Chapter 35 – The Truth Behind the Fall of the Zhu Kingdom

Su Ming followed the guide to a room marked with a large “One” on it, clearly corresponding to the VIP Card.

Su Ming: “I want to know, is it really that easy to become a VIP Client?”

Guide: “Originally, there would have been many troublesome procedures, but the City Lord directly acknowledged you, so those formalities were skipped.”

Su Ming: “The City Lord?”

Guide: “Becoming a VIP Client doesn’t come with many obligations. If you have intelligence, you can provide it to this establishment, and after it’s sold, the profits are split seventy-thirty. The main obligation is to maintain the safety of Half-Ghost City and to keep the auction running.”

The safety of Half-Ghost City was understandable—after all, she was now part of Half-Ghost City. But what exactly was an auction?

Guide: “Every VIP Client has an auction. You need to keep the auction running and hand over sixty percent of the auction’s revenue to the City Lord.”

Su Ming: “So I still get forty percent of the revenue?”

Guide: “Correct. However, this work is usually done by subordinates. After greasing palms up and down and accounting for potential losses, you often only end up with about twenty percent.”

Su Ming: “Twenty percent is still quite a lot, isn’t it?”

Guide: “Of course. Half-Ghost City has always prioritized the strong. As long as you don’t violate the rules set by the City Lord, the weak should make way for the strong.”

Su Ming nodded, then asked, “So what benefits do VIP Clients get?”

Guide: “Madam, don’t you know? VIP Clients get many benefits. First, you receive a monthly share of Half-Ghost City’s earnings, as mentioned earlier. Then there’s the auction revenue. And one more thing—if you encounter any difficulties in Half-Ghost City, the VIP Card allows you to bring those difficulties to the City Lord.”

Su Ming: “So as long as I don’t break the rules, I won’t have any difficulties, right? Who would dare to bother the City Lord?”

Guide: “That’s true. But you should also be careful—many people covet VIP Cards. The only condition to inherit a VIP Card is to defeat the previous holder.”

Su Ming nodded. Behind great profits always lay blood and tears.

Guide: “If there’s nothing else, please enter the room yourself. I’m not permitted to go in.”

Su Ming waved her little hand: “Thank you for your hard work. Goodbye.”

The guide left, feeling for the first time that the job wasn’t so exhausting. Usually, the guests were either bloodthirsty maniacs or masters of manipulating hearts, but this one was simple and quite adorable! ʘᴗʘ

Meanwhile, the City Lord was still contemplating his cooperation with Su Lin. He had once been a prince of the Zhu Kingdom. After the kingdom’s fall, he built Half-Ghost City within his own domain, where humans and ghosts coexisted peacefully—that was his wish.

He certainly knew that someone who made Su Lin worry this much must be a member of the imperial family. But he had heard that the entire imperial family had been slaughtered. Who was left?

He had established the VIP Card system to gather surrounding forces, maneuvering among them. With abundant funds, he could both stimulate the economy and have the wealthy and powerful protect Half-Ghost City.

But now Su Lin was about to shatter this peace, and he found that hard to accept.

He had been a collateral branch of the imperial family and held no particular affection for them. His main reason for building Half-Ghost City was to protect his subordinates and the common people.

Looking at the thriving Half-Ghost City, he fell into hesitation. On one hand, the Zhu Kingdom had indeed been wrongfully accused back then, and as a descendant of the Lin family, he had an obligation to pursue kingdom restoration. On the other hand, he didn’t want to shatter this hard-won peace.

By this time, Su Ming had already finished counting the items in the room—18,362 gold coins, countless copper coins (the smallest currency unit in Half-Ghost City, each worth one yuan), ghost beads and beast cores (she mainly stopped counting after the gold coins because she didn’t feel like counting anymore), and an egg that couldn’t be identified as any known species.

Su Ming: “Actually, this amount of gold coins really isn’t much for those wealthy people. I reckon Guo Dong took a batch and left some behind without taking it all.”

Blood Soul Ghost: “Master, what should we do? Is this enough money to buy those twin blades?”

Su Ming: “I don’t know, probably.”

In truth, Su Ming figured the Ghost General would also want to buy them, but she really wasn’t sure whether this money would be enough to secure the purchase.

Su Ming: “But what species is this egg? I can’t tell at all…”

Vermilion Bird: “Master, this egg doesn’t seem to be a product of this world, nor is it an ordinary spirit beast egg.”

Su Ming, confused: “This thing isn’t a spirit beast egg?”

Vermilion Bird: “I’m not certain either, but my memories tell me this thing is not a spirit beast egg, nor is it from this world.”

Su Ming pressed further: “What do you mean?”

Vermilion Bird: “Back then, the Zhu Kingdom was situated at the junction between this world and another world. We Four Sacred Beasts also came from that world—and of course, not just us. Many extremely rare spirit beasts originated from there. For us, you should call us divine beasts.”

This was the first time Su Ming had heard this account, so she let Vermilion Bird continue.

Vermilion Bird: “Creatures born with the ability to speak human language—nine times out of ten—are spirit beasts from there. You call them divine beasts, but in truth, we should be called refugees.”

Su Ming guessed: “Something happened in your world?”

Vermilion Bird: “An endless calamity swept across our world. It was so powerful that we had no way to defeat it, even if all our divine beasts fought together.

“But one day, for reasons unknown, the passage between the two worlds opened. We knew we couldn’t defeat it, so we fled—ran here.

“We discovered that the ancestors of the Zhu Kingdom had mastered a mysterious spatial ghost arts technique and accidentally opened this passage. To protect this world, we four strongest Sacred Beasts remained in the Zhu Kingdom, while the others settled throughout this world.

“But eighteen years ago, the Zhou Kingdom stole our power, allied with the surrounding small nations, and under the pretext that the Zhu Kingdom harbored dangerous divine beasts, launched a war of annihilation against the Zhu Kingdom.

“After we Four Sacred Beasts were defeated, our power was extracted by a mysterious figure, who manufactured a large number of spirit beasts containing our bloodline.”

Su Ming: “You scared me—I thought you all had been running around having children everywhere.”

Vermilion Bird: “Are our morals really that low?”

Su Ming: “Continue, continue, I want to hear more.”

Vermilion Bird: “The formation that we Four Sacred Beasts maintained together with the Zhu Kingdom, which sealed the infiltration from that world, also failed with the fall of the Zhu Kingdom. That world has begun to seep into this one.”

Su Ming: “Strange—so am I a member of the Zhu Kingdom’s imperial family? Otherwise, why would the Four Sacred Beasts have been entrusted to me?”

Vermilion Bird: “That’s not urgent, but at the time there was also a mysterious person who quietly tore open a small crack and diverted the upper-level forces of the Zhu Kingdom. Combined with the Qilin being controlled at the time, the impact on us was too great, leading to the fall of the Zhu Kingdom.”

Su Ming: “Oh my, I was wondering how you all, being so powerful, could lose. So it turns out someone was stirring up trouble.”

Vermilion Bird: “Exactly. But what was strange back then was that the mysterious person should have had the ability to break the seal, yet even now the seal hasn’t been destroyed. That’s quite odd.”

Su Ming: “Could it be that someone is maintaining it?”

Vermilion Bird: “That shouldn’t be the case. Only with the combined strength of us Four Sacred Beasts and the upper-level forces of the Zhu Kingdom could we barely maintain it. For anyone else, it would be very difficult.”

Su Ming: “If you don’t mind me asking, what was your strength level at the time?”

Vermilion Bird: “In order to maintain the seal, our strength could never reach the Ancient God Realm. Our normal state was Peak Grandmaster Realm, but when unleashing our full power, we could reach the Ancient God Realm.”

Su Ming was dumbfounded. The Ancient God Realm had never been seen anywhere in the world, yet these four could all unleash power to that level. It was hard to imagine how much damage the Qilin had inflicted on them back then…