Edited by Aelryinth

The round-faced middle-aged man was thinking of withdrawing from Jingzhou and returning to headquarters from the start. He had never planned on going to other cities to develop.

Some large cities already had Freemason branches in them. Even if the round-faced man brought a whole group of people over, they’d only live in the shadow of others. This was something he definitely didn’t want to deal with.

Although his mind was being controlled to a certain degree, it wasn’t like he didn’t have ambitions of his own. He was still aware of the principle of being the head of a chicken rather than the tail of a bull.

Instead, why not return to the headquarters and report the situation in Xinjing City to the higher-ups, then wait for their arrangements?

He would be in frequent contact with the huge figures at the headquarters, even if he only took on an unimportant role. There’d be an opportunity to go to other cities in the future to develop another faction.

After offering his suggestion, Zhang Che immediately kept quiet and stood in position, his eyes lowered.

No one stood forward to oppose his idea.

After all, Zhang Che’s fame was quite something. Basically all of the middle and high-level members of the Freemason had heard of his deeds, not to mention Huang Juyun was already very powerful by himself! With the appearance of another strong foe, although these people were very unwilling to leave Xinjing City just like that, they had to weigh the pros and cons for the sake of their own safety.

“Hmm. Old Zheng, your intelligence came just in time.” The round-faced man seemed to have woken up from a daydream. He praised Zhang Che, then swept his gaze across everyone and said, “Ai, actually I don’t really wish to leave Xinjing City, either. After all, we made great efforts here. Such a pity. Our circumstances are forcing us against our will. The military grew so much stronger all of a sudden, and are even searching for us everywhere. If this continues, I’m afraid the consequences will be unthinkable.

“So, I propose we relocate our branch immediately and leave Xinjing as soon as possible, perhaps even leave Jingzhou Island. What do you guys think?”

Done speaking, he squinted once more, sweeping his gaze across everyone’s face.

For a short while, nobody raised any objections.

Since their boss had already made his decision, who would dare to object? Did they want to have a bad time? Moreover, everyone could understand his point after thinking for some time. It really seemed too risky for them to continue staying in Xinjing City now; it was better to retreat as soon as possible!

“Alright, then. Since no one has any objections, this matter is decided. Everyone notify the brothers under you to start withdrawing from Xinjing in batches from today on and go hide for some time. Come back only after the situation has calmed.

“As for us, I’m thinking of returning directly to the headquarters and seeing how the President wants to arrange things. What do you think?”

Seeing nobody was objecting to his suggestion, the round-faced man was very satisfied.

“As the branch chief decides.”

“I’ll listen to whatever branch chief says.”

“Right, I haven’t been to the headquarters before. I can expand my horizons and go admire the esteemed president.”

This time, everybody echoed their agreement.

Truthfully speaking, since they could no longer stay in Xinjing City, it was a very exciting matter for many to be able to go to the headquarters. No matter if they were thoroughly brainwashed devouts, or speculators with their own calculations in mind, retreating to the headquarters was extremely beneficial to all of them!

Zhang Che kept a calm expression after hearing the branch chief’s decision, but he was feeling incredibly excited inside.

He wasn’t expecting the branch chief to decide to retreat to their headquarters directly. He thought he needed to exaggerate the strength of the Xinjing military division a little more to scare the branch chief.

Zhang Che had only leaked news of his arrival in Xinjing City, and the branch chief had unexpectedly decided to leave Jingzhou and return to their headquarters without needing him to persuade them any further.

-Looks like my name is a rather good deterrent. If I can grow stronger, these evil cult members wouldn’t dare provoke me anymore in the future, right?-

Zhang Che felt very content inside.

His strength had scared the Xinjing branch cult members into retreating to their headquarters! The same effect might not be achieved if anyone else was in his place.

-Very good. If I can follow these people back to the Freemasons’ headquarters, then I can find out where their nest is!-

At that time, if their headquarters was strong, Zhang Che could keep a low profile for some time and tell his father-in-law to mobilize large numbers of elite military troops in the dark to destroy them. If they weren’t, then too bad for them; Zhang Che would flip their world upside down with his own strength, and remove the brains of this large scale evil cult organization.

As long as he could eliminate the senior staff of the Freemason headquarters, the branches spread through all of Hua Xia would quickly fall apart and disappear, right?

-Indeed, one should try to destroy the enemy from within if they want to bring them down quickly.- Zhang Che was very pleased with himself.

According to the strict rules of these evil cult organizations, and the precautions they had in place against interrogations, it was truly too difficult to break them apart from the outside.

The government and the military had expended huge amounts of resources, both manpower and materials, and yet they couldn’t get rid of them completely.

This was all thanks to Zhang Che’s ability to disguise his appearance and alter his voice through the Myriad Transformation Lizard, and obtaining important intelligence from his targets through the Psychedelic Ghost-Patterned Butterfly. Nobody else could have accomplished this tough mission.

Of course, Zhang Che wouldn’t reveal that he possessed such abilities. Let alone the fact that this was one of his important survival abilities, even if he was truly willing to disguise as others to infiltrate the inside of every evil cult, he wouldn’t have that much time and energy!

Moreover, as long as the government and military intensified their crackdown on the evil cult organizations, they would eventually lose their ability to survive, and be slowly strangled. Even if they weren’t destroyed completely, it would be almost impossible for them to develop again.

——

As someone who had escaped from the military, and although Zhang Che and Fang Ruqing had cleared the Freemasons’ investigations and proved that they were not suspicious, they had no say in the huge matter regarding the branch’s withdrawal.

After all, they were only mid-level members originally. They didn’t have the authority to participate in the discussion. However, Zhang Che didn’t mind it.

In any case, after learning the Xinjing branch would be returning to the Freemason headquarters, he had already achieved his objective in infiltrating the organization. Everything was fine now.

Going forward, he only needed to remain here and not expose himself, and wait to return to the headquarters along with the other Xinjing branch members.

-At that time, I’ll resolve all my old grudges and new feuds with them all at once. I’ll get all the senior members of the Freemasons in one fell swoop!- Zhang Che resolved.

Unless the Freemasons had divine-tier beastmasters in their ranks, with Zhang Che’s strength alone, he’d be able to deal a heavy blow to the organization if he suddenly made a move against them.

Zhang Che didn’t care about the ordinary members. If he could take down the Freemasons’ high-end combat forces right away, what was left was only to inform the government and military to come clean the rest up.

——

For the rest of the day, Zhang Che wasn’t allowed to leave the underground base. He was glad about that, too, and decided to hole himself up in his room and pretend to sleep.

That was the logical reaction expected from him. Zheng Huawei was interrogated by the military for a few days, then escaped from their clutches after much difficulty. He must have been exhausted. How could he possibly still be energetic without resting properly?

If that was the case, he’d immediately fall under suspicion!.

——

Zhang Che had successfully infiltrated the Freemasons’ Xinjing branch. On Huang Juyun’s side, he had the military continue searching and arresting members of evil cults everywhere, not letting up at all.

However, he didn’t know of the details of Zhang Che’s plan at all. He thought Zhang Che wanted to follow those escaped evil cult members and try to infiltrate the evil cult territories. Unexpectedly, Zhang Che had directly taken the place of one of the members and successfully infiltrated the Freemasons.

“Hopefully this kid succeeds in his plans. For these evil cults to grow so big in such a strong time, in addition to the difficulty in finding their real nest, the influence behind all this must be very powerful already.

“Luckily Xiaoche is only planning on infiltrating the evil cult’s branch. There shouldn’t be any danger…”

Huang Juyun wasn’t too worried for Zhang Che’s safety. After all, he was very clear on how strong Zhang Che was.

Even the powerful subdued beast he currently possessed, considered top tier among epic-quality exotic beasts, was easily killed by Zhang Che’s subdued beasts. Unless their epic-quality subdued beasts were able to claim an overwhelming advantage against Zhang Che, it was impossible to be much of a threat to him.

Based on what had been observed thus far, there were no signs of the evil cult’s nest being in Xinjing City. Even if there were a couple of experts with epic-quality subdued beasts present, they wouldn’t be able to drive Zhang Che into a dangerous situation. Even in the worst case scenario, he would be able to get away.

After thinking of the results Zhang Che might achieve, a hint of cold killing intent flashed across Huang Juyun’s face.

Those evil cult organizations actually dared to lay their hands on his precious daughter. They really didn’t want to live anymore!

Although he didn’t have the ability to find the evil cult’s nest, Xinjing City was now his territory. Of course he’d retaliate fiercely and strike at them hard!

“Hopefully that kid completes his mission quickly and comes back soon. There’s a huge plot of empty land in the herbal field waiting for that kid to go gather spiritual herbs in the beast worlds to fill them up…” Huang Juyun’s face recovered into a bright smile at the thought of this.

The spiritual crystals Zhang Che and Huang Tielan had obtained by chance a few days ago had been buried evenly across the herbal field. After these few days, the research staff had concluded from observations that the spiritual herbs’s growth in the field had improved sharply.

Basically all of the spiritual herbs had accelerated growth under the nourishment of the spiritual force emitted by the crystals. The herbs in their flowering periods had bloomed spectacularly.

In just these two days alone, the increase in production of spiritual honey brought about by the addition of the spiritual crystals was obvious. The production rate had already increased by more than ten percent!

And this was only the beginning!

As time gradually passed, and the spiritual crystals’ medicinal efficacy was fully displayed, the growth of the herbs would definitely reach a new height!

After observation and calculation, the staff reached an incredibly shocking conclusion.

In another month or so, even without the addition of new spiritual herbs in the field, the production of spiritual honey would double!

What kind of a concept was that?

This meant that the production rate of the new body tempering pill would also double!

Calculating the sale price of the new body tempering pills, that was a huge figure! With the accumulation of days and months, it would become an astronomical sum that would definitely shock anyone!

Huang Juyun was confident that with the sale of the new body tempering pill, the Huang family could surely rise to become one of the top clans in all of Hua Xia within three years!

At that time, Zhang Che would probably grow immensely as well. Whether he could become a divine-tier beastmaster depended on his luck, but he could definitely become the number one figure below divine-tier beastmasters!

People who had ideas on the Huang family’s businesses wouldn’t dare to make any casual moves at that time.

Done thinking, Huang Juyun felt a surge of emotions in his heart once more. His precious daughter’s vision was truly too inhuman, to actually fall onto Zhang Che, who was only a commoner back then. This foresight of hers was simply incomparable!

——

Dok dok dok…

Knocks came from the door. Zhang Che woke up from his “sleep”. He feigned a blurry consciousness and asked, “Who is it? Disturbing someone’s sleep at this time… Don’t you know I’m resting?”

Sun Hailin’s voice came from behind the door, “Old Zheng, wake up quickly. It’s lunchtime. We have to go help after eating lunch. The organization is about to start moving.”

“Ah? We’re moving today? Give me a moment. I’m getting up now!” Zhang Che pretended to exclaim in shock, feeling happy inside.

He didn’t expect the Xinjing branch to move so quickly. It had only been a morning, and they had actually packed everything and were going to move in the afternoon.

The evil cult’s efficiency was really impressive!

-With this, I should be able to follow these people to the Freemasons’ headquarters very soon, right?

-Hmm? Oh, right… I don’t recall that round-faced middle-aged branch chief saying they would let me go with them to headquarters…-

At the thought, Zhang Che felt his heart thump.

-I have to find a chance later to sound them out and see if they’ll bring me along. After all, I, “Zheng Huawei,” gave them important intelligence after escaping from the military. The top executives of the branch shouldn’t burn the bridge after crossing the river and leave me behind in Xinjing City, right?-