Chapter 131- Desert Part 3

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Looking from the distance that they had traveled as the sky had gone dark, Liu Guanyi estimated that they had probably passed hundreds of miles.

Although they were only walking at a brisk pace to save their stamina, people in the tower were much more powerful and resilient compared to those in his world, especially for them so even walking for a few hours could cover a long distance.

And they had been doing this for over a month so it was easy to imagine how long the distance that they had covered in the desert. Once again, Liu Guanyi was amazed at how vast the tower was.

This desert was only a part of the middle area of a single floor yet, it was so big that its size alone was definitely more than hundreds of thousand square kilometers.

Liu Guanyi hoped that their journey today wasn't so uneventful and they could find the hint to the thing they had to find and capture for the sake of the test.

Fortunately, after moving for a while, Liu Guanyi had spotted something in the far distance, approximately a hundred miles away. With his incredibly sharp vision, he could easily make out the figure of the object with clear detail, it was a small settlement.

There were around a dozen tents made of leather and clothes erected in the area with a few cattle located just right beside it.

Seeing the settlement, Liu Guanyi turned toward his teammates. "Let's pick up the pace I spotted a settlement just a hundred miles away." He spoke as he increased his speed, from walking quickly to running.

Adori and Xin didn't ask him anything and only nodded, and quickly followed suit as they created a bluish circular disk under their feet to counteract the soft feature of the sand as the footing for their steps.

With every step, they created a new disk before their feet landed on the sand, making them able to run very quickly unobstructed by the deep sand and saving their stamina.

Within just an hour, they managed to cross the hundred miles distance and arrived in front of the settlement. When they looked around, almost nobody was outside of the tents if not because there were a few old folks attending to the cattle.

Liu Guanyi nodded. It seemed that just like where the settlement was located in a desert, the place itself was also looking deserted. With a friendly look, Liu Guanyi went to the closest tent and politely asked the tenants inside to come out.

Before long, he was greeted by a middle-aged woman with a little girl. After exchanging some pleasantries and giving them a little food, Liu Guanyi asked her to lead them the way toward the leader of the tribe.

Since the woman was pretty grateful for their gift and the little girl was seemingly already fixated on the not-so-special food that they gave with drool on her face, it was easy to say that their request was immediately granted by the host.

Giving away some charity and doing good was alright. Liu Guanyi didn't mind it as long as it could efficiently solve the problem and he could get what he wanted.

Although he certainly had the power and means to force the old woman and the entire tribe to his demand, doing something like that was unneeded if he could use a softer approach.

Everything was perfect in balance and anything that was excessive and out of balance was most definitely far from perfect and optimal. This applied to any case wherever and in every situation.

If Liu Guanyi always used brute force to get what he wanted, he would limit himself and his mind to habituate that behavior so whenever he faced any problem, he would immediately try to solve the problem by force even though that problem wasn't suitable to be solved with brute force.

There was a clear example of this in the tower, the king Zahard himself.

Because he had reigned supreme in the tower for so long without any force and power capable of actually threatening his reign, he had grown conceited and so used to getting his way anywhere in the tower with brute force as nobody would dare to stand up against him.

Naturally, he had the capital to do so with his immense power and "bought immortality" as he had proven himself far superior from FUG and anyone who dared to stand in his way.

However, this also made him unable to see past his oversized ego as proven by how he handled the aftermath of the incident on the floor of death, at least that was how Liu Guanyi see it.

Instead of taking the monstrous threat that was the Red Tower and his words seriously and trying to change his ways so as to not provoke the Red Tower even more and spur him to take action, Zahard did exactly the opposite.

He immediately locked down and isolated the whole floor of death to prevent the survivor and residents there to escape and spread the information about the incident, something that he had failed spectacularly as Liu Guanyi had gained knowledge about it on the internet after a "not-so-hard effort" and paying a few thousand credits.

Which meant that he was sure that a lot of people other than him could access the information just as easily as well.

Compared to his reputation as an almighty king of the tower and some kind of a god figure, his intelligence was apparently not up to par at all. Or maybe he was just too cocky and delusional to even think and consider seriously that anyone could ever be a threat to him?

Well, Liu Guanyi didn't know for sure but it might be the truth.

After all, Zahard and his companions had lived for so long that nobody knew how long exactly they had lived, and all the while they had always been holding on to the seat of power. Most people would be drunk in power if that was the case.

If the Red Tower was being straightforward and didn't have any hidden agenda, Liu Guanyi bet that Zahard would have already done for a long, long time ago.

Whatever scheme that the Red Tower concocted, Zahard kind of deserved it, anyway. After all, looking at what he did so far, his intelligence seemed to be quite pitiful.

Fortunately, he wasn't really interested in something as useless and as fleeting as wealth and authority, those were merely akin to a mirage of an oasis in the desert. People seek and crave them but they were just something useless.

If there was something that Liu Guanyi wanted, it was to walk further on the Martial Way.