her. Some members of Zhang Hu’s Puppy Patrol inquired about joining, but Yu Fei tactfully declined.

’If they couldn’t share in adversity, how could they share in prosperity?’

Jiang Nianwei and her classmates would have to wait for over six months. Until their fourth year, they had too many mandatory school missions. Ye Shuping could make an exception for Yu Fei, but not for an entire class—that would be a breakdown of discipline.

The founding of the Yulin Army war band was a major event to those in the know. It was, after all, a powerful alliance between two Celestial Pride Classes, with three more waiting in the wings. That was the seed of a potential super-corps.

But the world was vast and full of geniuses. In the grand scheme of the martial world, the formation of the Yulin Army war band was a trivial affair. Thousands of such groups were formed and disbanded daily, barely causing a ripple.

Since this group was willing to follow him, Yu Fei naturally couldn’t be stingy.

Yu Fei sold off the last of his personal jade reserves, netting just over thirty billion merit points. He immediately transferred twenty billion to the war band’s account as reserve funds. From now on, if they needed more merit points, he’d have to go mining for them himself.

Yu Fei wasn’t worried, though. He figured this would be the last subsidy he’d have to provide. With so many powerful and promising Celestial Prides working together, they were bound to earn battle merits at a rapid pace. He was confident they would soon become self-sustaining.

With the war band established, the organizational structure needed to be sorted out. Yu Fei sat in on a few of the planning sessions with Fenghua and Jiang Nianwei and the others, and immediately felt a massive headache coming on.