Chapter 221: Shaken
The world was shaken, and the waves were hitting harder and harder.
The deaths of Saint Peter and Adam were still not yet the most astonishing revelation.
Many throughout the world were in shock when someone uploaded a clip showing Lu Xuan hovering high above the air, summoning a thunder dragon to smite the Seventh Fleet.
No one expected any human to be that powerful, after all.
That feat alone exceeded the imagination of all cultivators all throughout the world.
Various heritages of cultivation throughout the world had been broken for hundreds of years. Many cultivators eventually came to regard the surreal feats performed by cultivators of the Celestial Realm, which were recorded in ancient texts and inherited within their respective clans and sects, as little more than fairy tales. They were unable to fathom how such godly beings could walk among humans.
However, from the looks of things at present, such feats no longer seemed to be the stuff of legend.
What excited the cultivators more, was that since Chu Yunfan showed that even mortals were capable of such feats, it was only a matter of time before they were able to pull such feats someday as well. By then, those cultivators would be regarded as gods among humans.
Other than the world of cultivators, what Lu Xuan did had also rocked those of yet another circle.
Said circle was none other than the higher-ups of various nations.
Everyone knew just how huge and formidable the American Seventh Fleet was, so much so that it was said that only Huaxia and Russia were capable of fielding a naval force on par with it. The remaining two of the five major powers were utterly incapable of even amassing such a force.
In an era where nuclear weapons were deemed off-limits, such fleets were the very weapons that formed the backbone of a nation’s fighting force. The Americans had been reaping all manner of riches and beating many who stood against them, armed with such a naval force.
They never truly suffered any setbacks all along.
The two Gulf Wars were more than enough to serve as demonstrations of the might of the American fighting forces.
However, at the moment, such a glorious fleet was severely crippled by just one man. The fleet lost over 70 percent of its ships, and casualties were over 50 percent as well.
The United States had never suffered such losses since the second world war.
Governments throughout the world were shocked to the core, as the emergence of Lu Xuan was simply too sudden, and his abilities were simply too surreal for them to comprehend.
If such a man had been able to reduce the effective fighting force of the Seventh Fleet to such extent, any other American fleets, or naval forces of other nations, would effectively be crippled from just one blow like that.
The Americans were probably the only nation powerful enough to avoid being hurt to the core by such an attack.
If other developing nations of medium powers were to suffer such an attack, it would have been more than enough to dismantle their naval forces once and for all.
The intimidation from one such attack was deemed to be of little difference to nuclear weapons.
Worse still, such a being was from Huaxia, and that earned the envy and jealousy from many other nations.
The American higher-ups were furious at the turn of events.
They had never suffered a blow so huge since World War II, after all.
If it had been the East Sea Fleet of Huaxia that attacked, the confrontation alone would have been more than enough to be considered an act of war.
Yet, it was simply an act from just a single individual, and that simply did not give the Americans enough reason to do anything.
“We definitely cannot afford to let him go free. The United States will have lost all its intimidation factor.”
“We must honor our fallen with the head of that guy!”
“We have to make Huaxia hand that man over, or we’ll start a war with them. War!”
Those of the far-right were furious, harping all over the place about starting a war with Huaxia.
But then again, no one bothered with them. Under the threat of mutually assured destruction, which could be brought about by the might of nuclear weapons, the five major nations never fought each other directly. Any confrontations were done either by going into battlefields without confronting each other or simply through proxies.
That was because if a war were to be started, things would definitely spiral out of control in no time, and mushroom clouds would most probably be seen everywhere.
As such, all that talk about waging wars were little more than chants of those of the far-right.
The higher-ups of the American government suffered a blow so huge that many declared revenge.
They went even to the extent of amassing several powerful fleets from other parts of the world to the Pacific Ocean, declaring their intentions to have Huaxia hand over the man responsible.
Huaxia, on the other hand, refused to back down. The fleets were all in battle-ready states, being fully prepared to engage the American naval forces in the Pacific.
The Pacific region felt like a bomb ready to go off.
Deep in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, a secret, ancient castle that never saw the day of light was brightly lit everywhere.
A man with blue eyes and blonde hair, dressed in the Association of Lore Seekers uniform, entered the castle.
The place looked very spooky. If one were to take a closer look, one would have seen people hanging on the ceilings of the old castle, making them look like bats.
However, that middle-aged man simply walked the long corridor and came before a huge room, led by another man who was dressed in a suit. The man in the suit was very pale. It was as if he was very used to the scenery and found nothing to be out of place.
A pungent stench of blood emanated from the room.
A massive pool of blood was seen before that middle-aged man when the door opened. The pool was well over 100 square meters in size and was all fresh blood. One could even see stray limbs floating on the pool of blood time and again.
That harrowing stench was from that very pool of blood itself.
The pale-looking man, who escorted the middle-aged man, did not seem uncomfortable in the slightest. On the contrary, he looked as if he was enjoying himself instead.
The heavy stench that flooded his nostrils was deemed a luxury like no other.
The blonde-haired, blue-eyed middle-aged man behind him was hardly fazed because he knew all too well who he was about to deal with.
Those people were none other than the vampires. They were the beings who were pulling the strings behind most of the nation’s inner workings.
The United States, which was lauded to be a land of democracy and freedom, was instead an empire ruled by the vampires behind the scene. That itself was probably one of the greatest jokes of all time.
The expression of that middle-aged man hardly changed. The Association of Lore Seekers was an organization backed by the empire of vampires after all. There was no way he would not have known about the existence of those beings.
“Hold on for a moment. I need to wake Count Dracula.”
That man with a pale face said. His fangs were visible as he spoke, and his voice was so hoarse that he sounded terrible.
“Indeed,” that middle-aged man answered.
The pale-faced man began chanting ancient words and infusing magical powers into the pool of blood.
The pool began to boil, and from the bottom of it, a meticulously crafted, pitch-black coffin gradually rose to the surface.
The black coffin was gradually erected and then opened, revealing a handsome-looking young man.
That young man looked to be in his twenties, and his complexion was harrowingly pale. A pair of very pointy fangs were visible.
He was wearing well-fitted regalia of some ancient design, making him look like some noble of some ancient line from Western Europe.
“Who is it that awakens me?”
The handsome young man’s eyes were thrown wide open. He then scanned the two before him.
Both the human and the vampire felt immense pressure. That middle-aged man looked like he was still holding it together, yet that pale-faced man looked as if his knees were about to give.
Such was the overwhelming might from the bloodline.
Despite being of a very high position in the empire of vampires, that pale-faced man was little more than an ant before the handsome young man.
That handsome young man was one of the three remaining elders of the empire of vampires—Count Dracula.
He was also the most well-known vampire throughout the world.
“I’m sure you know well of the consequences of interrupting my slumber without a very good reason,” Count Dracula added with a cold, unfeeling voice.