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Two years later, Tang Sen returned to Xiling with Xu Shuhui.

By then, Tang Zuo had been promoted to the steward of the second floor of the Steel Bone Tower, tasked with assigning duties.

Upon his official return to Xiling, Tang Sen took up a position in the Battle Hall and applied to establish his own household. He spent nearly all his money buying a mansion next to the Martial Hall.

Initially, he could only afford a single steward, Uncle Fu, and two maidservants, which made the mansion seem desolate.

Since birth, Tang Luo was familiar with the name Tang Zuo because he assigned Tang Sen all the difficult and dangerous tasks, much to Xu Shuhui’s displeasure.

However, Tang Sen saw this differently and was actually excited, knowing that the most dangerous tasks also came with the highest rewards.

He needed large amounts of money and did not want Xu Shuhui to live a difficult life, so he accepted all of Tang Zuo’s assignments and accomplished each task successfully.

So, their wealth visibly increased and due to completing the most challenging tasks, everyone in the Martial Hall held Tang Sen in high regard.

In Tang Luo’s memory, he never saw his father injured, and they would always have meals together when there were no missions.

Having lost his mother at an early age and relying on his younger sister, he felt that their current life was the happiest it could be.

However, just because you do not fight for something does not mean that others would leave you be.

As Tang Luo grew older, and as his younger siblings were born, the fight between Tang Zuo and Tang Sen increasingly heated up.

Tang Zuo was backed by members of the Tang Clan from the First Cultivation Ground, the main branch warriors, and children from several branch families.

On the other hand, those who supported Tang Sen were all warriors from the Battle Hall. The stalemate between the two sides persisted until the year Tang Luo turned ten, when the elders of the Tang Clan made up their minds.

They decided to have Tang Zuo and Tang Sen, both at the pinnacle of the Transcending Mortal stage, fight each other. After all, determining the First Head of the Martial Hall had to be decided by strength, and this decision was approved by the previous Martial Hall Head.

The fight was conducted in a closed cultivation room, with only the elders of the Tang Clan allowed to watch.

Although Tang Luo did not know the details, he was sure that Tang Sen won, because, from that day, Tang Zuo became the head of the Tang Clan’s fleet, leading a large number of warriors to set sail from Xiling and conduct trade in the outer states.

Meanwhile, Tang Sen became the deputy head of the Martial Hall, and two years later, he became the Martial Hall Head at the age of thirty-four.

The Wancheng Treasure Ship represented the most profound assets of Xiling.

This ship was a super vessel built by the Tang and Mi Clans cumulatively over a hundred years. As a commercial city, Xiling had no special products, let alone ores or jewels, it only had two gold mines.

The head of the Tang Clan decided that if they continued to pursue internal development and peace, they would be threatened not only by faraway cities but also by nearby cities like Clear Water. There would be no talk of peace.

So, the two clans decided to organize long voyages to develop trade and military training.

Since they were somewhat wary of each other, they established a pact to jointly build a massive ship for commercial purposes. Although there were gaps between the two clans in Xiling, they regarded each other as brothers once they went up the Lingjiang River and onto the Long River.

They invited a master from the Ou Family in Yuanzhou to design a steel ship for them, which ultimately manifested as the Wancheng Treasure Ship.

The ship’s dimensions were as follows: 124 meters in length, 56 meters in breadth. It had a displacement of 28,000 tons and could carry a weight of up to 21,000 tons. It was a formidable and unmatchable vessel.

The ship had fifty sets of sea wheels and two hundred wheels in total, attaining a maximum speed of forty nautical miles per hour. It carried hundreds of armored soldiers and thousands of elite archers, meeting even the standards for sieging a city.

This marked the first expedition involving the full power of the Tang and Mi Clans.

The Wancheng Treasure Ship set off from Xiling and headed upstream from east to west. It left Lingjiang River and headed south down the Liao River, conducting trades in dozens of cities.

Then, once they left Longjiang River and were 10,000 miles away from Xiling, the Wancheng Treasure Ship suddenly transformed from a merchant ship to a warship, and began to plunder the coastal cities and ships they encountered.

The ship left destruction in its wake; the once-flourishing small cities turned into ruins as several Fierce Realm warriors led the ship’s warriors to plunder defenseless clans.

Gold, silver, and jewels, secret martial art manuals, spirit beasts, and beautiful women.

This steel behemoth carried a crew of demons who came and went like the wind. The coastal cities fell within just a few hours of being attacked, and those centuries-old families were wiped from existence.

Why trade when robbery was faster?

In their first expedition, the return voyage began in less than a year, not because they had met an adversary, but because the spoils of war were too many to fit on the ship.

Upon returning to Xiling, the ship and its crew were hailed as heroes, and they generously tossed their treasures towards the two banks.

Gold, silver, jewels, and ancient artifacts were flung around as if each person had suddenly become a tycoon.

And so, after the first expedition, the wealth of the Tang and Mi Clans skyrocketed.

Why has nobody been able to surpass the Tang and Mi Clans for hundreds of years as Xiling has grown into a massive city with a population of three million? And why do the two clans firmly hold the first two positions in Xiling?

Of course, it is not because the two clans are exceptionally outstanding.

The reason lies in their regular expeditions. As the saying goes, a horse cannot get fat without enough night pastures, and a clan cannot get rich without unexpected wealth.

When the two clans discovered that “trade” was the key to prosperity, they tacitly decided to build a second treasure ship.

What happened next was predictable.

Through plunder and trade, the Tang and Mi Clans grew richer, and the number of treasure ships increased from one to two.

Despite this, every time they engaged in trade, the two clans would set off on their voyages simultaneously. Although the nautical paths had changed, the rivalry between them only intensified.

The voyages took longer and longer, with expeditions that used to be easily completed in a year now taking as long as two or three years.

Each time the treasure ship returned to Xiling, it was the grandest celebration of the city.

Bystanders could see gold and silver being scattered off the ship like waste, and some amber and jewels even being thrown into the Lingjiang River as an offering to the heavens.

The elders of Xiling passed down the tale, stating that when the treasure ship returns, people should stop working and run along the riverbank with the ship —the spoils they’d collect in a day would exceed what they earned in a month of hard work.

And when the treasure ship returned, it was time for the prostitutes of Xiling to exhaust themselves.

The vigorous crew would burst into the brothels bearing bags of gold and silver.

When the treasure ship returned, it was as though Xiling’s whole economy received a boost. Many offspring of the Tang and Mi Clans would establish their own households and many others would indulge themselves in brothels.

The return of the treasure ship had become more than just a grand event for the Tang and Mi Clans—it had become a citywide celebration in Xiling.

Furthermore, according to intelligence, the treasure ship would return in no more than two months.

Even more tantalizing was the news that the spoils of this expedition were unimaginably plentiful..