Counterfeit Hero

After a night of discussion, it was time for the Mountain Breaker Sect to make a decision.

”We’ll just watch the challenge play out,” Little Boksar said, seemingly devoid of any honor as a Mech Knight: ”Let the Absolute Kill Stream go first. After all, their ranking is ahead of ours. The top-ranked sect should have the top-ranked awareness.”

Amidst the laughter, Little Boksar glanced out the window gradually brightening with dawn light, staring at the increasingly visible buildings in the distance, and said in a deep voice, ”I reckon this time the traditional way of challenge won’t resolve the conflict. After all the years we’ve invested, once we tear our faces, it’s a fight to the death. Notify all Broken Army Camps to prepare for battle.”

”Yes!”

After a brief outburst, the meeting room plunged into an indescribable silence.

In the Free World, which power doesn’t have some foundation?

Long-term survival of the fittest made everyone understand how to protect themselves in this world.

The Nine Routes Broken Army Camp is the militarized organization of the Mountain Breaker Sect.

Within are the carefully selected descendants whose families have been with the Mountain Breaker Sect for generations. Their loyalty and combat strength are beyond question.

But has the day really come to deploy them?

*****************************************************

As the star’s light shrouded the Lifetree statues around Freedom Square with a golden sheen, Mars Central City awakened in the morning.

In the blink of an eye, the originally cool, suspended roads in the city’s mid-air turned into flowing ribbons of flying cars. Shops on either side of the street opened their doors, and crowds from the Space City poured out, bustling along the streets.

The automated breakfast shops were already full. Adventurer spacecraft that set off early were prepared for takeoff. The space port saw a continuous flow of merchant ships, with massive mechanical arms lifting modular cargo pods from transport ships onto the docks, where they were loaded and unloaded by mech. Loud assembly horns blared as mercenary bases scattered throughout the city began their training routines, while some community halls lit incense and delivered speeches.

The war had not yet impacted this bustling world. People continued with their daily lives as usual.

Without resources, everything at Mars Free Port relied on the planet’s unique geographical position on the trade routes.

Transport ships filled with ores, solid energy blocks, and various materials converged here. After being processed by Free World enterprises into various products, they were re-exported. These products included mecha, ships, weapons, as well as food and light industrial goods of all kinds.

Mars Free Port boasted several industries that were top-notch across the universe. For instance, the handicraft shoe workshops in several streets at the Central City’s Southern District attracted many billionaires from various countries, who would even send people on spaceships to order custom shoes. However, the most famous was the private mecha manufacturing industry guided by civilian mechanical sects.

The free societal structure created the prosperity of Mars Free Port. In the Free World, there is no embargoed material. Even if you transported an entire ship of drugs, no one would care, as long as you weren’t afraid of black-market robberies.

Thus, with the full-blown war today, it became a hub for smuggling ships transporting strategic materials from various countries.

The saying goes, ”A man without ill-gotten wealth is not rich, a horse without night grass is not fat.” The more a country is blockaded, the easier it is to make money. For instance, the Leray Federation and the Gazalin Republic, due to tight border blockades by the Western Alliance Countries like Desic, Suss, and Jiepeng, faced severe shortages in materials historically imported through trade.

Whether it’s machinery, energy blocks, electronic products, metal raw materials, food, or medicine, one shipload can fetch profits ten to dozens of times greater than the value of the transport ship itself.

Such profits prompt most people to take life-threatening risks for a chance at fortune. For the Free World’s smugglers and commerce groups, such opportunities are once-in-a-lifetime events they live their whole lives preparing to seize.

This is Mars Free Port. Every day, relying on free trade, manufacturing, adventure, gambling, fighting, and plundering is how Free Port People live.

On the surface, today was just another ordinary day. But with careful observation, one can notice that the expressions of people coming and going carried a hint of seriousness and excitement unlike usual.

Whether on the streets, in malls, office buildings, or factory workshops, at ports or docks, be it well-dressed office workers or sweat-drenched laborers, everyone was discussing the same topic. When familiar faces greeted each other, even without time for a few words, a meaningful glance conveyed everything.

In this era, news could spread across the entire planet in just a few minutes or seconds.

Now, no one was unaware of the Tai Sect initiating challenges at the Nine Halls. This explosive news had shaken the entire Free World.

The gravity lay in knowing that with sect disputes erupting, the Free World’s reshuffling was imminent. The excitement stemmed from a common question.

Would the nine major sects under challenge retaliate?

This question undoubtedly had an answer.