The World Online

Chapter 970 – ASEAN and Its Weird Atmosphere

With the misunderstanding resolved, the golden dragon felt a little awkward, and a pained expression appeared on its face. With a ‘Shua!’ a white stone appeared in its claws.

“Human, you have removed a problem of our dragon race. We thank you for it; this is for you.” The white stone gently floated onto his hand, and then the dragon swept its tail and disappeared into the horizon.

Ouyang Shuo received the stone and took a look at its stats.

Contract Beast Wishing Stone: Use gold to make a wish and summon a beast egg of a contract beast. Friendly Reminder: Desolate beasts start from one thousand gold, spirit beasts from 10 thousand, god beast subspecies from 100 thousand, god beast from a million gold.

If a normal player got this wishing stone, it would not be of much use. Not to mention a million gold, but even those who were able to take out a hundred thousand gold was rare.

However, falling into Ouyang Shuo’s hands was naturally different.

With the fate dragon, Little Green, Little White, and other god beast subspecies, Ouyang Shuo did not lack any beasts. Subconsciously, he thought abouthis unborn pair of children.

If the two little fellows were able to have a god beast protect them as they soon as were born, it would be a really fortunate thing.

Ouyang Shuo only had two million gold on him, and he did not dare to use it right now. It was better to wait until the global auction ended before he used it.

Thinking about it, Ouyang Shuo placed the Wishing Stone into his storage bag.

************

11th month, 11th day, after that short interruption, the Emperor Squadron smoothly arrived in Xingzhou Prefecture. Under the accompaniment of Gu Xiuwen, Ouyang Shuo excitedly toured Lion City.

As the previous Singapore Imperial City, Lion City had a deep foundation. With the Great Xia running it well, it had become a core point of global trade.

Internally in the city, it was also really prosperous, and the shops made for voyage trading took up nearly half of the shops inside.

Apart from the prosperous trading, the killing at the surrounding islands had never stopped. The massacres between China players and Java players continued every day, giving birth to hundreds of PK maniacs.

The huge player base was why Java was so confident about going against Great Xia and China.

Not only Java, but even the player base of the 10 ASEAN countries was quite huge. Apart from Singapore, Annan had eight million, Nanzhang had 600 thousand, Zhenla had 1.2 million, Siam had five million, Piao Country had 4.5 million, Luzon had eight million, Johor had 2.5 million, and Brunei had the least at 40 thousand players.

The nine remaining countries of ASEAN had close to 50 million players, which was equal to half of China.

A year and a half had passed, and each of the ASEAN countries had been through huge changes. Ouyang Shuo was most uneasy about regional overlords that had stepped up from each one of the nine countries.

Each one of them had one Lord left.

Take Johor as an example. A year ago, it was still Perak City and Sabah City. Now, there was only Perak City left in Johor.

Guo Yannan, who was of Chinese descent, had fallen at the hands of Shantha, and his territory was merged into Perak City.

Behind the quick mergers of the various ASEAN states, there were signs of Silver Hand. Silver Hand had seen through Ouyang Shuo’s strategic intention of taking over ASEAN, so they tried to stir up the waters.

As there were only nine Lords left in the entire ASEAN, their internal decisions had a lot less resistance. It also caused Great Xia’s efforts in nurturing people they trusted in ASEAN to go to waste.

Out of the nine Lords, the three heads were Java Lord Uwais, Annan Lord Ruan Tianque, and Luzon Lord Mading. The next level was Siam country Ti Lade, Piao country Lord Mo Angyin, and Johor Lord Shantha.

Zhenla Country Lord Bi Wenlie, Nanzhang Lord Suo Langgong, and Brunei Lord Abdul; these three basically had no speaking rights in ASEAN and followed the three heads.

Who knows whether it was a coincidence or not, but the three heads were all enemies against Shanhai City.

Till this date, Java, Annan, and Luzon all had no trading relations with Great Xia.

Needless to say, Java and China had a deep animosity that could not be resolved. Annan was whacked twice by Great Xia, and they were naturally unhappy about it.

Luzon and Great Xia had both historical elements and game interest conflicts. The Great Xia Dynasty was expanding into the Spratly Islands and Nansha Islands, reducing the ocean space of Luzon country.

ASEAN was silently split into two factions. One side wanted war, while the other side wanted peace.

Needless to say, the three heads wanted to fight. Along with Nanzhang, which was connected to Great Xia, the remaining five all had trading relationships with Great Xia and wanted peace.

The two factions were in a balance and one group changing sides might disrupt this balance.

Under such a situation, to break the balance, Ouyang Shuo wanted to sign a trade agreement with the ASEAN Lords.

The goal was to strengthen their relationship with the other Lords and strengthen the presence of Great Xia in ASEAN.

Of course, one could look at the trade agreement as a smoke bomb or bait that Ouyang Shuo tossed out to numb ASEAN.

Regardless of the consideration, to break up ASEAN so that they could not pose any physical threat was Ouyang Shuo’s long term goal.

And to fulfil this goal, it was impossible to not see any blood.

However, before he truly waved his knife, Ouyang Shuo could not let the ASEAN Lords see through his intentions. If not, they would all hug tightly together.

If that happened, Ouyang Shuo really did not have any confidence to shake the ASEAN.

Not to mention other things, but the 50 million players alone were not something Great Xia could underestimate. The only way would be to break them down one by one.

Before Ouyang Shuo arrived in Xingzhou Prefecture, Honglu Temple and the Business Department had already went through three rounds of discussions regarding the agreement with the countries.

Unfortunately, the results were not ideal, so they needed Ouyang Shuo to come personally.

…

Afternoon 2 PM, Xingzhou Harbour.

To express his sincerity, Ouyang Shuo specially received the five Lords at the harbor.

At the designated time, Ti Lade, Mo Angyin, Shantha, and Abdul were invited into Lion City.

The part that made Ouyang Shuo frown was that Zhenla Lord Bi Wenlie did not come.

“This is not a good sign.”

Bi Wenlie not coming had sent a really obvious signal that Zhenla was determined to fight. Ouyang Shuo was not sure if there were signs of Silver Hand within all that.

No matter what, under such a scene, Bi Wenlie’s sudden disappearance made Ouyang Shuo feel really humiliated, and it was like a slap to his face.

Before the discussions even began, there was a dark cloud hanging over.

Although he was furious in his heart, he was still smiling on the surface as he shook hands with them one by one.

Out of the four, the only person Ouyang Shuo had contact with was Shantha.

Without a doubt, they were all young and handsome and were born from noble families or were members of the royal family.

No wonder they were able to unify their respective country so swiftly.

Their identities had a natural connection with Silver Hand. Maybe their families did not have the rights to join Silver Hand in reality. However, due to the complex nature of the game, Silver Hand would not stick purely to the rules, and they did not mind accepting new members.

This was why Silver Hand was really scary. Facing outside threats, they would still be willing to change their ideas.

As they greeted one another, Shantha and the others could not help but look at the west of the port. There, the Emperor Squadron was quietly docked, and The Emperor was especially eye catching.

Shantha and the others were expressionless, but their eyes froze and their moods became really serious.

The main Warships of ASEAN were either turreted warships from Great Xia or Man O’ War warships from the west. They had never seen the Z1 Type Warship before.

Without a doubt, this was a new type of warship designed by Great Xia.

What ASEAN worried the most about was the strong navy of Great Xia. Shantha and the others thought that after bringing in the turreted warships their navy standards could be closer to Great Xia.

Who knew that they actually designed a new type of warship?

Such an impact was really huge.

When Ouyang Shuo saw that, he laughed to his heart. He specially received them at the dock and also placed the Emperor Squadron at such an obvious place to warn them.

‘You all might want to fight, but if it really comes to that, Shanhai City has some trump cards.’

…

Ouyang Shuo led them to the governor manor of Lion city and began a new round of discussions.

The part that made Ouyang Shuo frown was that even with him taking part personally, they still made many unreasonable requests.

Ouyang Shuo laughed coldly, thinking to himself, ‘They really think they have the help of Silver Hand and do not need to fear anything?’

Seeing this, Ouyang Shuo looked around and smiled, “Using this chance, I want to announce a certain piece of news.”

Shantha’s heart trembled, and he forced a smile, “We are all ears!” This time, it showed that his confidence was not as strong as he displayed.

Ouyang Shuo said, “To keep pirates at bay, Great Xia Dynasty will set up an ocean checkpoint at the Gulf of Aden to check merchant ships. Ships that do not pass will not be able to enter the Mediterranean.”

“….”

Shantha and the others exchanged glances with one another.