Chapter 1038 - Reclusive Families

After the auction came the banquet, and the Wealth Faction went all out to celebrate their success. Ingredients from every civilization were laid across the tables. Han Wu even found Great Dragon meat on his plate.

Han Wu had reached Demon King Transformation Stage Four, the True Holy Dragon Transformation. This meant he could call himself a Holy Dragon King, which technically made him one of the Great Dragons. Finding Great Dragon meat on the menu thus invoked a flash of anger in his heart, but he suppressed it with reason.

Great Dragons ate others, and others ate Great Dragons. This was just the natural order of the strong preying on the weak. He could not resent the Wealth Faction for it. The best he could do was not partake in the meat.

Ye Xiao approached him with a raised glass and thanked him for the loan. “If you hadn’t lent us the money, the Forest Clan wouldn’t have been able to afford the Undying Tree. We could’ve even been thrown out as frauds.”

With that, the old man produced two items. The first was 100,000 of Han Wu’s Microcosms, leftover from the Undying Tree’s final price after the re-auction. The second was a compass needle that pointed toward the Forest Clan’s hidden realm. Pouring a hundred Divine Essence into it would teleport the user to their secret territory.

“We look forward to your visit. The entire Forest Clan will receive you warmly,” Ye Xiao said.

Han Wu turned the compass needle over in his hand. During the auction, he’d looked up the Forest Clan through the Wisdom Faction’s archives. The records mentioned that the clan had withdrawn from public life after the Forest God King’s fall. The three Divine Trees the Forest God King had cultivated at the peak of his power had vanished along with them.

If his guess was correct, those three Divine Trees were still alive and thriving within the Forest Clan’s hidden realm. Several centuries in the Divine Civilization translated to tens of thousands of years in a divine realm.

He could only imagine how powerful those trees had become under the Forest Clan’s care. Ye Xiao’s strength alone told Han Wu plenty. He was looking forward to the visit.

As Han Wu was about to ask Ye Xiao about tree-cultivation techniques, a commotion drew his attention. He looked over and saw a young man grabbing Qin Shuang’s wrist. She was being harassed.

Jing Jing tried to intervene, but an old man cloaked in lightning blocked her. The Commerce God King attempted to reason with them and got backhanded to the floor. Sun Qingnian was nowhere in sight, probably off meeting one of his informants.

Han Wu abandoned his conversation with Ye Xiao, rushed to Qin Shuang’s side, and slapped the young man’s hand away.

“Oho, someone’s got guts. A strong hand too.” The young man sneered.

The lightning-cloaked elder forced Jing Jing back and stepped forward. “Insolent brat! You dare raise a hand against Lord Di Hong? Cut off both your hands, kneel before him, and kowtow a hundred times. If Lord Di Hong is in a forgiving mood, he may spare your bloodline. Otherwise, it’s death to your entire clan!”[1]

Han Wu almost laughed. That was quite the threat.

“Who do you think you are? What makes him so special?” Han Wu asked bluntly, seeing no reason to be polite.

“How dare you speak that way?! You have no manners at all! Bring your elders out here. I want to see which family raised such a lawless wretch!” the elder roared. He was nothing more than a loyal guard dog.

Jing Jing had swallowed the humiliation of being blocked, but she couldn’t accept them insulting Han Wu. Han Wu was her God. No one got to disrespect him in front of her.

“Insult my God and die!” Jing Jing snarled. The Soul God King’s aura erupted from her body.

The elder sensed a fellow God King’s pressure and matched it with his own. The power of a Lightning God King poured off him.

Soul and lightning clashed. The elemental matchup was brutally unfavorable for Jing Jing. Lightning pierced straight through her Soul Energy, causing her to stumble back several steps. Her rage only grew. As she was preparing to unleash more power, Han Wu grabbed her arm.

“Easy,” he said.

Jing Jing forced herself to stand down.

Han Wu stepped forward and faced the elder. “You’re the Lightning God King?”

“Indeed, I am.” The elder puffed up his chest, assuming Han Wu had recognized him and was about to back down.

A bright smile stretched across Han Wu’s face. “Then you can die.”

Even without the Demon King Transformation, he had peak Subcosm strength. He closed the gap in a single step and drove his fingers in a tiger-claw strike toward the Lightning God King’s chest. This was a martial technique called Heart Gouging Black Tiger Claw. The True Martial Jurisdiction amplified the blow.

Space cracked in layers ahead of his hand, locking the Lightning God King in place. The old man couldn’t dodge or even move. All he could do was watch as Han Wu’s claw inched closer to his sternum.

Despite being pinned, the Lightning God King could still channel every scrap of lightning in his body into a ferocious current aimed at stopping Han Wu’s advance.

Han Wu didn’t dodge. Instead, he took the Jurisdiction-empowered lightning head-on and kept pushing forward. Flesh and bone in the Lightning God King’s chest caved under his strike. He only needed one more second to rip the old man’s heart clean out.

Then a thunderous shout rang across the hall, and an invisible force wrenched the two of them apart.

The Lightning God King staggered back, gasping heavily. Five bloody puncture wounds gaped in his chest. The pain twisted his face into something inhuman.

“You little bastard, you’re dead!” He tried to charge forward, but the invisible force held him fast.

The person who’d intervened stepped out of the crowd. It was the Information God King, the Wealth Faction’s second-in-command. Beside him stood the Wealth God King Zhao Zihong, and behind them was the Gift God King Shaura. The three made up the Wealth Faction’s leadership.

Even the Lightning God King dared not act up in front of all three.

The young man, Di Hong, also dropped his arrogance long enough to bow. “Di Hong of the Chaos Clan pays his respects to the Wealth God King.”

That introduction told Han Wu everything he needed to know.

This was yet another reclusive family from the Divine Civilization, and based on the Lightning God King’s guard-dog behavior, the Chaos Clan was extremely powerful.

1. Ah, I was wondering when the arrogant young master cliché was going to happen ☜