Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely

Chapter 1534: Chapter 480: Cultivation, Dan Medicine, and Frost Ash Association Loopholes Exposed (2)

The six Great Dragon Heads of the General Altar, plus this Little Dragon Head Ji Hong, and including the Squad Leader of Yanling County—these people have never once met each other face to face. Whether it’s issuing missions or daily communication, they rely entirely on message transmission, and the handover points are either outside the city or in all sorts of nooks and crannies inside the city—places you’d never think of, in any case.

The second point is a clever and covert method of material circulation. Such a large organization naturally has to spend huge amounts of money and supplies to keep running, and in the process, fixed channels of material flow are bound to form. As for the internal circulation of supplies, it basically all goes through the Worldly Noble Tavern.

What’s worth mentioning is that even inside the Worldly Noble Tavern, the two sides never meet in person either. It’s basically one side leaving something first and the other picking it up later, with at least five days in between. They also use encryption, changing the code every time, and put on layers of disguise as well. In short, they guard the secrecy of personal identities to the death.

Take the recent Lu River Valley uprising as an example. The Lu River Valley incident was a mission assigned to Little Dragon Head Ji Hong by the Frost Ash Association General Altar. Ji Hong first received a large sum of Silver left for him by the Squad Leader at the Worldly Noble Tavern, then secretly purchased weapons and shipped them to the Lu River Valley area. With the cooperation of Jiang Xinfan and the other eight, as well as those nameless experts from the Yanling County Squad, he orchestrated the entire uprising in a fully remote-control fashion.

“So what’s the background of this Worldly Noble Tavern?”

Clearly, this Worldly Noble Tavern was the big backer behind the Frost Ash Association, so after listening, Xia Hong went straight to the point and asked about the background of the Worldly Noble Tavern.

At Xia Hong’s words, a strange look flashed across Jiang Xinfan’s face, and only then did he slowly say, “The Lord might find this hard to believe. This Worldly Noble Tavern has branches all across the Moao River and within the Four Vassals’ territories—every major city has one. The Moao River Heavenly List and Earthly List were created by them. As for the many behind-the-scenes owners of this tavern, there are quite a few, but the biggest are four.”

“Don’t tell me it’s the Four Vassal Landgrave?”

Jiang Xinfan nodded with a smile and said, “Exactly the Four Vassal Landgrave. This is actually fairly hidden information. Ji Hong only managed to sniff it out after a lot of trouble, relying on his status as Adviser Chen’s Closed-door Disciple…”

Here he paused for a moment, then continued, “As the rumors go, the behind-the-scenes bosses of the Worldly Noble Tavern didn’t include the Four Vassal Landgrave at the very beginning. It was only the Nine-Surname noble family—that is, nine noble families in the Moao River region with over three hundred years of heritage. Later, they probably felt this slab of fat was too big to ignore, and the Four Vassal Landgrave couldn’t just sit and watch, so they forcefully stuck a foot in.

The Nine-Surname noble family naturally refused and joined forces to resist. But in the end, the arm can’t twist the thigh. So the nine bosses became thirteen, and among them, the Four Vassal Landgrave took up four seats and occupied the largest share.

The Four Vassal Landgrave might be powerful, but as latecomers they were in the wrong to begin with. On top of that, they take the lion’s share of the profits every year, and these Nine-Surname noble family are in fact their own people within each Feudal Town. They couldn’t afford to offend them too ruthlessly, so they made some concessions: they only take dividends and do not interfere in any of the tavern’s management or operations.”

Now that is truly interesting!

In other words, there is actually a force capable of joining hands to counter the Landgrave within the Four Vassals’ domains. It may not be tightly bound, but it’s still a solid, genuine power bloc…

After Xia Hong heard this, his expression instantly became animated. He hurriedly asked, “Then do we know which clans these Nine-Surname noble family are, respectively?”

“We only know two in the Chen Cang Realm: the Longxing Chen Family and the Pingyang Lu Family!”

Just as expected. That says it all: this Chen Family and Lu Family are the biggest backers of the Frost Ash Association in Chen Cang.

Something suddenly occurred to Xia Hong, and he pressed on, “I heard people say before that the Frost Ash Association has only existed for just over twenty years…”

“How is that possible?”

Jiang Xinfan immediately shook his head and went on, “The Frost Ash Association has been in the Moao River region for at least a hundred years. It originated in the Hezang Feudal Town, then slowly expanded into the other Three Vassals. Chen Cang had it long ago, only its development wasn’t good in the early days, so its name wasn’t prominent.

Twenty-five years ago, in the year 267 of the Chen Cang calendar, the Great Dragon Head of the Chen Cang branch of the Frost Ash Association ambushed Longxing City’s City Lord Chen Tianjue near Donglin County City. Though they ultimately failed, they managed to severely wound him. That battle made their name overnight, and only then did the Frost Ash Association surge into rapid expansion.

In the years that followed, Chu Longteng’s suppression of the Frost Ash Association was vicious beyond words. In 272, he even directly raided and shut down every Worldly Noble Tavern in the Chen Cang Realm.

That move ignited the powder keg. Not only did the Frost Ash Association refuse to be cowed by Chu Longteng, their actions grew ever more brazen; they began stirring up trouble all over Chen Cang, and the conflict between the two sides just kept escalating.

Until sixteen years ago, in the year 275 of the Chen Cang calendar, when the Frost Ash Association stirred up a major riot south of Fengyang County, in the area bordering Donglin County. Things got completely out of hand after that.

Ji Hong and I guess that Chu Longteng must have compromised around then. The Worldly Noble Tavern, which had been shut down for three years, reopened for business, and from that year on, the Frost Ash Association stopped being quite so rampant in Chen Cang.”

Wonderful, truly wonderful!

Where there are people, there is a Jianghu.

And the more people there are, the deeper the water runs.

This counts as the Nine-Surname noble family joining forces to fight the Four Vassal Landgrave—no, no, that’s too simplistic. Those Nine-Surname noble family aren’t fools. They let all Four Great Landgrave in at once. Unlike their own nine houses, the relations among the Four Great Landgrave are inherently delicate and can hardly form a unified community of interests.

As long as the Four Great Landgrave don’t see their Silver shorted and things don’t go too far, any single Landgrave wanting to target them is dreaming, and the Four Great Landgrave can’t fully unite either. Under such circumstances, the Worldly Noble Tavern is still effectively run according to the will of the Nine-Surname noble family.