Blue Phoenix

by Tinalynge

  Accepting the stones, Hui Yue thought they were done, but Gao Yan quickly placed all the books back where he had taken them before he repeated the action with another twelve books. Once more he copied them and handed the twelve new stones to Hui Yue. This repeated a few times before Gao Yan finally picked up a massive book. Within this book were multiple memory stones and Gao Yan copied thirty-five stones after which he gave them to Hui Yue.

  “The first twelve stones contain information about the twelve experts who are always there at the dinner party. The next twelve stones are guests who have been invited more than once. Then the next thirty-six are members who have been there once before. The final thirty-five stones are about the City Lord himself. That is everything we have about him. You should be able to learn quite a bit about him from all this information.” Gao Yan said to Hui Yue. The white-haired young man nodded his head to show he understood, and he could not help but feel very relieved with obtaining all the information he had from Gao Yan. About payment, Hui Yue did not mention anything and neither did Gao Yan. Both knew it was something which needed no mention. Hui Yue knew that Gao Yan felt like he owed Hui Yue for years already. Once upon a time, Gao Yan had been a cripple, someone who had lost all his internal energy which he had worked hard for, but thanks to Hui Yue and Lan Feng Gao Yan managed to increase his cultivation base rapidly. He managed to become far stronger than he had ever expected and all of this was due to Hui Yue. Back then Hui Yue had never asked for anything, and now that Hui Yue needed help he would obviously do his best; to ask for payment would mean that they were not considering each other friends.

  Hui Yue and Cai Jie gained what they had come for and after giving their thanks to Gao Yan, the two young men left behind the dodgy looking inn and headed back to the mansion belonging to the Rong twins. Moving together, they found a small room with a library at the mansion. Everything was filled with dust, and they assumed that the room hadn’t been used in quite a while. Using a bit of their power, they managed to get rid of the dust, and then they slowly sat down in a chair each.

  “Do you want to learn about the City Lord, or do you want to read about the many men who the City Lord invites to his mansion?” Hui Yue asked as he placed two storage stones in front of them. One was about the City Lord, the other for his guests. Sighing Cai Jie reached out and took the one for the City Lord. “Might as well take this one,” He said and withdrew the first memory stone which he placed to his forehead.

  Chapter 302 - Searching

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  Chapter 302: Searching

  Cai Jie and Hui Yue, who were sitting in the small library they came across, put one memory stone after another to their foreheads. Silvery blue light constantly shined within the room while the two men would regularly write down anything important they came across.

  Cai Jie found out quite a few interesting facts about the City Lord, and Hui Yue learned a great deal about all the many guests who took part in the City Lord’s dinner parties. He started with the guests who appeared at every dinner. The information they obtained from Gao Yan was quite detailed. It stated which faction the person was a member of, everything about their families, about their ranks, about their most used attacks, their highest ranked attacks, and also things about which elemental affinities they had or were known to have. But what Hui Yue could use the most was that Gao Yan included information about whether or not these families were loyal to the factions they were part of. After sorting through four of the twelve memory stones, Hui Yue had already found one person who was not faithful to his faction.

  All of them were official members of the City Lord’s faction, yet the person whom Hui Yue found was a nobleman called Dong Liang; the Patriarch of the Dong family. On the surface, he was a part of the City Lord’s faction, but truthfully he was a part of the first prince’s faction. Whether or not the City Lord was aware that this was a big question which Hui Yue was incapable of answering. The information was for sale by Gao Yan so accessing it was not hard.

  Within the capital, there were six different factions. One of these was the City Lord’s faction. The second belonged to the first prince, and the third was the second prince. The fourth was the third prince. Apart from these four factions, there were two others. One was led by Zhan Weisheng, a merchant, and the final was the royal faction led by the king and his supporters.

  Within the capital, the majority of the merchants followed Zhan Weisheng, which made his faction one of the largest. The merchants and high ranked mercenaries supported this man who was allied with the City Lord.

  The current king was old and his faction was quite small. The majority of the nobles were supporting one prince or another while a few of them chose to support the City Lord instead.

  Looking through the many memory stones, Hui Yue found that of the twelve steady members of the dinner party, three were loyal to someone other than the City Lord. Of the experts who were invited more than once, half of them were faithful to other lords. Of the ones who had been invited once, the majority were loyal to others.

  The three who were unfaithful to the City Lord’s faction were Dong Liang, a nobleman called Huang Zhen, and a merchant named Han Shi. Huang Zhen was the patriarch of the Huang family, and his true allegiance was towards the second prince. The merchant Han Shi was faithful towards Zhan Weisheng. Whether or not these three experts and their true allegiance were known to the City Lord, Hui Yue did not know, but he made a mental note to watch out for them.

  Making a list he wrote down the attacks these men were skill at, and he made a mental note to revisit the Black Lion to get some information about the royal family. He needed more than just what he had about the third prince right now.

  Looking through the memory stones, Hui Yue found nothing else of interest. While Hui Yue was busy looking into the City Lord’s guests, Cai Jie had searched through all information about the City Lord himself. What he had written down was information about the City Lord’s rank, attacks, and skills. He was an Emperor, and he had been the City Lord for eleven years already. He had taken over the job from his father when he died, and he had been on the seat ever since. He managed to make the merchants support him because he was always fighting for their rights when he met with royals and nobles, while at the same time he did not support anyone specific within the royal family. All the factions from the royal family were trying to gain his support. If they could then they would be capable of claiming the throne after the king died, but so far as they could tell the City Lord had not made a decision concerning the three princes.

  After going through the information about the City Lord and his dinner meetings, Hui Yue looked over all the information on the third prince. The third prince was thirty-six years old. He was the youngest of all the princes, but he had the best talent when it came to cultivation. The prince was already a King ranked expert. To Hui Yue, this was not an astonishing speed, but to anyone with no assistance of things like the blue cloud energy, the red mist energy, and all the other phenomena he had knowledge about from his past lives, the third prince’s speed was quite astonishing; he worthy of being called a genius.

  This prince was treated with great respect by all, even the City Lord and his two brothers. His faction was the largest of the royal factions, and he was constantly winning more and more noble supporters because of the way he dealt with various problems in the kingdom.

  The second prince had the second largest group of followers within the royal family, and followed by him was the king. The first prince had the least amount of followers. His latent talent was lacking, and he focused more on drinking and young women than on leading the country. The memory stones also told him that the reason for this first prince’s dislike of royal matters was because his fiance was assassinated by the third prince. This information was placed in the information about the third prince, but the source was written as dubious. It was not something that could be confirmed, but it was suspected to be the truth. Most of the information about the third princ
e was open to the public, but the most critical information about his most used attacks, his highest ranking attack, and his preferred Wu Wei creations was nonexistent as no one had seen him use his skills in a real battle so far.

  The third prince and the second prince were currently fighting to be the ruler of the kingdom, and to do so they were both doing their best to gain the favor of both the City Lord, Zhan Weisheng, and their father’s faction. These three factions were what would determine who would be the king. Wondering for a moment, Hui Yue and Cai Jie looked at each other, “I guess we should try and make the City Lord favor the second prince. It is bad enough that we are going for the third prince, but taking down the future heir of a kingdom is not a very good idea.” Hui Yue said as a shiver passed down his spine as he imagined how terrible the repercussions would be if they were to kill the third prince now, versus if they were to kill him if he were the king in the future.

  “Being part of the City Lord’s faction will be beneficial for us, and the City Lord himself will gain quite a bit of face, alongside quite a few nobles. Knowing that the Grand Marshall of the beast army has joined his faction, I am quite certain that he will have nobles flooding to his side.” Being able to attract so many different nobles, Hui Yue was aware that his opinion would matter greatly. Behind him was the strength of the entire army of Shenyuan. An army which laid the Siban Empire to waste. Even if Hui Yue was not willing to fight over the Taiyang kingdom, he should still be able to call on more than a few Saints and have them commit random assassinations to get rid of those who were against him.

  Hui Yue understood the train of thoughts quite well, and although he would never consider actually calling in any of the beasts, he would never tell anyone this; instead he would use their strength to tip the City Lord towards his own opinions.

  Having gone through all the information, Hui Yue and Cai Jie ended up spending the majority of the day in the library. Now the sun was setting, and dusk was arriving. Sighing deeply, Hui Yue knew that his friends should be returning soon, and he could not wait to spend time with them. He ate a meal and drank some wine before it was once more time to focus on cultivating. Hui Yue had been so busy that he had not seen Wang Ju Long since the previous day. Xu Piao had done nothing but cultivate, so he had not seen him since morning. Ma Kong came to visit last night, but Hui Yue was unaware of how much work the older man had at his family’s auction house. Therefore he was unable to say whether or not he would appear during the night to celebrate their reunion.

  The two twins were both busy at the academy. What exactly they were doing, Hui Yue didn’t know. They were both too old to be students, but as they had already graduated, they must be doing something different. Hui Yue could not wait to hear more about what they were doing. In general, he looked forward to hearing about all his friends. How their lives had been going, and what they were now doing with their time. The previous night had been a great reunion, but none of them had any time to speak with each other. Cai Jie had not had the time to be introduced, and there were so many things they needed to talk about; things that would be perfect to discuss over their evening meal.

  “Let’s go,” Hui Yue said as he stood up, and with Cai Jie in tow, he looked through the house until he found the dining room. Within the room was a large table with enough seats for one hundred people. Currently, no one was seated there, but many servants were scurrying back and forth, preparing the room and placing plates and cutlery on the part of the table which was furthest away from them.

  Looking around, Cai Jie and Hui Yue were both quite uncertain about what they should do. They were in the way of the servants, but they didn’t know where to go. After looking at the servants for a few moments the two quickly retreated, walking through the house in the hope of running into someone who was living there. Someone whom they could spend some time chatting with.

  “We still have almost a full week before the next meet up at the City Lord’s mansion,” Cai Jie suddenly said as he looked around, “Perhaps we could see if we could get invited to some other nobleman’s house to get more interesting information.”

  “There is another option,” Hui Yue said slowly while pondering. “At first, I was planning on supporting the City Lord since he has a faction already, but what if we do not support anyone. What if we create our own faction. I am quite certain that the City Lord will support us, much like Zhan Weisheng is currently supporting the City Lord. Making our own faction, we will have far more power than what we currently have.” He continued, and with each word, Cai Jie nodded his head slowly. What Hui Yue said made sense.

  “Let’s bring it up at dinner,” Cai Jie said. “If we make our own faction we will need the help of all the friends you have within the capital. If we are backed by a massive auction house and such an information network, not to mention the threat of your beast army, then we should be able to make quite an influential faction.” He continued, and his words caused Hui Yue to grin. He had to admit that he preferred to be in control of how things were done.

  “Well, we don’t know if we can do this,” Cai Jie warned as he saw the excitement on Hui Yue’s face. “I don’t know if we can do this, but we should try our best and talk about it with your friends this evening.”

  Chapter 303 - Starting a Faction

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  Chapter 303: Starting a Faction

  Hui Yue and Cai Jie were both excited as they spoke with one another about starting a faction. Neither of them could contain the large grins that were evident on their faces. Just as they were about to start talking about the details of their faction a large bell could be heard ringing throughout the premises. It was a dinner bell, calling the lords and ladies to the dinner hall where the food would be served shortly. Looking at one another with beating hearts, the two smiled as they rushed towards the very same dinner hall that they had fled earlier that evening.

  This time things were different. All his friends were already seated, and the seat at the end, meant for the host, was empty waiting for Hui Yue to sit down. While Deng Wu was seated at his right side, the left was empty clearly intended for Cai Jie. Hui Yue seeing that his friends took this much consideration towards a man they still had not been introduced to made his heart shake with gratitude. Nodding politely to all of them, Hui Yue was grateful to see that Ma Kong made it to their house once more again, something that would make everything much simpler.

  “Thank you for letting us stay here,” Hui Yue started as he smiled to his friends. All of them waited patiently to hear what he had to say. They wanted to see how much he had changed. They wanted to know if they could help in any way. The fact that Hui Yue started speaking proved that he was now ready to introduce his friend alongside telling them what he had planned. “This young man is Cai Jie,” He started the introduction, and then he came to a standstill. He wished to describe the young man but truthfully Hui Yue knew nothing about him. He felt like he could trust him, that he was a brother in arms, but he truly knew nothing about him. Frowning for a moment before he continued, Hui Yue decided just to make a brief introduction, “I met him while I was fighting in the Siban capital. He did me a great favor by taking care of a group of Crusaders. We found that we have the same goals and decided to work together to achieve them.”

  “Returning to everyone, I had no actual goal apart from gaining strength so that we can deal with the guy who banished Lan Feng from his body, but when I returned I heard about the problems we have with the third prince. What he did is inexcusable. To kill not only the able-bodied men but also both the elderly and children, to slaughter people who had already been given their freedom, that I will not accept. I will deal with him while I am here, and because of that I will needing everyone’s strength.” He paused for a moment as he looked at Deng Wu and Wang Ju Long. Both of them had determined expressions on their faces, but gratitude could be seen in their eyes, gratitude and hope.

  “At first, I wanted to join the City Lord’s faction and make the City Lord support whom I
wished to support, but after thinking it over for some time, I came upon a much better idea. I think it is time for this capital to gain one more faction. I will be the leader of this faction, and I will see if it is possible for us to work with the City Lord. It would be preferable to have him back our faction.” His words caused everyone to be short of breath. No one expected that Hui Yue was willing to put himself forward in such an obvious way.

  “To become a faction of strength we will use various means. First of all, I need everyone to know that I am the Grand Marshall of the beast army. For reasons I am now a half beast, and I was finally able to return after finishing some things with the beasts. Now I wish to be close to my dear friends while I spend my time cultivating and increasing in strength. My strength alone is not enough to start a faction so I will need everyone’s help.” He continued and looked at those around him, “Gao Yan, I need you and your information network to officially take part in our faction. Ma Kong, I need your auction house to support us. Do you think it’s possible to make your family’s Black Market Auction House part of my faction, or will they continue to side with Zhan Weishen?”