The hall fell silent for a moment.
A brief silence, broken only by the sound of breathing.
Then, three voices spoke almost simultaneously.
“What?” Ning Fengzhi rose halfway from his seat.
“A master?” Chen Xin’s silver brows knitted together.
“Whoosh!”
A white blur.
Chen Xin appeared before the young Soul Master in the blink of an eye.
Before the hem of his snow-white robe had settled, his hand had already seized the young Soul Master’s collar, lifting him bodily off the ground.
“Explain.
In detail.”
Chen Xin’s voice was as light as a breeze drifting from afar.
But the chill in his eyes made the lifted young Soul Master feel his blood freezing in his veins.
“A master?
What master?
Who?
What happened?”
Gu Rong’s voice exploded from behind: “How were you watching over Rongrong?
How did Rongrong end up with a master just by going to enroll?”
His tone was as cold and sinister as a frigid wind creeping up from the earth.
Ning Fengzhi’s brow also furrowed tightly.
But he did not move.
He remained seated, fingers pressing on the armrests, his gaze calm and steady as he watched the young Soul Master suspended in mid-air by Chen Xin.
“Put him down.
Let him explain clearly.”
Chen Xin’s fingers loosened.
The young Soul Master staggered a step the moment his feet touched the ground.
His Adam’s apple bobbed twice before he found his voice again.
“Y-young Miss…
after entering Suotuo City, she was drawn to a fortune-telling stall near the South Gate.”
He began recounting from the start.
From the middle-aged man who claimed to have calculated the exact position his wife was in when she conceived, to the old farmer who found Gold Spirit Coins by the back wall.
From Ning Rongrong stepping forward to righteously denounce the swindler, to being jointly rebutted by those two men who said she was meddling in other people’s business.
By this point, Ning Fengzhi’s brow was deeply creased.
Chen Xin and Gu Rong exchanged a glance.
“Isn’t this just a swindler?” Gu Rong’s voice rose another notch.
“Hiring two shills to put on a show, child’s play.”
Chen Xin didn’t respond, but the curve of his mouth had turned icy.
The young Soul Master continued.
“Young Miss’s temperament wouldn’t allow her to back down.
She argued with the fortune-teller.
In the end, they made a bet, challenging him to calculate the question Young Miss posed.”
“And then?” Ning Fengzhi asked.
The young Soul Master took a deep breath.
“The fortune-teller…
he calculated everything.”
The air in the hall turned frigid.
“Young Miss’s name, age, identity, hobbies, background, her purpose for coming to Suotuo City.” The young Soul Master’s voice grew smaller and smaller.
“Even your name and identity, Sect Leader…
all of it, word for word, without a single error.”
Gu Rong’s face darkened completely.
“Someone is scheming against Rongrong!” He slammed a palm against a nearby pillar.
A dull, booming thud echoed through the hall.
“Daring to set a trap targeting our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect!”
He turned to look at Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin, his sunken face filled with unquestionable certainty.
“I absolutely refuse to believe this is truly a coincidence!”
But standing there, the temperature around him had dropped below freezing.
The killing intent emanating from his very bones made the young Soul Master feel as if an invisible sword were pressed against his neck.
Ning Fengzhi’s expression had become completely placid.
Not calm.
It was the kind of blankness that comes after all emotions have been gathered and compressed.
He spoke, his voice devoid of any fluctuation.
“Rongrong ended up taking this person as her master?”
The young Soul Master nodded.
“Yes.”
Ning Fengzhi closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, his gaze pierced through the entire hall, landing somewhere far, far away.
“Why didn’t you act at the time?”
The words were not heavy, but everyone present could sense the weight hidden beneath them.
Sweat began to bead on the young Soul Master’s forehead.
“The Sect Master’s orders before departure were…
we could only intervene if the young lady was in genuine mortal danger.
At the time, we judged that the fortune-teller…
was an ordinary person without Soul Power.”
“Ordinary person?” Gu Rong exploded outright.
“How could an ordinary person possibly know about our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect’s affairs?
How could they know Rongrong’s preferences?”
He took a step forward, looming over the young Soul Master.
The angle of his gaze, combined with his terrifyingly gaunt face, was almost enough to make someone faint on the spot.
“That person’s Cultivation Base must have been higher than yours!
You simply couldn’t see through it!”
The young Soul Master shrank back.
“But…
but that person looked to be only in their teens…”
“In their teens?”
Chen Xin’s eyes narrowed.
Within those usually indifferent, almost emotionless pupils, a flicker of amusement suddenly surfaced.
“Interesting.”
Ning Fengzhi remained silent for a few seconds.
“An ordinary young person…”
His fingertips tapped lightly on the armrest twice.
The light in his eyes flickered uncertainly; it was impossible to tell what he was calculating.
“Continue,” he said, his tone regaining its gentleness.
“Since you saw him as ordinary, and Rongrong also thought he was a fraud, how did she ultimately succeed in taking him as her master?”
The young Soul Master swallowed hard.
“After the fortune-teller divined the young lady’s information, she still didn’t believe it.
She accused him of being a thief who had planned this in advance.
But…”
His voice began to tremble again.
“But then the fortune-teller said one sentence.”
Three pairs of eyes locked onto him simultaneously.
“What sentence?” Ning Fengzhi.
“Stop dithering!” Gu Rong.
Chen Xin didn’t speak, but his entire aura sharpened like an unsheathed sword, its cold light piercing.
The young Soul Master took a deep breath.
Summoning all his strength, under the gaze of the three great figures, he forced the words out from the depths of his throat.
“That fortune-teller said to the young lady…”
“He knows the method for the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda to advance to the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda.”
Boom!!!
It wasn’t shattered by sitting.
It was the sudden, uncontrollable surge of Soul Power aura erupting from him that blasted the entire chair from the inside into a cloud of flying fragments.
The pieces were still scattering in the air.
A raging storm erupted around Chen Xin.
That aura poured forth from his body like solidified sword blades, churning the air within three meters in front of him into a chaotic vortex.
Under this pressure, the young Soul Master’s body was slammed flat against the ground, limbs splayed, unable to move, his face pressed against the cold floor tiles.
Even breathing became a luxury.
And on the Sect Master’s seat.
Around Ning Fengzhi’s body, a surging blue Soul Power spread out without warning.
He stood up.
In those eyes that were always gentle and refined, only one emotion remained now.
“What?!”
Ning Fengzhi’s voice echoed through the hall for two seconds.
He then closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, that moment of composure loss had been suppressed deep within his chest.
He straightened up, one hand smoothing the collar of his robe, his movements unhurried as if tidying the wrinkles caused by his earlier outburst.
Then he stepped down from the sect leader’s seat.
Leather shoes tapped rhythmically against the jade-tiled floor with each step.
His face, always gentle and refined, now resembled a flawless piece of white jade, revealing no trace of emotion.
He walked until he stood before the young Soul Master.
Ning Fengzhi looked down at his subordinate, who was still sprawled on the ground.
His voice was as flat as a bowl of water without a ripple.
“Get up.”
The young Soul Master trembled as he scrambled to his feet, his knees still shaking.
“Explain what happened next, word by word.” Ning Fengzhi’s tone held no hint of threat; it was so mild it could have been mistaken for casual conversation.
Yet everyone present could sense that beneath this gentleness lay something far more terrifying than outright rage.
Before his words had fully faded—
“Ha!”
A short, almost mocking laugh erupted from the right side.
Gu Rong rose from the shattered remains of the master’s chair he had reduced to dust.
His gaunt, corpse-like face now wore a twisted smile.
Paired with his sunken eye sockets, the expression was ten times more horrifying than his usual grimace.
“Our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect’s thousand-year lineage.”
His voice grated like sandpaper scraping against dry bones.
“A thousand years!
Countless generations have poured their hearts and souls into seeking the answer, only to fall short!”
He slammed a palm against a nearby pillar, sending wood splinters flying.
“And now some teenage brat sets up a shabby roadside stall and solves it effortlessly?”
He turned to look at Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin.
“Isn’t that laughable?
Ha!
Truly an eye-opener!
In my ninety-plus years of life, this is the first time I’ve witnessed something so absurd!”
His laughter held not a trace of mirth.
“Fengzhi.” Gu Rong’s expression darkened, his murky, aged eyes gleaming with the sharp intensity of a hawk’s gaze from deep within their sockets.
“Someone is targeting us.”
His gaze swept toward Chen Xin.
“Old Swordsman!” His voice rose sharply.
“You tell us—whose handiwork is this?
The Heaven Dou Imperial Family?
The Spirit Hall?
The Clear Sky Sect?
Or the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon?”
He took a step forward, his imposing skeletal frame leaning slightly forward with emotion.
“Or perhaps these factions have joined forces to set their sights on our sect?!”