Chapter 615: The Xiang Family's Embarrassment (1)

The battle was utterly without suspense.

Even though the Xiang family's juniors all used secret arts, they were still easily crushed by the three brothers Wu Jin, Wu Yin, and Wu Tong.

It was not a mere knockdown, but a complete rout.

Overwhelming, like a millstone smashing an egg, they were utterly routed.

Wu Tie brandished the God-Beating Whip, skirmishing behind his three older brothers, but it had no effect whatsoever.

Wu Jin inherited the Human Emperor's legacy; Wu Yin and Wu Tong had the Wu family's old monsters personally tutor them. Likewise, they used secret arts to condense the Wu tribe's ancestral bloodline, plus Wu Tie's infusion of countless rare resources, and further soaked their bodies with stellar essence, forcibly infusing the divine fetus by evolving the Great Dao through their primordial spirits.

The three brothers, unbeknownst to themselves, had undergone a tremendous transformation of shedding the old and being reborn; their overall strength far surpassed that of their Wu tribe peers.

Over a hundred Xiang family youths, their faces bruised and swollen, collapsed to the ground, every bone in their bodies broken, lying there immobile. Their eyes were bloodshot, their chests heaving rapidly, as they continually let out low growls and curses.

Some words were harsh to hear, directly aimed at the seniors of Wu Tie and his brothers.

After all, the Xiang family is also a military clan; day in and day out, these Xiang family youths mingled in the army camps, constantly dealing with rough soldiers, and when they cursed people in street slang, they were even more adept than the toughs of the market.

Wu Tie waved his hand, and Huang Yu and Li Ergouzi led the people over, wielding bamboo-joint steel whips and lashing fiercely at the faces of those Xiang family youths.

Wu Tie returned to the throne and pointed at the Xiang family youth who had been cursing the most fiercely.

Several Earth Essence Elders with tremendous power strode over with thudding steps, seized this limp Xiang family youth, and slammed him heavily to the ground before Wu Tie.

"I have no grudge against the Xiang family," Wu Tie drawled, opening with the usual official pleasantries.

"Now there is a grudge." That Xiang family youth glared viciously at Wu Tie: "You killed my elder brother Xiang Zhang; you and our Xiang family are now locked in a blood-deep feud… the blood of our Xiang family youths can only be washed away with blood."

"You were the ones who struck first—do you even talk about reason?" Wu Tie crossed his legs.

He stretched out his left hand, and a Staff Officer hailing from the Lan Family of Jade Prefecture stepped forward from the crowd, placing a pot of freshly brewed hot tea in Wu Tie's hand. Wu Tie held the pot, brought it to the spout, and took a big gulp.

The scalding tea was brewed extremely strong, strong to the point of bitterness, hardly different from a decoction of coptis.

Such a large pot of tea, placed before the nobles of the Green Hill Divine Kingdom, would be quite loss of face; they value sipping tea delicately from fine cups, and no one drinks tea straight from the pot.

But Wu Tie just likes it that way.

He was deliberately cultivating a rough-and-tumble style that was out of place among other royalty and nobility.

The more out of place he was, the more he defied worldly common sense, the safer it became. Thus, in the future, on his fief and in his domain, if some strange things happened, people would recall Wu Tie's usual conduct and thus be able to understand and accommodate them.

He spat out a tea leaf stuck to his lips with a heavy "pfft"; the fragile tea leaf struck the solid stone ground condensed from mighty magical force, punching a small hole the size of a thumb.

The Xiang family youth wore a grim face, stared fixedly at Wu Tie's behavior, then snorted contemptuously: "A country bumpkin is a country bumpkin—when have you ever heard of the Xiang family reasoning?"

He lifted his head arrogantly and said in a cold voice: "All the military clans under heaven praise my Xiang family, but with the Xiang family's Eight Hundred Tiger Warriors, we can roam the battlefield at will. The fame and status of my Xiang family are won with fists… never with tongues."

He stared coldly at Wu Tie and sneered: "You killed my elder brother Xiang Zhang; you're as good as dead. Our Xiang family's ancestors will never let you off. Don't think that just because you're some 'Dog-fart Peace King'—how many royal princes have the Xiang family beaten, I don't know, but what can they do to me?"

Wu Tie, holding the tea pot, snorted: "Hey, what grandeur, what killing aura—you're all iron-willed tough guys. I like it, I appreciate you… Well, strip you naked and hang you on flagpoles. Hang them higher so people can't miss them."

After looking around for a while, Wu Tie pointed to the gate tower of the Demon-Suppressing First City behind him: "Hang them up there, uh, Mu Sanhua—you guys sprout a few sturdy wooden poles, make them a bit longer, a bit straighter, ideally three to five hundred zhang high, and strip those unreasonable Xiang family wolf pups naked and hang them up."

Near the Demon-Suppressing City defenses, as previously mentioned, lies a desert wasteland where no grass grows; only a few extremely tenacious clinging mosses barely attach to the rocks, scraping out a furtive existence.

No grass grows, so naturally there is not a single tree.

A group of Wood Essence Elders and Earth Essence Elders joined forces, found a patch of yellow sand beside the Demon-Suppressing First City; the Earth Essence Elders used secret arts to turn the sand into fertile soil, then the Wood Essence Elders took out a bag of seeds and carefully planted them in the earth.

A Water Essence Elder summoned a drizzling cloud and let down a fine mist of rain.

The Wood Essence Elders communicated with these seeds, arousing the innate vitality within them, then infused them with thick streams of yin-wood spiritual energy.

The seeds burst open with a "whoosh"; in that sound, the seeds began to grow rapidly, and within a quarter hour they became a hundred and thirty-eight trees as thick as a sea bowl, straight as poles with hardly any branches, reaching a height of five hundred zhang—odd-shaped trees.

Several Metal Essence Elders stepped forward, their arms turning into long blades, and with light swings they chopped off all the twigs and stripped the bark, turning those odd-shaped trees into a hundred and thirty-eight poles of uniform thickness, straight as rods, and incredibly tough.

They planted the poles on the gate tower of the Demon-Suppressing First City; the hundred and thirty-eight Xiang family youths whose cultivation had been sealed howled and cursed as they were hoisted by leather straps to the tops of the poles.

When the wind blew, these sea-bowl-thick yet five-hundred-zhang-long poles proved extremely elastic and flexible, swaying left and right; the tops could oscillate thirty or forty zhang, and the Xiang family youths on them swung wildly back and forth, shaken until they saw stars and couldn't help but vomit.

For a moment, the gate tower rang with "whoosh whoosh whoosh" sounds, nothing but the wind-breaking noise from the poles swaying left and right.

"How magnificent!" Huang Yu and several Lan Family officials clapped in unison, admiring the sight; at that moment they really wanted to compose a poem to commemorate it, but their literary reserves were a bit lacking, and after thinking hard they still couldn't come up with a fitting verse.

Wu Tie gazed at the hundred and thirty-eight Xiang family youths and snorted: "Unreasonable? Let me see who's really unreasonable!"

He casually pointed at the Xiang family fleet and sneered: "Take them all, every person, reduce them all to slave soldiers, conscript them into my Invincible Army; whoever dares to resist, beat them, beat them to death—well, as long as you don't actually kill them, feel free to beat them however you like."

He gave a cold huff and sneered: "Drag out those scoundrels—their army's marshals, staff officers, and recorder sergeants—I just want to make sure, what are this bunch of Xiang family idiots doing running to Demon-Suppressing City?"

Soon, the people Wu Tie wanted were brought before him, violently pressed to the ground, and forced to kneel against their will.