Miss Chu’s carriage rattled into Blue Poplar Village, and Ma Wu hurried out to greet her before ushering her straight into Dreamspring Garden.

They uncorked a bottle of red wine and toasted each other before Miss Chu handed a folded newspaper to Ma Junyang.

Blue Poplar Village was so out of the way that news wandered in at a snail’s pace. After reading the headline, Ma Wu felt his eyes go wide with shock.

“The Lu Dongliang who showed up at Qianyue Restaurant was actually Lu Dongjun in disguise?” Ma Wu blurted out in disbelief. “Is this news even reliable?”

“Reliable or not, who cares? The Lu Family is in a jumble already. You’ve been eyeing Paramount Club for ages, haven’t you? Now is your perfect chance.”

Ma Wu let out a crooked little smile. “Even if the opportunity is staring at me, I can’t hold onto it. I simply don’t have the capital for something like that.”

“You don’t have it, but I do. I will provide the money and you will do the work. We will buy Paramount Club together. Come on then, help me decide what price would be suitable.”

When it came to business, Ma Wu’s mind was clearer than anyone’s.

You provide the money, I do the work? After I contribute all the labor, whose business is it? Still yours, isn’t it? In other words, you are trying to trick me into doing the hard work.

Ma Wu had no intention of being the one doing the heavy lifting while someone else pocketed the profit, so he turned her down with a polite smile. “You think far too highly of me. One little village already leaves me exhausted. How would I dare take on a business that enormous?”

Miss Chu tucked her chin ever so slightly, glanced up through her lashes, and locked Ma Wu in a glittering stare. “Young Master Wu, I am sincerely inviting you to join me.”

The truth was that she looked downright frightening like that. Ma Wu lit a cigarette to calm himself. “Miss Chu, I truly don’t think I’m capable.”

The room went utterly still. Wen Hongyan licked her forearm as she prepared to force Ma Wu to cooperate. This was exactly what she and Miss Chu had planned. If Ma Wu said no, they would simply make him say yes.

Knock, knock!

A knock came from outside the private room.

Yang Yanzheng stopped mid-movement, casting a sharp look toward the door. Something dangerous was approaching.

Ma Wu called out, “Come in.”

Zeng Jincheng and Cao Zhigang stepped through the door, each balancing a bottle of wine under one arm and several dishes stacked precariously in the other.

“Master Wu!” they chimed. “Your food and wine are all ready. The poor server outside was trembling so hard we were worried that he would spill everything, so we brought everything in ourselves!”

Ma Wu stretched his hand out and said, “Thank you, both of you. Sit and eat with us.”

The two men agreed with two big, jolly grins… yet not a single backside touched a chair.

Ma Wu popped open another bottle and turned to Miss Chu. “Second Miss, how about another drink?”

Miss Chu’s expression froze. “Settle the matter first. We can drink later. Are you coming with me or not?”

Ma Wu shook his head. “I truly do not have that ability.”

Wen Hongyan glared furiously. “We offered you the easy way, but oh no, that wasn’t enough for you! So now we’ll take the hard way. Ma Wu, today you’re coming with us whether you like it or not!”

“That is not right according to the rules” Zuo Wugang boomed as he strode in from outside. “By principle, the guests obey the host. Our Master Wu is the host here, so he alone decides whether he leaves or stays.”

The moment Wen Hongyan saw Zuo Wugang, she stepped in front of Miss Chu. It was simply the instinctive response of someone from the jianghu when confronted by a stronger opponent.

“Old Zuo, you found yourself a new master so quickly? You embarrassed yourself working for the Lu Family, and now you have come to embarrass yourself working for the Ma Family?” Wen Hongyan taunted.

Zuo Wugang was not angered. “My luck ran thin. I did lose standing in the Lu Family, but Master Wu never looked down on me, and I owe him for that. Anyone who dares touch him will answer to me.”

Ma Wu urged him, “Chief Zuo, it is really not that serious. I am only talking with Miss Chu. Why not sit down and have a drink first.”

Zuo Wugang smiled. “Thank you, Master Wu. I have been sitting all day and I am tired. I only wanted to stretch my limbs a little.”

He did not sit. Instead, he stood beside Ma Wu with a grin, the sort of grin that carried a very clear message. If Wen Hongyan or Yang Yanzheng felt even the smallest itch to start a fight, he was more than happy to help them scratch it.

Would they actually fight?

Wen Hongyan most likely could not defeat Zuo Wugang, and Zeng Jincheng and Cao Zhigang were more than capable of holding off Yang Yanzheng. This was Ma Wu’s territory. If the fight dragged on, Miss Chu would be the one to suffer losses.

Miss Chu might be crazy, but she was not stupid. This was not the place for her to start a fight.

After a long stalemate, Miss Chu’s face grew pale in waves. She rose to her feet and called to Wen Hongyan, “We are leaving.”

Everyone boarded the carriage and left Blue Poplar Village. Ma Wu summoned Little Chuan. “Go to Greenwater City and find out what is happening with the Lu Family.”

The next afternoon, Little Chuan returned. “Master Wu, something really happened to the Lu Family. Everything is in chaos. The old master, Lu Maoxian, beat up Lu Dongjun. That same night, Lu Dongjun led his men to the train station and beat up Monkey Qiu. He even seized a full shipment of Monkey Qiu’s goods.”

“He seized the goods? What goods?” Ma Wu had not expected the matter to escalate this far.

“Food. Grain bound for the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs. The Ridge suffered a disaster and is now facing famine. The Lu, Ma, He, and Chu Families all run many businesses there. Worried that the place would fall into chaos, they kept sending grain into the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs.”

“The Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs is suffering from a disaster? Has this been reported in the newspaper?” Ma Wu felt the matter had come far too suddenly. The autumn harvest was long over. What kind of disaster could have struck the Ridge?

“Not yet, but I heard it is very serious. Many people have already starved to death.”

Ma Wu rubbed his forehead and murmured, “Chu Huaiyuan, if you still dare to covet Paramount Club now, you will be poking a hornet’s nest.”

***

In the He Family’s residence, He Yuxiu tossed her shawl onto the sofa and spat, “Lu Dongjun, that bastard, how dare he seize our goods. I swear I will cut off his balls and feed them to the flies.”

Last night, Monkey Qiu went to the station to deliver goods and was blocked at the entrance by Lu Dongjun.

Lu Dongjun intended to kill Monkey Qiu, but Monkey Qiu had planned an escape route through the station. He took a few minor injuries yet still escaped.

For reasons unknown, Lu Dongjun seized every shipment waiting to be loaded onto the train, including goods from the Lu Family, the He Family, the Ma Family, and the Chu Family.

These goods were grain meant for disaster relief at the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs. It was a major matter for all of Puluo Province, yet Lu Dongjun dared to interfere.

“He is insane, truly insane.” The head of the He Family, He Haiqin, father of He Qing, sat on the sofa shaking his head. Even he could not understand what Lu Dongjun was trying to do.

He Yuxiu straightened her clothes. “I do not care if he is mad or stupid. I am going to burn his mansion down right now.”

He Haiqin stopped her. “Elder Sister, do not be hasty. We still do not know what lies behind this. I will send people to investigate. Lu Dongjun is not a clever man, but he is not foolish enough to go this far.

“Even if he does not fear offending the great families, he should not provoke the people from the Outer Provinces. How was he able to cause trouble at the train station? This must be investigated thoroughly.”

***

That night, all of Greenwater City was in an uproar. The Ma Family and the Chu Family had gathered their men, ready to demand an explanation from Lu Dongjun.

Lu Dongjun waited for them in his mansion, but after two full days of commotion, no one dared to come.

Why did they not come?

The first reason was simple. Lu Dongjun was an eighth-level Martial Cultivator. If he was prepared, anyone who entered his mansion would be marching to their death.

The second reason was that another major power had remained silent, and because of that, the Border Controller made no statement.

Lu Dongjun had taken the goods at the train station, including relief grain paid for with the Border Controller’s own funds. In doing so, he had openly slapped the Border Controller in the face.

Yet the Border Controller did not react at all.

Every great family was left in a state of confusion, and even Monkey Qiu could not make sense of Lu Dongjun’s actions.

At dawn, journalists made their way to Lu Dongjun’s mansion, and he greeted them calmly and agreed to an interview.

“Regarding the grain at the train station, please rest assured. I promise that I will deliver all of the food to the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs. Not one grain will be missing. I will even add my own and double the shipment.”

The reporter looked puzzled. “Mr. Lu, in that case, why did you detain the grain in the first place?”

“Because this is the wrong time to send it,” Lu Dongjun explained patiently. “The Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs is suffering from a plague of insects. The land is crawling with bugs. Several relief shipments were sent earlier. Did it help? NO! The moment the grain was unloaded, the insects devoured all of it. Not a single mouthful reached the people.

“If we delivered the grain over right now, it would only feed the insects. When the people actually need relief, there will be nothing left. How could anyone call that proper disaster relief?”

The Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs had indeed been struck by an insect plague, and a most peculiar one at that.

The culprits were mosquitoes. Not the sort that whined in your ear or nibbled at your skin, but mosquitoes with a taste for grain. They swarmed wherever food was stored, feasting on sacks of rice and wheat as eagerly as other insects drank blood.

No one would have believed it in the past. Mosquitoes had needle-thin mouths, built for sucking, not chewing. Grain was far beyond their abilities, or so everyone thought.

Yet it had happened. Undeniably so.

In the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs, a kind of mosquitos had appeared. These mosquitos had black skin with white stripes. It did not drink blood. It wanted nothing to do with flesh. Grain was its only obsession.

From the moment it hatched, the creature wasted no time. As a larva, it fed solely on water fleas and reached full size in a single day.

On the second day, it sealed itself into a pupa. By the third, it emerged as an adult, took to the air, and immediately set upon sacks of grain with frightening enthusiasm.

Take a grain of white rice, for instance. The mosquito would drill a tiny hole straight into it, ooze an acidic fluid inside, and melt the grain from within. Then it would suck the rice clean, neat and thorough, leaving nothing behind but a hollow shell.

A single mosquito could eat two grains of rice in a day. On its own, that did not sound like very much at all.

However, by the fourth day, the newly matured adults were already mating. And once they did, they wasted no time. Eggs followed immediately. Lots of them. A single mosquito could lay more than a hundred.

On the fifth day, it laid eggs again. Another hundred or so, as easily as before.

At that pace, with a lifespan of roughly ninety days and more than eighty of them spent laying eggs, a single mosquito could produce over eight thousand eggs in its lifetime.

Would all eight thousand survive? Not quite. But nearly eighty percent of them would, which was more than enough.

These mosquitoes were poisonous. From egg to larva to adult, every stage of their lives was toxic. Birds would not touch them. Beasts avoided them. Fish spat them out, and other insects kept their distance.

A creature with no natural predators could only do one thing. It bred like a snowball rolling downhill, growing faster and larger with every turn.

The Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs swarmed with these mosquitoes. They could smell grain from far away. Rice, millet, wheat, corn. Any kind at all. If it was grain, they devoured it without mercy.

The people of the Ridge tried every method they could think of. They used smoke. They used poison. In some places, they even hired Poison Cultivators, whose techniques were capable of killing hundreds of thousands at once.

Did it work? Hardly. For this type of mosquito, the loss of a few hundred thousand meant nothing at all.

In a single village, even if every mosquito was wiped out, countless more would fly in from outside by the next day and devour every grain they could find.

Some villages guarded their grain with the utmost vigilance. They managed to preserve a little and pinned their hopes on the arrival of the twelfth lunar month, believing that the mosquitoes would vanish by then.

However, no one expected these mosquitoes to withstand the cold. When the twelfth month finally arrived, their numbers had barely fallen at all. By then, almost every last grain in the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs had been consumed.

This was the territory of Gourmandism Cultivators. If a Gourmandism Cultivator went even a single day without food, their life would be in danger.

Countless people across the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs had died because of it. In time, this black-skinned mosquito came to be known as the Annihilation Mosquito.

The reporter asked directly, “Mr. Lu, with the Annihilation Mosquitoes raging and people in the Ridge dying every day, do you plan to continue waiting like this?”

Lu Dongjun shook his head. “Of course I will not wait. I will mobilize the full strength of the Lu Family and wipe out these pests within one month.”

Click, click!

The photographer pressed the shutter again and again. The weight of that promise settled heavily in the air.

The great families of Puluo Province had already poured vast resources into this problem and still found no solution to the mosquitoes. And yet Lu Dongjun claimed he would eradicate them within a single month?

The reporter grew nervous. “Mr. Lu, are you the one making decisions for the Lu Family now? Do your words truly represent the stance of the entire Lu Family?”

Lu Dongjun rose and said, “My elder brother entrusted the burdens of the family to me. It is a responsibility he gave me. No matter how insignificant evildoers try to stir up trouble, my brother’s trust in me remains unchanged.

“If something has happened in the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs, the Lu Family will not turn a blind eye. Nor will we send a few carts of grain as an empty gesture and then wash our hands of the matter.

“I must save the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs! I must rescue the tens of thousands who are suffering and starving!

“This is the duty of the Lu Family, and it is my responsibility as Lu Dongjun!”

Click!

The camera captured Lu Dongjun’s resolute expression and unwavering stance.

***

After the reporter left, Lu Dongjun summoned Wan Jinxian.

“Tell me,” he said, “just how reliable is this plan, exactly?”

Wan Jinxian brought over a glass bottle and handed it to Lu Dongjun. “Master, take a look. Not a single mosquito in this bottle survived.

“This is a method I created through great effort. Once a single mosquito is infected, every mosquito that comes into contact with it will die as well. The infection spreads layer by layer. Within half a month, every mosquito in the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs will be wiped out.

“When that time comes, you will be the god of the Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs. The Ridge of Bottomless Stomachs will be your territory!

“At present, the most urgent task is to liquidate all of your businesses in Greenwater City and convert everything into hard cash. We must relocate at once. The chaos of Greenwater City must not be allowed to stand in the way of your rise any longer.”

Author’s Note:

P.S: Lu Dongjun has chosen to temporarily withdraw from the competition in Greenwater City, but will that be a good move?

Salagus is pushing to reach level three and I need more comments and reviews! Can you all leave a review or a comment for me please?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep