155 Starting Gang Wars (1/2)

Gradually, residents of Jade City began to refer to Shangguan Ru and her killers as the ”Kun Society”. Even Master Ru herself did not know who invented this name, however, as this name was already widely known, she had no choice but to accept it.

Everyone in the city was looking forward to seeing how the Tenth Young Master of the Golden Roc Fort would compete with the Fifth Young Master of the Meng clan. Many thought at first that it would be a good show.

As the animosity between Shangguan Ru and Meng Mingshi had built up to a very high level, everyone believed that the Kun Society and the Horned Dragon Society would start a gang war very soon. Gu Shenwei did not spare any effort to make matters worse.

Once he was back at the Stone Castle, he gave a detailed debrief to the Tenth Young Master about the incident over the hiring of machetemen in the Rouge Forest. Shangguan Ru expectedly was furious and wished that she was present at the scene, so that she could personally teach a lesson to that devious scoundrel from the Meng clan who had betrayed her. She felt that under these circumstances, the killing of Bigmouth Liu was justified.

However, because of Lady Meng's objection, Shangguan Ru could not even leave Golden Roc Fort now. The Lady was still worried about the 'evil spirit' in her daughter's body and forbade her from entering South City. Although Shangguan Ru had not had any outbreaks recently, no one was able to confirm that the spirit had been totally removed.

Shangguan Ru had waited for many years to be completely independent and naturally did not want to be restricted. Mother and daughter had a quarrel over this issue.

In the end, Gu Shenwei came up with a solution. He offered Shangguan Ru Tie Hanfeng's residence at North City as her base camp. It was close to South City and was a convenient command center for her to direct her killers and machetemen.

The level of safety at the North City was only slightly lower than that at the Golden Roc Fort and many times higher than that of the South City. Eventually Lady Meng agreed.

Shangguan Yushi kept finding faults with Slave Huan's work. Firstly, she complained that it took too long to hire the machetemen and that Shangguan Fei's team had already long been formed up. Then it was criticism directed at Huan Slave that he only managed to hire old machetemen who were previous of the eldest Young Master. Lastly she devalued the manor at the North City, saying that it was too small and unfit for someone of the Tenth Young Master's stature.

Shangguan Ru was not so fussy and was satisfied with everything. On the first day after leaving the mountain, she summoned all of the machetemen.

51 machetemen entered the North City empty handed and presented themselves in the yard (which was not too wide), for their new master's inspection. They demonstrated a few formations.

Shangguan Ru's performance proved that she was indeed the Supreme King's daughter. She had an air of authority yet meanwhile still appeared to be approachable. Her time at the Iron Mountain camp taught her numerous techniques of socialising with adult men. Hence, after a contest of machete skills, drinking a round of good wine and playing two rounds of dice with them, even those machetemen who despised women the most were impressed and pledged their lifelong allegiance to the Tenth Young Master in a drunken stupor.

After partying for three days, the machetemen returned to the South City along with five killers. Only five remained at the North City, and the Tenth Young Master now had to consider the real problem of survival.

According to the rules of the Golden Roc Fort, a young master would only receive 20,000 taels of silver during his or her first year of independence. If they wanted to earn more money, they had to expand their business in South City. They would have to start from the ground up, but there were tried-and-tested ways to do it.

The first method was to collect protection money. There were many merchants in the South City and everyone of them had to look for one or multiple protectors. The only problem was that most merchants in the city already had people protecting them and there were not many new merchants. If the Kun Society wished for a share of the pie, it would not be easy.

The second was to provide bodyguard and armed escort services. This was a field facing intense competition, and the main rival would be the Golden Roc Fort. Fortunately, there were many cargo owners who were keen on cost savings. Besides, as Tie Hanfeng's disciple, Gu Shenwei could easily get some orders from the merchants in the southwestern area of South City.

The third choice was entering the assassination business, which had once been Golden Roc Fort's main source of income, but now hit jobs were few and far between. Take Shangguan Ru for instance, even she herself did not understand the inner workings of how the business was run.

Shangguan Yushi spent all of her effort on the Tenth Young Master and naturally left the lowly task of earning money to Slave Huan.

Gu Shenwei requested for Maid Lotus, three other killers and the 51 machetemen to follow him. Thus, he began the tough task of setting up business.

There was now a good opportunity up for grabs in the South City. After Shangguan Chui was killed, his Outer Hall organization was disbanded and those merchants under the protection of the Young Master were looking everywhere for new protectors.

These merchants were from all types of industries and spread out across the South City.

The Kun Society entered this market a little late as most of the merchants had already found new protectors. Gu Shenwei did not give up because of this. He got a list of merchants from Tuo Nengya and found out about the standard rates for protection money from the Xu siblings. After he was sure of how to do it, he began bringing his men to visit each merchant to establish contact.

Some of the merchants wanted to maintain the peace. They were willing to pay for extra protection but demanded a significant discount. Others refused to accept the Kun Society's protection and asked them to talk with their new backing.

Most of the time, these new protectors were the Horned Dragon Society.

Gu Shenwei delined to offer the merchants any discount. He only told all the merchants peacefully that Shangguan Chui's business should be given back to Golden Roc Fort and the only people who were eligible to take these business over were the Ninth Young Master and the Tenth Young Master.

He was waiting for a suitable opportunity to showcase his ability.

The chance came soon and the location was at the Blacksmith Village at the side of the city.