The Nine Cauldrons

Sects were aloof and remote in the land of the nine prefectures. Some families might be able to hold some high positions in a sect, but it was impossible for them to slaughter people outside the sect in the name of their family.

Teng Qingshan pulled up the sail and adjusted its direction.

“Which family are all of you from?” Teng Qingshan inquired as he sat with his bottom on the deck.

The little girl replied carefully while looking at Teng Qingshan and Li Jun, “The people inhabiting the island are the members of the Liu Clan of the Dark Steel River. After the Liu Clan lost the war, they fled to this island to recuperate. Unexpectedly, the Chunshen Clan actually went as far as chasing the family to this island and completely wiping out the Liu Clan of the Dark Steel River.”

“Oh, are you not from the Liu Clan?” Teng Qingshan determined from the little girl’s tone.

The little girl lowered her head and spoke softly, “I... I am a servant bought by the Liu Clan.”

“Servant?” Teng Qingshan was not surprised at all as he looked at the ragged clothing on the little girl, her malnourished appearance and the knife scar on her face. It was evident that she had not lived a good life.

However, a little girl who spoke in an orderly manner was hard to come by.

Li Jun held the little girl’s hand and looked at her. “From now on, you are no longer a servant.”

“Oh, by the way, what is your name? How old are you?” Li Jun asked.

“I am called Little Ping, and I am nine years old,” The little girl replied.

“Nine years old?”

Li Jun was somewhat shocked. With the little girl’s malnourished appearance and her petite body, she appeared to be six or seven years old and did not resemble a nine-year-old child at all. The little girl bit her lip. “I was sold three times and often did not have enough to eat, so......”

“Sold three times?” Li Jun was shocked once again and felt more sorry for her.

However, Teng Qingshan narrowed his eyes and cast a glance at the little girl. When Li Jun blurted out the words ‘Nine years old’ in shock, the little girl understood what he had been thinking. So, she had replied immediately that she was skinny and small because she had been sold thrice and had never eaten enough. For the nine year old to have such wisdom—it caused Teng Qingshan to be amazed.

Night time...

As the sea breeze blew, the tungsten wood vessel headed north. The little girl called, ‘Little Ping’, lay asleep on Li Jun’s leg. Teng Qingshan stood motionlessly like a statue on the bow of the ship, looking ahead into the distance.

The sea breeze billowed against Teng Qingshan’s clothing, while his gaze fell onto a small dot in the distance.

Even though it was very far away, Teng Qingshan could see clearly with his night vision as he said to himself, “That is......” Far away up ahead, there was a large ship. Teng Qingshan then continued to say, “Looks like it is the warship that left the island earlier.”

As the tungsten wood vessel’s size was small, it was quicker than the large warship.

The distance between the tungsten wood vessel and the warship decreased continuously.

“Eh?” When the distance between the two boats was several Li, Teng Qingshan could see the elevated war flag clearly. There were two large characters written boldly on the war flag.

“The two characters must be Chunshen.” Although Teng Qingshan could not recognise the characters, he still made a guess.

“Little Jun,” Teng Qingshan opened his mouth.

“Yes?” Li Jun raised her head and looked at Teng Qingshan.

“I’m going to go out on a trip, and I will get back on the ship later,” Teng Qingshan said with a smile. Li Jun listened with surprise. “Big Brother Teng, it’s the middle of the night and you want to practice your fist art at bottom of the sea?”

“No, you will know later.”

Teng Qingshan walked into the cabin and took out the Dark Blaze Rod. Currently, with Teng Qingshan’s spear art, even if he used the Dark Blaze Rod, first class experts like Huangfu Yujiang and First Godly General Borileimu would be no match for Teng Qingshan.

“Whiz!” Teng Qingshan jumped off and dived directly into the seabed.

How quick was Teng Qingshan in the sea?

The huge sea-going ship, which had the width of nearly fifty Zhang, was like a giant creature that had entrenched itself on the sea and was moving forward slowly. A fire-red figure kept close to the bottom of the ship and emerged from the water’s surface. It was Teng Qingshan.

“Their naval architecture is as good as the naval architecture in the land of the nine prefectures.” Teng Qingshan’s body flashed and stuck to the bow side of the ship as he listened carefully to the various noises on the ship.

There were many people on the ship, and the sounds were chaotic.

“I have three nines!”

“Hey, what a coincidence. I have three tens! No one has bigger cards than me, right? I also have a joker. Come and give me money everyone.”

When Teng Qingshan heard this, his face couldn’t help but reveal a trace of a smile. Cards? In the nine prefectures, there were some casinos to play in with both dice and cards. However, it sounded like the North Sea continent’s gambling rules and methods were different from that of the Nine Prefectures’.

“Ah~~ Ah~~” A girl cried out.

“Old Third, come and drink with me. It’s all thanks to that strike of yours today. Otherwise, I would have certainly been crippled by that old bastard from the Liu Clan.” The sounds of drinking cups being exchanged were also amidst the noises.

A large group of people were on the ship and it was truly chaotic.

“It truly is the Chunshen Clan.” Teng Qingshan seemed like a demon as he disappeared in a flash.

......

On the Chunshen Clan’s warship, there were only ten soldiers standing guard on the deck. However, all of them were lax. Who would worry about a sneak attack on the sea?

“All the bastards of the Chunshen Clan, come out!”

An ice-cold and metallic voice echoed throughout the entire warship in a flash, reverberating inside each and every cabin. The facial expressions of the soldiers who were originally lax changed immediately, and each and every one of them looked like a mad and feral wolf as they looked towards the source of the voice.

“Who is it?”

“Who dares to mess with us?!”

Angry shouts were heard as a great number of soldiers rushed out of the cabins rapidly, and they all gathered at the spacious deck which had a length of several Zhang. Uniformly, all of them held a machete, and their eyes were red as they glared at the shadow on the bow of the ship.

“Quiet!” Dressed in black armor, a robust man with short hair held up his left hand. The several hundred people on the deck suddenly became quiet.

All of them continued to stare unwaveringly at the shadow on the bow of the ship as though they wished to swallow it up completely.

“Who are you?!” The robust and short-haired man looked at Teng Qingshan.

“A hijacking pirate!” The dark figure emitted a cold and stern voice, “Don’t talk nonsense. Take out all of your money, books, maps and so on. Otherwise... die!!!” The voice sounded like clashing metal, causing people to feel fearful during this late night.

However, the several hundred soldiers were the elite soldiers of the Chunshen Clan. How could they surrender so easily?

“You dare to rob our Chunshen Clan just by yourself?” The robust and short-haired man guffawed, and the several hundred soldiers laughed along with him. Even though the robust and short-haired man was laughing, he was still scrutinizing the person that had arrived.

With a tall and thin body which was covered in black clothing, the person stood perfectly straight like the barrel of a gun. A dark red long rod was held in his right hand.

“An expert in rods? Even if you are an innate expert, you wouldn’t rob a ship with elite soldiers alone, right? Of the people that our Chunshen Clan have offended, there should not be an innate expert who wields rods,” The robust and short-haired man thought to himself.

“I will count to three. If you still do not hand over your wealth and goods......” The voice grew colder.

“One!”

The shadow yelled.

“Brothers, let’s scrape him!!!” The robust and short-haired man suddenly roared.

“Kill!”

The soldiers were like a pack of wolves as they held their machetes and divided into groups of five, forming simple formations. As they howled, their eyes filled with the wild desire to kill wildly. They then charged immediately toward the shadow.

Suddenly, the shadow swung the long rod in his hand!

“Boom!”

As though thunder had rumbled, countless soldiers were immediately smashed into pieces. Just a swing of the rod had produced such force, throwing the countless people behind the shadow into the air. As screams resounded on the warship, the blood which appeared dark red in this dark night sprayed in all directions. The shadow then proceeded to advance and it swung the long rod to the left.

“Boom!” Another sound, like the sound of something pounding on the heart, was heard.

Blood splattered and another group of people was thrown up into the air.

Several broken bones and flesh turned into paste and tumbled onto the deck, while blood dyed the deck red. The complexion of the several hundred soldiers, who had originally been in a crazed state, suddenly turned pale. All of them stayed where they were as they were completely shocked by the opponent’s two swings of his rod.

“You wanted to scrape me?” The metallic and ice-cold voice sounded out again.

The robust and shot-haired man’s forehead seeped out beads of sweat as he replied hastily, “No, no—”

“Peng!” With a sound, the robust and short-haired man was once again smashed and thrown out flying like a sandbag. He then fell into the sea, making a “Plop” sound.

“Two!” The cold voice of the black figure echoed out.

At this moment, the soldiers recalled the terrifying strength they had just seen before their eyes and were convinced that they would certainly be wiped out at the count of three.

“We will give, we will give!”

“We will give all of our wealth!”

“We will give all of our books and maps!”

Even though they could not understand why the person wanted the books and maps, none of them dared to speak rubbish as the person’s formidable power had already proved everything.

“Hurry and go get them. If there is anything missing, you will all still die!” The cold voice said.

A moment later—

Huge chests of gold and silver were piled onto the deck, along with many books and maps.

Teng Qingshan looked at the gold, silver, books and maps before him. “I didn’t expect that the North Sea continent would use gold and silver for currency as well. So much gold and silver...... I estimate that they must have recently obtained it from the massacre of the Liu Clan of the Dark Steel River .”

“You massacred the Liu Clan, yet you only obtained this little?” Teng Qingshan said coldly, “What about gold notes?”

All of the soldiers were terrified that Teng Qingshan would find that they had some gold and silver which had not been handed over. Indeed...... They had hidden some and had not handed them over! This was because if they were to truly hand over everything, they would be doomed when they returned to the Chunshen Clan.

Furthermore, they believed that this powerful person could not possibly know how much gold and silver they had.

“Gold notes?” One of the officer said puzzledly, “What are gold notes?”

Once Teng Qingshan heard that, he understood immediately....... that the North Sea continent still didn’t have a marked currency or anything similar to that. “Oh? Could it be that the North Sea continent is very chaotic and does not have sufficient power or capital to establish marked currency?”

“Pack everything into sacks.” Teng Qingshan commanded, “Pack the gold but not the silver!”

Very swiftly, the soldiers packed the great amount of gold, filling a total of three sacks while, in comparison, there were fewer books. Who would bring books into war? There were only ten books. However, there were a lot of maps—although most of them were military maps.

Teng Qingshan carried the Dark Blaze Rod on his back, then he grabbed two large sacks with his left hand as his right hand grabbed one large sack.

“Whew!”

His whole body emitted out a fire-red Innate True Origin, and he jumped into the endlessly gloomy sea.

The several hundred soldiers ran to the edge of the ship and looked down.

“He’s finally gone.”

“He scared me to death.”

All the soldiers breathed a sigh of relief.

“Eldest Brother, so much gold was taken. What will happen when we return?”

“You fools. To come across this kind of powerful expert and still be able to survive and return to the family with some gold and silver, why would the family be dissatisfied? We should be regarded as lucky If this expert was friends with the Liu Clan, then I fear that we would have been completely wiped out today. Motherf*cker. With a mere swing of his rod, he blasted so many people dead. Could it be that he was a Golden Dan Innate Expert?” A big bearded warrior, who appeared to be an officer, licked his lips, feeling afraid as he thought about what had happened.

......

On the tungsten wood vessel...

Li Jun and the little girl were discussing about Teng Qingshan when all of a sudden—

“Whoosh!” A shadow fell from the sky and descended onto the deck. It made a thumping sound, causing the deck to shake two or three times.

Teng Qingshan threw down the three large sacks casually, causing all the gold bars inside them to scatter out. The gold light from the gold bars dazzled the little girl servant’s eyes, while Li Jun was gobsmacked.

“Yes, this amount of gold and silver should be enough for us to use in the North Sea Continent,” Teng Qingshan stated.