Sea Fatty’s weakness?
In the eyes of a Young Lord of Dawn who had already obtained detailed intelligence, if you wanted to name Sea Fatty’s virtues, then apart from a thick skin, which barely counted as one, you would not find a second virtue anywhere on this greedy, lecherous Hai Dafu. On the other hand, if you wanted to talk about Sea Fatty’s faults, there were as many of them as hairs on an ox, past all counting.
Greed, lechery, cowardice, laziness… nearly every fault a human being is capable of having, this creature had.
Faults ordinary people did not have, he had too.
As the Young Lord of Dawn saw it, a man like Sea Fatty was simply a freak of nature.
For a piece of trash like Sea Fatty, alive in the world, the Young Lord of Dawn could not think what use he served beyond wasting rice.
He could not for the life of him understand why Yue Titan, a man whose character drove him to pursue perfection, would take in garbage like Sea Fatty — worse than garbage, human filth — as one of his own teammates… what use is a waste product like Sea Fatty, beyond dragging down the whole team’s strength and ruining the team’s reputation? Why would Yue Titan keep this Sea Fatty in the team the entire time to be trained up, and give him treatment no worse than that of a Xue Tanglang with extraordinary talent? It was simply unthinkable. The Young Lord of Dawn had tried repeatedly to put himself in the other man’s place, and he still could not work out why Yue Titan would do it.
Keeping a teammate like Sea Fatty was no different from keeping a fatal weakness at your side for the enemy to use.
And yet Yue Titan had done exactly that.
And he had never changed his mind and never reduced Sea Fatty’s standing in the team… it was precisely this state of affairs that made the Young Lord of Dawn feel he could not quite see through this opponent, Yue Titan.
It was plainly a blunder. Why did Yue Titan insist on it?
Simply because Sea Fatty was the first friend he had made?
What left the Young Lord of Dawn more baffled still was why Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang and the Tianra Prince did not push Sea Fatty out of the team or freeze him out of it. Ye Kong beat him regularly enough, in front of people and behind their backs, but he had never once formally expelled this garbage of a teammate. And it should be understood that after Yue Titan left the Heavenly Realm he handed the team over to Ye Kong to manage, and Ye Kong held enormous authority. Strangely, this hot-tempered, blunt-natured thin man had never really expelled Sea Fatty, and frequently wiped the backside of a teammate who was useless in the extreme and could do nothing but eat and drink hugely and hold everybody back.
Was the friendship of the Sky Tower really as solid as that?
According to the intelligence they had gathered, the people of the Sky Tower are famous for loving civil war. Look across the whole Heavenly Realm and there is no race that loves civil war more than the Sky Tower.
Wars to the death break out between races in the Heavenly Realm constantly. That is normal. But deadly fighting rarely breaks out inside a race. The Sky Tower is the opposite. What they love most is a civil war, their own people fighting their own people to the death — fathers killing sons, sons killing fathers, brothers slaughtering brothers and turning on one another inside the same walls. Never mind a whole race with that many people in it; even inside one household they will fight until the sky goes black. By ordinary reasoning a race that loves infighting like this ought to be very easy to conquer, since internally they are a heap of loose sand and cannot pull themselves together at all.
But it does not work that way.
The unexpected part is this.
Facing an invasion from outside, at the moment when survival itself is in question, the race of the Sky Tower behaves with extreme unity, and their fighting will is fierce beyond measure. Many powers of the Heavenly Realm have acknowledged them as hard bones, and a portion of the warriors who guard the Sky Tower could be called another word for would rather die than yield.
If the Sky Tower did not also produce a certain number of traitors, the Young Lord of Dawn would have thought them an unconquerable race.
The Sky Tower is an unbelievable place, and the lives inside the Sky Tower defy all reason.
The Young Lord of Dawn turned it over.
And he felt that his own father was very nearly the same kind of thing.
On one side a merciless killing overlord, playing with his enemies in the palm of his hand by supreme wisdom. On the other, fanatically and obsessively hating the land he loved deeply and could not put out of his mind, and wanting, every single day, to conquer and even destroy that beautiful homeland he dreamed of a thousand times over… however he approached it, the Young Lord of Dawn could not understand a feeling of that kind.
Was this love or hate?
If it was love, then this land should be tended with the greatest care.
If it was not love but hate, then the place should be destroyed in an instant by the most vicious and cruel means available and made never to exist again.
Love and hate stand opposed to each other. And yet in his father, the Young Lord of Dawn saw both existing together, a contradiction and an impossibility at once — as awkward a thing as watching Yue Titan, who pursued perfection in everything, tolerate a piece of garbage in his team and look after him at every turn. The two were the same tune played on different instruments.
“The people of the Sky Tower are a compound of contradictions.” The Young Lord of Dawn sighed lightly and put the thought away. He was not a man of the Sky Tower and did not need to trouble his mind over this place. There was conquest and then more conquest, and no need whatsoever for his father’s complications. As a son, the most he would do was let out a sigh, exactly as he had just done, and then go calmly back to judging his enemies from a higher and better position, in his standing as a favored son of heaven from the Central Divine Hall — and before killing every one of them, first apply a restraint that held the initiative at every point, and toy with them without much interest.
Tormenting an opponent like this one gave him at least a small amount of pleasure.
If it were possible, the Young Lord of Dawn would very much have liked to get a look at this Yue Titan the people of the Sky Tower had made into a god… unfortunately, before that could happen, the Young Lord of Dawn had to wait patiently.
The Young Lord of Dawn kept his patience intact and slowly put out a hand in front of him. “Although I have not paid you much attention — forgive me, I truly cannot make myself concentrate on an opponent like you. Still, Hai Dafu, I have collected a little information on you as well. And before my subordinates fight you, I have decided to introduce you to a friend first.”
“Please welcome the very satisfactory friend I found in the Sky Tower. Shuntian.” The Young Lord of Dawn waved a hand lightly, and the old opponent — the Shuntian whom Sea Fatty had once driven out of his mind with rage — appeared in front of Sea Fatty again.
This was a different Shuntian.
There was no madness left in his face and no confusion in his eyes.
On the contrary, his reason had come back to him entirely. His pride was gone, but the sinister cruelty in him ran deeper, and the killing intent between his brows was like a knife’s edge.
Sea Fatty took one look and it hit him like a lightning strike, and he cried out at once in a voice that cracked. “Shuntian, you — you — you turned traitor? How could you turn traitor?”
Shuntian came striding up and lowered that golden head, staring down at Sea Fatty the way a tiger stares down at an insect, and seized Sea Fatty’s collar with an enormous hand and lifted him bodily like a chicken, and pulled him up to the tip of his nose. Endless killing intent came roaring out of those golden eyes. “To beat you and take back the glory I had, I will accept any condition whatsoever. So long as I can grind you flat again, you dead fat man, the way a man grinds out an insect, nothing else matters to me at all. For victory, whoever I have to serve and whatever price I have to pay in exchange, I can accept it.”
Sea Fatty nearly wet himself.
If Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang had not put out an enormous burst of strength and hauled him bodily out of Shuntian’s hand between them, this specimen would very likely have died of fright on the spot.
Thrown down onto the arena by Shuntian, Sea Fatty drew circles on the ground with tears running down his face, and muttered to himself in dejection, “I thought only a shifty-eyed rat-faced fellow like me would ever think of turning traitor. Who’d have guessed a solid-looking, heavy-browed, big-eyed fine specimen like Shuntian would turn traitor too.”
“In fact I bear no ill will at all, and I personally hold no prejudice against Young Master Hai. Here and now I can make a promise. So long as Young Master Hai takes no part in the fighting between us and stays neutral throughout, then whether we win or lose this battle, our camp will not make things difficult for Young Master Hai. Doing this is absolutely not a betrayal. It is a rational avoidance — sidestepping a pass where life and death are at stake, sidestepping a hard predicament, preserving a useful body to be put to use at a more important moment. I wonder whether Young Master Hai might consider such a small and undeveloped proposal?” The Young Lord of Dawn judged the moment ripe. His side’s opening lay in this Sea Fatty.
He knew he had strength enough and time enough to beat Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang and the rest easily.
But the Young Lord of Dawn did not care for brute force.
What he liked was to do as his father did, and use a wisdom a cut above everyone else’s to settle his enemies.
To do as his father did — to play with enemies in the palm of his hand at any moment and in any place — that was what he loved best.
He had not yet had a chance to trade blows with Yue Titan. Whether the man had been made into a god, how much water there was in Yue Titan’s legend, whether meeting him would fall short of hearing about him — none of it could be confirmed, because Yue Titan was still in the Heavenly Realm and had not come back. But the touchstone for Yue Titan was standing right in front of him. The small team Yue Titan had built with his own hands, the young elites the Sky Tower’s races took pride in, were right there.
How to toy with them one after another until they broke, until they despaired completely of the Yue Titan they had followed with all their hearts, and finally until every one of them killed himself… that was what the Young Lord of Dawn hoped to achieve.
Yue Titan had assembled them and given them strength and belief.
Now he was going to take them apart, wipe out their strength, and collapse their belief.
Only that way would the Young Lord of Dawn feel he had scored something that barely counted as a victory in a battle fought at a distance against this Yue Titan the legends had made into a god.
“Unconditional neutrality is out of the question.” Sea Fatty hesitated for one second, looked at a Shuntian whose strength had risen by who knew how much, thickened his skin and squeezed out a face full of smiles, licked his lips, and spoke with limitless greed. “Unless you give this young master one treasure — no, two treasures — there is nothing to discuss.”
“Hahaha.” The Young Lord of Dawn laughed out loud with real satisfaction.
He had been a little worried before this.
He had wondered whether a Sea Fatty remade by Yue Titan might already have acquired Sovereign Intent like Ye Kong and the others, and changed his own essential character entirely. The result proved it: rivers and mountains are easily changed, a man’s nature is not. Sea Fatty was still Sea Fatty, greedy and lecherous exactly as he had always been. Even Yue Titan could not change this garbage, this piece of human filth.
After Yue Titan assembled the elite team, Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang and the others were unquestionably an extremely successful transformation.
Weak into strong. The Ye Kong who had nearly starved to death on the Sky Tower’s first floor had grown into a guardian of the Sky Tower with Sovereign Intent, and the same for Xue Tanglang and the Tianra Prince. Unfortunately the transformation was not thorough.
At the very least, this Sea Fatty had not undergone any fundamental change.
He had tested it repeatedly.
Under the pressure of the Golden Arena, the gold-tier war beasts and the old mortal enemy Shuntian, this Sea Fatty, who had no Sovereign Intent and was greedy past all measure, had yielded.
The Young Lord of Dawn was in a very good mood now. He felt he had won a small victory in this long-distance battle with Yue Titan, because he had found where Sea Fatty’s weakness lay, and had broken through there and finally succeeded in planting an unstable element. With Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang he had never expected to find any method beyond killing them — against loyal men who will die for a cause, nobody has a method. But stripping Sea Fatty out of the elite team Yue Titan had built amounted to a slap across Yue Titan’s face.
“Hahaha. I agree. So long as you stay neutral from now on, I will make you a present of three treasures, and one of them will be a Sacred-tier treasure.” Pleased with himself, the Young Lord of Dawn laid out a generous condition. “If you leave your friends now and go stand off to one side, I will give you this Golden Arena. It is an exceedingly rare treasure even among Sacred-tier objects.”
“Really?” Sea Fatty’s eyes lit up like a wolf’s at the sight of a naked little beauty.
“I have treasures in abundance. You should know that I am Dongfang’s son — the Young Lord of Dawn, famous in the Central Divine Hall for the number of treasures he owns.” The Young Lord of Dawn put out a hand with great confidence and conjured up two platinum-tier treasures.
Sea Fatty looked at them and swallowed hard, secretly.
He glanced at Ye Kong with a touch of embarrassment and edged a little to the side, then glanced at Xue Tanglang and secretly edged a little further.
Ye Kong kicked him flying and pointed at the Young Lord of Dawn, whose face was full of satisfaction, and shouted furiously. “You want to split us with treasures? You think two paltry treasures will make Sea Fatty abandon his friends and go over to the enemy? What a joke. If that were possible he’d have been bought by the enemy long ago. Put your act away. Ridiculous methods like this don’t work on us at all.”
Sea Fatty picked himself up and found Ye Kong staring at him with murder in his eyes.
He wilted immediately.
And he said feebly, “Right. Exactly. This Young Master Hai is no treasure-blinded traitor who forgets what is right. What treasures? This young master has plenty. Two platinum-tier treasures are nothing… two Sacred-tier treasures might be closer. No — I didn’t say anything. I’m not surrendering. Monkey, don’t worry, my wife-money is still deposited with you and I haven’t taken it out.”
The Young Lord of Dawn smiled a little. “Naturally I have two Sacred-tier objects. Young Master Hai need only go on being neutral. There is no need to talk about surrender. How is that?”
Sea Fatty suddenly coughed lightly. “I’m not going to stay neutral… ahem. How about the two sides negotiate instead? Nobody here has a father-killing grudge or a wife-stealing hatred anyway. There’s nothing we can’t talk about.”
Ye Kong was furious. “Shut up. Nobody asked you to speak here.”
But the Young Lord of Dawn burst out laughing. He threw the two platinum-tier treasures to Sea Fatty, which left the fat man briefly at a loss, and then smiled at his leisure. “I do in fact intend to negotiate. Otherwise, why would I have talked with you so patiently? If a fight to the death can be avoided and everyone can sit down and discuss it slowly, that really would be much better. You are right. We have no deep grudge and no great hatred. Why should two tigers fight? Toward the Sky Tower I have never had anything but curiosity and goodwill, no crooked intentions and no malice. If I had not come here following my father, I would not have taken an important post at all. There is a genuine basis for us to make peace. Young Master Hai — so long as you bring the peace talks about, whatever the outcome, this young lord will make you a present of two more Sacred-tier treasures. How is that?”
Sea Fatty heard that and his heart bloomed. Even his eyes, looking at the Young Lord of Dawn, were giving off little red hearts. “Peace talks. We want peace talks. We want to live together in peace, and love one another…”
The Young Lord of Dawn looked at Ye Kong with a smile. “What do the rest of you think?”
Ye Kong was silent.
Xue Tanglang did not make a sound either, cold as an iceberg.
It was the Tianra Prince who showed a warmth like winter sunlight in his smile. “Very clever Young Lord of Dawn. Everything you have said, and the deliberate use of treasures to split the feeling in our team, is nothing but an attempt to shift our attention, so that we would not notice the Golden Flame Divine Banner you have been quietly planting. Would you like to know what I am about to say next? Young Lord of Dawn, you are very clever, and very cunning, but would you please not take other people for fools? Apart from that fool Sea Fatty, who cares about your treasures? Who would accept a gift from an enemy?”
Sea Fatty immediately raised his voice in objection. “Hey, hey. This young master is not a fool. These treasures came free, all right? Young Lord of Dawn, you’re really not making peace? Then this young master will accept these two treasures with thanks and not give them back. Ha. Two treasures picked up for nothing. Wonderful.”
He had not finished speaking.
The two treasures in his hands flashed with white light on the instant and formed a peculiar cage of white light, clamping Sea Fatty inside it, and however he struggled he could not struggle free…
“Peace talks? Those are essential.” A strange smile appeared on the Young Lord of Dawn’s face. “But not until every one of you is lying down. You should understand that this young lord does not like people bargaining with him on their feet. And you may not know it yet, but in this world only a dead man makes a truly good negotiating partner — because no dead man, whichever one you pick, will ever object to my opinion.”
As the Young Lord of Dawn’s words fell, an enormous banner blazing with golden light rose up behind him.
At once a force very close to a law, and stronger than the Golden Arena’s constraint.
Covered the whole field.
(End of Chapter 1236)