Chapter 142: One Month Had Passed, and the Sanctions Began
Before long, both the Divine Elephant Nation and the Little Sakura Nation received the ultimatum.
The Divine Elephant Nation’s original notice had been sent from the Balibali border to Huaxia’s Northern Frontier.
So the Northern Frontier naturally sent its reply directly to Balibali City as well. This matter could not casually be escalated to a national-level dispute.
Otherwise, the Bloodsea Military District would have had to report it further up.
At the headquarters of the Balibali Military District, the noble officers of the Divine Elephant Nation were holding a ball.
When the message arrived, the noble officers all smiled.
One of them flattered Kapil, saying, “General Kapil truly is brilliant.”
“With nothing more than a small scheme, you dragged the Little Sakura Nation into the water as well. You’ve saved time and effort while putting enormous pressure on Huaxia.”
“But Huaxia really has gone mad. They actually dared to issue a provocation against us.”
“How should we reply?”
Kapil smiled smugly and said, “There is no need to respond. The Little Sakura Nation will come to us on its own.”
“After all, their population is nothing like ours. If even one Kurozawa dies, that is still a slap in their face.”
After Kapil said that, the room immediately erupted in laughter.
Compared to the massive population of the Divine Elephant Nation, every other country except Huaxia seemed almost insignificant.
And Huaxia had always given people a mysterious and gentle impression.
They had spent all these years quietly developing, avoiding, as much as possible, the constant friction and struggles among the nations.
No one knew their true strength.
But as time passed, people had begun to question what Huaxia’s true strength really was.
After all, they had lain low and developed for so long. If they were truly powerful enough, how could they not invade others?
How could they not expand their territory and seize more of the Abyss?
So in recent years, some countries had begun eyeing Huaxia’s land with open greed.
And the sort of probing the Divine Elephant Nation and the Little Sakura Nation were carrying out against Huaxia had become more and more frequent over the past two years.
In truth, the reason the Bloodsea Military District had dared to make a private decision and let Li Mu stir things up like this was precisely because Huaxia itself was gradually waking up, and this too was a kind of test directed at the outside world...
“That Kurozawa Ranzi fool actually thought he would really get four times the reward.”
“What a joke.”
“All we have to do now is wait for the Little Sakura Nation’s response.”
One of the officers asked doubtfully, “General, can the Little Sakura Nation really threaten Huaxia?”
Kapil said, “That is how they have always presented themselves.”
“The power of their oni-gods is indeed mysterious and formidable. That part should be true.”
“And even if the Little Sakura Nation itself is not strong enough, standing behind them is the Great Eagle Nation.”
“You still look at the master before beating the dog. Would Huaxia really dare provoke those bloodsuckers and those werewolf warlocks of the Great Eagle Nation?”
The other officers all nodded.
Although the Great Eagle Nation had very little historical depth, after the great upheaval it had been one of the nations that handled things with relative calm.
After the Abyss erupted, they used advanced technology and genetic serums to greatly enhance the Power of Faith of all Great Eagle Nation citizens.
One could say they had created gods out of thin air, forcibly plundering several major systems from their own “myths.”
Vampires, werewolves, witches, the Holy Church, and so on.
After so many years of development, and with the support of genetic serums, they had become a tremendous deterrent.
It was just that Huaxia had never taken these “Artificial Gods” seriously.
After hearing Kapil’s words, all the officers relaxed, and the ball resumed.
But over the next few days, something interesting happened. After receiving the news, the Little Sakura Nation made no statement at all.
They neither condemned Huaxia nor demanded the release of Kurozawa Ranzi.
Nor did they make any move toward the Divine Elephant Nation.
It was as though they had never received any ultimatum in the first place.
The Divine Elephant Nation indirectly sent reminders to the Little Sakura Nation.
The Little Sakura Nation still acted as though it saw nothing.
That made the Divine Elephant Nation somewhat uneasy.
They could not tell whether the Little Sakura Nation was secretly brewing some plan to retaliate against Huaxia, or whether it was simply sitting atop the mountain and watching the tigers fight, willing to sacrifice one Kurozawa Ranzi and a bit of wounded pride under Huaxia’s bullying, so long as it could leave the Divine Elephant Nation roasting over the fire first.
After all, the Divine Elephant Nation had promised to act against Huaxia after one month.
But Huaxia, in return, had moved its own deadline forward by two days and declared that it would act against them first.
The side that truly had reason to panic was the Divine Elephant Nation, not the Little Sakura Nation.
Thus, a strange equilibrium came into being.
Huaxia was waiting for an apology from the Divine Elephant Nation.
The Divine Elephant Nation was waiting for the Little Sakura Nation to join hands with it.
And the Little Sakura Nation was pretending to be deaf and stupid.
Time slowly passed within that peculiar balance.
The Divine Elephant Nation still had some backbone. It did not go begging the Little Sakura Nation again.
Nor did it apologize to Huaxia.
Instead, it quietly gathered strength, preparing itself for the coming conflict with Huaxia.
Tiger Roar Camp, meanwhile, was developing at high speed as well.
On the second day after Kurozawa Ranzi and the others were captured, all the herbs needed in Li Mu’s Blessed Field Art for the Ghost-Axe Destiny Pill matured.
Li Mu harvested them immediately and refined all the Destiny Spirit Crystals in his possession into Destiny Pills.
They were:
【S-Grade Nine Heavens Thunderclap】
【S-Grade Black Witchcraft】
【S-Grade Divine Elephant Brute Force】
Li Mu gave Nine Heavens Thunderclap to Zhang Zhiwei.
The reason was simple: he himself truly had no use for it, and each person could only possess one Destiny Talent.
If Li Mu used it himself now, then if he later managed to obtain an SSS-Grade Talent, would he not be unable to use it?
Besides, his own Growth-Type Talent should already be at the S-Grade in theory.
He simply had not yet advanced the Heavenly Immortal Art to Mid-Grade.
The moment he reached Mid-Grade Heavenly Immortal Art, his Talent would rise to S-Grade as well.
And once his cultivation reached Yellow Rank Ninth Grade, the Heavenly Immortal Art should advance to the Great Heavenly Immortal Art, at which point he ought to gain an SSS-Grade Talent.
Then, with one SSS-Grade Talent of his own and another SSS-Grade Destiny Talent seized afterward, the two SSS-Grade Talents together might just barely amount to one little toe of the Great Heavenly Immortal Art...
Terrifying beyond words!
There was also one small reason why Li Mu did not dare keep Nine Heavens Thunderclap for himself.
He had obtained the system only because his Talent had been swapped away.
Now, the chances were extremely low, but in the very unlikely event that his original Talent returned to him, who knew what effect that might have on the system or on his Growth-Type Talent? There would be no place to cry then.
Just to be safe, Li Mu decided it was better to feed it to someone else.
If Zhang Zhiwei took that Destiny Talent, then with Golden Spears and Iron Steeds in his hands, the result would only become even more fearsome.
It would also make him a better support for Li Mu.
As for the 【S-Grade Divine Elephant Brute Force】, Li Mu gave it to Lu Chenfeng.
There was no way he could hand that one to anyone else.
And the 【S-Grade Black Witchcraft】 went to Song Chuhe.
That guy was relatively weak in direct combat. But as a sort of mage, lurking in the rear and quietly stirring up trouble, he was very much in his element.
Charging headlong into battle, on the other hand, was not for him.
By the fifth day, Li Mu’s Jade-Pure Bone-Cleansing Pill finally came out of the furnace.
Over those five days, Kurozawa Ranzi and the others, the experimental subjects, had gone berserk from time to time.
The effects of the berserk state were still tremendously powerful.
But each time they came out of it, they were left extremely weak, and the group had already been tortured into wretched half-human, half-ghost states. Great patches of their hair had turned white!
However, after one of them was fed the Jade-Pure Bone-Cleansing Pill, that person was suddenly able to control the timing of the berserk state freely, the feeling of pain disappeared, and his hair stopped turning white.
Then another full six days passed.
Kurozawa Ranzi and the three Divine Elephant Nation men who had not taken the Bone-Cleansing Pill died directly inside the room.
The other four Divine Elephant Nation men, the ones who had taken the Bone-Cleansing Pill, all survived. Not only that, they grew more and more energetic, and their strength improved enormously.
That made them deliriously happy.
And then Li Mu had them killed.
At that point, the side effects of the Corpse Dissolution Flower liquid had been perfectly neutralized by the Jade-Pure Bone-Cleansing Pill.
After a round of voluntary testing among the soldiers, those soldiers successfully obtained the ability to enter a berserk state.
Li Mu immediately diluted the Corpse Dissolution Flower liquid on a large scale and began distributing it equally, free of charge!
As for himself, he did not drink a single sip.
There was simply no need.
From then on, the soldiers of Tiger Roar Camp used the Chase-and-Evade Game to train their agility, earn points, exchange them for pills, and then strengthen themselves even further.
As for Li Mu, he went to inspect the location Kurozawa Ranzi had revealed.
There was no resource development zone there at all.
That meant the Divine Elephant Nation officer had lied to Kurozawa Ranzi as well.
But Li Mu was not in a hurry. Once he beat the Divine Elephant Nation into submission, whatever resources there were would sooner or later become his anyway.
So during those days, Li Mu stopped scouting for that resource.
Instead, he threw himself into slaughtering monsters for Triumph Points.
At the same time, he flew to the Divine Elephant Nation camp and then even deeper beyond it, confirming the locations of the other Divine Elephant Nation camps.
Over the course of that little less than a month, Li Mu completely mastered the positions of all five of the Divine Elephant Nation’s camps.
He also grasped their approximate troop distribution.
At the same time, he had Song Chuhe draw up an utterly ruthless plan.
In the blink of an eye, twenty-four of the twenty-five days Li Mu had promised were already gone.
Early that morning,Tiger Roar Camp was brightly lit.
All the leaders of Tiger Roar Camp had gathered inside the command post...