Cui Chongyong endured and endured, but in the end he still could not hold himself back.
“Father, are you not making rather too much of this?”
He would have been better off saying nothing. The moment the words left his mouth, everything exploded. Cui Xuanchan’s brows shot up, anger flared in his eyes, and he gave a cold laugh. “Making too much of it? Heh, making too much of it! You dare call this making too much of it! I see you really have been spoiled rotten by your father!”
“Oh, no. I am so angry I have muddled myself. Your father is me.” Cui Xuanchan slapped his own forehead. His chest heaved several times. Only after closing his eyes and calming himself for a while did he reopen them, sweep his gaze across the crowd, and feel his temper rising again. He shouted, “I may not have known that demon thrall, but he must have been a demonic cultivator who fed on blood and flesh. Am I right?”
Though he looked old, his gaze remained as fierce and startling as a lion’s. As it swept across everyone with imposing authority, all the disciples paled and lowered their heads in alarm.
Under the pressure, Cui Jingchun answered, “Y-yes, Grandfather. That was exactly what I wanted to report to you just now…”
Cui Xuanchan looked at his beloved grandson, then turned back to Cui Chongyong and forced down his anger. “You idiot! You are one big bean bun yourself, yet you brought along a whole crowd of little bean buns. If Little Jade Beauty had not acted quickly enough and that demon thrall had swallowed all you buns who came serving yourselves up as food, his cultivation would have skyrocketed. Once he transformed fully into a demon, eating as he fought and replenishing himself as he went, by the time I managed to kill him there might have been only two living people left in all of Dongxun City: me and Little Jade Beauty!”
Cui Chongyong was left speechless and could not answer.
“Let me ask you this! I ordered you to lock down the city, and you refused to obey. That is insubordination! If you truly had the ability to make your own decisions, I would not blame you. But you have served as acting City Lord for more than a few decades and still possess not the slightest experience facing an enemy. You think too little, judge wrongly, and have no grasp of the situation at all!” Cui Xuanchan roared. “Forget helping. You cannot even manage not to make things worse, and you still think I am making too much of this!”
When Cui Xuanchan first saw Yin Wuchen’s corpse, he had not felt much. Only when his ignorant, fearless son and beloved grandson arrived together did delayed fear suddenly wash over him, feeding his anger until it burned hotter and hotter.
Cui Chongyong took the scolding head-on until his face was gray as ash and did not dare say anything more.
Cui Jingchun gathered his courage. “Grandfather, Father was worried about you too.”
“Worried?” Cui Xuanchan threw back his head and laughed, his tone impossible to read as joy or rage. Then he barked, “When you are all alive and kicking, I am delighted you have such concern for me. If you were lying here stiff and dead, would I not be the white-haired elder burying the black-haired young?”
After this relentless torrent of abuse, not only Cui Chongyong himself but even the other disciples caught in the blast were frightened silent and dared not make a sound.
Besides the Cui Clan members, there was one other person whose face had turned the color of earth.
That person was Ren Yijue.
Yin Wuchen was dead, so by all logic the crisis had already ended. Yet Ren Yijue felt that the real danger had only just begun.
And this danger was far harder to deal with than Yin Wuchen.
Because this particular trouble was named Cui Xuanchan. More precisely, Cui Xuanchan, current head of the Qingyang Cui Clan, lord of Dongxun City, and the Falling Star Lord.
By now, very few people who had once called Cui Xuanchan the Falling Star Lord were still alive. Their deaths, however, certainly did not mean Cui Xuanchan had grown any weaker.
As luck would have it, Ren Yijue had once heard someone explain the origin of the title “Falling Star.”
In his youth, Cui Xuanchan had happened upon a stone from the heavens. After refining it, he unexpectedly obtained ten pearl-marrow beads dense with spiritual qi. He cultivated using the pearl marrow and progressed at astonishing speed. When the beads finally disintegrated, however, they did not turn to ash. Instead, they scattered into countless grains of star-sand and became a spiritual artifact linked directly to Cui Xuanchan’s mind.
The star-sand could undergo countless transformations according to his will and take the form of anything in the world. In those days, someone had described the sight of Cui Xuanchan attacking as though, across the azure reaches of the Nine Heavens, ten thousand stars all fell.
That was how the title “Falling Star Lord” spread.
As for why Ren Yijue was suddenly remembering this ancient piece of trivia, naturally it was because of the dead Yin Wuchen.
The man had been brought here by the two of them.
The demon had appeared inside the City Lord’s Manor.
And it was members of the Cui household who had died gruesome deaths.
Ren Yijue could not resist quietly asking Qian Xuelang, “How does the Jade Beauty’s cultivation compare with Cui Xuanchan’s?”
Qian Xuelang was, as always, very honest. “He is stronger.”
Ren Yijue politely thanked him. Accustomed to taking on the burden of thinking further ahead for the two of them, he now looked exceptionally grave and discovered that whether or not he was Qian Xuelang’s Dao companion suddenly seemed rather unimportant beside a matter of life and death.
For someone like Ren Yijue, encountering a powerful opponent whose superior strength could not be compensated for with intelligence produced even greater unease than it would in an ordinary person.
At present, Ren Yijue wanted nothing more than for Cui Xuanchan to return to the amiable, domestic old man from moments ago. He would not even mind if the man asked when he and Qian Xuelang planned to hold their wedding banquet.
Anything would be easier than Cui Xuanchan learning that the two of them had brought Yin Wuchen into the City Lord’s Manor, deciding that the two harbored ill intentions, reverting to the Falling Star Lord of old, and giving them a personal demonstration of what it meant for “ten thousand stars to fall across the azure reaches of the Nine Heavens.”
The one piece of good news was that Qian Xuelang had remained beside him the entire time. That gave Ren Yijue considerable peace of mind.
Qian Xuelang suddenly spoke. “How much longer will you be busy?”
He did not name anyone, but everyone knew whom he was addressing. They all turned toward him in shock. Even Cui Jingchun froze.
Ren Yijue went instantly from reassured to despairing.
“Although I have been a City Lord in name only and ignored mundane affairs for many years, something this serious happened inside my own manor.” Cui Xuanchan’s anger had not entirely subsided, but he was not about to direct it at Qian Xuelang. “The clan elders will probably come trouble me shortly, and there is still all this mess to clean up. One way or another, I will need a while.”
Qian Xuelang said, “Then I am taking this corpse with me. Come find me at Bright Moon Mist Tower when you are finished.”
Cui Jingchun seemed about to say something, but he was too astonished and forgot how to speak. He could only watch as Qian Xuelang bent down, gathered Yin Wuchen’s corpse into his arms, took Ren Yijue by the hand, and simply walked away, abandoning everyone else in bewilderment.
Ren Yijue was still among those bewildered people.
After separating from Qian Xuelang earlier, Ren Yijue had searched the City Lord’s Manor for Cui Jingchun. Along the way, quite a few servants with low cultivation had fallen victim to the demonic qi. Fortunately, the patrolling disciples were well trained enough not to panic in the crisis. Several quickly formed a spiritual formation to resist the demonic qi and prevented the casualties from spreading further.
But merely resisting it already demanded everything those patrolling disciples had. They could not move around freely, so they entrusted Ren Yijue with reporting the situation and told him where Cui Jingchun could be found.
By the time Ren Yijue found the Cui father and son, Cui Xuanchan had only just appeared. After tossing out a brief instruction, the old man vanished again. Ren Yijue therefore had to explain the situation first to Cui Chongyong and Cui Jingchun, which was what led to everyone rushing to Quiet Mountain Cloud Residence and witnessing Cui Xuanchan’s furious outburst.
He still remembered that before entering the city, Qian Xuelang had said he had no friendship whatsoever with Cui Xuanchan.
How had Qian Xuelang somehow become such an easy conversational companion and new friend of Cui Xuanchan’s in the brief time Ren Yijue had been away?