The Lord’s Empire

No matter if it was the restaurant or equipment shop, business was booming. Zhao Fu was naturally quite happy to see money flow into his pockets like water flowing through a river.

At the same time, he caught the attention of a few large families and factions. There were 6 large families in the Forest of Horrors, and they all wanted to make the Forest of Horrors the base for their development.

Because everyone was sent to random places in the Heaven Awaken World, the large families could only gather small groups of people in the Forest of Horrors, while their remaining forces would settle wherever they had been spawned, with the family’s main development being in the Forest of Horrors. They all chose this place for different reasons: some thought that the competition would be weaker here, others thought that it would be a good place to develop, and others were here because the successors of their families had been spawned here.

These 6 large families were the Jiang family, Zhang family, Cao family, Yan family, Hua family, and Zhou family.

There were also 3 large factions created by players: the Holy Light Group, Soldier Alliance, and Demon Tree Gang. Based on their names, they seemed to be the largest factions in each of the 3 main cities. There were also some smaller factions that weren’t worth mentioning.

Some of these factions were created by large financial groups working together in the real world, while others were formed purely by friends meeting in the Heaven Awaken World. Others were formed by a group of thugs led by an ambitious boss.

Before, they had taken the rumor hinting that Zhao Fu was a Legatee as a joke, but they now started to have suspicions. Putting aside whether Zhao Fu really was a Legatee or not, it was clear how powerful he was by the fact that he had such an abundance of Blue grade equipment that he would sell them, and he even possessed Silver grade equipment and Refined Martial Souls.

Even though opening 2 shops seemed quite simple, Zhao Fu had become a great threat.

………………………….

In the real world, Zhou Jie was kicked to the ground by his father. “You unfilial son, all you do is make trouble for me. Look at what you’ve done – we can’t tell how powerful the man you angered is!”

Nearby was a young man who was a few years older than Zhou Jie. He was the Zhou family’s Eldest Young Master Zhou Ming.

Zhou Ming watched his little brother be kicked a few times before walking over and pleading on his behalf, “Father, that should be enough. Little Jie has learned his lesson, and the situation is not as bad as you think. We have not developed irreconcilable hatred with that person, and now is the time for us to be developing our forces. The Jiang family has already obtained a shop, and they have been earning at least 20 gold coins per day just from selling clothes.”

Zhou Shizhi coldly harrumphed and stopped kicking his son. Following this, he started to discuss some matters with Zhou Ming. Zhou Jie’s face was ashen as he slowly raised his head and looked at his father and elder brother with a trace of hatred in his heart.

Elsewhere, Zhao Fu was standing in front of the equipment store and hanging up a sign that requested for materials of Silver grade or above. Anyone who provided such materials would be able to trade them for items from within the shop. Right now, Zhao Fu did not lack Blue grade equipment at all, but he didn’t have many pieces of Silver grade equipment.

Right now, there were five Grey Dwarves in Rhode Village who could forge Silver grade equipment. Because Wang Dawu, the Great Qin Village’s Blacksmith, had not forged for as long as them, he was only at the boundary of being able to forge Silver grade equipment.

After taking care of matters here, Zhao Fu took some money and went to see what other properties he could buy for his remaining 7 lots of land. He took the money with him back to the Great Qin Village and then headed to Soldier Forest.

This was the first time that Zhao Fu had come to Soldier Forest, and after arriving, he found that it was similar to Holy Light City. It had large streets crammed with people, and the only difference was that Soldier Forest was much more military-like.

Zhao Fu went to the real estate office and bought another lot of land. Zhao Fu planned to build another Westfall Restaurant here and started to recruit people. However, he decided not to open an equipment shop here because he was barely able to meet the demand of the market in Holy Light City.

Zhao Fu did not want to sell any of the bronze concentrate equipment because he did not want to make his opponents too strong. Only when he had many pieces of Silver grade equipment would he sell them.

After ‘befriending’ Soldier Forest’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Zhao Fu obtained another 10 guards, and he prepared to open a restaurant. Afterwards, he also went to Demon Tree City and did the same thing.

Right now, he had 3 Westfall Restaurants, and after a few days, they began to bring in a steady revenue of 500 gold coins per day. Adding on an average 600 gold coins per day from the equipment shop, Zhao Fu now earned more than 1,000 gold coins per day. What’s more, this was with a shortage of equipment – if he could maintain a stock of equipment, he would be able to continuously earn this much money.

Since the profits were so great, Zhao Fu decided to create a second team to explore the passages in the region of bones. The team composition and skills of the team were the same as the first team: there were Goblin Warriors, Infantry, and Archers, and Zhao Fu supplied them with Holy Light type skills.

What was strange was that Li Wen and his team had not finished exploring even a single passage after such a long time. It was not because Li Wen was incompetent but because the passage was simply too long. Zhao Fu had only found the original passage due to the ground caving in, and part of the passage had been buried. As such, he had no idea just how long the passage was or where it led to.

Now that Zhao Fu had so much money, there were many things for him to consider. The first thing was the matter with the energy stones. It was a pity that he could not find a mine; each of the 3 main cities controlled a small energy stone mine each, and they were able to produce 300-400 energy stones per day.

Just these energy stones alone would cost a massive amount of money. 1,000 energy stones cost 10,000 gold coins, and who knew how many he would need in the future?

In order to achieve his God-Refining Plan, Zhao Fu decided to go all out. He took with him Snow Fox fur from the Snow Fox that one of his teams had killed in the Forest of Horrors not long ago and headed out.

The Snow Fox was an Elite grade creature. Its fur was as white as snow and incredibly soft, and it did not have any foul smells. It was Blue grade, and if one was to turn it into equipment, it would be worth perhaps 500 or 600 silver coins. However, if it was turned into a luxury item, it would be worth many times more, and it could perhaps be worth thousands of silver coins – such things were liked by rich women.

Zhao Fu took the Snow Fox fur to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Because the largest providers of energy stones were main cities, Zhao Fu directly went to talk to the Minister of Internal Affairs.

The Minister had been paying attention to Zhao Fu’s matters over the past few days. Zhao Fu was now quite famous within Holy Light City, and many upper-class members of society mentioned his name. Of course, they weren’t interested in his equipment shop because most of them had Gold grade equipment. Rather, they were very much interested in his restaurant. The food there was incredibly eye-catching and mouth-watering, and these upper-class members of society were also humans and had to eat. The Westfall Restaurant’s 12 private rooms and 4 VIP rooms were all usually booked out.

As such, the Minister’s attitude towards Zhao Fu had greatly changed over the past few days. Now, he no longer acted all high and mighty, and he instead started addressing Zhao Fu as ‘brother.’ Zhao Fu found out that the Minister’s name was Qin Nan, and despite looking very chubby, he was actually a Stage 1 expert.