ACSP: Chapter 198: Something happened to the Zhao family in the Magic Capital!
For the past few days, the sky hanging directly over the ruins of Jinghai City has been continuously shrouded in a faint, oppressive gray haze.
The heavy, metallic smell of stagnant blood mixed with the bitter tang of scorched earth completely permeates every single alleyway, street corner, and plaza in the city. These are the grim, indelible traces left behind by the previous cataclysmic battle. Although Jiang Chen had ruthlessly efficient orders put into motion to fully dispose of and incinerate the mountain of corpses immediately following the battle's conclusion... because far too many living souls had been brutally slaughtered here by the invaders, this nauseating, suffocating stench still heavily clings to the air, refusing to dissipate for a long time.
In order to properly oversee the complex logistics of rebuilding Jinghai City, Jiang Chen has been completely overwhelmed with administrative work these past few days. The sheer volume of managerial tasks has left him without a single spare minute to personally enter any Secret Realms to farm resources.
Of course, the primary practical reason behind this hiatus is that there are simply no high-level Secret Realms anchored anywhere within the immediate geographical borders of Jinghai City anyway. Even if he possessed the free time and desired to dive into a dungeon, the local landscape couldn't provide a venue worthy of his strength.
Fortunately, his systematic looting of the invading vanguard had yielded a massive windfall. He currently holds a more than sufficient stockpile of high-tier resources on hand to continuously open a staggering 20 Silver Chests every single day, a luxury that has successfully prevented his personal leveling progress from falling behind the curve.
And the dense influx of raw experience points harvested from those daily Silver Chests did not disappoint his expectations.
Just this morning, a surge of pure energy rippled through his network as he finally broke through his current cultivation bottleneck, leveling up by another full stage. This specific level increase did not merely bring him a massive, sweeping upgrade to his baseline physical and spiritual attributes—it also triggered a monumental milestone, allowing him to successfully unlock the next evolutionary tier of his absolute ultimate defense: [Susanoo].
With this breakthrough, his spectral warrior can now be directly manifested and stabilized all the way up to the Fourth Stage.
The [Susanoo] in this specific state can be confidently classified as the absolute strongest, most devastating form achievable before transitioning into the mythical Perfect Susanoo. This stage fundamentally revolutionizes the technique by completely materializing the lower body and legs of the ethereal titan, a massive structural upgrade that drastically enhances its battlefield mobility and tactical speed.
Furthermore, the layered, crystalline armor plating wrapping around the titan's frame has been reinforced to an absurd degree, significantly elevating its defensive power against high-tier S-rank destructive skills.
The only structural drawback to maintaining this colossal form is that the continuous, draining consumption of his innate Ocular Power is vastly greater than before. However, for a monster of stamina like Jiang Chen, this specific level of spiritual expenditure is still well within a threshold he can easily bear without breaking a sweat.
...
And during these exact few days of intense physical reconstruction... a massive, unprecedented storm of controversy was rapidly brewing across the global network as well.
The absolute second the local communication towers were repaired and the network signal inside Jinghai City was fully restored, Jiang Chen had his communication officers compile and post a massive wave of raw footage, data, and photographic evidence detailing every single horrific crime committed by the East Island contractors online.
After being allowed to ferment across the global digital space for a brief window of time, the horrifying evidence triggered a massive explosion of public outrage. All kinds of explosive voices, debates, and structural condemnations rapidly materialized across forums, social media channels, and underground websites spanning every continent.
Virtually overnight, East Island became the absolute target of universal public criticism, fiercely reviled and condemned by countless factions and nations worldwide!
On the open internet, a relentless, non-stop torrent of viral posts criticizing and exposing East Island's past and present atrocities emerged one after another. Seeing the momentum shift, many independent organizations and minor factions who had previously suffered under their boots even chose this exact moment to publicly leak classified records of historical crimes the island nation had committed in secrecy.
[EXTRA! EXTRA! The East Island demons have officially reappeared in our world, and this shameless, parasitic nation is starting to stir its fangs once again!]
[SHOCKING EVIDENCE! East Island actually initiated an unprovoked war of aggression, wantonly slaughtering tens of thousands of ordinary, defenseless citizens in the Great Xia Kingdom. How is such subhuman behavior any different from rabid beasts?]
[Those East Island dogs simply cannot change their historic habit of eating excrement. They were the primary culprits behind the bloody territorial wars of the past era, and now they are greedily coveting other peoples' ancestral land again. They are a literal disgrace to the human race!]
[Please never forget our history! The catastrophic ocean pollution crisis from those years was also entirely engineered by East Island's corporate greed!]
[To launch an unprovoked invasion means the systematic slaughter of an entire civilian city; those Dongdao Contractors are truly completely devoid of human traits!]
As these highly charged, factual posts flooded major global forums and geopolitical channels one after another, East Island's international reputation and diplomatic standing plummeted completely to rock bottom in a matter of hours.
However, what has caught many international analysts and intelligence agencies completely by surprise regarding this massive digital fallout... is East Island's reaction.
Throughout this entire global public relations execution, the high command of East Island has maintained a rare, deeply unsettling, and absolute silence.
Even the usually hyper-aggressive, ultra-nationalistic East Island netizens who historically flooded major forums to spam propaganda and attack rival factions have completely vanished; not a single person from their domain has stepped forward to type a single word of defense or counter-argument this time.
When things deviate so drastically from standard human behavior, there must be something deeply sinister brewing beneath the surface.
Because of the eerie, collective silence of the entire East Island digital population, a vast number of seasoned strategists and powerful independent guild masters across Blue Star have sharply realized that something is fundamentally wrong.
If a faction commits an atrocity of this magnitude and, upon being exposed to the entire world, doesn't even bother to offer a single fabricated excuse, paint a narrative, or explain their actions, then there is only one terrifying logistical possibility remaining:
The other party must be actively brewing a counter-strike or a military operation that is infinitely more terrifying than the first.
This chilling realization has caused a massive wave of anxiety to ripple across neighboring neutral territories, with many starting to worry deeply about the current geopolitical isolation of the Great Xia Kingdom. Looking at the silent island across the sea, they can practically feel a world-shaking, apocalyptic storm rapidly approaching the eastern coastline.
...
Meanwhile... safely within the internal forums and localized websites operating inside the borders of the Great Xia Kingdom itself... millions of indignant, red-blooded netizens are also mass-gathering online, furiously discussing the tragedy of Jinghai City and debating their nation's next move one after another.
The domestic forums within the Great Xia Kingdom were a chaotic, roaring furnace of pure fury, righteous indignation, and classic internet black humor.
[Damn it, these Dongdao Contractors are really going too far. Brothers, grab your weapons, let's fight them to the bitter end!]
[Screw them, let's settle old and new scores together this time and sink East Island directly into the trench!]
[I'm going to burn down their Nanga Shrine and then take the head of His Majesty the Emperor to use as a literal toilet!]
[Nice, bro, lend it to me when you're done!]
[I'll go third after you're done...]
[Holy crap, are the two people above acting out Stephen Chow's 'Hail the Judge'? Do you want me to lend you half a pancake as a prop?]
[To be entirely honest, if East Island were really erased, I wouldn't be happy about it. After all, then there wouldn't be any "action movies" left to watch.]
[Brother, East Island's adult videos just repeat the same few moves over and over and aren't even good anymore; why are you so obsessed with them?]
[Exactly, the domestic premium section is already very awesome now, with all kinds of plot-heavy versions available. If you want to watch high-quality stuff, you can go to our underground forums and find them; I guarantee you'll benefit a lot.]
[Damn it, we literally have real-life Shadow Clones and Transformation Techniques now, and you guys are still stuck at home watching action movies?!]
[If I don't go to hell, who will? I'm currently stationed in an East Island red-light district, resisting Japan with my own physical body, one against nine (Click to view paid video link)!]
[...]
...
Whenever Jiang Chen managed to scrape together a few minutes of free time over the past two days, he would casually pull out his phone and browse through the trending online posts to gauge the public sentiment.
Just as he had mathematically calculated... East Island had thoroughly become the universal target of public criticism. The entire nation was united in a wave of raw, burning condemnation against the invaders' horrific war crimes. Some hot-blooded, high-level young fighters living in the peripheral coastal cities had already begun mass-assembling weapons and forming independent militia guilds, actively preparing for an all-out, cross-sea war with East Island.
"It seems the psychological groundwork has matured. The second step of the grand strategy can officially begin implementation..."
Looking at the chaotic, fiercely nationalistic content of the forum threads, the corners of Jiang Chen's mouth curled up into a cold, satisfied smile. He tapped the screen and turned off his phone, fully preparing to stand up, step outside, and mobilize Li Dala to orchestrate their next major military move.
Unexpectedly, right at that exact fraction of a second... his sharp peripheral vision caught a red-hot, flashing trending headline tightly sandwiched right in the middle of the main forum page.
[BREAKING NEWS! The patriarch of the Magic Capital's absolute number one superpower faction (the Zhao Family) has mysteriously passed away. The Zhao Family has completely fallen apart into factions, a brutal civil war has officially erupted, and the sovereign ownership of the coveted Sharingan Secret Realm may change hands at any moment!]
"Damn it... internal strife at a time like this?" Jiang Chen's brows furrowed tightly, a layer of cold irritation washing over him.
He honestly couldn't comprehend the absolute short-sighted stupidity of these aristocratic syndicates. The Zhao Family was an legendary, ultra-elite clan where every single bloodline member uniquely possessed the inherited traits of the [Sharingan]. Functionally acting as the absolute lords of Shanghai, almost the entirety of the Magic Capital's massive economic resources, hidden vaults, and high-tier dungeons were squeezed tightly within their palms.
It was no exaggeration to say that within the borders of Shanghai, the Zhao Family was an untouchable local tyrant—a solitary, apex power that no independent guild or merchant alliance ever dared to offend.
Logically speaking, with such a flawless, god-tier starting position and a monopoly on the most versatile dōjutsu bloodline in existence... the Zhao Family's structural development and scaling should have been the most stable and dominant in the entire empire.
No one could have ever anticipated that a catastrophic internal coup would actually trigger right when the country was most vulnerable. The savage Contractors from East Island were already literally knocking at the southern gates of the kingdom, yet these narcissistic, greedy family elders still possessed the relaxed heart to engage in a bloody internal turf war for a throne. It was simply the pinnacle of unreasonable absurdity.
"Since you've managed to play an absolute winning hand so incredibly poorly, I suppose I'll just have to step in and personally reshuffle the entire deck for you..."
After a brief moment of calculated contemplation, Jiang Chen decisively unlocked his phone once more, dialing the secure lines of Li Dala and Ronan, who were currently stationed outside supervising the heavy machinery and construction workers clearing the rubble.
Before long, the heavy doors of the command post were thrown open, and Ronan and Li Dala came running back into the office in a breathless hurry.
Thanks to the high-tier medical resources and physical stabilization protocols over the past forty-eight hours, Ronan's previously severed hand had now been flawlessly reattached and bound to his chakra network. After spending the last two days executing fine-motor drills and calibrating his muscle memory, his baseline combat power had fully recovered to its absolute, lethal peak.
"Boss, is there some kind of critical emergency that you couldn't just detail over the encrypted comms? Why did you have to pull us off the reconstruction sites so urgently?" Li Dala asked impatiently the absolute millisecond he crossed the threshold, brushing dust off his armor.
Jiang Chen stood up, his dark eyes radiating an icy, unshakeable authority as he spoke indifferently: "A severe structural collapse has just occurred within the ranks of the Zhao Family in Shanghai. I plan to take the vanguard and personally head over to the Magic Capital to take a look."
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