“This morning, the physician I sent over said that the young man’s condition is fine for now, but he doesn’t know when the boy will wake up.”
Kang Zongdan answered.
“That’s good then…”
Huang Yong said, pausing for a moment, and then continued to ask:
“The child had an older brother who came as well, right? He wasn’t very old, and I think he’s also a cultivator?”
“Do you mean Fellow Daoist Chen?”
Kang Zongdan replied.
“That’s right. I remember his name sounded like Chen Yan. I don’t know, Fellow Daoist Chen, what sect did he come from?”
Huang Yong’s tone was flat, with a hint of curiosity.
Kang Zongdan shook his head and said:
“Fellow Daoist Chen claimed he was nothing but a rogue cultivator.”
“I see.”
Huang Yong nodded.
He didn’t press the matter further, but he knew very well that the likelihood of that Chen Yan being a pure rogue cultivator was minuscule.
Two days ago he had met Chen Yan once.
He understood clearly that such a composed, effortless air could not be faked.
Even if Chen really was a rogue cultivator, he would be one who had seen the world.
Still, Huang Yong had only asked casually. As a protector of Mirage Palace’s inner court, an unknown junior cultivator was far beneath notice.
He had come to Yunxi Country only to fulfill the promise Elder Zheng made years ago to the Kang family patriarch Kang Zongdan.
The Kang family’s branches across Yunxi Country had gathered their eligible young heirs to the Kang Mansion over the past few days.
They were simply waiting for the formal selection to begin tomorrow morning.
Huang Yong only wanted to try recruiting a few talented Kang heirs who might meet the threshold, and if any showed exceptional talent he would cultivate them properly.
If their talent was mediocre, he would send them to Mirage Palace’s outer court to do menial tasks.
As for anything else, it had nothing to do with Mirage Palace.
...
The Kang Mansion’s evening banquet was brightly lit.
Delicacies flowed out like a river; every dish, from ingredients to cooking to presentation, was flawless.
Although the food was mundane fare—suckling pig, lamb chops, various game, fresh vegetables—it fully satisfied the appetites of the young disciples from Mirage Palace.
After all, two disciples who usually trained almost every day, Wang Jianian and Feng Ya, hardly ever got to enjoy good food.
Chen Yan attended this banquet with Su Hongzhen.
They sat at the same table as the four cultivators from Mirage Palace and Kang Zongdan, but they were seated at the most marginal positions.
That was the most reasonable seat arrangement.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Chen Yan had Su Hongzhen thank the cultivators from Mirage Palace, especially the girl who looked about the same age as Su Hongzhen.
Su Hongzhen’s rescue had been entirely the doing of that girl named Jiang Shiyu.
The girl only nodded and said nothing.
Her silence made Little Su a bit embarrassed.
“Big brother, why do you think she saved me?”
At the banquet, Su Hongzhen lowered his voice and asked Chen Yan quietly.
“What do you think?”
Chen Yan replied with a question.
“Maybe because she’s a good person?”
Su Hongzhen answered.
“Perhaps.”
Chen Yan said.
Tonight Kang Zongdan was in a very good mood, and his repeated refills of fine wine were the best proof.
Since he was thirty-one and said farewell to that great senior, from the day he returned to the Kang Mansion he had been looking forward to tonight.
During that time his eldest son Kang Keye had leaned over to whisper to him, urging him to drink less.
Kang Zongdan told him to go away.
So Kang Keye could only leave in a huff; the seventy-something patriarch’s retreating figure looked rather pitiful.
“Back in my day, as the fourth son of the previous head of the family, I never imagined I would one day become head of the Kang family. So for the first thirty years of my life my only goal was to be a wandering knight, to call the world my home!”
The ninety-one-year-old man’s voice was loud and robust:
“To this day I still remember those years of roaming the world. Those were the most carefree years of my life, and they still haunt my dreams, hahaha!”
Kang Zongdan laughed heartily, raised his cup and drained it again. Although as a Body Forging Realm cultivator he should be able to dispel alcohol easily, he let the wine redden his wrinkled face.
“It wasn’t until that senior from Mirage Palace appeared that my fate abruptly changed. I returned to the Kang family and sat in the seat of patriarch…”
Sitting beside him, Protector Huang Yong of the Illusion Time Pavilion’s Daoist Hall wore a faint smile.
In the depths of his eyes, however, passed a barely noticeable weariness.
If this had been within Mirage Palace, a disciple of Kang Zongdan’s cultivation level would not even be worthy to meet him.
No, such talent would not be admitted into Mirage Palace.
Yet here Huang Yong could do nothing but listen to the old man’s drunken ramblings.
“By the way, Protector Huang.”
Kang Zongdan shifted his tone, intoxicated as he asked:
“Did that senior ask you to bring any object for me?”
“Elder Zheng did indeed entrust me with an item to give to Patriarch Kang.”
As he spoke, Huang Yong reached casually into the air and a roll of aged, lustrous parchment appeared in his hand.
“This is a fragment of the Lian Ti cultivation method. Lian Ti was the exclusive method of the Bi Lian Sect, a first-rate sect that flourished in the Western Region four thousand years ago. After the sect was annihilated, remnants wrote its method onto eight pieces of sheepskin; this is one of them…”
Huang Yong paused for a moment:
“Although this sheepskin holds only a fragment of Bi Lian Sect’s exclusive method, even this fragment is more than enough to transform the Kang family from a martial arts lineage into a true cultivator lineage.”
Huang Yong handed the sheepskin to Kang Zongdan.
“Thank you, Protector Huang!”
Kang Zongdan reached out with both hands to accept the sheepskin, his eyes betraying unhidden excitement.
Chen Yan sat quietly at the end of the table, watching everything with a calm expression.
He picked up the wine cup on the table and drained its contents.
At tonight’s banquet, he and Su Hongzhen were complete outsiders.
Chen Yan liked it that way.
He would have been delighted if everyone treated him as if he were invisible.
Thinking so, Chen Yan glanced in the direction of the Mirage Palace disciple named Jiang Shiyu.
Tonight, nothing was out of the ordinary.
...
The next morning.
The Kang Mansion was a field of corpses.
Kang family patriarch Kang Zongdan’s corpse lay on his back in the main hall.
The body was unusually emaciated, yet it still clutched that sheepskin tightly in its hand.
The vast Kang Mansion—main house, branch family heirs, women, servants, maids—altogether numbered over three thousand people.
But among those more than three thousand, the only survivor was the patriarch’s sixth son.
Kang Keyang.