685 Turbulent Undercurrents (1/2)

Wang Lu's injuries completely recovered three days later.

However, when he came out of his room, he felt that the whole world had turned upside down.

The first thing that he noticed was the work.

During the three days of convalescence, Wang Lu boldly enabled Hai Yunfan to temporarily substitute him in his work. However, pushing a disciple of Ten Thousand Arts Sect who had always been relatively low-key to the top position with the greatest pressure undoubtedly threw him into confusion.

Because of Wang Lu's excellent performance as the chief planner, more and more work had been handed over to him boldly and confidently by Supreme He Tu. That kind of workload, for any other Elder in Heavenly Sage Hall, they would've long cried out complaints. However, Wang Lu handled it easily—mainly because he was too bold and extremely daring and that he could use the cutting the Gordian knot tactic frequently. Unfortunately, there was only one Wang Lu in Nine Regions. And now, because he was bedridden due to injury recuperation, a shortage of his presence was immediately exposed.

Hai Yunfan was undoubtedly a qualified bureaucrat, unfortunately, compared to Wang Lu, there was still a big difference.

This gap was not necessarily a gap in ability and wisdom—dealing with routine affairs did not require much talent and unique ideas, but more of an accumulation of experience. As Wang Lu's longtime secretary, Hai Yunfan had enough intelligence and experience. What was hard to cope was his courage.

Wang Lu's courage was so formidable that ever so often, he communicated with the high-level Elders of Heavenly Sage Hall, and even so much as directly refuted the reputation of the other party—in any case, he had the backing of the biggest character in Heavenly Sage Hall, Daoist He Tu, so he didn't have to defer to anyone else's status.

However, for Hai Yunfan, even if he multiplied his courage for a hundred times, he would still not dare to do as what Wang Lu did. He Tu favored Wang Lu, but never Hai Yunfan. Those Elders might not dare to do anything to Wang Lu, but they would easily get angry with Hai Yunfan.

Therefore, when handling official duties, Hai Yunfan felt that his hands were tied. Many things could not be decided at all and had to be pushed by him onto Wang Lu who would later recover from injuries in a few days. Even so, there were still a lot of work that could not be pushed for later, which made Hai Yunfan incessantly complain, and during which, he inevitably made mistakes.

Standing in Wang Lu's position, any mistakes that Hai Yunfan might make could lead to catastrophic consequences. But fortunately, the time was right for him, so in the end, he passed through the crisis without any mishap.

The so-called 'time was right' referred to the excellent achievements of the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals in these past three days.

After the one-on-one Jindan Stage level Challenge, seven more competitions were held one after another in the next three days. There were cultural competitions and martial competitions, of which, the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals won six of them. One of them was Yuanying Stage level one-on-one fight. In that fight, the Fourth Elder of Spirit Sword Sect Zhou Ming came on stage. With one sword strike, he inflicted a serious injury toward the Yuanying Stage level Flesh Massacre and split his already damaged human-skin-apron into two halves.

This fight almost made the people of the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals burst out. Previously, the victory in Jindan Stage level Challenge depended upon Wang Lu's frequent clever tricks, but the victory of this Yuanying Stage level fight was clearly based on Zhou Ming's strength! That dazzling sword light easily tore the defense of Flesh Massacre. No matter how much the sea of corpses that he put out, he could not prevent his defeat.

Although Zhou Ming showed very obvious symptoms of exhaustion after the fight, during the fight that lasted for around thirty minutes, Zhou Ming was on a roll, which mesmerized everyone.

The Union of Ten Thousand Immortals actually had people who could rely on their strength to defeat the Earth Immortal in the fight! This was truly incredible!

Of course, by this time, people seemed to unanimously exclude the Number One Jindan in Nine Regions, who obviously always crushed everything thrown at her, from the category of human beings.

The revelry caused by this victory was enough to cover up some slight mistakes in Hai Yunfan's work. Thus, when Wang Lu recovered from his injuries, Hai Yunfan could finally wipe out his cold sweat and hand over the seal that symbolized the position.

After taking over the seal, Wang Lu saw a lot of urgent and even outdated official duties, and the many troubles caused by Hai Yunfan's improper handling of affairs.

In regard to this, Hai Yunfan naturally felt quite sorry—although he was somewhat dissatisfied with Wang Lu's forced arrangement of this work. Nevertheless, the mistakes were accumulated under his hands, so he did not want to shirk away from the responsibilities.

However, Wang Lu had already anticipated this early on, so he just patted Hai Yunfan on the shoulder and comforted him, ”Being alive is good.”

Hai Yunfan didn't know whether to laugh or cry, thinking that, ”Did you expect me to make terrible mistakes in these three days and then sacrifice myself heroically? Knock it off, if something truly bad happened, I would just push the blame on you, roll up my sleeves, and leave. You're single, so you have no responsibility, while here I have a wife.”

However, on the other hand, to be alive was indeed good. Although he had only been in power for three days, Hai Yunfan had given a deep impression to many Elders, but through the good and the bad, nevertheless, they remembered him. This was undoubtedly a new door for Hai Yunfan, who had gradually felt his cultivation life tedious.

After taking back the authority, Wang Lu quickly began to clean up the accumulated mess left by Hai Yunfan. However, when he really began to look carefully at the files of the past three days, he could not help but frown.

”Little Hai, what's all this about?”