Chapter 4409 — The Grand Gathering Opens

In less than three minutes, Wu Chengtian had been beaten black and blue. In the chaos, someone had torn his clothes to shreds—no one could say who—his hair was a tangled mess, and he looked so pitiful, so utterly wretched, like a man who had been savaged within an inch of his life, that the whole crowd doubled over laughing, nearly splitting their sides.

"Brothers, sisters, go easy on me, will you? Keep it up and I'll call the cops!" Wu Chengtian protested, the picture of injury. Fortunately, he was an external-path cultivator and couldn't actually be beaten to death, and of course none of them were truly trying to do him in—but he looked so utterly humiliating that if someone snapped a photo and posted it, he'd never be able to show his face in public again...

"You deserved it! Who told you to sit on military intelligence? Holding back news this important until now—completely unreliable!" They all cursed and scolded him in turn; not a single one pitied him.

It had been nearly a full day since the package arrived. Any normal person would have spoken up about it immediately, but not Wu Chengtian—he'd bottled it up until this very moment. If that didn't earn him a beating, what would?

"I only mentioned it a little late. It's not like I actually forgot. What's everyone so worked up about?" Wu Chengtian scratched his head, speechless. Ever since the package arrived, his attention had been fixed entirely on Central Express, his mind consumed with what tricks might lie behind it. In fact, if not for that sudden flash of inspiration just now, he really might have forgotten all about it...

"A full twenty-some hours—and you call that 'a little late'?" The others snorted in contempt, then paid him no more mind and gathered in a circle, barely able to contain their excitement. "Come on, come on. Let's hurry up and figure out how we're going to write our reply to Wei Zhao and the others."

"Simple enough. Everyone writes their own letter, we put them all together, and send the lot. Done," Fatty Lai suggested.

"Yes, yes—one letter each, as long as you like, write as much as you want. It's decided: I'm starting with fifty thousand words!" Ying Ziyu declared with great ambition.

"Fifty thousand words? Ziyu, sweetheart, you think you're writing a novel?" The crowd burst out laughing.

"Exactly. Fifty thousand is way too many—that's a huge stack of paper. Central Express might not even agree to deliver it. I say thirty thousand is about right," Xu Shilan said, dead serious.

Everyone nearly fainted. Thirty thousand words was still a hefty stack—how was that any better than Ying Ziyu's fifty thousand?

And there were so many people present! If every single one of them wrote thirty thousand, that would add up to several hundred thousand words altogether. How thick would that be on paper? Central Express would probably lose their minds.

"Thirty thousand is still too much. Let's be realistic, everyone. If we really churn out hundreds of thousands of words, never mind whether Central Express will even agree to ship it—even if Wei Zhao receives it, he'd have to go into seclusion for days just to get through the letters..." Qiu Lingshan couldn't help laughing.

"Exactly. Sister-in-law Lingshan is the one talking sense." Everyone nodded in convinced agreement, then asked, "So what do you think the upper limit should be?"

"Well now..." Qiu Lingshan thought it over very seriously for quite a while, and finally said slowly, "How about twenty thousand words?"

Good grief! The whole room collapsed in a heap, every face caught between laughter and tears. After all that back and forth, it turned out even she measured things in tens of thousands of words?

"I can't help it. It's been over a year since we last saw him. There's just so much I want to say..." Qiu Lingshan stuck out her tongue, embarrassed.

A whole year and more—all that had happened in that time, how could ten thousand words ever suffice? And women were emotional creatures besides; whatever happened, they always wanted to share it with the man they loved. Even Qiu Lingshan was no exception.

Over the matter of how long these letters should be, they went back and forth, one chiming in after another, debating enthusiastically in their little group for a full hour before they finally managed a grudging consensus. Then each fetched paper and brush, found a spot at random, and began writing furiously, until the whole scene felt exactly like the tense hush before a major exam.

As for what these characters would actually end up writing—that would only be known once Wei Zhao received it on Cloud Terrace Island. Of course, there was also the chance he'd never receive it at all: for instance, if the letters they produced, gathered all together, proved simply too heavy and too thick, and Central Express refused to ship them...

Cloud Terrace Island, South Continent, the Demon Cold Sea.

Demon Cold City, already a bustling place, was today more crowded than ever. No mystery why—the long-anticipated South Continent Escort Guild Assembly was finally officially opening today.

Though it was called an escort guild assembly, which at first hearing sounded like it had nothing to do with the vast majority of people, in truth the great escort guilds, within the perpetually chaotic waters of the South Continent, occupied a status far beyond that of ordinary logistics organizations.

Lacking any unified, powerful official authority, the many escort guilds, beyond their core duty of guarding cargo, largely doubled as the keepers of order across the many seas of the South Continent. Their very existence served as an indispensable deterrent to pirates and every manner of petty ruffian.

And so it was: though all the waters of the South Continent were lands of chaos, the degree of that chaos varied greatly from place to place. Where a powerful escort guild held sway, order tended to be relatively stable; where only weak guilds existed—or none at all—the chaos ran unchecked.

The Demon Cold Sea, for instance: with the Four Seas Escort Guild, perennial occupants of the top spot, holding sway there, its order had always been the best among all the seas of the South Continent.

The Weihu Sea, likewise: home to the Heaven-Supporting Escort Guild, ranked fifth, its order might not match the Demon Cold Sea, but at least it had yet to descend into utter ruin.

The Zhen Duan Sea, however, had no proper powerful guild within its bounds at all. Its chaos far surpassed that of the Demon Cold Sea or the Weihu Sea; it had always been a gathering place for pirates. Even if pirates openly discussed their robberies, no one dared interfere—because seven of the ten people around you might well be pirates themselves, and the remaining three were brokers who found them work and fenced their stolen goods.

So were it not for these escort guilds, the state of the many seas would likely be far more chaotic and far crueler than it was now—quite possibly a total wasteland, where not even a somewhat prosperous city like Demon Cold City could be found.

Thus the quinquennial South Continent Escort Guild Assembly gathered every escort guild of real strength in the South Continent seas. This was no mere trade gathering—it was a core event watched with the keenest attention by every soul across the South Continent waters. (To be continued...)