Gao Lan nodded repeatedly, wondering to herself, "Who exactly is this 'Lin' in Yelin Group?"
"Take this list and use company funds to purchase these medicinal herbs," Ye Chen said, handing her a slip of paper. "Regardless of the cost, these must be acquired. The sooner, the better."
This was the most important reason he had taken over the company.
"Understood, President Ye. I will get it done as soon as possible!" Gao Lan adjusted her glasses, promising with absolute seriousness. She knew better than to ask questions about things that weren't her business.
After giving his instructions, Ye Chen stood up and left. Watching his retreating figure, Gao Lan felt that the man became more dashing the longer she looked at him. She made up her mind to showcase her talents and ensure she did not disappoint him.
Once Ye Chen left the company, he called Lin Ruoyi to tell her he had to go out of town on business but would definitely be back by nightfall. After hanging up, he hailed a taxi and told the driver to head to Nandu.
By the afternoon, at the Nandu residence of the Sun family—a first-tier family—the grand mansion was already adorned with white mourning cloths. Within the spacious courtyard, two or three hundred men stood in dense rows, all dressed in black suits and armed with blades, guns, and clubs.
Standing at the very front was the head of the Sun family, Sun Zhiye.
"Are you all ready!" Sun Zhiye roared. Having just suffered the pain of losing his son, his rage was overwhelming. He was single-mindedly focused on avenging his son’s tragic death.
"Head of the family, we are ready!"
"We await your command!"
"Let's go to Jiangbei and butcher Ye Chen to avenge the Young Master!"
The group shouted in unison, their intent to kill palpable. Among these two or three hundred Sun family guards, over thirty were experts of the Grandmaster Realm, while the rest were martial artists of the Xiantian Realm. It was this power that kept the Sun family firmly seated as a first-tier family in Nandu.
Beside the Sun family guards stood twenty men in camouflage combat gear. These men were all robust and possessed fierce, murderous glints in their eyes. They had quite a pedigree.
"Gentlemen, I am counting on your full support," Sun Zhiye said, his tone markedly more polite. "I have received new information that the boy, Ye Chen, has even neutralized the underworld forces in Jiangbei, which proves his strength is significant. However, I believe that with your intervention, you will certainly be able to handle that little bastard."
"Rest assured," the leader of the group replied with a confident smirk. "We are men who have been tempered in the fires of the battlefield. If we couldn't handle a mere man named Ye, wouldn't that be a disgrace to the great lord we serve?" The others laughed arrogantly. They had been dispatched here on orders.
"With your word, I am at ease," Sun Zhiye said with a sinister grin. "Everyone, listen up! Get in the vehicles and move out! We are going to Jiangbei to wipe out that little bastard!"
With such force, they had enough power to flatten all of Jiangbei.
As the group prepared to depart, a resonant voice boomed from beyond the courtyard gate. "There is no need for you to go to Jiangbei. I have come myself."
The next second—*BOOM!* The Sun family’s courtyard gate was blasted into splinters. Everyone inside was shocked and turned their gazes toward the entrance in unison. Sun Zhiye frowned, wondering if the boy had actually come looking for them himself.
As the dust settled, the crowd finally saw who it was. Ye Chen stood with his hands behind his back, staring coldly at the people in the courtyard, his foot crushing the Sun family’s gold-lettered plaque into pieces. His eyes quickly locked onto Sun Zhiye. This was the man he had come to kill.
"Ye Chen, it’s you, you little bastard!" Sun Zhiye roared, laughing hideously. "I never expected you to dare come to my Sun family and seek your own death! Hahaha, you’re dead today!"
"No, I won't be the one dying," Ye Chen said with a cold smile. "You will."
"Hahahaha! What a joke!" Sun Zhiye laughed, finding it the funniest thing he had ever heard. "You think you can kill me on my own turf? Men! Surround him!"
Following his command, the two hundred-plus guards moved instantly, surrounding Ye Chen layer by layer, brandishing their weapons with hostile intent.
"Heh," Ye Chen scoffed, standing motionless. He stared straight ahead without blinking, treating the two hundred thugs as if they were nothing. No matter how many there were, they posed no threat to him.
"You really are arrogant to the extreme, Ye!" Sun Zhiye sneered. "You remnant of the Ye family, today I’ll teach you how to write the word 'death'! Get him! A ten-million-dollar bounty for whoever brings me his head!"
The twenty men in camouflage watched with contempt. "So this is the kid we have to deal with? Tch, I thought he was someone important! We don't even need to lift a finger for this." They crossed their arms, preparing to watch the show.
"The ten million is mine!" three Grandmaster Realm elders shouted, rushing forward at once. One attacked with empty fists, one with a sword, and one with a blade, launching a fatal strike from three directions. They were all supremely confident; killing a mere boy was easy work!
"Seeking death," Ye Chen murmured, a cold glint flashing in his eyes. He remained rooted to the spot, completely ignoring the attacks of the three Grandmaster experts.
"Haha, die, kid!" the elders shouted, naively believing he had given up on resisting. They unleashed their strikes with full force: one fist aimed at his back, one sword thrust at his throat, and one blade aimed at his neck.
However, just as they thought they had succeeded, their fists and blades stopped three inches from Ye Chen’s body, as if they had struck an invisible wall of solid iron. They couldn't hurt him in the slightest!
The three elders were terrified. His true qi was so strong that he was impervious to blades? As they prepared to strike again, Ye Chen sighed. "Die."
Having allowed them one strike, he would not give them a second chance. He released his true qi in a sudden, terrifying shockwave that shattered their blades and swords. The three elders were blasted backward, colliding with the crowd behind them and hitting the ground dead on the spot.
Seeing this, the two hundred guards were paralyzed with terror. Grandmaster-level elders had been so easily defeated by this boy? Fear caused them to instinctively retreat several meters, their previous arrogance replaced by grim expressions.
Sun Zhiye’s face darkened instantly. This remnant of the Ye family was even more formidable than he had imagined! Even the twenty men in camouflage had their smiles frozen on their faces. They realized this was a hard bone to chew.
"You little bastard, I didn't think you had such skills!" Sun Zhiye barked, though his voice wavered. "But so what? Can you beat all of us? Everyone, attack together! Kill him, and everyone gets a reward!"
"Don't be cowards! Let's get him!" the guards shouted, charging forward. With thirty Grandmaster-level experts and the rest being Xiantian warriors, this was a force that could walk sideways across Jiangbei and Nandu!
Ye Chen closed his eyes slightly, feeling pity for them. Born as men, yet they chose to be dogs for the powerful. Today, he would start a massacre.
"If you want to be dogs for the Sun family, then die!"
Ye Chen unleashed his power. With a single punch, a dozen men flying toward him vomited blood and were killed on impact. With another wave of his hand, a dozen more were sent flying. Regardless of whether they were Grandmasters or Xiantian warriors, they were like grass before his scythe.
The guards realized that numbers were useless. Faced with absolute strength, they were separated by an unbridgeable chasm. They lost their nerve and began to flee, but there was no turning back. Ye Chen showed no mercy; he left no one alive.
Seeing his guards failing, Sun Zhiye lost his arrogance. Terror gripped his heart. "Help! Someone, kill him!"
The leader of the camouflage-clad men drew his dagger. "Don't be afraid, Head of the Sun family! We will kill him!"
"Another dog here to die," Ye Chen said with a disdainful smile. No matter who they were, if they moved against him, there was only one outcome: death.
A minute later, the courtyard was covered in corpses. Ye Chen walked toward the last remaining soldier.
"Boy, I am a subordinate of the King of Jiangnan! If you dare kill me, you will—"
Before the man could finish, Ye Chen sent him flying with a single palm strike. The King of Jiangnan? He didn't fear him!
"Sun, it’s your turn," Ye Chen said, walking toward the only one left standing—Sun Zhiye. "Before you die, tell me, was the King of Jiangnan the one who ordered the Sun and Zhao families to act against mine?"
Sun Zhiye scrambled backward, trembling violently in fear, until he collapsed on the ground. A pool of unmentionable liquid spread beneath him.
"You remnant of the Ye family, you aren't worthy of saying the King of Jiangnan’s name!" Sun Zhiye hissed, his face twisted in a mix of terror and defiance. "He is an existence you cannot afford to provoke! I am his man; if you dare kill me, he will grind your bones to dust!"
"Answer me! Was it the King of Jiangnan?" Ye Chen stepped on Sun Zhiye's chest and used his internal energy to pull a dagger from the ground, pinning Sun Zhiye's hand to the floor.
"AAHHH!" Sun Zhiye let out a piercing howl.
"Telling you won't help, you can't touch him!" Sun Zhiye shrieked. "I’m warning you again—"
Ye Chen pinned his other hand to the ground with a second dagger. "AAHHH!"
Ye Chen lifted his foot, leaving Sun Zhiye to crawl like a dog. "You aren't going to kill me! You don't..."
Before the words could leave his lips, a long sword pierced his heart, pinning him to the ground. Sun Zhiye died with his eyes wide open, never believing that Ye Chen would actually dare to kill him.
As Ye Chen turned to leave, a phone in Sun Zhiye's pocket rang. The caller ID read: "King of Jiangnan."
Ye Chen answered.
"How did it go?" a rough, gravelly voice demanded from the other end. "If you didn't finish the job, don't bother coming back alive!"
"Rest assured, it went very well," Ye Chen said coldly.
"Who are you?!" the King of Jiangnan demanded.
"Ye Chen."
"Ye Chen! You brat, do you have any idea who I am? You dare touch my people?"
"And what if I did?" Ye Chen retorted. "I will uncover the truth. If it leads to you, you had better pray for yourself."
Ye Chen hung up. He was now eighty percent certain that the mastermind behind the destruction of his family was this King of Jiangnan.
On the other end of the line, the King of Jiangnan was enraged. In Jiang Province, no one had ever dared to threaten him. He ordered his men to investigate what had happened at the Sun residence immediately.
Ye Chen walked out of the compound, not a single drop of blood on his clothes.
Outside, a crowd of onlookers had gathered, wondering what the screams were about. They had no idea that the young man who just walked past them had single-handedly annihilated the Sun family.
As Ye Chen moved to leave, crowds of people blocked both ends of the road. It was the families of Nandu, acting on Sun Zhiye’s secret plea for reinforcements. Over a thousand elites from a dozen families blocked his path.
"What do you want?" Ye Chen stopped, scanning the crowd. He had just finished a massacre; he didn't want to kill more, but he wouldn't hesitate if they insisted on courting death.
"The Head of the Sun family called us here!" the leaders shouted, looking at him with arrogance. "He said we couldn't let you leave Nandu!"
"Oh? Sun Zhiye called you?" Ye Chen chuckled coldly. "He’s lying inside right now. You can go in and see him."
"What do you mean, brat?" the head of the Li family, a first-tier family, snapped.
"I mean," Ye Chen said, his killing intent flaring again, "if you don't want to end up like the Sun family, get out of my way!"
"End up like the Sun family? What happens to the Sun family?" the man sneered.
"Open your eyes and look for yourself!"
Ye Chen grabbed the man through the air and threw him into the compound. The man shrieked as he landed on a pile of corpses. Terrified, he looked around and saw the floor littered with the dead.