Chapter 65: Locomotives

In the Kong family, Kong Donglai faced his brother Kong Donghua’s mangled body, and his fury surged! Kong Donghua was not just a brother; he was one of the few talented practitioners in the Kong family, and now this ‘genius’ brother lay in a ‘coffin.’

After simmering in anger for a long time, Kong Donglai wrote a letter to his uncle in Wuyang City, the Grand Master Kong Xiang, while sending his youngest son to blend into the crowd and secretly slip out of Nanyang, heading north toward the Cai Kingdom!

Looking at the map, Kong Donglai’s expression turned fierce: “Li Yulong, Li Xian, Li Liang, Brilliant Star Group? Hmph, this time I will leverage the power of the Cai Kingdom to eliminate An Yang. Once An Yang is destroyed, I can take advantage of its fall to eliminate Li Yulong!

“Zhi’er, come here!”

Kong Yingzhi approached in his hemp clothing, saying, “Father.”

“Zhi’er, you will lead five hundred elite troops, all of whom must be at least at the eighth layer of Qi Refinement or in the Foundation Establishment stage. Lie in wait beside An Yang. Seize any relevant information, talent, and technology at the opportunity! Also, keep an eye on Li Xian and Li Liang; make sure they are silenced!”

“Understood!” Kong Yingzhi immediately began assembling his troops. All the elite soldiers disguised themselves and mixed with the crowd during the day, swiftly leaving the city.

From this point on, no one knew of the Kong family’s schemes or the actions they were undertaking. Of course, many were eager to watch the spectacle—regardless of what the Kong family did, people were just interested in the excitement!

On the evening of the third day after Li Xian killed the Golden Core expert, news of the event had already spread through Wuyang City.

Upon hearing this, Wang Chuan of the Wang family burst into wild laughter. “This kid has guts! I haven’t even settled the score for Wang Ming’s death yet, and now he’s offended the Kong family. Hah, I wonder if this is part of a plan or just reckless action?”

Beside him, Wang Yuhe, Wang Ming’s father, had a cold expression. “I believe the battle must have been intense; otherwise, Kong Donghua’s body wouldn’t be in such a state. The situation must have been desperate.”

Wang Chuan looked at the bright spring light outside but spoke with calculating intentions: “Regardless, the situation is fascinating now. Keep an eye out and see if there’s any activity from Kong Xiang lately. Hmph, as long as that old man dares to do anything he shouldn’t, I’ll topple him.

“Then I’ll take the opportunity to rise to power, surely becoming one of the Three Dukes. At that time, I’ll make the Li family suffer!”

“Big Brother will definitely succeed! I’ll take care of it right away!” The power of hatred is great; Wang Yuhe had already begun to descend into darkness after the pain of losing his son.

Not only was there scheming here, but also among the First Prince, Second Prince, Third Prince, Noble Concubine, and His Majesty the Emperor, among others. In short, this matter was truly significant! The Great Xia Nation had very few Golden Core experts, and reaching the Golden Core stage was the primary goal of countless practitioners—powerful, noble, and with a lifespan of five hundred years! It’s easy to imagine the huge impact of a Golden Core expert’s death.

“An assault crossbow killed a Golden Core expert? What a powerful assault crossbow!” Shangguan Guang, Shangguan Yong’s father, put down the intelligence report and sneered, “Could this assault crossbow have been made from dragon bones? Did Kong Donghua just stand there foolishly without dodging?”

On the second day after the tendering was completed, Li Liang personally ran to Qingyun Valley to find Li Xian.

“A rare visitor! Brother, you finally decided to leave your little patch of land to come see me,” Li Xian said with a grin.

Li Liang was immediately enraged at Li Xian’s words. “Don’t joke with me. Tell me, how could you kill Kong Donghua? You could have just crippled him! Now that he’s dead, we’re at odds with the Kong family for life! Father is only a Second-Rank official, while Kong Xiang is already a First-Rank. Do you know how much trouble this will cause for Father?”

Li Xian sighed, “Brother, do you know how many people have been targeting your little brother? Did you not see those greedy eyes? To avoid offending more people, I had no choice but to offend one family severely.”

“That’s absurd logic!”

“Absurd or not, it’s still logic. Come on, I’ve prepared five thousand sets of stainless steel weapons and armor. Since you’re here, take them away. With these five thousand sets, our elite troops will basically have one each.”

Li Liang was taken aback. “Five thousand sets? Your production speed has increased so much?”

“What’s five thousand sets? The wire issue has been resolved; in a while, producing fifty thousand sets a day will be no problem.”

Five thousand sets of weapons looked impressive. The long, sharp blades and gleaming armor filled the massive warehouse, stacked five layers high. It was as if a celestial army was about to descend, shining brightly.

“Great!” Li Liang exclaimed. Although this wasn’t his first time seeing such shiny armor and weapons, he still felt excited each time; especially after hearing about the exorbitant prices of stainless steel weapons in this tendering process—his younger brother was indeed ruthless.

Five thousand sets of armor and weapons were not a small number. However, as soon as news of the new weapons and armor reached him, Wang Jian led his five thousand elite troops directly over. By noon, they were wearing the armor and excitedly chatting as they returned, touching their shiny armor and gazing at the mirror-like blades, grinning with their big yellow teeth.

After several days of commotion, Li Xian finally felt excited again because— the first motorcycle prototype had been completed!

With the engine, bearings, and the assistance of magic, the core problems of the motorcycle were not significant. The biggest challenges were the details like gear shifting and control.

For this, Liu Bin brought a group of people along with some researchers to refine geometry, mathematics, algebra, and quite a bit of basic physics.

“Brother Li Xian is here!”

From a distance, a group of little kids shouted excitedly. These children were the future pillars that Li Xian had prepared, already beginning their education and training. Of course, even children needed to make oaths.

In this celestial realm, swearing oaths was almost a daily occurrence—if one wanted others to believe them or to gain prominence, making oaths had become a cultural custom.

“Uncle, uncle, I want to drive!” Zhao Fei tugged at Li Xian’s sleeve, refusing to let go. Beside them, Xia Qingqing smiled at the two, also taking care of the kids running around.

Liu Bin, however, was quite anxious, constantly sending people to keep the children away. The first experimental motorcycle was still quite dangerous, and he didn’t want any kids to get hurt.

Li Xian picked up the mischievous Zhao Fei and, ignoring his wailing protests, tossed him to Xia Qingqing before stepping forward to observe.

Liu Bin explained from the side, “It uses a three-wheeled support, with the power at the back and the front responsible for steering.

Moreover, to solve the problem of instability in the spirit gathering formation during movement, we have set up multiple different structures of spirit gathering formations for energy supply, using jade to create filtering and adjusting intermediate containers (capacitors).

Technically, because we used mysterious iron wires, the engine has been reduced in size by half again. The engine’s power is four horsepower.”

“Four horsepower? Isn’t that too low?” Li Xian frowned slightly. “I remember that textile machine engines have already reached six horsepower. If we connect external spirit gathering formations, it could even reach ten horsepower.

There’s plenty of space on this motorcycle; we could easily set up several more spirit gathering formations.”

However, Li Xian had long since become a hands-off manager, only offering hints while leaving the rest to others.

Liu Bin opened a workbook and explained piece by piece, “Young master, the spirit gathering formations must be stable to work. During movement, the formations will sway and cause interruptions. This is an insurmountable issue.

What limits the motorcycle now isn’t the engine, but the problems with the spirit gathering formations. We are currently working on improving them, but the results aren’t very good.”

“Spirit gathering formations?” As soon as Liu Bin mentioned it, Li Xian understood. Many formations rely on “communicating with heaven and earth,” and the spirit gathering formation was no exception. The motorcycle would inevitably bump during movement, causing the formations to fail.

“If we want to change this, we must overthrow the current formation system, which would fundamentally reconstruct the path of cultivation!” Xu Ren said, making it clear that this route was not feasible.

Li Xian struggled for a long time before coming up with an idea: “Let’s try using a water suspension device to stabilize the spirit gathering formations. Also, consider whether we could eliminate the spirit gathering formations and use spirit stones to provide energy!

By the way, how is the research on spirit stones going?”

Tang Rong felt embarrassed as soon as Li Xian asked about spirit stones. “Young master, we have some results, but… the outcomes are limited.”

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