novelraw Chapter 97 : The Enchantress Appears! Intelligence is a Business Too!
Chapter 97 : The Enchantress Appears! Intelligence is a Business Too!
Chapter 97: The Enchantress Appears! Intelligence is a Business Too!
That voice was like the finest silk — slick, soft, yet carrying an all-penetrating seduction, as if it could slip directly into the seams of a person's bones.
Chu Feng felt a chill in his heart, but his face remained unreadable.
He slowly turned around, and saw that in a corner of the high platform, at some unknown moment, there had appeared a slender figure.
She was a woman dressed in a black gauze dress.
Her skirt flowed like the moving night, embroidered with intricate and uncanny red spider-lilies in silver thread, swaying gently with the breeze.
On a face the size of a palm, her features were so exquisite they seemed inhuman — especially the slightly upturned phoenix-red eyes; as her gaze shifted, they hid countless charms that seemed capable of stealing a person's very soul.
She leaned casually against a pillar, playing with a long, smoke-breathing pipe in her hand. Her red lips parted slightly; between the curling smoke, that exquisitely beautiful face gleamed and faded, adding layers of mystery and danger.
The master of the Thousand Illusions Pavilion was Yao Yue.
Even though Chu Feng, in his former life, had seen all kinds of beauties, he had to admit: the woman before him was an outright demoness.
Every inch of her skin, every glance, every motion plainly said:
I am dangerous, but you cannot resist.
The disciples on the square apparently had not noticed her at all; they remained lost in their fanatic discussions about ‘War Bonds’.
Obviously, the woman had employed an extremely clever concealment technique.
“Master Yao Yue, your honored presence. Forgive our poor welcome.”
Chu Feng put on a professional smile and inclined his head slightly toward her; his expression was as clear as if he were looking at a visiting salesman.
A flicker of barely noticeable surprise passed through Yao Yue's beguiling eyes.
The men she had met usually reacted to her at first sight in one of three ways — either they became breathless, their eyes greedy, like fools; or they feigned seriousness while their eyes darted; or they treated her like an approaching enemy, all tension and vigilance.
She had never seen anyone like Chu Feng before — so calm, as if discussing business.
“President Chu really had great self-control.”
Yao Yue's red lips curled slightly. She exhaled a perfect smoke ring and, with a cat-like elegant gait, slowly approached Chu Feng.
“The True Lord Lieyang outside radiates such murderous qi it’s about to pierce the heavens, yet you still have the heart to stage this ‘war mobilization’. I am impressed.”
Her voice carried a natural coquettishness; ordinary cultivators who heard it would likely feel their bones go pleasantly soft.
“There’s no choice — big companies were hard to manage.”
Chu Feng spread his hands with a look of “the troubles of being the boss.”
“You had to paint some appetizing pictures for the employees, pump them up, otherwise the team would fall apart. Mistress Yao Yue, forgive me for the spectacle.”
His blunt honesty cut off the store of seductive lines Yao Yue had prepared.
She felt as if she had punched cotton — strength with nowhere to land.
This man … did not play by the usual rules.
“Giggling…”
Yao Yue laughed, her chest trembling slightly. She leaned toward Chu Feng, almost close enough to press against him, and whispered, her breath like orchids:
“President Chu, you jest. But I did not come today to listen to your ‘corporate management’. I came to… help you.”
“Oh?”
Chu Feng raised his brow, remaining as unmoved as a mountain, letting the intoxicating scent envelop him.
“Do tell.”
“True Lord Lieyang — Nascent Soul, Great Perfection — cultivated the ‘Great Sun Severance Fire Technique’. His nature was like blazing fire, headstrong and self-willed. He possessed a superior treasure, the ‘Red-Sun Golden Wheel’, whose power was boundless.”
Yao Yue’s finger, as if by accident, brushed across Chu Feng’s chest while her voice dropped lower.
“I know that three months ago, in order to refine that golden wheel, he forcibly drew out the earth-fire essence of a third-rank fire vein, causing the surrounding hundred-mile region’s spiritual qi to weaken and the people to seethe with grievance.”
“There were many elders within the Heavenheart Holy Land who had complaints about him…”
She tossed out a not-too-big, not-too-small “free piece of intelligence” as bait.
Chu Feng listened and only smiled.
“Master Yao Yue, let’s be frank.”
He cut off Yao Yue’s performance.
“You are a merchant, and I am a merchant. The ‘intelligence’ in your hand is your commodity.”
“I needed it, but I did not like this ‘free trial’ sales tactic.”
He took a step back, distancing the flirtatious closeness between them; his gaze sharpened.
“Speak plainly — how do you sell your ‘product’? Priced per piece, or sold in bundles?”
“Do you offer membership discounts? Do you support installment payments?”
A string of commercial terms again left Yao Yue bewildered.
Installments…?
She felt her brain short on available space.
She had walked the jianghu for a century and had never had anyone negotiate business with her like this.
Looking at Chu Feng's earnest face, Yao Yue suddenly felt that all the seduction and scheming she prided herself on were child's play — laughably immature — before this man.
She inhaled deeply, put away her coquettish act, and her eyes turned serious.
“All right! President Chu is direct. This woman will not beat around the bush.”
“All of True Lord Lieyang’s dirt — from peeking at his senior sister while she bathed, back when he wore his loincloth, to taking another concubine just the night before yesterday — I had it all.”
“One flat price: one million superior spirit stones!”
“Too expensive.”
Chu Feng shook his head without a second thought.
“I’m funding ‘infrastructure’ right now. The company’s cash flow was tight. One million — I couldn’t come up with it.”
“Then how will President Chu pay?”
Yao Yue narrowed her eyes.
“I’ll give you a better plan.”
A foxish smile curved Chu Feng’s lips.
“I invite you to invest in our ‘counter hostile-takeover PR campaign’.”
“Venture investment?”
Yao Yue heard another new term.
“Yes!”
Chu Feng explained,
“You, as an ‘intelligence supplier’, would put your ‘intelligence product’ in as capital, investing into our ‘PR war’.”
“I, as the operator, would use your intelligence to maximize returns.”
“When it succeeded, I would give you a share of all our gains — including but not limited to sales of ‘war bonds’, subsequent brand appreciation, and… the meat we bite off from the Heavenheart Holy Land. I would pay you ten percent as your ‘investment return’!”
Yao Yue was utterly stunned.
She looked at Chu Feng as if listening to scripture.
Using intelligence as equity?
Sharing post-battle profits?
The idea was unheard of, yet damnably tempting!
She had come thinking herself the hunter and Chu Feng the lamb to be slaughtered.
Now she realized this man plainly intended to pull the hunter onto his cart and make her his partner!
“President Chu… you truly are a… man who is hard to read.”
After a long while, Yao Yue finally spoke softly, and for the first time genuine curiosity and admiration shone in her beautiful eyes.
“Well? Mistress Yao Yue, care to place a bet?”
Chu Feng smiled and extended his hand.
“If we win, what you get will far exceed one million spirit stones. If we lose… you lost nothing since I paid nothing, right?”
Yao Yue looked from Chu Feng’s hand to his confident face and suddenly burst into laughter, her limbs trembling like a flowering branch.
“All right! I’ll bet!”
She extended a jade hand, soft as though it had no bones, and gently clasped Chu Feng’s hand.
“A pleasant cooperation, Chu… shareholder.”
A jade slip that shimmered with a faint glow appeared in her palm and she handed it to Chu Feng.
“Inside this is True Lord Lieyang’s lifetime of ‘colorful stories’. I wish you… enjoyment in its use.”
Chu Feng accepted the jade slip and swept his divine sense across it; his smile grew even brighter.
Yet, just as the two reached their agreement—
“Boom—long—!”
A tremendous roar, like heaven collapsing and earth caving in, rang out!
A scorching, violent, supremely majestic and terrifying aura — like an erupting volcano — descended from the sky and pressed down upon the entire Qingyun mountain range!
The protective mountain formation’s light was instantly dimmed, emitting groans as if under unbearable strain.
All the frenzied disciples on the square, under that pressure, simultaneously changed color; those of weaker cultivation went weak in the knees and collapsed to the ground.
A voice, like majestic heavenly wrath filled with endless killing intent, detonated in every person's soul!
“Chu Feng! Murong Xue! Come out… and meet your deaths!”
True Lord Lieyang had arrived!