"Who would dare go against us?" Bai Chong mused over it.

"Could it be the Heavenly Treasure Pavilion?" one elder whispered fearfully, "They are the only ones with that kind of money."

"Then why can it not be Blood Iron Mercenary Guild?" Another elder asked.

"Silence! Su Mei and that brute are a greedy bunch. They would operate on strict profit margins and wouldn’t artificially crash the market for no reason," Bai Haoran grunted as he tried to connect the dots.

"Then there is only one other faction in this valley with the wealth to pull something like this off," Elder Bai Chong stated grimly, his eyes darting toward the western side of the town.

"And they have the most to gain from our clash with the Gu Clan!"

"The Song Clan."

~~~~~

Meanwhile, on the completely opposite side of Poison Valley Town, the lavish and heavily fortified estate of the Song Clan was surprisingly calm and quiet.

Song Tianming, the wealthy and highly apprehensive Patriarch of the Song Clan, sat behind his pristine ironwood desk while he carefully read through a stack of urgent reports.

Unlike the Bai and Gu clans who focused entirely on poisons, bodily cultivation, and medicinal alchemy, the Song Clan had built their massive fortune by strictly monopolizing the trade of weapons, defensive arrays, and high-tier talismans, allowing them to remain comfortably neutral while the other two clans constantly slaughtered each other.

"Are these reports entirely accurate?" Song Tianming asked with a skeptical tone, looking up at the elder who stood respectfully by the door, "You are saying the entire medical and poison supply chain of Poison Valley Town has been bought out overnight?"

"Every single word is true, Patriarch," the elder replied seriously, keeping his hands neatly folded behind his back. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

"The Bai Clan is currently in a chaos because their poison refinement halls are completely empty, and the Gu Clan is suffering the exact same fate, although slightly better."

"Which means neither of the warring factions is behind this." Song Tianming stroked his long, neatly trimmed beard.

He suddenly pulled out an abacus to quickly calculate the sheer volume of Spirit Crystals required to execute a market sweep of this magnitude.

He moved the wooden beads rapidly, and when he finally saw the final number, his eyes widened slightly in genuine shock because the total amount of liquid currency needed to buy supplies at such an heavily inflated prices was absolutely staggering.

"This requires at least a hundred thousand of Low and Medium-Grade Spirit Stones, maybe even more," Song Tianming muttered to himself.

His mind racing with completely terrifying possibilities since he knew that even his own wealthy clan would severely struggle to produce that much liquid Spirit Stones without their Shops being sold out first.

"Patriarch, the Bai Clan elders are already starting to point fingers at us," the elder warned cautiously, stepping closer to the desk, "Since we are the only other major faction with deep pockets, they suspect that we are trying to starve them out so we can forcefully take over their businesses."

Song Tianming listened to the remarks of the elder and nodded slowly processing the stupid assumptions of the Bai Clan. He was sure that Gu Clan must be thinking along the same lines.

But he had absolutely no intention of getting dragged into their bloody, pointless gang war over some rocks.

"Bai Haoran is a brainless idiot, so of course he assumes we are behind this," Song Tianming scoffed coldly as he stood up from his desk and walked over to the large window.

"But we do not deal in herbs or beast cores, and I am not stupid enough to artificially crash a market that doesn’t benefit my weapon sales directly."

He turned back to face the elder and several other high-ranking elders who had been sitting silently in the room all along, his expression shifting into one of extreme caution and deep, underlying fear.

"Listen to me very carefully," Song Tianming commanded, his voice echoing with absolute authority as he looked at each of his elders.

"I want our clan to maintain the strictest neutrality possible during this crisis."

"we don’t take sides, and we sell to whoever pays us. Be it the Bai Clan or the Gu Clan sell them whatever they want."

"But keep in mind... No discounts. we might not want to be a part of this meaningless fight between them. But that does not mean we can’t profit from it."

"But Patriarch, since they are on each other’s throats, we could easily charge them double or triple for weapons to defend themselves!" one greedy elder argued quickly, seeing a massive opportunity for profit.

"Don’t be greedy, you fool," Song Tianming snapped at the elder down immediately, "Do you not understand what has happened here overnight?"

"Someone had strangled the foundations of the two most violent factions in this valley without even showing their face," Song Tianming explained.

"If we suddenly exploit this crisis to extort them, we will not only force those desperate dogs to hold a grudge, but we will also draw the attention of this unknown force."

As Song Tianming explained to them, the elders quickly fell silent as the his words made sense to them.

"Someone has turned their attention upon our Poison Valley Town," Song Tianming whispered grimly, his eyes narrowing as he looked out over the town’s rooftops.

"An unknown force with limitless wealth is currently laying his pieces, and if we make a single wrong move, we could become their target as well."

Song Tianming turned away from the window as he looked at the elders in front of him.

"Double the guards on our trade routes, sell our weapons exactly at the standard market price to both sides, and tell our merchants to keep their heads down," the Song Patriarch declared firmly.

"We are going to sit back and watch the Bai and Gu clans bleed dry, because whoever is pulling the strings from the shadows right now might be far too wealthy and dangerous for us to provoke."

What Song Tianming might not have dreamt in his wildest dreams was that the "Unknown Power" he was so worried about was the bastard trash of the town and right now after sending the three clans in a sense of frenzy, he was in the bath with his dear step-mother, enjoying the taste of sweet grapes.