Published: February 12, 2025
The chaotic surroundings of Ying City suddenly fell silent within two days. Those battle teams that were previously resisting either surrendered or fled.
This rapid change occurred because the main battle team of Cloud Summit began to fully intervene in the fight. With accurate intelligence and frequent assassinations provided by avoidance, these already small forces quickly collapsed.
Of course, the most important reason was that a piece of news spread rapidly across the area. The King of Cloud Summit personally took action, annihilating the major forces in Guan City and killing three eight-star evolvers...
This news was so explosive that many people, even if they couldn't discern its truth, mentally collapsed. The major forces that had been closely watching the battle initially thought it would take at least a month for Cloud Summit to complete this round of expansion, but they never expected it to end in such a way.
With territory expanded, control strengthened, and after consolidating their jurisdiction, the wave of secret realm exploration began.
The increase in Cloud Summit's income also started to show at this time.
This was a complex process. On Cloud Summit's books, there had always been a state of outflow, but this was not a loss. Various magic crystals, materials, potions, scrolls, battle beasts, and other items entered the warehouse, while large quantities of equipment, trace element supplements, ammunition, genetic life forms, magic crystal weapons, and delicacies were transported away and sold through various channels. Most of these were provided to the water steward, and Cloud Summit's own merchant convoy did not stop; it was just that Lu Yi no longer personally oversaw it but entrusted it to others, sporadically filling the gaps left by the five rings society and the Ogre Chain, two major commercial giants.
This was actually carried out according to a business restructuring plan proposed by someone. Influenced by the peacetime principle of channel dominance, this former executive of a commercial company felt that relying on others' channels was highly unreliable during the apocalypse.
Cooperation with the water steward was possible now, but it might not hold in the future; the same could be said for the Ogre Chain and the five rings society—what if they didn’t collaborate later?
This person wrote a proposal and submitted it to Xia Lei, who was relatively easy to see. The big sister of Cloud Summit was quite satisfied with this plan, consulted with Ye Zhongming, made a few minor modifications, and then began to promote it.
Of course, this promotion was not loud and would not affect the cooperation with individuals and organizations such as the water steward and the five rings society or Ten Thousand Beast Manor and the Ogre Chain, but it indeed started to establish Cloud Summit's own commercial network.
For instance, some low-end equipment, low-level evolution potions, and by-products from manufacturing professions were used to open up markets in remote areas surrounded by desolate land or mutated life forms. They launched different models of items in the same series to avoid competition with the water steward and others. They also established an agent system to allow people to maintain trade routes and obtain agency rights for local specialties of Cloud Summit, and so forth.
Ye Zhongming and the higher-ups listened to this person speaking for two hours and found that he indeed had insightful ideas. Having been with Cloud Summit for some years, he was considered a trustworthy veteran. They handed over this aspect of work to him, and this person, who usually reported to Lu Yi, became the deputy of the Cloud Summit commercial division.
The commercial division was renamed from the merchant convoy, which also meant that this department became more professional. The commercial operations would gradually separate from the main battle team, transitioning from the previous team model to a dedicated merchant team.
This definitely did not mean that those involved in the plan would abandon evolution. There were some evolvers who had been refined through more than four years of the apocalypse, proving that either their temperament, physique, or mentality were not suitable for combat. Many people simply lacked courage and could not develop it; when it came time for battle, they hesitated. Those fortunate enough to enter Cloud Summit could take on internal roles.