The news about Wu Hei's action was certainly unexpected, and now Lin Mu and the rest were left to think about how to respond to it.
"Do we send a message to him?" Adviser Liu asked.
"No… doing so openly will be bad and doing it secretly won't be possible, either. If he has taken over the position of the minister, then it is likely that he will be closely observed by Gu Yao to ensure that everything is fine.
I reckon we will need to wait for a while before we can make contact. In fact, this might be what Wu Hei intended it to be like. He is telling us to stay away till he had established himself and his power well enough." Lin Mu replied.
"Very well, Senior Lin Mu. We'll do as you say." Adviser Liu stated.
"What about the others? How do we proceed with the alliance?" Jing Luo questioned.
"For now, I don't think we need to make any big changes to our plans. The only thing we add to it is keeping an open link for Wu Hei to send a message and also keep an eye on him.
He may try to contact us at some point. I'm sure he knows I am somewhere in the south at this point. We also need to ask Jingming Shang to get his network to make contact with Wu Hei in a non direct manner.
It will be for matters unrelated to us or the alliance. This is just to make sure that he has a certain level of trust and neutrality with it. Once we are ready, we will use the same connection to make contact." Lin Mu answered.
"Hmm… that will be for the best." Jing Luo agreed.
"Then it's decided. We keep on doing what we are until Hua Wu and Hua San make contact with us. Once the Noon Grass Sect has joined up in the alliance, we will make moves on the Long Cloud alliance with their help." Lin Mu stated calmly.
Seeing that everyone was in an agreement, Lin Mu went ahead and gave some more orders, before he returned to the Kong plane with Jing Luo. There they returned to their tasks, where Lin Mu focused on choosing a shape for his Dao Shell, while Jing Luo prepared for his breakthrough.
Ten days passed like this and Jing Luo finally made his breakthrough to the Adult Soul Stage of the Nascent Soul realm. Lin Mu had also made some progress in choosing the shape of his Dao Shell, but still needed some time to figure out the details.
Since he already knew that the Dao Embryo he was going to comprehend in the future was related to the Earth Element, and the Earth Dao, he wanted the Dao Shell to be conducive to that.
It would be something that could help the Dao Embryo and would increase his overall power as well. Jing Luo too finished stabilizing his cultivation base in a couple of days and got back to working on the prototype.
By now he had decided on the name of the tool that he was making, it would be called as a Teleportation Gate and would allow one to enter the Kong plane and exit it. With the number of such gates that they were going to make, they would probably have to make a lot of sections in the cave.
Thankfully, the cave was very large and there was plenty of space to make use of it.
A few more days later, the news from Hua San and Hua Wu finally arrived. Lin Mu checked the communication jade slip and read the message.
"Senior Lin Mu, we will be arriving at the Hong Lin city in a week's time along with our elders." Hua San stated.
Lin Mu informed everyone that needed to know it, including Jing Luo, Adviser Liu, King Hong who was busy cultivating and Jingming Shang. Adviser Liu took care of the rest of the people in the palace and Lin Mu talked with King Hong about the matters of the alliance.
Since King Hong was the king of the Hong Lin kingdom, he would need to be there as per the etiquette. King Hong was fine with it and was also excited to meet the elders of the Noon Grass sect.
After all, even if they were ranked tenth, they were still part of the top ten sects and were as old as the Top three sects too. King Hong had only heard of their stories but had never met someone from them and from the message it was implied that the master of Hua San might be coming too.
This master was of course, none other than the Sect patriarch Hua. He was a man that stayed out of the public attention most of the time and very little was known about him or the other elders of the Noon Grass sect.
Only the other top sects knew about them somewhat and even among them, only the top three sects knew the details. That was the reason why when the Long cloud alliance and the Zither Wind Alliance tried to recruit them, their words fell on deaf ears.
They didn't know what the noon Grass sect would desire and thus they had no leads to go on. All they could do was put forth the reward that an average cultivation sect would like. Even then, the Noon Grass simply rejected all offers and stayed neutral.
Being able to withstand this temptation and pressure showed the hidden tenacity of the Noon grass sect, and thus it had become a complex factor for the alliances. Though the top three sects were secretly pleased that the Noon Grass Sect stayed neutral like them.
All the four sects that stayed neutral had existed for a long time and were very experienced. They had their own inheritance and foundation that was not easy to shake. Even if the Noon Grass sect was pushed to the tenth rank, it had a stable foundation to stand on, which could not be denied.
