The map wasn't just a general overview of their realm; it was a blueprint of the world's secrets. It gave many of the masters around the table a genuine sense of shock, bordering on terror.
How could a boy from a lower realm know the exact coordinates of the Silent Grave hidden clan or the Heavenly Forge islands?
"I didn't write the nas over these dots," William casually pointed at the map he had just finished after spending an entire hour in focused silence. He set the brush down, the ink still wet. "But if there is a place you don't recognise, just ask, and I'll tell you about it."
He wasn't boasting. There were indeed lots of places marked on that paper that even the veteran masters sitting here, n who had travelled the upper realm for dozens of years, didn't recognise.
"How about this one?" one of the elders cleared his throat, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. He pointed a scarred finger toward a tiny, isolated island chain in the northern sea.
"It's the Horned Hornets. You know them, right?" William answered calmly.
His words left a knowing, stunned look on the face of the master who asked. After all, the Horned Hornets were a legendary, terrifying force that had kept its silence and presence hidden for the last couple of hundred years. Most people thought they had gone extinct; William had just marked their current headquarters with ease.
"Then... This spot in the Southern Desert?" Another master was about to ask, his voice trembling slightly, yet the leader raised his hand to stop him and the others.
The leader stared at the map. It was a masterpiece of intelligence that would be worth more than a fortune even in the upper realm. It was a map that could start or end a world war. Still, his mind remained focused on the man behind the brush.
"Why did you draw this map for us, William?" the leader asked, his voice low and dangerous. "What do you want to achieve by showing us all this?"
"As I said," William stood calmly in front of the map he had drawn, the ink now drying. He didn't look like a boy from a lower realm; he looked like a grandmaster of the upper realm. "I ca here to speak about our plans for the future. So, using this map, we need to plan out our next target…"
"Target?!" The leader raised an eyebrow, his voice thick with a mixture of amusent and genuine shock.
William could easily grasp why the man was surprised. In this era of the upper realm, the ti before William's master had eventually ford the great anti-Fox coalition in his past life, the various powerhouses were notoriously fractured.
No matter how famous or strong they were, no matter how well-known and respected they were, the great guilds and forces lived by a code of isolation.
They worked solo, guarding their techniques and territories with a paranoid ferocity. They never thought of joining hands except on the rarest, most desperate occasions.
William understood the underlying logic. The spirit master world was a cruel, harsh environnt where a hand offered in friendship was often a distraction for a dagger aid at the heart. It was a world of and mine. Yet, William intended to change all that. He knew from bitter experience that this isolation was exactly what the Fox exploited.
Back when he had locked himself inside the core and ditated on the general strategy to follow, he had spotted this glaring weakness as the foremost point to solve.
If they didn't unite the anti-fox forces and purge the hidden cancerous ones, they were rely waiting for the Fox to pick them off one by one, like how it happened back in his past life. Now, he was about to take the first step toward that unification.
"We'll remap the world according to new standards," William said, his voice low and cold. "We'll highlight the forces which have actively fought against the Fox and the various dark master forces.
Those are our potential allies. Then, we'll mark the ones who never raised a sword against either. Those who did the forr will be our targets for cooperation. Those who did the latter... They will be our targets for destruction."
"Targets for destruction?!!" One of the elder masters sitting around the circular table exclaid in a voice full of doubt. He slamd a hand on the table, making the wood rattle. "Why? That's madness! Shouldn't we target the known dark forces and that damn Fox first? Why would we waste our strength on neutral parties?"
"To get to the Fox, we need first to extricate the harmful weeds from our own backyard," William responded. His calm words carried a heavy weight of hidden hints and warnings.
"Are you implying that these neutral forces are, in fact, working in tacit understanding with the Fox?!" Another master blurted out, finally voicing the subtle subtext William had provided.
"That's impossible! Take the Grand Gold Guild, for example. They are a well-known and widely respected rchant guild. They've never fought for the dark, but they've never fought for us either. They just trade. Does that lack of participation truly make them our enemies?"
"Indeed," William said, his gaze unflinching.
At this point, he was being entirely straightforward. In his past life, this exact mistake, the one the masters here were making right now, had cost his master dozens of lost battles and the deaths of countless legendary masters and forces. In the upper realm, the neutral-looking forces were, in fact, the most effective spies and traitors.
They weren't overtly evil; they were worse. They were deeply hidden, their treachery cloaked in the respectability of trade and the tradition of loving peaceful lives. They were far more dangerous than any dark master force because they were never suspected.
Their treason always ca at the key monts, foiling grand strategies just as they were about to reach fruition. Because they were well-respected and never doubted by the majority of the world, they had connections in every force, clan, and academy. They heard the plans before they happened, and they whispered those secrets into the Fox's ear.
User Comments
0 comments from readers