Book 4, Chapter 226: Given Sweet-Smelling Nectar
Book 4, Chapter 226: Given Sweet-Smelling Nectar
After his conversation with Jenkar, Chen Chuan took plenty of photos near Vakrahn Central City with his camera. Then, he went to the mooring point and got ready to go back to Jibei Road.
His status should have been exposed by now, and the details should have reached the intelligence officers of various countries. This was going to draw plenty of attention, so staying any longer was going to be troublesome.
When he boarded the airship, he had one extra luggage bag with him. It contained the gifts from Jenkar. He hadn’t had the time to check them yet, so he was going to do it on the way back.
Once he sat down in the cabin, the captain came over and bowed to him. “We’ve sent a telegram back, Mr. Chen. The airship has also been fully maintained. We’re ready to take off. Should we leave now?”
“Let’s,” Chen Chuan answered.
The captain nodded and went out to make arrangements. The entire airship crew, including the captain himself, was incredibly impressed with Chen Chuan.
As members of the National Martial Artists Council, they had escorted other martial arts masters. They had left the country plenty of times and knew that international cases were often complicated and difficult to handle.
A little counterintuitively, when martial arts masters took care of such cases, they seldom used force.
They treasured their bodies a lot and wouldn’t fight unless absolutely necessary. This was the case everywhere. The ones who were the busiest were actually the negotiators and the intelligence officers. Brute force was only used as a form of protection and intimidation. This meant that a lot of time was required to solve most problems, which was why they had gotten certain things ready for the usual proceedings.
To their surprise, in less than two days, Chen Chuan solved the matter, and that was including the time he took for his personal matter. Chen Chuan didn’t leave behind too many complications either. His efficiency was something the captain had never witnessed before.
Those who had no experience in such things would think that this was normal, but they could tell that Chen Chuan was different from the other martial arts masters. He had no qualms about using force and displayed great strength and decisiveness during the operation. The fact that he managed to defeat two martial arts masters in Veshahan was proof of that.
The captain sighed. In certain situations, force was the most efficient and direct solution, but few people used it.
The captain strode back to his office to write a report with a lot of motivation. Today, he wasn’t going to write it numbly based on the template.
After the airship left the mooring tower, it started rising, and Chen Chuan looked away. When he came here, he had found the scenery around him a novelty, but now, he simply thought that everything looked the same.
So, he decided to check the gifts instead. He grabbed the luggage bag, removed the protective bag around it, opened the zipper, and took the items out to place them on the table.
Most of the space was occupied by a desk mat. It was hand-felted with the wool of sheep from the merged space. There were colorful irises and lotus flowers woven into the mat.
He also received two sets of traditional Veshahan clothes. One was for a boy, and the other for a girl. Jenkar even included shoes, hats, gloves, and scarves. These were all stereotypical Veshahanese gifts for foreign guests. The clothes were all hand-stitched by master seamstresses. Even if Chen Chuan didn’t wear them, he could treat them as beautiful collection items.
Then, he took out a can of milky-white nectar that let out a tempting scent. It seemed like a calorie-dense nutritional fluid from the merged space.
Veshahan’s merged space was unable to provide Vakrahn Central City with much, so most of the things inside it were used for Jenkar’s training. Him offering this to Chen Chuan showed his sincerity.
Aside from these were some souvenirs. Jenkar packed jewelry, decorative knots, gemstones, and other things. In the end, he even found an artifact.
Chen Chuan was quite surprised and picked it up to take a look.
It was a small, golden ball full of tiny holes inside a hollowed, round, silver ornament that hung over a small silver incense burner and let out a comforting fragrance.
Jenkar was very considerate and stuck a note on the incense burner to tell him its rank and function.
He checked it and found that it was a Class Four artifact. Apparently, once the incense burner was lit up, it would increase the success rate and efficiency of whatever he was doing.
It might look like a normal thing, but the “whatever” in the description was everything from paperwork to practicing secret techniques. It didn’t matter how difficult the task was either. It would provide the same benefits, which made it special.
However, it was a consumable item. After a while, it would be gone. Even so, it was a good item.
Speaking of which, he had three artifacts now. The other two were the spine from Talu, and the eggshell from Yang Yuncheng. They were no longer useful to him, though.
The spine could manifest a monster. By fighting against it, he could train and get some other benefits. But now, it could no longer bear his strength. The moment he used a little more strength, he was kicked out. As for the eggshell, it could replenish his stamina and mental energy before, but now, it was pretty much useless.
However, even if he couldn’t use them, his team could. After he went back, he intended to use the Fu-Mu Entity’s domain resources to train his team and help them get stronger.
Once he packed everything, he poured the can of nectar into a glass and started reviewing the two fights.
How should he put it... He felt like neither Atamur nor Saybal had much fighting experience.
He didn’t mean that they had never fought before. Every martial arts master had to go through countless fights to reach the Fourth Limit. What Chen Chuan meant was that they had seldom fought against other martial arts masters.
It hadn’t been too long since Chen Chuan had become a martial arts master himself, so strictly speaking, he hadn’t fought against many martial arts masters either, but he had killed martial arts masters before. He didn’t think that Atamur and Saybal had the same experience.
That was normal. For martial arts masters from small countries, it was rare to get into such bad conflicts with other martial arts masters. This was clear from the fact that they didn’t fight each other, even though they knew that it would bring them great benefits. Besides, Veshahan couldn’t provide them with enough resources. The calories they got weren’t enough for their training, so how could they possibly have the energy to fight and spar against other martial arts masters?
Honestly, they weren’t weak. Wei Guochan had been even weaker, which was entirely due to him lacking resources even more. However, due to Atamur and Saybal having little experience in fighting against other martial arts masters, Chen Chuan was quite confident that if the three of them fought, Wei Guochan would win.
Only if Atamur and Saybal gained more experience would the situation change. After all, they were quite advanced in their paths of the other form.
Chen Chuan took a sip of the nectar. Hu Kan was right. Fighting nonstop was the best method to stay on top and have sharp battle instincts. They could only stop after reaching the Longevity Stage, which allowed them to stay at the peak of their condition without having to eat.
It was the stage he needed to aim for next.
Two days later, the airship arrived at the checkpoint and maintenance station in Longyou Road. Everyone except for Chen Chuan got out for a short break, while he handed the jade piece to a government officer who came into the airship to take it from him. The government officer shook his hand, thanked him, and left in a hurry.
Chen Chuan had examined the jade. Aside from the unique nature of the materials, he couldn’t sense anything else. Either there was a special method to use it, or it could only be used after all the pieces were gathered together. However, that had nothing to do with him.
They stayed there for a day because Longyou Central City was in charge of giving him the rewards for his mission. He needed to wait for them to be ready.
Since he was a martial arts master, he had to submit an application to enter Longyou Central City. This procedure would take a few days and waste too much time, so he stayed in the airship and didn’t go anywhere. Once a government official gave him his ingredients, Chen Chuan went back.
Four days later, he returned to Jibei Road’s Central City.
All the parties reacted to his return, especially the municipal government. Many of them became nervous, because Chen Chuan was like a blade waiting to cut into their necks.
The two politicians who gave the orders to attack Chen Chuan were gone. Even though the municipal government felt lucky that they had gotten away with using them as their scapegoats, they couldn’t help but think about whether they would end up the same way some day.
***
Back at the Union’s base in White Bird District, Mr. Chi received news that Chen Chuan came back. He immediately picked up his phone to call a messenger. “Please tell the master that he’s back. We’ll continue watching him and paying attention to his actions.”
“Do you know why he had left?” the messenger asked.
“I don’t have any information, but it might be a mission from the country, so it’s hard to get information about it. Still, we should know about it in a few days,” Mr. Chi reassured.
It wasn’t so easy to hide the tracks of a martial arts master, especially if they had a great impact on the place they visited. They should receive the details after some time.
However, there was nothing they could do for now aside from waiting. His higher-ups hadn’t given him any instructions on what he should do next.
***
After the airship returned to the city, it stopped at the mooring point in Chen Chuan’s manor.
Chen Chuan shook hands with the captain and said goodbye to him before getting out and walking to his manor.
He first went to take a shower and changed into another set of clothes. Then, he brewed himself a cup of tea, rested a bit, turned on his Realm Pass to reply to the messages his friends had sent him, watched some indie and mainstream shows, and checked the situation at the Defense Bureau.
It had made adjustments to the deputy directors based on Chen Chuan’s request. Due to Lu Gao’s past record of selling the Resolution Department’s information, he was put into detention.
The two idle deputy directors had been transferred away. Chen Chuan already had replacements for them. One was Luo Xiucheng. He was a deputy director of the Resolution Department, so he could be considered to have gotten a promotion. The other was a military officer from the World Ring Defense System, though he had yet to come into office.
The deputy directors were going to be the ones in charge of running the Defense Bureau. The central government didn’t expect him to do anything specific, since he was a martial arts master. They would much rather he stay away from the daily operations.
The Fu-Mu Entity sent him a piece of news. The safety policy panel was going to have a meeting at the end of the month, and he was to attend it.