Xu Ziyan tried to recall the moment more carefully. Uh… perhaps he had been so startled that he could no longer remember exactly what he had felt.
He pressed a hand to his forehead and decided something was wrong with him. Bai Hua must have been influencing him lately and making his thoughts abnormal. How could Zirong possibly have improper intentions toward his elder brother? That was ridiculous!
He shook his head hard, convincing himself that he had imagined the entire incident. He also felt guilty for having such unsavory suspicions about his innocent little brother…
He had originally planned to show off his cooking tonight as a reward for Zirong, but the close quarters on the flying sword had left him profoundly unsettled.
He swore! Their bodies were merely standing close—they definitely weren’t pressed together—so why on earth could his backside constantly feel this faint, scorching heat?!
Was the heavens itself trying to drive him mad?
Xu Ziyan was almost in despair. Perhaps something about the original owner of this body really had rubbed off on him…
After all, the original owner had been attracted to men, and Bai Hua had deliberately tried to charm him. Could that have awakened his interest in men?
Then go fucking find someone else! Why the hell are you fantasizing about your own younger brother?! Does this body of yours have any shred of decency left?!
Xu Ziyan felt an intense urge to curse.
He had to admit that Zirong’s face was genuinely exquisite. Whether judged by the standards of men or women, that face possessed a dangerous, alluring charm.
But however one looked at it, Zirong was still his ‘younger brother’!
Feeling anything so strange toward his younger brother challenged the very foundation of Xu Ziyan’s values.
He wondered whether staying too close to Bai Hua had somehow affected him. Before all this, he and Zirong had lived together constantly, yet he had never reacted this way.
It must all be Bai Hua’s fault!
“Big Brother…” The hot breath against his ear sent a full-body shiver through Xu Ziyan, his knees nearly buckling beneath him.
He turned to glare at Xu Zirong, who wore an innocent expression and pointed downward. “Brother, aren’t we supposed to be saving someone? There’s a person crying down there.”
Fine. It must have been my imagination…
Xu Ziyan kept reassuring himself inwardly. When he looked down, he saw an elderly woman in a gray cloth dress huddled in a corner behind a narrow alley, quietly sobbing.
He had never met Yu Hao’s mother, but the cluster of small houses below did seem to belong to the Yu family.
“Auntie… are you all right?” Xu Ziyan descended and helped the woman up from the ground.
She looked prematurely aged. Xu Ziyan guessed she was only in her thirties, but her deeply lined face and graying hair made her look well past forty.
“Thank you, Immortal Master. I… I’m all right.” The woman seemed frightened by Xu Ziyan’s arrival from the sky and timidly drew back her hand.
Xu Ziyan did not mind. He gently asked why she had been crying.
The woman dared not speak, merely shaking her head over and over. Just then a door in the alley behind her opened, and a heavyset woman stepped outside.
The newcomer spotted the elderly-looking woman, raised her brows, and began cursing. “You old hag! No wonder the water vat isn’t full. So you’ve been sneaking off to loaf around!”
The older woman looked terrified, her lips trembling as she struggled to speak.
The stout woman then noticed Xu Ziyan standing behind her victim. Her eyes shifted, and she launched into another vicious tirade. “What’s this? Can’t walk straight when you see a young man, can you? Why don’t you look at your reflection? Who would want a face like yours? You filthy slut! Don’t think you became somebody just because you climbed into the master’s bed. So what if you bore him a son? You’re still completely under Madam’s thumb! If I were you, I’d have hanged myself from a crooked tree ages ago instead of wasting food!” She spat contemptuously to drive home her disgust.
“My… my son isn’t dead…” Until then the older woman had endured the abuse meekly without daring to object. But when the other woman claimed her son was dead, fear could no longer keep her silent.
“Oh, you filthy wretch! Growing bold enough to talk back to me, are you? Madam said your son died ages ago. They couldn’t even find his body! She only kept it from you out of pity.”
“Y-you’re lying!” Tears filled the older woman’s eyes as she trembled.
The stout woman gave a cold laugh. “Don’t believe me? Think about how young he was when he ran away, and how many demonic beasts live in those woods! He must have ended up in some beast’s stomach long ago. If you were a better mother, your boy wouldn’t have been eaten. Hah! You’d better give up hope!”
The older woman shook like a leaf and swayed on her feet, on the verge of fainting.
A calculating gleam entered the stout woman’s eyes. She reached toward the older woman’s hair, apparently intending to drag her back into the courtyard.
“Enough!” Xu Ziyan looked at the stout woman in disgust. He had not been certain of the older woman’s identity before, but the information revealed by the abuse was more than enough to confirm his suspicions.
“Well, where did this pretty boy come from? What’s wrong? So desperate you’re even interested in an old hag like this?” The stout woman had not seen Xu Ziyan descend from the sky and therefore did not know he was a cultivator.
“How can you be so rude?” A sharp rebuke suddenly came from overhead. A young man in white robes descended on a flying sword and regarded the stout woman with displeasure.
She jumped in fright. She knew perfectly well that someone who could fly was a cultivator. But as a servant of the Yu family, one of Wuti City’s four great clans, she believed ordinary cultivators would still show the family some respect.
She curtsied to Bai Hua. “Immortal Master, this woman is a servant of the Yu family. Surely even you have no reason to snatch another family’s servant by force?”
Bai Hua ignored her and smiled at Xu Ziyan instead. “Fellow Daoist Xu truly has a benevolent heart, always ready to help others. But why waste words on such a coarse person? Anyone who insults a cultivator can simply be erased. Would the Yu family dare disrespect you over it?”
Xu Ziyan frowned. He disliked Bai Hua’s attitude of treating ordinary mortals as ants. He acknowledged that some people deserved to die, but being a mortal was no justification for indiscriminate killing.
The stout woman was badly frightened by the man in white. With a leap nearly as fast as a rabbit’s, she darted through the little door and slammed it shut behind her.
Bai Hua suddenly flashed a toothy grin and winked at Xu Ziyan. “See? Problem solved.”
Xu Ziyan understood at once: Bai Hua had only been frightening the woman. His expression relaxed slightly.
Xu Zirong lowered his head and smiled to himself. He had clearly sensed the fluctuations of Bai Hua’s spiritual power just now, and he was certain his brother had also detected Bai Hua’s genuine intention to strike.
His brother was accustomed to dealing with straightforward people. Whether it was the arrogant Wei Qing or the honest Le Hu, they might have their shortcomings, but hypocrisy was not one of them.
Bai Hua was clearly not very skilled at concealing his true feelings. Compared with Xu Zirong himself, his attempts were almost laughably clumsy.
“Fellow Daoist Bai, did you come here for something?” Xu Ziyan did not want to discuss the matter further and only hoped to send Bai Hua away quickly. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that Bai Hua had marked him as a target, a feeling that carried an ominous sense of approaching disaster…
Xu Ziyan’s question trapped all the polite remarks Bai Hua had prepared in his throat. Of course he had come for Xu Ziyan, but he could hardly admit it so openly.
“Haha, nothing in particular. I was passing by and happened to see Fellow Daoist Xu below, so I thought I’d come see whether you needed any help.” Bai Hua looked and sounded perfectly sincere. An ordinary person would have been taken in by his warmth.
Unfortunately, Xu Ziyan was already deeply wary of him. Coupled with his rather unsuccessful performance just now, Bai Hua’s friendliness did nothing to make Xu Ziyan want a closer acquaintance.
“Oh, in that case I won’t keep you, Fellow Daoist Bai. This auntie looks very weak. I’ll find her a doctor first.” Without giving Bai Hua the chance to respond, Xu Ziyan picked up the woman, who had already fainted, and leaped onto his flying sword.
Xu Zirong unhurriedly drew out his own flying sword and deliberately put some distance between himself and his brother. Seeing Bai Hua’s unwilling expression, he smiled delightedly and lowered his voice. “You think you can set your sights on my brother? Dream on.”
Suppressing his anger, Bai Hua smiled faintly. “You’re worrying too much, Fellow Daoist Zirong. I simply think Fellow Daoist Xu is a good person and would like to become friends with him.”
Xu Zirong did not become angry. He merely curled his lips. “My brother belongs to me. Don’t even think about it.”
Bai Hua put on a deliberately startled expression. “Fellow Daoist Zirong, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Fellow Daoist Xu is your own elder brother! How could he belong to you? He’ll belong to his future lover!” He deliberately emphasized the words own elder brother.
Xu Zirong sneered, his face turning icy. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re after. You’re a filthy whore who’s been fucked ragged, and you still dare covet my brother?”
“You!” Bai Hua’s expression changed abruptly. The look he shot Xu Zirong suggested he wanted to tear him apart. He did not believe there was anything wrong with improving his cultivation through paired cultivation, but having Xu Zirong expose it so contemptuously filled him with humiliation and rage.
Xu Zirong made no attempt to hide his killing intent. A faint red glow flickered around his fingers. “Come near my brother again, and you’ll end up like that woman.”
Bai Hua felt every hair on his body rise, as though a prickling pain had spread through all his pores. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders, shivered, and stared at Xu Zirong in terror.
“Zirong, what are you doing?” Xu Ziyan called impatiently after waiting so long for his brother to take flight.
“Coming!” Xu Zirong’s murderous aura instantly melted into a smile as gentle as a spring breeze. He lifted his head and looked tenderly at Xu Ziyan high above. After casting one final cold glance over his shoulder, he turned and left without hesitation.