“Is everything alright?”

“Ah yes, sorry I spaced out a bit there…”

“You have a lot of nerve to space out when such a beauty is right next to you!”

Zhang Dong chuckled while hugging his wife closer. It was the dawn of the next day, after catching up with his children it was then time for his wife. One night of passion later he woke up with many thoughts crowding his head. Which continued all the way until the next day.

“The meeting is going to start soon, we need to get up…”

After a night of pleasure, it was time to get back to work. While he had gone through his decision in his head, he still intended to listen to the people he was responsible for.

“Do we really have to?”

To his surprise, Liena that most of the time was the proper cultivator in the relationship, wanted to skip the boring talk with the elders.

“It hasn’t been long since you have returned, the children need their father.”

From a family standpoint, it would probably be better if he remained at the sect ground to build up the relationship with his son and daughter. Regretfully the people from the other empires would not wait for that, neither would Wang Long. His biggest enemy remained at large and he had no idea where to search for him.

“I know but if we don’t act now, their future will be at stake.”

“I know…”

Liena nodded as he had clued her in about the coming war as he was returning from the empire. The other elders had also been informed via Zhang Liu that was close to returning home.

After a few moments, both of them put their robes back on. Zhang Dong's gaze focused on his wife as she was just as he remembered her. Five years did nothing to diminish her beauty probably before she reached the age of five hundred it would be hard to spot a wrinkle.

As he was the Patriarch everyone was already waiting for his arrival. The meeting chamber was still the same as the sect wasn’t damaged in the Soaring Dragon Sect assault.

Things had changed a bit though, with his absence the power balance had been shifted towards people like Huo Qiang and his Huo Clan. While he had feared that something like this would have happened, he was thankful to his old friend that he didn’t succumb to the allure of power.

With Zhang Dong gone it wouldn’t be hard for the Huo clan faction to take over. They did have the most nascent soul level masters and also the strongest one of them all. They would be crippling the sect though as they knew that Liena would not give up her position without a fight.

In a sense, the fear of other sects attacking during an infighting process had worked in favor. Without enough power to force the other side to capitulate without a fight, it was quite hard to change the status quo.

‘I guess having factions at a similar level is good for keeping order but this only works if they are close to equal…’

In his sect there were mostly only two factions, the one that he was the leader of which was the Zhang Clan and Feng Clan factions. The other faction was on the Huo side and their allies that prefer doing things the old-fashioned way, by the sword or fist.

“Senior brother Dong, when will we spar again? I need to show you all the new tricks that I have learned in these past five years!”

“Qiang, this is not the place for this!”

Before Zhang Dong could greet his old fight buddy, his wife placed herself between the two and started glaring.

“It’s fine, Liena.”

Before they could continue their comedic routine of shouting profanities at each other, he decided to grab his wife by her waist, pick her up and place her on the nearby chair to the side. The other Elders weren’t quite used to something like this, seeing their powerful Matriarch being handled like a child was not something they were expecting.

“Haha, that’s my senior brother!”

Huo Qiang was ecstatic after seeing his shouting partner being put in her place. It totally evaded him that Zhang Dong was only doing it to keep both of them quiet but it was just easier to do it this way. If he wanted to shut Qiang up, he would probably have to give him a good thrashing in a spar. Then he would gain a few months of silence before the next challenge.

“Why you…”

“Okay everyone, quiet down, we have a lot of things to discuss!”

Before his wife could retaliate he forced his aura through the whole chamber. This caused his voice to travel everywhere as well as showing that his cultivation realm was the largest in this room. The moment he did it, he could see some of the elder’s faces dropping down but mostly from the Huo Clan side.

“As you might have heard… there has been a recent revelation concerning my true roots…”

“Yes, I would have never thought that you would turn up to be related to the Long clan, should we start calling you Long Dong now, Dong’er?”

Zhang Jin with his somewhat younger-looking face and more vital energy commented as most people here were already aware of the Golden Dragon title.

“That won’t be necessary, I will always be part of the Zhang Clan.”

The elders started murmuring with each other at his declaration. Normally a cultivator would quickly abandon their family name to join such a prestigious clan. They didn’t actually know that the only reason that their Patriarch didn’t was because of the naming.

“I would wish to discuss the plans for the future, as some of you might know, a war is awaiting us…”

While some of the inner circle elders knew about everything, there were still a lot of them that didn’t know what was happening. Zhang Dong quickly explained about the coming century-long war that would turn the empire upside down.

At first he thought that they would be scared and try to run, but he had underestimated these cultivation nuts. Instead of fleeing, they seemed interested in the lands beyond the borders. The more he explained the more they were convinced to join the war effort and get stronger.

“I say that we just wait here, there is no reason for us to fear these ‘empires’, our sect is strong and now we even have the protection of the Azure Emperor himself, there is nothing we have to fear!”

Surprisingly Huo Qiang’s father spoke up in favor of the war. Most of the elders nodded at this point as everyone felt confident in their power. It did help that quite a bit of them went through a drastic change.

After Wang Long’s attack, he did boost them to new heights at the cost of most of his spirit stones and remaining spirit stones that the sect had. They would probably need to restock on those before attempting something similar but with him there, they were even more confident.

“I guess you all have made up your mind?”

The discussion didn’t even take more than an hour as everyone was in favor of fighting. They also wanted to expand their lands after the fact that they were so strong. They wanted to take back the lands that previously belonged to the Dark Palm Sect. With no fear of retaliation from the two sects that were occupying this land, they were resolute in taking it back.

“I to wish to reclaim that land, Qiang, could you take a couple of our ascended brothers there and ask them to return the lands that we should have received?”

Even he believed that they should have been given those lands. The ones that killed the Patriarch were them and not the other sects. They weren’t even given a speck from their treasure room, they were only left scraps that the other three sects didn’t want.

“Now you are speaking my language brother!”

“Wait, Zhang Zhi keep Huo Qiang company, make sure that he doesn’t go overboard, I don’t want a bloodbath to happen.”

Before Huo Qiang could leave Zhi was given an order to be a chaperone. They would also first send quick letters to notify that the other sects needed to leave the lands. But to be sure that they left most of their treasuries behind, he needed to send a proper battle-ready force of nascent soul masters along with the declaration.

“As you command Patriarch!”

Their United Element Sect was now a force to be reckoned with. The number of nascent soul masters that they had was staggering and if they managed to get their hands on a few spirit stone mines, it would only increase further.

“Before the Heavenly Crane Sect can move in, we need to claim some of the lands that used to belong to the Soaring Dragon Sect.”

This was another big issue, what would become of all those resources. Their sect was also run by the Soaring Dragon Sect that was not there anymore. What would normally happen in this situation would be that the next strongest sect would get it all. This would be the Heavenly Crane Sect along with the Long Clan, but now they were in the conversation too.

While their real strength was yet unknown, they had some accolades that would make people think twice before they attacked them. The first one was them defending themselves against Wang Long that later managed to eradicate his own sect. The next was that their Patriarch was Long Dong, the sworn blood-brother of the Azure Emperor.

Just by being associated with the Emperor, their Sect would gain prestige at the same level as the big three powerhouses. While Zhang Dong didn’t intend to manage all of that land, he would still like to receive the taxes in the form of spirit stones from these lands.

‘I won’t even need to rob those spirit stone mines, they will send everything to me but I have to be fast about it…’

Thus it was time to formulate a plan of action. They had many nascent soul masters to carry out this task. He just needed to send them in small groups of at least three to show off their might.

“Everyone listen up, we can’t waste any more time, we must get control of the most important lands, I need you to list the places with the largest spirit stone mines to me, we will start with those!”

It was time to act, there was no way of knowing when this war would start. Wang Long was also waiting for him in the shadows, while his sect worked on taking over the other sects he would visit the Soaring Dragon Sect or at least what remained of it...