“You absolutely cannot mention medicinal wine in front of the Wine God Palace’s disciples. It’s a very sensitive subject,” warned Qi Hao solemnly.

“Why is that?” Long Chen was puzzled.

This wine was extremely powerful. Although it was just ordinary wine, he sensed a special energy within it. If it was refined into medicinal wine, it would allow the medicinal energy to instantly spread throughout the whole body. It would be over ten times more effective than pure medicinal elixirs.

“You must not know. There used to be medicinal wine produced through a combined effort of the Grand Xia’s Wine God Palace and Pill Valley. But later, they suddenly stopped producing it. The Wine God Palace stopped sending Pill Valley their wine, while Pill Valley also stopped giving the Wine God Palace medicinal pills. Both sides immediately turned hostile to each other. Now the Wine God Palace has stopped producing medicinal wine, while Pill Valley continued to try without them, but the medicinal wine they can produce without the Wine God Palace isn’t even fit to be called medicinal wine. There’s no way to compare it with the original medicinal wine,” said Qi Hao.

Long Chen hadn’t expected there to be such a backstory. It was unexpected that this Wine God Palace would be so obstinate as to even fight against Pill Valley. It had to be known that Qi Hao hadn’t said it was a Pill Tower; it was Pill Valley.

“What kind of fight was it? Do you know, brother Qi Hao?” probed Long Chen.

“It… in truth, it was nothing. It was just because of the profits.” Qi Hao shook his head with a bitter smile.

“Profits? They didn’t like the split in money?”

Qi Hao shook his head once more. “No. You don’t comprehend the Wine God Palace. Although the Wine God Palace resides within the Grand Xia, they are not actually controlled by the Grand Xia. They do not belong to any power and are a group of devout, prideful people. They might gift their fine wine to others, but they definitely won’t sell it. You can’t talk about selling their wine, or they’ll treat it as a blasphemy toward the Wine God.

“But when Pill Valley cooperated with them to create the medicinal wine, Pill Valley’s people began to secretly spy on the way the Wine God Palace’s disciples made their wine. The Wine God Palace’s disciples warned and chided them several times, but they refused to change their ways. The conflicts between them grew.

“The Wine God Palace’s disciples are prideful, while Pill Valley’s people like to look down on others. As a result, the conflicts grew until there came a day when the Wine God Palace noticed that Pill Valley had been selling their medicinal wine behind their backs. In their fury, they directly kicked out Pill Valley’s people and ceased the production of the medicinal wine. As for the Pill Valley, they had already learned the techniques for making wine, and so they didn’t care. However, when they began to make their own medicinal wine, they suddenly became dumbfounded. Despite clearly knowing the formula and process of creating the wine, the effect of their medicinal wine was not even a tenth as good as the original wine from the Wine God Palace. At that time, Pill Valley finally understood that the true arts were still in their hands, and that they fundamentally couldn’t learn them. They tried to fix things with the Wine God Palace, but the Wine God Palace directly told them to scram,” laughed Qi Hao.

“Amazing. The Wine God Palace’s integrity is admirable,” praised Long Chen. This Wine God Palace truly had guts to say such harsh words to Pill Valley.

“But of course. In the entire Martial Heaven Continent, the number of people who would dare say such a thing to Pill Valley can be counted on one hand.” Qi Hao nodded.

“Does the Wine God Palace have many powerful cultivators guarding it? How are they so daring?” asked Long Chen.

“I don’t know. The Wine God Palace’s disciples all focus on making wine, and they don’t like interacting with the outside world. But the Wine God Palace is an extremely special existence in the entire continent. Many sect masters of large sects will go to the Wine God Palace to worship the Wine God’s statue and give them a tribute. The Wine God Palace will normally give them some good wine in return. It’s said that the wine made by the experts of the Wine God Palace can allow a person to comprehend the Heavenly Daos. It’s extremely beneficial to top experts, so all the large sects treat the Wine God Palace very respectfully. Even Pill Valley doesn’t dare to attack the Wine God Palace,” said Qi Hao.

Long Chen sighed inside. This world was truly huge, and there were many things that surpassed his imagination. Even wine had such a terrifying inheritance.

“I’ll definitely have to take a trip to the Wine God Palace,” said Long Chen with anticipation.

“With brother Long’s character and such astute evaluation skills, you’ll definitely be welcomed by the Wine God Palace.”

“Ah, that’s right, I had something else I wanted to talk about. What did you say about the Grand Han again?” Long Chen returned to the main topic. He felt like it would be very difficult to end up mediating things with the Grand Han. Learning a bit more about it now wasn’t a bad thing.

“The Grand Han is a bunch of shameless egomaniacs. It’s like they think the whole continent was made by them, as if the origin of all the culture and magical arts in this world came from them. A long time ago, the Grand Han acquired all kinds of inheritances from the Grand Xia. It was originally a cultural exchange, and the Grand Xia didn’t hold back. But then they suddenly realized something was off. When the Grand Han learned something, they would start saying that they had been the original innovators. They refused to admit that they were just stealing the culture of my Grand Xia.

“At first, it was just a few of them saying this. But later, more and more people refused to admit the truth, saying that all our culture was theirs. If they were just that shameless, then fine. But then they started accusing the Grand Xia of stealing their culture, that our techniques were taught by them! Those fucking… cough, forgive me for being too excited, brother Long.” Qi Hao immediately felt embarrassed when he burst into obscenities.

“Are there really such people?” Long Chen almost didn’t believe it.

“You think that’s it? That was just the start! They became more and more arrogant, tampering with historical and cultural documents. Anything with any fame ended up originating from them, whether it was historical events or famous people! According to them, when the Wine God became a god, the Wine God supposedly comprehended the Dao and ascended right within their Grand Han Ancient Nation!” raged Qi Hao.

“What’s the point? Is bragging like this interesting?” Long Chen didn’t understand.

“To put it frankly, it’s simply that their citizens don’t feel enough national pride. Their history isn’t dazzling enough. Without enough of a foundation, they steal from others. In any case, the events from that long ago cannot be confirmed. It’s all about who’s more shameless and whose skin is thicker. Furthermore, as time passed, it turned out their shamelessness was actually brilliant. Right now, all their civilians are full of intense pride, as if other than the ones in the Grand Han, everyone else is a country bumpkin.

“In the past few thousand years, the Grand Han became more and more arrogant, to the point that their youngsters are like madmen! They go around worshipping idols. Right now, the Grand Han has three supreme geniuses called the Three Monarchs. Each of them looks like a girl, but somehow they have countless admirers who are practically crazy with adoration. Other than the Three Monarchs, they also have the Eight Princes. Don’t you think they’re begging you to call them the eight bastards?[1]

“But with the embellishment of the Grand Han, these people end up becoming national icons. Not only do countless people worship them within the Grand Han, but even some of the Grand Xia’s ladies idolize them! There are countless women marrying into the Grand Han. Fuck, it really pisses me off. And the Grand Han’s civilians grow more and more united, as well as more and more arrogant. The young women go all-out cultivating in order to pursue their idols, while the young men also want to become those idols. Now they have countless geniuses rising in their ranks. Before, the Grand Han was the weakest of the four ancient nations, but now they’re the strongest. Tell me, what kind of damn logic is this?!” Qi Hao was venting, just a bit away from cursing.

Long Chen couldn’t help but find it funny. Fundamentally, there was nothing wrong with cultivating in order to become an idol and have others pursue you. However, this was very irritating to the Grand Xia.

“In truth, the Grand Xia’s men can take their vengeance. Why don’t you seduce their women as well?” Long Chen smiled.

“Brother Long, the Grand Han’s confidence is overinflated. Their women always marry within their nation. Even if they were to become nothing more than a maid, they can’t marry outside. If they do, not only will they be looked down upon, but their family will also never acknowledge them for the rest of their lives. However, let me tell you, the Grand Han’s women… yes, they really are beautiful. There are many of them that are the ‘tender and soft as water’ kind.” An expression of adoration appeared on Qi Hao’s face when he mentioned the Grand Han’s women, as well as an expression of bitterness like feeding pigs the best cabbages.

Long Chen shook his head. The Grand Han’s history was truly curious. But as long as the Grand Han didn’t have a good relationship with the Grand Xia, he was at ease.

Right now, Long Chen didn’t know that the Xuan Master had already given the four great powers a slap in the face. He thought it was likely he was already on a wanted list, so he had to be careful.

After chatting a bit longer with Qi Hao, they quickly finished the wine. Long Chen took out the best wine the Xuantian Dao Sect had to offer, but he quickly realized that this wine was like horse urine when compared to the wine they had just drunk.

After getting a rough understanding of the situation within the Grand Xia, Long Chen got up to say farewell. Qi Hao directly sent Long Chen to the next checkpoint so that he didn’t need to be checked twice.

“Brother Qi, our meeting can be considered fate, as I had an immediate sense of familiarity upon seeing you. This little one doesn’t have any good gifts for you, but here is an insignificant medicinal pill. It’s not worth any money, but you can keep it to remember our meeting.” Long Chen gave Qi Hao a jade bottle before leaving. After drinking his fine wine and learning so much, he’d feel bad not leaving something behind.

It was a common occurrence for cultivators to exchange gifts. Qi Hao didn’t particularly care about it too much. He only opened the jade bottle once Long Chen was far into the distance and gone from his sight.

“Heavens, this is… this is…” Looking at the sparkling medicinal pill that had a small figure moving around agilely within, he realized it was a top grade eighth tier pill. It was a rarely-seen Foundation Building Pill.

Qi Hao’s talent wasn’t very good. He had attacked the Foundation Forging realm twice, failing both times. He no longer had any hope of advancing to Foundation Forging in his lifetime. But this top grade Foundation Building Pill allowed him to see that hope once more.

“Squad Captain, look at the secret report we just received from the Grand Han!” When Qi Hao returned to his border city, someone gave him a sealed letter.

“What? One of the Grand Han’s Eight Princes were killed? The killer was - Long Chen!” Qi Hao’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

[1] 王子=prince, 王八犢子=bastard. It’s just two new characters inserted within the term for prince.