Chapter 295: Lifeline Of Southern Frost City
The southern territory of the Crimson Lotus Empire consisted of exactly five major hub cities.
Thousand Waves City and Crimson Iron City were two of the primary pillars.
For Shen Yu to confidently state that they would secure half of the south meant his ambitions had already spanned across three entire metropolises.
As Shen Yu leaned back against the edge of her desk, his gaze grew distant, tracing the map of the empire pinned to the wall.
The path to this absolute regional hegemony was already forming with terrifying clarity in his mind.
The first two pieces on the board were practically guaranteed.
The third city was Southern Frost City, the last metropolis in the empire’s southern expanse.
It was there that the Tang Clan had quietly but aggressively expanded its roots over the past few weeks.
When the exact same type of volatile pills made by the Peng Clan but from a different source began leaking into the markets of Southern Frost City, a wave of absolute horror swept through the population.
The flawed pills caused cultivators’ dantians to violently fracture and degrade upon consumption, instantly rendering decades of hard-earned cultivation entirely useless.
As the realization of the damage set in, the local populace panicked.
In a fit of desperate rage, a mob of furious cultivators violently hunted down and thoroughly destroyed the merchant group responsible for introducing the poison into their city.
Left with ruined foundations and clinging to any shred of hope for recovery, the desperate locals eventually caught word of the events in Thousand Waves City.
They discovered that the Tang Clan had successfully created a pill to counter the effects, completely restoring the damaged dantians of those who took it.
Desperate to save themselves, representatives from Southern Frost City practically begged the Tang Clan for aid.
Knowing about this from the letter of Yilan, Shen Yu had already directed the Tang Clan to swoop in with full force.
They flooded the market with their high-grade, purifying pills, offering them at a massive, heavily subsidized discount right when the dying populace needed them most.
The strategy had worked flawlessly.
The desperate cultivators of Southern Frost City had practically worshiped the Tang Clan for throwing them a lifeline in their darkest hour.
Over a single night, their newly established storefronts had become the absolute center of local commerce, solidifying the public’s absolute trust in the Tang brand into an unshakeable foundation.
With that masterstroke, two of the three required regional hubs, the powerhouse of Thousand Waves City and the frozen borderlands of Southern Frost City, were already securely nestled within the palm of the Tang Clan’s expanding network.
Securing the imperial tournament’s qualifications in those regions would be a straightforward, easily executed sweep.
Yilan was more than capable of handling the competition in Thousand Waves City single-handedly, while Southern Frost City could be locked down either by sending one of his core head alchemists or by having Shen Yu step onto the stage himself under an alias.
"The foundation is already laid," Shen Yu murmured smoothly, breaking the heavy silence of the chamber as his sharp gaze snapped directly onto Crimson Iron City on the map.
"Thousand Waves and Southern Frost will fall into our hands without any friction. But here... Crimson Iron City remains our true variable."
Unlike the other two hubs where the Tang Clan held undisputed merchant supremacy, Crimson Iron City was a jagged, multi-factioned warzone.
The political chessboard there was incredibly tangled. Though Shen Yu technically held two massive chess pieces, Bai Ruolan, who headed the alchemist faction of the Golden Cauldron Merchant Union, and the entire Cao Clan, neither was positioned to secure an easy victory.
Bai Ruolan did not possess absolute, centralized control over the Union yet, so even if she won, the Union wouldn’t be under her control, and that meant not under his control.
Meanwhile, the Cao Clan simply lacked a younger-generation prodigy capable of standing on the tournament stage and winning against the city’s apex genius, Bai Ruolan.
Furthermore, Shen Yu couldn’t just throw on his disguise as ’Mo Liu’ to fight for the Cao Clan.
From what he could guess, the one who could participate in the Imperial Competition would most likely be capped at the Golden Core Realm.
’Mo Liu’ was known to the world as a Nascent Soul Realm powerhouse.
Stepping onto the stage with that level of cultivation would not only violate the tournament rules but instantly blow his cover, inviting unwanted imperial scrutiny.
There was only one logical path left forward.
He couldn’t rely on a proxy, and he couldn’t use his current aliases to bypass the restrictions.
To seize Crimson Iron City, he needed to accelerate execute his plans.
"We have seven days before the official rules are laid bare. Send a encrypted transmission to Madam Tang. Tell her to mobilize her a top alchemist in Southern Frost and prepare herself for the competition. They must be primed to dominate ."
"And for Crimson Iron City, Young Master?" Li Na asked, her voice steadying as she adjusted to the staggering scale of his ambitions.
Shen Yu looked down at her, his lips curling into a cold, reassuring smile. "I will handle the pieces here. Keep the network tight."
Without waiting for her reply, his body blurred. Activating his Phantom Steps, he dissolved into a weightless shadow and vanished from the office, leaving the tea house entirely undetected.
His next destination was the Cao Clan pavilion. While his primary spearhead rested on Bai Ruolan at the Alchemist Union, a master strategist never relied on a single thread.
It was time to put Plan B into motion.
Shen Yu had decided to personally elevate the alchemy standards of the Cao Clan, but his choice of student was highly calculated.
Patriarch Cao was a powerful Golden Core cultivator and a capable alchemist, but his loyalty was forged entirely out of terror.
If the Patriarch managed to win the competition and secure the backing of the Empire, that fear might evaporate, tempting him to turn his blade against his mysterious benefactor.
His wife, Cao Shuying, was a entirely different story.