Martial Peak

“Yes, Young Master Qu. More and more people keep arriving, a long night of sleep brings about many dreams.” Immediately after the first man spoke, his sentiments were echoed by the other teams gathered around. People quickly expressed their support and agreed to let Qu Chang Feng come up with a plan.

Qu Chang Feng himself seemed to enjoy this feeling of being respected, so after hearing all of this, his gloomy complexion finally eased and he put on a serious look and said, “Naturally we must take action. As long as everyone works together to break this barrier, the Soul Cleansing Divine Water will be within our reach.”

“I agree. When we first found this place, my Junior Brother and I tried to break this barrier but soon discovered it was incredibly hard, I’m afraid it can’t be broken with just two or three people. Our only option is for everyone to work together!” A beautiful young woman nodded with a smile.

“Then what are we waiting for? As long as Young Master Qu coordinates all of us to attack together, I don’t believe so many of us will fail to break this damn barrier,” A man with a large beard snorted as he took out a hammer artefact, clenching it tightly as he waited for Qu Chang Feng to speak, as if he was a loyal soldier waiting to be commanded.

Qu Chang Feng smiled slightly, giving everyone present the impression a light spring breeze had just blow through. At this moment, he finally restored his usual flamboyant temperament and spoke, “Breaking this barrier won’t be a problem, it’s only a matter of time until we can obtain this Soul Cleansing Divine Water, but before we act, this Qu feels we should first discuss how to allocate it.”

When he said this, many people frowned secretly.

Before they even broke the barrier, Qu Chang Feng wanted to distribute the benefits. This clearly made many feel uneasy.

However, no one raised any objections. If Qu Chang Feng became angry out of shame, the consequences weren’t something any of them could bear. Heaven Battling Union looking for trouble with people who had done less wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, and everyone they targeted ended up quite miserable.

“Then… how does Young Master Qu think we should allocate this Soul Cleansing Divine Water?” The beautiful woman who spoke before smiled sweetly, batting her eyes slightly as she asked, displaying a fresh and charming appearance.

She didn’t want to seduce Qu Chang Feng as she knew that she could not win over this Heaven Battling Union Young Master with her skills. She just wanted to show as much goodwill towards Qu Chang Feng in hopes he would be more generous to her when dividing up the spoils.

Unfortunately for her, Qu Chang Feng turned a blind eye to this before speaking in a smooth tone that illustrated he had already come up with a distribution plan, “There are eight forces represented here, so this Qu suggest we divide this pool into four parts.”

“Four parts?” The beautiful woman frowned slightly but quickly resumed smiling, “If we divide this pool in four, how do we distribute it?”

Qu Chang Feng proudly declared, “My Heaven Battling Union is not unreasonable, we only want one portion!”

Hearing this, everyone secretly let out a sigh of relief while also feeling a little surprised. Qu Chang Feng being this generous was far beyond their expectations; all of them had thought Qu Chang Feng would demand half of it, so him asking for a quarter was a pleasant surprise.

This proposal had to be accepted! No one here was stupid enough to refuse.

Everyone nodded strongly, not raising any objections.

Seeing that everyone agreed to his proposal, Qu Chang Feng was satisfied, his smiling and laughter growing gentler.

“Young Master Qu, how do you suggest we divide up the remaining three parts? I hope you can provide us with your guidance so that after we break this barrier, everyone will have a set of rules to abide by. All of us live together on Shadowed Star and none of us should act shamelessly about such matters, inviting public anger upon us,” Another person said. This person was head of the force with the smallest number of members, three in total. That was also why he allowed Qu Chang Feng to decide the allocation of the Soul Cleansing Divine Water; otherwise, if it turned into a free-for-all, his team would undoubtedly obtain less.

As soon as this person’s words came to an end, many people stared at him fiercely.

However, Qu Chang Feng just nodded politely, “This is also true. If no one has any opinion, how about this Qu decides how the remaining three parts are divided?”

Although some people were reluctant, who would be stupid enough to stand up and question Qu Chang Feng’s status at this time?

All of them could only hold their noses and accept the situation while hoping Qu Chang Feng wouldn’t be too partial to anyone. After all, some forces here had good relationships with Heaven Battling Union.

Disregarding how everyone else was thinking, Qu Chang Feng laughed and said, “That being the case, this Qu won’t be polite. En, of the remaining three parts, this friend can take one. Do you have any complaints?”

To everyone’s surprise, Qu Chang Feng first addressed the lone, stern-faced male cultivator who was standing to the side.

“Ah…” Exclamations sounded as everyone was filled with surprised, staring at Qu Chang Feng in shock before turning to look at the stern-faced man, wondering what Qu Chang Feng was thinking.

To them, it was obvious Heaven Battling Union could acquire one quarter of this Soul Cleansing Divine Water, but the stern-faced man and Yang Kai were both all alone and clearly didn’t have the ability or qualification to acquire any of this treasure.

They had long ago subconsciously excluded these two people entirely!

How could they have imagined that Qu Chang Feng would suddenly give an entire quarter of this pool to a lone man; that was how much his entire Heaven Battling Union took.

Was there some kind of trick behind this?

Many people had doubts in their hearts whether Qu Chang Feng was planning to let this person take away a quarter of the Soul Cleansing Divine Water and then rob him of it later, but if that was really his plan, why not give it to that lone First-Order Saint King instead? Why would Qu Chang Feng choose this Third-Order Saint King?

Wasn’t that just asking for trouble?

Despite all the confusion around him, the stern-faced man didn’t show any surprise at all, as if he had expected this situation from the beginning, simply nodding as he bluntly said, “Sure!”

He spoke calmly and confidently, without the slightest hint of thanks or apology.

This made the leaders of the other forces gathered here change slightly and frown slightly as if they had just thought of something, none of them raising any objections to Qu Chang Feng’s distribution plan anymore and instead readily agreeing.

At that moment, the look everyone gave to this stern-faced man changed, fear and dread flashing across their eyes.

Yang Kai’s brow furrowed as well as he guessed the origins of this man. However, he wasn’t sure of his guess; after all, he hadn’t been on Shadowed Star for very long and didn’t know much about its customs and local conditions.

Next, Qu Chang Feng went on to distribute the remaining half of the Soul Cleansing Divine Water among the assembled forces on the scene. The distribution was based on the number of people each force had, with those having more people obtaining more of the pool while those who had less receiving less. This distribution was fair and simple, not showing favour to anyone, not even the beautiful young woman who had flirted with him. This naturally caused her to frown as a layer of frost seemed to cover her expression.

Out of everyone present, the only one who wasn’t assigned anything was Yang Kai.

No one was surprised by this though because they had long ago excluded him. It would be strange if Qu Chang Feng really assigned anything to Yang Kai.

After the distribution of benefits was decided, many cultivators glanced towards Yang Kai. Some people showed ridicule and disdain while others showed sympathy. Everyone had different opinions on the matter, but no one spoke a single word for him.

Yang Kai just stood there indifferently without saying anything.

He actually found this whole situation somewhat amusing. He wasn’t even sure this golden pool of water was Soul Cleansing Divine Water and putting hope on others to understand this was no different than hoping a pig could explain it to him.

These people didn’t know anything at all about Soul Cleansing Divine Water yet before the barrier was even broken, they had decided how to divide it up.

Yang Kai really wanted to see how they were going to take away this Soul Cleansing Divine Water!

Once this treasure left the pool where it had been formed, it’s purifying, and cleansing properties would immediately disappear. If the Soul Cleansing Divine Water was taken out of the pool, all they would get is a pile of rich spirit liquid rather than Soul Cleansing Divine Water.

So, no matter what kind of extravagant and colourful words Qu Chang Feng spoke, and no matter how everyone was staring at him, Yang Kai didn’t show a flustered look.

Since nothing could be brought out from this pool, what good was a distribution plan? In the end, it would be necessary to absorb this Soul Cleansing Divine Water here and now, so their distribution scheme was meaningless, and once everyone realised this, Yang Kai was confident he would be able to fish some benefits in the ensuing chaos.

Immediately after the discussion about the distribution of benefits concluded, under Qu Chang Feng’s call, everyone began attacking the golden barrier covering the pool.

For a time, various artefacts and Martial Skills bombarded the golden dome above the pool, causing numerous ripples. To ensure that no complications arose due to delay, everyone put forward all of their strength.

As soon as everyone began attacking, individual strengths and weakness were revealed. The cultivators at the Third-Order Saint King realm all had relatively similar strength, but Qu Chang Feng’s performance stood out. The fact that he was using an Original Grade High-Rank artefact, a long bronze axe, also increased the difference between him and the others present. Although with his Third Order Saint King cultivation he could not display the full strength of this artefact, every strike he made would cause the golden dome to tremble fiercely.

It came as no surprise that Qu Chang Feng had such skill though; after all, he was the first talent of Heaven Battling Union and his reputation had spread across Shadowed Star. It was also normal for him to possess such a powerful artefact.

What was surprising though was the stern-faced man didn’t seem to have any powerful artefacts at all, only wearing a pair of plain black gloves on his fists as he repeatedly punched the barrier.

However, this calm and relaxed attack actually carried no less power than Qu Chang Feng’s.

Seeing this, the crowd confirmed their previous conjectures and understood why Qu Chang Feng had willingly given this person a quarter of the Soul Cleansing Divine Water.

After understanding this, everyone focused on exerting the power of their artefact and Martial Skills and avoided paying attention to this person.

Qu Chang Feng, on the other hand, seemed to want to compete with this stern-faced man, and knowing an outright confrontation was out of the question, he had settled on who could make a bigger impact on this barrier instead. As such, Qu Chang Feng pushed his Saint Qi even harder, increasing the ferocity and effect of his attacks with each blow.

But no matter how Qu Chang Feng urged his Saint Qi, the stern-faced man’s attacks remained unchanged and he showed no intention to strengthen them at all, as if he didn’t place Qu Chang Feng in his eyes at all, making Heaven Battling Union’s genius disciple so frustrated he nearly spat blood.

It was incredibly vexing to Qu Chang Feng, like he had struck a blow with all his might but only hit cotton.