The Legendary Man

Chapter 1087 What About You

The members of the respectable families froze at Winston's proclamation.

Even Remy gazed at Winston, his expression turning incredulous.

“What are you talking about, Winston? How could we fight alongside Asura's Office? Instead, I think we'd be better off mobilizing the God Realm cultivators of the remaining families to get rid of Jonathan and his friends once and for—”

Winston was about to continue when he noticed Winston fixing him with an icy stare.

“You should know how quickly we will fall apart if we do not stand together, Remy. I am aware that Asura's Office has expanded to such an extent that it threatens the eight respectable families. However, you must understand that once Asura's Office falls, Remdik's troops will occupy all three provinces of Doveston. What would become of the Leeson family then?”

Though Remy was impulsive, he was shrewd enough to understand Winston's reasoning.

The Leeson family's ancestral land was still a mystery, and nobody knew where it was located.

In that regard, they were just like the Mallory family at Yorksland. Though the approximate location of both those families was common knowledge, they had hidden their kin in the mountains.

Centum Mountain of Yorksland served as a natural barrier. Due to its strategic location, it contained many Precelestials.

In addition to the Mallory family's ancient skill with parasites, handed down for generations, even cultivators of other prominent families did not dare trespass.

This was especially so for the Leeson family of Doveston, situated atop the intersection between Delisgar Ridge and two other ranges.

Easy to defend but hard to besiege, it provided a treacherous perimeter around the Leeson family stronghold to cross.

To investigate the origins of the Leeson family, one would likely not return from such a quest through the mountain ranges unless he was God Realm and above; Grandmaster Realm cultivators would not stand a chance.

They had set it up with regard to the cultivation environment within the Chanaean borders.

Once Remdik occupied the three states, no cultivators or natural defenses would be able to stop the state's army.

Unlike most others, the Leeson family was familiar with Remdik.

As an ancient family of cultivators occupying Doveston for almost two millennia, it was a shorter distance for them to enter Remdik's eastern flank than to march toward Harfush.

The Leeson family was well acquainted with Remdik's cultivation environment.

Given its vastness, Remdik cultivated warriors at a rapid rate—many more times than Chanaea.

It was that fervor that had led to the births of families of cultivators, one after another.

Furthermore, those families were similar to the eight respectable families. As the cultivators' strength increased, they were able to procure more resources to train on and further increase the cultivation rate—a bizarre upward spiral.

As they evolved with every generation, the Untouchables in Remdik grew in number.

With its limitless stretches of land, Remdik possessed much richer resources for cultivation than Chanaea. Owing to its smaller population, most of the families in Remdik could not monopolize the resources, either.

It would be akin to one selling produce in a village of farmers.

To increase the price of potatoes when every household had more than they could consume was folly. The monopoly would fall apart from everybody pooling their pantries together.

It was due to such an advantageous combination of factors that Remdik had become the country with the most Untouchables—a nation of soldiers.

Thriving under such favorable conditions, massive, powerful families began rising in droves.

One such example was Ivanov's family; they had even begun to threaten the tsar's authority.

Having caught a whiff of the threat, the tsar Valyeli, who reigned a hundred and fifty years ago, ordered a purge of cultivators when he ascended the throne.

As a nation known for its warlike brutality, the tsar's methods did his country's reputation justice.

The families, fully developed, were ordered to draft their kin ranking Grandmaster Realm and above into the Remdikian military.

Naturally, there was an option to reject.

However, the families who opted to reject became target practice for the Remdikian army the following day.

On the other hand, vast, powerful families like the Welsh family were not as easily subjugated. The tsar employed the nonconfrontational policy of enlisting them as the country's protectors, thus becoming respectable families.

It was in this manner with which they became the tsar's left and right hands, and how the families became parts of Remdik's defense over the ensuing decades.

The Leeson family could not afford to remain neutral if Remdik invaded Doveston with its full force. Only two paths awaited them.

The first was to swear fealty by changing their names and remaining a shadow of their former selves under the Remdikians' watchful eye.

The second was to leave their ancestral ground and give up everything they had built over the past two thousand years.

Aside from the problem of housing the people and items of a family of that size, even the selection of a new territory posed a problem. There was no place in Chanaea for them.

It was no coincidence that the eight respectable families had a legacy of close to two thousand years, and neither was it a coincidence that there were only eight of them.

The reason was that the respectable families were constantly attempting to conquer each other.

The Leeson family, for example, had the entire Eshistan as their territory. They would not hesitate to marshal their forces to defend against the other respectable families if the latter chose to invade, and they would leave no one alive.

That was the principle they held which granted them peace of mind.