"You want to protect Dusk Echo?!"
Bi Lin and the others in the hall were momentarily stunned — or rather, they simply couldn't process what they had just heard.
To dare to kill their Senluo Pavilion's vice pavilion master, then show up at the Senluo Pavilion acting as if it were nothing — as casually as swatting an ant on the roadside — had already left them marveling at Zero Wing's sheer audacity, at how these people had no concept of the word "death" or what true terror meant!
And now Zero Wing was actually declaring, in broad daylight, that they would protect Dusk Echo — the very target of the Senluo Pavilion's operations.
This was no longer mere audacity. This was outright insanity.
One had to understand — even if a superpower came to the Senluo Pavilion, they wouldn't dare be this brazen.
Bi Lin even wondered whether the Shi Feng standing before him had any basic common sense about the Divine Realm at all — or whether he had simply decided to smash the cracked pot altogether, knowing that killing Vice Pavilion Master Xiao Ming was an unforgivable crime that would erase his name from the history of the Divine Realm, and so he might as well provoke the Senluo Pavilion further, since he was doomed regardless.
"Ha ha ha! Good! Very good! It seems the Senluo Pavilion hasn't struck out against anyone in so long that even a mere guild from some insignificant kingdom dares come here and run wild!" Sha Chi fixed Shi Feng with an icy stare, and though a smile played across his face, it was the smile of someone pushed to the absolute limit of fury.
Ever since the Senluo Pavilion had expelled the Nine Star House from the Storm Empire, no other force had dared to challenge them. And because the Senluo Pavilion had focused on consolidating its grip over the Storm Empire — concentrating all manner of resources — it had never expanded outward, so the outside world had no idea of their true strength.
Then again, perhaps Shi Feng and his people simply had rocks in their heads. Having stayed in a kingdom for too long, they had no sense of how vast the world truly was, naively believing that the Storm Empire was just like the Star Moon Kingdom — a place where Zero Wing could do as it pleased.
At this moment, the members of the Senluo Pavilion's elite guard in the hall regarded Shi Feng and his companions as though they were already dead.
"To have provoked Boss Sha Chi to this extent — these people are as good as dead!"
"I'd say these people won't make it out of Storm City alive. This is going to be quite the show!"
"Exactly! Even if they got on their knees and begged for mercy right now, it wouldn't matter. And when the time comes, it won't be as simple as losing just one level. Boss Sha Chi will definitely use that thing to make them lose three levels at once, then have the tracking squad follow them and kill them all the way back to level zero."
While attacking within NPC cities carried enormous risk, as players' levels continued to rise and the items they obtained grew ever more numerous, killing players inside NPC cities was becoming increasingly easy.
Especially for a superpower like theirs — even in an imperial capital like Storm City, it posed no real problem.
Precisely because of this, expert players grew ever more reluctant to offend the great powers of the Divine Realm. A single misstep could cost them everything — being killed all the way back to level zero.
Although Shi Feng and his companions were all experts — far harder to deal with than ordinary freelance players, and potentially quite troublesome for other superpowers — for the Senluo Pavilion, they would be easy prey.
Never mind Shi Feng's group — even a full team of top-tier experts who offended the Senluo Pavilion would fall in Storm City.
That was because the Senluo Pavilion possessed a Domain Treasure recovered from ancient ruins. By expending enough Mana Crystals, it could create an isolated pocket of space, completely undetectable from the outside. Unless the domain was forcibly broken or dispelled, NPC guards within the city would be utterly unable to detect what was happening inside — unless a Tier 3 guard captain witnessed it with their own eyes.
But Tier 3 NPC guard captains were exceedingly rare.
Even in an imperial capital like Storm City, not one in ten patrol squads would have a Tier 3 guard captain. And each patrol squad typically covered three to five streets — if you picked your position carefully, the chances of encountering a guard captain were virtually zero.
Just as the twenty members of the pavilion master's elite guard were whispering among themselves, Wan Xiang — who had been sitting silently upon the pavilion master's throne this entire time — raised his gaze slightly and suddenly spoke.