Bai Hua watched the two figures vanish into the distance, dazed, and shivered for no apparent reason. A terrible scream rang out from behind the door. Sweeping the room with his divine sense, he saw that the stout woman who had been throwing her weight around moments earlier was rotting and dissolving piece by piece before her own eyes. At last, she collapsed into a pool of blood. The terrified screams of the servants soon drew several Yu family cultivators.
Bai Hua frowned and swiftly left the troublesome place. After finding a quiet corner some distance away, he suddenly remembered Xu Zirong’s icy eyes when he had threatened him.
Those black pupils had held not a trace of human feeling. They were as cold as ice that had remained frozen for a thousand years.
Yet that same indifferent person had softened like the spring wind the moment he heard his elder brother call.
Bai Hua could barely endure the restless heat surging through him. A hot current surged straight down from his lower abdomen, and this contradictory mix of feelings inexplicably excited him. Among all the men he had ever been with, not a single one had ever stirred him quite like this…
“Xu Zirong…” He rolled the name around on his tongue, unable to suppress the surging excitement in his heart.
Even though he clearly knew this person was dangerous—dangerous enough to bring him a fate of complete ruin—he still could not rein in the sudden flare of desire.
He touched his burning cheeks and licked his dry lips. A fierce urge to conquer rose sharply in his chest. That urge was so powerful that neither Lin Xiaotian nor Xu Ziyan could compare to the intensity of his craving for Xu Zirong.
“I will… have you.” Bai Hua narrowed his eyes and began devising an entirely new plan. He had time. He had patience. Sooner or later, the day would come when he would hold Xu Zirong completely in the palm of his hand.
With an unconscious mortal in tow, Xu Ziyan did not return to the Jiang residence. Instead, he found a clinic and asked a physician to treat Yu Hao’s mother. It was not that he begrudged her his medicinal pills. They had all been given to him by Luo Bigfoot, and their extraordinary potency made them sacred remedies for cultivators. To an ordinary mortal, however, they would be lethal poison.
With Wuti City under attack, its streets and alleys were completely deserted. The bustling scenes of that very morning had given way to eerie silence. Everyone was sheltering at home, silently praying that the cultivators defending the city could hold out.
Mortals and cultivators alike understood the fate of cities breached by demonic beasts: every one of them was massacred. The beasts had no need to occupy a city and instead rampaged through it. To them, human flesh was a feast, and no one negotiated with their food.
Xu Ziyan had to climb over a wall to enter a closed clinic. He nearly frightened the elderly physician into fainting. Fortunately, the man’s realization that Xu Ziyan was an immortal master brought him back to his senses. For mortals without cultivation, these cultivators wielding spiritual power were now their only hope of survival.
Eager to please Xu Ziyan, the old physician pulled out every trick he knew to treat the elderly woman. Unfortunately, she had merely fainted from years of poor health compounded by intense distress. The physician, who had hoped to display his skills, was rather disappointed.
But the moment Xu Ziyan handed him a spirit stone, that disappointment vanished. He promptly brought out his finest tea and tactfully withdrew from the sickroom.
After the physician massaged her, the elderly woman soon regained consciousness. Her eyesight was blurred, but she could make out the tall, slender cultivator standing before her. For a fleeting moment, his silhouette overlapped with her son’s. If Hao’er were alive, he should be about this age now.
Grief welled up in her. She covered her face with her sleeve and wept soundlessly, holding back her sobs as though terrified someone might hear.
Xu Ziyan felt uncomfortable. What he had learned from Yu Hao’s mother was enough to tell him how difficult her life in the Yu family had been. He sighed softly and handed her a handkerchief. “Auntie, please don’t cry. Getting worked up isn’t good for you right now.”
After sniffling for a long while, the elderly woman wiped the corners of her eyes with her sleeve and looked at him through red, swollen eyes. “Immortal Master, forgive my loss of composure. Thank you for saving me.”
“There’s no need to thank me, Auntie,” Xu Ziyan said hastily. “Actually, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Of course, Immortal Master. Please ask.”
Xu Ziyan thought for a moment. “I heard you say earlier that your son left home to seek instruction?”
At the mention of her son, the elderly woman nodded with an expression of anguish. “It’s all my fault as his mother. If I had been more capable, my Hao’er wouldn’t have had to go out into the world alone at such a young age, only to end up… sob…”
It seemed that Yu Hao’s mother had also come to believe the stout woman’s claim that her son had long since been devoured by a beast. After so many years, Yu Hao was the only hope keeping her alive. She had instinctively contradicted the woman, but deep down she had no confidence in her own denial.
Seeing her cry again, Xu Ziyan felt an even bigger headache coming on. Comforting people was truly not one of his skills.
“Auntie, please don’t cry just yet. There’s something I need to confirm. Is your son’s name Yu Hao?”
She jerked her head up and seized Xu Ziyan’s arm with her thin hands. “You… you know my Hao’er?”
Xu Zirong frowned slightly. With movements that looked gentle but were in fact quite firm, he pried her hands away from his brother’s arm and set them on her lap. In a soft voice, he said, “There happens to be a disciple in our sect named Yu Hao. He bears some resemblance to you, and you kept mentioning Hao’er, so my brother wondered whether that disciple might be your son.”
To be fair, Xu Zirong was being generous when he claimed the two resembled each other. Although the old woman now looked aged, it was clear that she must once have been a striking beauty. As for Yu Hao… well, he was not ugly, merely utterly ordinary.
His was the quintessential face that would disappear forever into any crowd. Worse, there was something faintly unsavory about his manner. When that side of him showed, it tended to make people want to give him a good beating…
“Hao’er… you know Hao’er?” The old woman grew so excited that she reached for Xu Ziyan’s arm again. Luckily, Xu Zirong reacted instantly, grabbed a pillow, and shoved it into her arms.
The elderly woman froze. Thoroughly bewildered, she stared at the porcelain pillow in her hands and then at Xu Zirong, unable to make sense of the gesture.
Xu Ziyan: …
He rapped Xu Zirong sharply on the head and shot him a look ordering him to get out of the way. Xu Zirong’s peculiar recent behavior might have left Xu Ziyan unsettled, but his authority as the elder brother could still make a considerable impression.
Xu Zirong pouted and moved aside, aggrieved. He watched his brother take the pillow away from the baffled old woman, toss it aside, and gently take her hand to give it a reassuring pat.
Xu Zirong kept his resentful gaze fixed on their joined hands. His stare was so palpable that even the elderly woman, beside herself with excitement at the news of her son, involuntarily drew back and released Xu Ziyan.
Xu Ziyan’s eye twitched with anger at this childish behavior. Unfortunately, Xu Zirong was faithfully adhering to his usual motto: repent sincerely, but never actually change.
Helpless, Xu Ziyan gave up trying to correct him. He simply did his best to ignore Xu Zirong and told the elderly woman what he knew of her son in an exceptionally gentle voice.
To his embarrassment, Xu Ziyan had not seen Yu Hao for more than five years. He could only paint a reasonably impressive picture of the grown man by relying on Xu Zirong to supply details from the sidelines.
Seeing hope rekindle in the old woman’s eyes, Xu Ziyan prayed silently: Yu Hao, you’d better live up to this. I’ve made you sound so impressive in front of your mother. If you still look as shady as before, I’ll lose all credibility…
After settling the elderly woman, Xu Ziyan still had to deal with the practical aftermath. The Yu family was, after all, one of Wuti City’s four great families. Even if Yu Hao’s branch was insignificant, he could not simply march off with someone’s concubine, though Yu Hao’s father had probably forgotten she existed.
After spending so many days in Wuti City, Xu Ziyan had heard quite a bit about Yu Hao’s father. He truly did not want to judge the man, but compared with him, even Father Xu was a far better parent. Father Xu might not have felt affection for his sons, yet at least he had fulfilled his responsibilities. Yu Hao’s father, on the other hand… well, enough said.
Yu Hao’s mother had practically no status. To many people, a so-called concubine was little different from a maidservant. A woman like her, old, no longer favored, and with a son long presumed dead, could scarcely expect a good end.
Xu Ziyan’s original plan was to use his position as her ‘savior’ to ‘buy’ her freedom from Yu Hao’s father. It sounded unpleasant, but it was the quickest method. He had considered other possibilities, yet the means Bai Hua had used in the original story were certainly out of the question.
When Bai Hua rescued Yu Hao’s mother in the original course of events, Wuti City had already fallen. The branch of the Yu family to which her husband belonged had abandoned her and fled, only to run into a high-tier demonic beast. With no cultivators of real strength among them, they had been wiped out, leaving Yu Hao’s mother a free woman by default.
Xu Ziyan could not help marveling at the protagonist’s halo. Look at Bai Hua: he really was born to be the protagonist. When he wanted to recruit an underling, even heaven arranged to remove the troublesome loose ends.
Scratching his head helplessly, Xu Ziyan considered how many spirit stones it would take to secure Yu Hao’s mother’s freedom. With her husband’s greedy nature, the man was sure to take the opportunity to demand an exorbitant price.