Even though the entire tournament had finished for quite a few weeks now, the elders and inner circle members of the Sun Alliance were still reviewing everything that had been going on in the tournament to decide who would get what prize. The prize pool that they had were large, far more than what they could ever hope to take in earnings as that was not the point of the tournament. This competition was devised by Sun Tzu himself as soon as he and Zhu Ge Liang rose to prominence to make sure that each generation would be able to be inspired by the previous ones and push them to become more motivated to become strategists.

This was a money-draining endeavor, but such was the price of propelling the entire community towards the future. Though the amount that they sunk into the competition every couple of decades would be astronomical to most other top-earning factions, they were able to do this because they could generate so much revenue to offset these costs. The Sun Alliance was quite a wealthy faction, but if they were compared to many of the other top factions within other communities, they would not even be in the top 100.

Most of these top 100 factions either belonged to the Jordsand faction who were all very powerful and domineering by nature. Or, from other relatively wealthy communities that got to where they were by exploiting their own or others who just so happen to wander into their reach. Many of them were not pleasant to be around and they had no wishes to change the way that they operate as they wanted to stay where they were above everyone else.

The main principle of the Sun Alliance was to never be like these people and instead use their wealth to benefit others of their own community. However, not everyone one of the top brass felt the same way, that was why some of them have become openly corrupt without their leader here.

Li Guang had been aware of all of this while his teacher, Sun Tzu, was here but what could he do but watch as most of these figures were his seniors for now. He had brought this to the attention of his master many times, but he did not do anything. Perhaps Sun Tzu had something up his sleeve, but Li Guang was definitely in no position to doubt his teacher. With that, he let the matter go but not without keeping an eye for the perpetrators.

While all of the elders were busying themselves with placing all of the participants and factions into rankings and special awards, Li Guang decided to pay a visit to Xuan Feng and Lun Hu. Although there were many other geniuses of their generation, he felt the closest to these two specifically. There were certain matters that he knew these two would be able to help him out with and now was a time where he really needed to get some input from other sources.

A problem had been bugging him ever since the aerial portion of the tournament, it was the Bair fighters and their mysterious intentions.

(LG) “What do you two think about the Bair fighters?” Li Guang asked with a depressed mood.

(LH) “They are great strategists, that's for sure. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone who was able to outwit so many of our top-tier strategists so effortlessly not to mention all at once as well.” Lun Hu said with a sigh.

(XF) “It is definite that they are not strategists from any normal faction. I have been thinking that they must be from the Jordsand community, though I have nothing to back it up.” Xuan Feng said nonchalantly.

(LG) “That’s just the thing, you two haven’t been at the strategist reincarnation deathmatch yet, but I have. I have seen everyone that the Jordsand community has sent out and none of them had this style of warfare. I took the liberty of trying to remember every little thing about the Jordsand community that I had a brief encounter with. They were certainly powerful, much more powerful than the Bair fighters I’d say, but something is just not right.”

(LH) “Look, even if there is something that isn’t right, you must understand that they have already left. There is nothing we can do now to them even if we wanted to.”

(XF) “Correct, do you remember that battle we had with Baron? The one where the Bair fighters first used their weird contraption to rain explosives down on us?”

(LG) “I have heard of it. That must have been quite an ordeal. To have won the battle and immediately get pounded by another unseen enemy right after.”

(LH) “Yes, what of it?”

(XF) “I have heard that the gambling house reports of one of the Sun Alliance members striking it super-rich.”

(LG) “Oh? Who is it?”

(XF) “Supposedly, it was someone by the name of Li Xin?”

(LG) “HIm? What did he bet on?”

(XF) “That battle I just mentioned? He bet that Lun Hu, Jie Zi Fang, Jiang Yan, and my combined army would lose close to half of our numbers before we won.”

(LH) “Hold on, they weren’t able to deal that much damage to us though.”

(XF) “Let me finish. With the help of the Bair fighters, he got it pretty close to the actual number of casualties. This was a technicality, but he is now 30 million coins richer.”

(LH) “What were the odds against him?”

(XF) “From what I heard, almost 2 million to one.”

(LG) “I have faced off against Li Xin a couple of times while we were both fresh on planet 4, yet I never took him for someone who was able to have this level of perception. Or perhaps he just got lucky.”

(XF) “I would guess the latter as well. Even a child would be able to guess which side to bet on. Yet he actively put in 20,000 coins. Could he have some connection to Baron or Zhang Da Zhi?”

The three of them chatted for a bit longer before finally splitting up to accomplish their own tasks.