After he sent away the people with all kinds of intentions on the birthday banquet, Gu Bai was finally able to reclaim the quietness he’d long desired. The four unworldly beautiful female servants officially started their job, their services covered all directions, and were free of mistakes and covered all the details. This allowed the fake City Governor, who had been training hard for many years, and had been dealing with the majority of the agenda, to finally receive the privileges that were worthy of his status.
However, Gu Bai didn’t let his guard down. In fact, he told the Intel crew, who had been secretly gathering information of nearby Wu Zhen, to temporarily cease all activities. Yeap, since Gu Bai became the City Governor he hadn’t only trained all kinds of male and female subordinates, but he had also arranged an An Wei Ying [1]. Before, this thing didn’t have a name, it was only a group of assassins dedicated to carrying out dirty tasks, that couldn’t be seen by people.
After Gu Bai took control over it, although they still carried out dirty tasks that couldn’t be seen by people, at least Gu Bai had better moral standards. He didn’t bully nearby residents for no reason. Back then, Tian Du Cheng’s greatest financial and authoritative powers weren’t controlled by the City Governor. So the subsidiary parties were filled with chaos, no one had a clear idea on what they’d done. But after Gu Bai took over the ownership of those powers, those subsidiary parties began to clean-up slowly.
So what were the people who used to be assassins doing now? Other than the unavoidable assassinations and murders to avoid information leaks, at all other times, they continuously trained new Intel crewmembers and quickly gathered the information of all of Wu Zhen that were within a thousand miles radius from Tian Du Cheng. All of those acts were just to hide Gu Bai’s attention to the protagonist.
Everything about the protagonist was a secret, so of course, Gu Bai wasn’t going to give the protagonist special attention. This was to prevent people with ill intentions from noticing his attention to him. So, the report scroll of a youngster with Dao Tian Wu Ti and high potential, was brought back on the Family Tree Record Scroll of the Qi Quan Family’s Family at the Town of the Blue Goats, and had been carefully raised by the family, was only being treated like an extremely ordinary report scroll, which Gu Bai put down after he took a quick look.
Gu Bai had always kept the habit of reading report scrolls, in all those years of being a City Governor. He had a decent understanding of all major Wu Zhen and in the dark, he had been observing the protagonist’s life track. Although every time he mentioned the protagonist, he only spoke in broken sentences, but Gu Bai still knew that the protagonist still lived the same life as described in his novel… the storyline hadn’t changed at all, and that was all he needed.
But, at this point in time, it was actually the most important moment for the protagonist to turn his life around, from a salty fish to a winner in life. If the protagonist accidentally discovered any suspicious trace… Gu Bai wasn’t willing to let all the hard effort he had put into this matter go to waste.
After all, a maniac was always hard to deal with, and it was also hard to understand their thought process. Things like “provoking the protagonist’s sensitive nerves”, Gu Bai, who called himself an intelligent person, was never ever going to do things like that! Otherwise, what if the protagonist included his Tian Du Cheng as one of the targets when he sought revenge on society?
Gu Bai spent two days and two nights in his secret room, he thoroughly thought through all the things he had done so far. After confirming that he hadn’t made a single mistake that would irritate the protagonist, he had been able to relax a little. The following year would be the most crucial timeframe, after he’d thought about it for a little while, Gu Bai passed down his orders, demanding the city regulations proposed in the past must be enforced and monitored, in a much more strict and thorough manner.
For example, all beggars within the City needed to be introduced to a job, and the person that introduced the job, must treat those beggars with a manner that was gentle and kind, like spring’s breeze. If they really couldn’t work properly, then they would be sent to the shelter for beggars, every day they would be given three buns, and they could live there until they died naturally.
For example, for any non-local travelers, regardless of their wushu practitioner division, the people within the city must not look down on any of them.
For example, people with high status within Tian Du Cheng couldn’t abuse their power, nor could they use their powers to abuse others. If they had conflicts with commoners, or if the City’s residents have conflicts with outsiders, then they could all go to Si Fa Tang [2] where all were treated equally and fairly. Si Fa Tang was monitored by Xing Tang [3], which was directly managed by the City Governor.
For example, wushu practitioners couldn’t disturb residents at their own will, but commoners also needed to respect wushu practitioners.
For example, refugees that came from the outside world were all to be sent to the center shelter for refugees and treated appropriately.
In short, there were all sorts of benefits, treatments, and all kinds of high quality and professional services. They all served the same purpose, which was to ensure that commoners and the weak had enough living space in this big environment controlled by the rules of the jungle, where wushu practitioners were treated like kings.
Obviously, when this regulation had just been proposed, Gu Bai had encountered a certain degree of obstruction, but under the deterrence of Gu Bai’s power, and his persistence, the regulation still got enforced. And when Gu Bai officially took control over the City, the enforcement of those regulations became much smoother. And to avoid infringing the rights and benefits of some people, the majority of the resources spent on those regulations were taken out of Gu Bai’s personal treasure room. Of course, all of the City Governor’s treasure rooms were his personal treasure rooms.
Gu Bai said, “I am rich, so I will just view this as doing charitable deeds.”
After all, the reason why Gu Bai went that far, wasn’t because he wanted to make Tian Du Cheng stand out, or a maverick city, but actually, it was because he had to do that, so that he could successfully pass the obstacle of his life.
And ever since then, after many of the higher-ups, like the Elders and Chief Managers, discovered that when the commoners had a certain degree of living space, their productivity increased, and they obtained even more benefits, the opposition ceased. Not to mention that, now that Tian Du Cheng’s City Governor’s reputation had skyrocketed and became the lighthouse of many people’s hearts, many low-ranking wushu practitioners who couldn’t survive in the outside world, ended up settling in Tian Du Cheng, this group of people also became a great source of power for Gu Bai.
But from the very beginning, Gu Bai had never ever thought about all of those things. And so, because the City Governor had again requested the City’s atmosphere to be thoroughly monitored, some people that had been thinking about nasty activities, ceased their movements. This act was almost like the “Yan’an Rectification Movement [4]”, it caused Tian Du Cheng’s entire atmosphere to go a level higher. And Gu Bai trained ever harder in City Governor’s Palace.
Two months later, on an afternoon, as Gu Bai focused his mind on learning a fist wushu, the sound of a special kind of musical instrument echoed from the outside of the seclusion room.
This musical instrument was designed under Gu Bai’s special request. Its sound was a kind of low-frequency sound, which couldn’t be heard by peoples ears most of the time. But to a wushu practitioner at Gu Bai’s level, they were able to sense it and react to it. The instrument’s sole purpose was so that Gu Bai could obtain information about the outside world when he was training in seclusion.
But for safety reasons, this instrument was only owned by three people. Those three were all of Gu Bai’s most trusted subordinates, one of them was City Governor Palace’s Da Guan Jia [5], Qin Xu Bo. Gu Bai knew that Da Guan Jia acted rigorously most of the time, if there was nothing urgent, or special, then he would definitely not interrupt his training. “I’m almost done with this fist wushu anyway…” he thought, and then he swept off the dust on him, stood up and opened the door.
Unsurprisingly, as soon as he stepped out of the room, he saw a handsome young man, with a long and skinny body shape, who stood in front of the door, the man stood straight; with his head laid low, which made him look extremely respectful to Gu Bai. Gu Bai glanced at him, “What’s the matter?” he spoke nobly and coldly.
The highest level of acting cool, was also acting cool in front of his/her most trusted subordinates, on top of acting cool in front of the public. After acting cool for so long, it became a natural habit, and it was also why he always emitted a cold aura.
When Qin Xu Bo heard Gu Bai’s words, he became even more respectful, “Your highness, someone requested to see you.”
Gu Bai spoke without any expression on his face, “Who is it?”
But deep down in his heart, he was quite interested in the person who wanted to see him. But if people knew he met whoever wanted to see him, then wouldn’t the title of City Governor have no value? And that person had been able to make Qin Xu Bo come and report to him personally and interrupted his training.
Qin Xu Bo fully understood the meaning behind the City Governor’s unfinished sentence, and so he immediately spoke, “This person holds City Governor’s personal Yupei, and it’s also the reason for my presence here now.” Gu Bai was totally shocked by Qin Xu Bo’s words.
Yu… Yupei? A little face overloaded with cuteness, suddenly flashed through Gu Bai’s head. Could that person be Xiao Shan…? In that instant, Gu Bai, whose mind-boggled brain cells had remained dormant for a long time, became active.
According to the storyline, the protagonist had probably already become a life winner from a salty fish. Gu Bai remembered back then, when he’d used a lot of gold fingers [6] and allowed the protagonist to take control over all the Big and Small Families in the Town of Blue Goat within a really short period of time. He even became the sole decision-maker for the Qi Guan Family. All of those who had once offended or bullied him, either died from his plots or their Wu Ti got destroyed by him.
Quickly, all Big and Small Families were in the Qi Guan Family’s possession. The protagonist became the Family Master that was worthy of the name, he even took advantage of the ancient Tun Tian Xuan Mang, a unique ability to control a kind of snake voodoo, which allowed him to control the minds of those who opposed him.
The protagonist at the current time frame has already become the pronoun of “die if you oppose me”. And to those of whom the protagonist feel untrustworthy, they were all being planted with the snake voodoo, becoming the protagonist puppets for life. If they ever have an intention to cause harm to the protagonist, then they will immediately get executed.
The protagonist in that current timeframe had already become the pronoun of “die if you oppose me”. And to those of whom the protagonist felt untrustworthy, they were all being planted with the snake voodoo and became the protagonist’s puppets for life. If they ever had any intention to cause harm to the protagonist, then they were immediately executed.
Different than other protagonists that made use of their strong personality or domineering aura to gather servants/subordinates in other novels, useful and non-useful were the only two things that mattered to the protagonist. He would just kill the latter straight away, as for the former, he didn’t need their loyalty, control was the only thing he needed.
You could say, the protagonist had already developed an unbreakable obsession with controlling others, by the time his life went through a complete change for the second time. No matter who the person was, as long as they were willing to be controlled by him, then they could live. But if they refused, then he would come up with all sorts of plots to kill them or turned them directly into his food.
To be honest, at that moment in time, the protagonist hadn’t treated devouring humans as a normal thing to do. It was only after he came to Tian Du Cheng and made a scene at the wedding. He was first humiliated by the gate watcher’s words, then he got irritated by the bright red wedding hall, so he raged and devoured everyone within the City. And from that point onwards… since there was a first time, then there was a second time, and so the protagonist continued down the one-way road that led to becoming the Great Human Devouring Demon.
Now, since Gu Bai hadn’t liked Luo Su Su, of course he wasn’t going to keep Luo Su Su at Tian Du Cheng and marry her. So even though he had done a lot of preparations beforehand, most of them were carried out in case the protagonist was going to enter the City, but Gu Bai believed that the protagonist wouldn’t be visiting Tian Du Cheng at this moment in time.
Maybe after Luo Su Su returned home, she would get married to the protagonist because their marriage agreement was still valid? Well, even if she could only be one of the protagonist’s mistresses, it’s still better than getting devoured at Tian Du Cheng… Anyway, girl, delay the protagonist for as long as you can, if you can play cute and stop the protagonist from coming to Tian Du Cheng, then it would be even more amazing! So don’t hold back, take advantage of your fiancee status. Oh wait, it could even be the charm of the Real · Wife!
So, as a matter of course, Gu Bai continued fantasizing. The story was probably going to be like, Xiao Shan was working stably at a random Family, then suddenly, the protagonist, aka the trouble maker, appeared out of nowhere. He wasn’t the direct heir of the protagonist, so he definitely endured a lot of harassment. Later, he’d recall he met a xiao gege when he was little, and so, he carried the yupei with him and put all his hope into that and the only pathway that still had some hope to save him… Oh dear… poor little Xiao Shan’er… Gu Bai quickly felt sorry for him.
Even though Xiao Gu Shan had only stayed with him for a really short time, but that period of time was a total enjoyment, which Gu Bai rarely had. Within Gu Bai’s heart, Xiao Gu Shan was actually far more important than many other people, even if he had never ever gone looking for him in-person.
So, with an emotionless expression on his face, Gu Bai walked towards the Guest Room at a speed that was neither fast or slow. In there, a person turned around and a smile appeared on his face, “Are you… xiao gege?” Gu Bai’s face tightened up, and his mind was like the raging tide. What the fuck?! Where was the cute shota that we agreed upon?!