Trillionaire's Slice of Life

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After seeing off the young miss of the Zhou family, Chu Mo temporarily set aside the matters concerning the Zhou family and Britain. Having spent a few leisurely days in the demon city, he set off once again, his destination being Dali.

Dali, the capital of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, is located in the western part of Hua Country, on the Erhai Plain of the Yungui Plateau, at the foot of Cang Mountain, by the shore of Erhai Lake. It served as the capital of both the ancient Nanzhao Kingdom and the Dali Kingdom. As the political, economic, and cultural center of ancient Yunnan, it thrived for more than five hundred years.

Naturally, Chu Mo was not here for sightseeing but for a person—Wu Pengkun, the expert of the Iron Shirt technique. Wu Pengkun had left a deep impression on Chu Mo with his Iron Shirt at the last martial arts convention in Capital City.

As a half-step grandmaster, Wu Pengkun was definitely among the top experts. In the fighting ring in Capital City, Wu Pengkun defeated a practitioner of Monkey Fist with his own power, and his incredibly resilient defense was precisely what Chu Mo valued.

Of course, as a half-step grandmaster, Wu Kunpeng was no ordinary person. He owned a martial arts academy in Dali called Kunpeng Martial Arts Academy.

The academy currently offers programs like martial arts forms, Sanda (Chinese kickboxing), ethnic and folk sports (such as dragon dance and lion dance), traditional sports health cultivation techniques, karate, etc. Since its establishment in 2000, it has trained more than 800 undergraduates, 81 Masters, and 20 Ph.D. students.

The academy now has 174 undergraduate students (including more than 10 international students), 16 Master's students, and 6 Ph.D. students (including 1 overseas Ph.D. student), who study martial arts forms, Sanda, martial fitness and wellness, traditional martial arts, karate, dragon dance, lion dance, and other specialty ethnic and folk sports.

Kunpeng Martial Arts Academy enjoys a fine reputation in Dali, having trained 2 World Champions and over 20 National Champions since its inception.

Wu Kunpeng, as the founder and dean of the academy, is respected but also beset with many worries.

Twenty years ago, it was the era when the ten Great Grandmasters of Hua Country's martial arts were recognized as deities. During that period, martial arts were prevalent throughout Hua Country, with many rushing to learn martial arts. Young people glorified martial arts as a path to honor, sparking a martial arts craze in the entire nation.

It was precisely because of this that Wu Kunpeng seized the opportunity and founded Kunpeng Martial Arts Academy. With its strict school spirit and formidable strength, the academy conquered all of Dali and flourished vigorously, earning Wu Kunpeng the honorific title of Master Wu from many of Dali's residents.

However, as time passed, after the coronation of the ten Great Grandmasters, they went into closed-door cultivation, paying no heed to worldly affairs. With the disappearance of these top-tier experts, the path of martial arts no longer had leading grandmasters to guide it, and the few half-step grandmasters were busy with their own careers, leading to a gradual decline in the martial arts.

As a result, affected by the changing environment, the contemporary youth lost its passion for martial arts, and Kunpeng Martial Arts Academy went from being renowned to being ignored. The academy's peak period was fifteen years ago when it had three thousand five hundred students, and many wanting to enroll had to pull some strings, as those with even slightly less talent were not accepted.

Now, with the decline of martial arts, the academy has only three hundred seventy students remaining, and as time goes by, the entry of new students is also plummeting. If the current trend continues, in no more than five years, Kunpeng Martial Arts Academy will no longer have new registrations!

At that time, the once-thriving Kunpeng Martial Arts Academy is bound to deteriorate.

Perhaps due to this reason, as the dean of the academy, Wu Kunpeng made a special trip to Capital City to participate in the martial arts convention—to exchange knowledge with top experts and to seek a survival path for his academy.

It was his visit to Capital City that caught Chu Mo's attention, prompting Chu Mo to make this personal trip to Dali.

In this era where Great Grandmasters no longer emerged from seclusion, half-step grandmasters are actually the backbone of martial arts. However, these top experts, taking into account the whole of Hua Country, only number in the dozens.

Furthermore, most of these individuals have their own established careers. They are either successful or significant regional lords, generally beyond the reach of ordinary powers, and enticing a half-step grandmaster to personally protect someone's safety is not something even the wealthiest man in Hua Country, Zhang Dahua, with his influence, could necessarily achieve. After all, although Zhang Dahua commands an asset of three hundred billion, any random half-step grandmaster would also possess a net worth of several billion.

Though a half-step grandmaster may not have the influence of a wealthiest man, they still have considerable power. Under such circumstances, no half-step grandmaster would naturally stoop to being a bodyguard for someone else.

For Chu Mo to recruit Wu Kunpeng, given the latter's status as a half-step grandmaster and dean of the martial arts academy, Chu Mo knew he had to offer sufficient sincerity and a very attractive exchange of benefits. This is exactly why he made the trip to Dali personally.

Chu Mo had been investigating Wu Kunpeng for some time. During the martial arts convention in Capital City, he had Jiang Tao, the head of the detective agency, secretly gather information on Wu Kunpeng to avoid startling the subject, and everything was carried out discreetly.

Now, with the time reaching mid-May, the detective agency's secret investigation into Wu Kunpeng was complete, and having grasped enough information about him, Chu Mo chose to visit Dali in person.

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