Chapter 184: Chapter 154: Marketplace Enemy Tracks

Seeing who had arrived, everyone in the hall stood up, except for Lu Qian, who remained seated at the head.

A flash of red passed by, and in the blink of an eye, the world-renowned beauty, Fairy Nishang, was already seated at the first seat to Lu Qian’s left. However, Fairy Nishang’s face was colder than usual, and everyone could see that she was in a bad mood, making them inevitably anxious.

It was Lu Qian who broke the silence first: "You didn’t catch the person?"

Fairy Nishang nodded: "By the time I arrived, the person had already left."

Lin Le hurriedly said: "I sincerely apologize; it seems my information was delayed."

But Lu Qian raised his hand to stop him: "The intelligence group has only been established for two years. Being able to forecast this in advance is already a substantial achievement. The enemy is not foolish enough to stay in one place waiting to be caught. This is just a matter of chance."

He turned his head to look at everyone: "Since we’re on this topic, I’ll address it first. This is a major issue concerning the success or failure of the Marketplace and must be handled with utmost caution."

Everyone focused and appeared serious. A large map was spread out on the table, showing Chongming County and its neighboring Liangxiang County, Xinghu County, and Sanshan County.

The Xuanguang Sect in Chongming County loves and thrives in battle, aggressive by nature, and the Mid-Stage Golden Core Supreme Elder, who has been stagnant for years, is poised to break into the Late-Stage Golden Core at any time and is a formidable force. Therefore, the surrounding counties maintain a cautious attitude towards Chongming County.

However, the Xuanguang Sect isn’t a war-crazy force seeking its own destruction. After suffering some losses, they have focused their attacks on the northeast Sanshan County, while Liangxiang and Xinghu Counties have their own troubles. So while there are some minor skirmishes on regular days, the general direction is still peaceful with Chongming County.

And bordering Shuangye Alliance is exactly Liangxiang County.

Using the map, Lu Qian summarized the situation facing Shuangye Square.

The Marketplace serves sects and loose cultivators within a certain range. The establishment of the New Marketplace naturally results in direct competition with existing marketplaces within the range.

Relatively speaking, marketplaces closer to Shuangye Square will lose more customer flow and be more hostile.

And the four marketplaces closest to Shuangye Square are Treasure Mirror Square, Shazhou Square, Fanglan Square, and Jiuzhi Square.

Treasure Mirror Square is a marketplace established by Xuanguang Sect, located in the central area of Chongming County, with a prime location and stable customer flow. Yunshan Sect is a subsidiary sect of Xuanguang Sect, and Yunshan Sect’s shares are divided into two parts, with Spirit Talisman Sect, Zhou Family, Spirit Snake Peak, Wuwang Temple, Zhuquan Sect each contributing one-sixth of shares, totaling one-tenth given to Xuanguang Sect. Naturally, the Golden Core director wouldn’t oppose the establishment of Shuangye Square.

However, Shazhou Square has an unfavorable location, and after the Spirit Talisman Sect and Shahe Gang had a nominal relationship, they transferred many store resources to Shuangye Square, leading to Shazhou Square’s rapid decline. Coupled with Yunshan Sect’s peace treaty with Shahe Gang, Han Wen had no choice but to shrink the scale of Shazhou Square while also opening a store in Shuangye Square. You can have a grudge against anyone, but definitely not against Spirit Stones.

But Fanglan Square and Jiuzhi Square are different. These two marketplaces are located in Liangxiang County, controlled by different Foundation Establishment sects, and are direct competitors of Shuangye Square. A total of six Foundation Establishment sects hold shares in these two marketplaces.

The hostility from these two marketplaces has been persistent since the construction of Shuangye Square.

Building the Marketplace itself isn’t challenging. Even if Lu Qian has been innovative in Marketplace layout design and various functional buildings, he has merely put in some meticulous work. The real trouble lies in attracting investment and customer flow.

Currently, Chongming County is in a strange calm, with all forces wary of each other, maintaining a fragile peace. But Shuangye Alliance, because of its exclusive control of the South of Chongming, possesses this advantageous geographic location, becomes the object of contention from all sides, sitting at ease like someone waiting for fishes to be caught.

After many rounds of communication, besides Shuangye Alliance and seven vassal sects, the Golden Core Major Xuanguang Sect, Spirit Talisman Sect, Kong Family Castle, Shouzhuo Sect, and Shahe Gang all opened their own stores in Shuangye Square.

Based on this, Lu Qian, together with Lin Le, visited various businesses in Plum Blossom Marketplace, offering considerable favorable terms, and invited many brand merchants to open branches in Shuangye Square.

With this, the first phase of investment attraction for Shuangye Square was nearly complete, having established a basic group of merchants. The current step is to leverage this festival to attract more merchants and sects from surrounding county mansions to open stores here.

Regarding customer attraction, Lu Qian planned this "Six-Six Festival," using the festival as the framework, organizing grand events like shopping, fighting tournaments, and recruiting fairs, and mobilized the intelligence group to distribute flyers in Plum Blossom Marketplace and surrounding medium-sized marketplaces instantly attracted a wave of customer flow.

If this move shocked Shuangye Alliance’s allies, the ads, sponsorship, and naming rights Lu Qian pulled out next left them dumbfounded, calling him a genius, and they worshiped him without reservation.

Even Xuanguang Sect sent envoys specially to Lu Qian for guidance, and soon Treasure Mirror Square also had many advertisements. Spirit Talisman Sect’s Zhuang Qing came for a turn, proclaimed him a genius, then immediately bought two shops at high prices, once again expanding Spirit Talisman Sect’s business scale in Shuangye Square.

If these tactics already made Fanglan Square and Jiuzhi Square unable to sit still, Lu Qian’s establishment of transit points in Plum Blossom Marketplace, Xinghu County, and Liangxiang County, renting the "Sky Ray" from Spirit Beast Sect for direct express service directly made these two marketplaces jump up, as this was tantamount to reaching out to snatch customers!

Lu Qian chose the locations for transit points carefully. For example, within Liangxiang County, the transit point is set at Kongxuan Mountain, a poor and unclaimed land where Fanglan Square and Jiuzhi Square’s controlling sects have no say. In addition, handling transport tasks is the large sect "Spirit Beast Sect," which is an existence no one dares to provoke; who dares to risk disturbing the head of the sovereign?

With Shuangye Square opening and the festival starting, Fanglan Square and Jiuzhi Square’s customer flow dropped by fifty percent in these two days!

Having suffered such a massive loss, how could these two marketplaces let it go?

Personally engaging a large army overpowering is impossible; both belong to different county mansions, different Golden Core Major Sects, and Foundation Establishment sects absolutely cannot bypass the Golden Core Major Sects to directly attack another county mansion, that is equivalent to declaring war on another Golden Core Sect.

Currently, it is merely a commercial war between Foundation Establishment sect marketplaces, and Liangxiang County’s controlling major sect won’t casually stir trouble with Xuanguang Sect over this matter, so Fanglan Square and Jiuzhi Square have to devise their own schemes.

And the plan they devised was hiring loose cultivators to infiltrate and wreak havoc, committing murder and arson, seeking to ruin and tarnish Shuangye Square.

One must admit, it is an effective and hard-to-prevent tactic, and though Lu Qian had preemptively learned about related actions from the intelligence group, he deeply felt troubled and found coping with them difficult.