Lu Xiuyuan understood. In a sense, the incense Dao was a more treacherous existence than demonic cultivation.
This Dao was tied to the power of faith. Incense made it, and incense broke it. A cultivator could grow strong through the power of faith, and could also perish when the power of faith dispersed. What was more frightening, a demon seed only needed the power of faith injected, and demonic qi could quickly spread through a cultivator’s body, making them transform into a demon at great speed.
Lu Xiuyuan only wanted to quickly increase his own strength. He had no hobby of seeking death, let alone of aiding the enemy.
“I won’t cultivate incense.” Lu Xiuyuan gave the Celestial Fox a definite answer, and casually coaxed him as well: “Be good. With me here, I won’t have you do things that strain yourself.”
The Celestial Fox was deeply moved: “Then Sect Master, give me the Seven-Treasure Lotus Heart, and I’ll go throw it away!”
Lu Xiuyuan’s smile did not change. He stretched out his right hand, pinched the paper fox’s big ear with his slender fingers, and rubbed it.
The rough paper rubbed against his fingertips. At first Lu Xiuyuan had not liked this texture, but in no time at all he had gotten used to such a strange fox.
The fox, no longer having a fluffy body, still kept a fox’s habits. Rubbed by Lu Xiuyuan, he went limp and lay in his palm, humming and acting spoiled: “Sect Master…”
Lu Xiuyuan, not letting it show, tucked the Seven-Treasure Lotus Hearts into the inner lining of his clothes.
He didn’t cultivate the incense Dao, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t study it in depth.
A strong intuition told him—Blue Star’s “thread of life” lay in this bag of Seven-Treasure Lotus Hearts.
“Cultivate? Ten million a month in pocket money isn’t enough for you to spend on that cultivation game? Now you want to touch your shares and dividends? I think playing games has ruined your brain.”
The old man didn’t slam his chopsticks, nor scold with excessive anger, yet it drove into everyone’s eardrums like an ice pick.
Old Master Jiang sat at the head of the dining table, his graying hair combed back without a strand out of place, his suit crisp, and his wrinkled eyes slowly swept over the long table. Wherever they passed, even the sound of breathing grew softer.
“It’s not a game!” Jiang Yuhuai said angrily. “Grandpa, do you think I’m the kind of person who’d be tricked into a pay-to-win trap? Our Wenxin Sect isn’t some fly-by-night sect! Our Wenxin Sect is a peerless sect with a Mahayana stage master holding the seat!”
Although Master hadn’t said who in the sect had the highest cultivation or what the highest realm was, Master had said something like 【My cultivation has not even reached the Mahayana stage. How would I dare to take disciples recklessly?】, and the subtext was surely that they must wait for a senior in the sect with Mahayana-stage cultivation to preside over the disciple-taking ceremony!
Jiang Yuhuai was full of confidence!
“Hmph!” Old Master Jiang gave a light sneer, clearly having no hope for his intelligence.
“I want money to cultivate properly. Have you ever seen sword flight? Do you know the Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Sect? And I, Jiang Yuhuai, a supremely gifted top genius, am your only connection for seeing all this!”
“I want money to raise my peerless sword! Sword cultivators burn a lot of money! Worldly money may not be useful, but without money, how can I get a step ahead of others?”
“Sword cultivators are poor” had nearly become a consensus. He would be a wealthy sword cultivator, so that his advantage would be being a step ahead!
Jiang Yuhuai patted his chest and said proudly: “To tell you the truth—I’ve already gotten the entrance trial qualification for Wenxin Sect. On the first of next month, I’ll be an official sword cultivator of Wenxin Sect.”
Jiang Yuhuai’s nonsense entered everyone’s ears, but not many people reacted to it.
The stern old man sat at the head of the dining table. His hair was graying, but his suit was crisp. Old Master Jiang said nothing, but his whole body ceaselessly gave off an awe-inspiring air without any anger.
“Doting on the grandchildren” was, to Old Master Jiang, a word that existed only in legend. As the head of the family who had held great power all his life, whether toward his bedfellow or his children, he mostly gave orders.
All the younger generation were used to it. They had only the state of listening with a dignified manner and listening to orders with heads bowed, and little of a warm atmosphere could be seen.
The several middle-aged men and women at the long table sat upright, and apart from eating a bit faster, showed no great difference from usual. But the dozen or so young men and women, whose resistance to pressure was after all not enough, had bent waists and hunched backs.
Old Master Jiang frowned slightly. A boy of seven or eight shuddered and the porcelain spoon in his hand tapped lightly against the rim of the bowl, making an extremely crisp sound.
“!” The little boy froze at once, wishing he could bury his head under the table, but he didn’t dare, and could only stiffly stuff the spoon into his mouth.
“Don’t move!” A hand suddenly gripped his arm.
The little boy looked up in fright and ran into a pair of dark, heavy eyes.
The little boy instinctively cringed. In this very, very big house, what he feared most was Grandpa, and next was this brother whom Dad called the “Demon Pill.”
“I, I didn’t break the spoon, I, I…”
Jiang Yuhuai looked down and scrutinized this half-brother by a different mother. On the face, which resembled his by a good five or six tenths, hung heavy dark circles that took up nearly most of the face, making the child’s tender features frightening.
Yet no one in the family found such a frightening face strange.
Jiang Yuhuai clicked his tongue, his tone very impatient: “Such an eyesore.”
Demonic qi!
Although little of it, this black qi was exactly the thing he had met yesterday, what Master called “demonic qi.”
Jiang Yuhuai drew from his sleeve a sword a full forearm long, its pitch-black blade flashing a cold glint. This was clearly a sharpened blade!
The little boy’s face drained of color from fright, and he screamed out loud: “Da-Daddy, save me, Brother is going to kill me—”
Jiang Yuhuai, without any hesitation, stabbed toward the little boy’s eyes.
“Jiang Yuhuai!” A middle-aged man slapped the table and rose, his chair crashing to the floor. “That’s your own little brother! However willful you are, there must be a limit!” He sat among a pile of teenagers, looking out of place.
This was naturally because his status in the Jiang family had fallen to the level of the underage grandchildren, who had no power and could only take pocket money.
Jiang Yuhuai’s seat was even further ahead than his! If he weren’t his own father, this idiot wouldn’t even have the qualification to shout at him like this!
Thinking of this, Jiang Yuhuai moved even faster, he was afraid that if he got angrier, he would stop caring about this stinking idiot’s son.
The sword tip passed under the little boy’s eye, and the black qi snapped at the sound.
“——”
“Wahh wuwuwu—Brother is a bad guy who wants to kill me!”
The child’s shrill wailing drowned out the demonic qi’s shriek.
Jiang Yuhuai let him go in disgust and put the sword back in his sleeve.
“Tsk, a little chick like you, worthy of making me commit a killing sin?”
The little boy opened his mouth and wailed: “Wuwuwu, Mommy, I want my mommy! I want to go home, Mommy, I don’t want to be at Daddy’s house, I want to go home—”
The middle-aged man was heartbroken and cursed at Jiang Yuhuai at the top of his lungs: “You heartless, wolfish—”
“Smack!”
A pair of chopsticks hit the middle-aged man’s face, nearly piercing his eyeball, and the pain twisted his features, but he didn’t dare make a sound.
—Because the one who threw them was Old Master Jiang.
“I’m not dead yet. Don’t quarrel in my house. All of you, get out!”
A team of bodyguards immediately jogged up in front of Jiang Yuhuai and the other two, making a gesture of “please.”
Jiang Yuhuai didn’t move. He didn’t give up and shouted to Old Master Jiang: “Grandpa, I’m an adult! I have the right to handle my shares and dividends. Give me the money! I’m going to take the money to cultivate!”
Madam Chen, sitting only a few seats from Old Master Jiang, shook her head at Jiang Yuhuai without showing anything. Jiang Yuhuai, who was usually very obedient to his mother, this time pretended to be blind to the end.
And he shouted at his own father with particular self-righteousness: “Dad, I’m your only connection in Wenxin Sect in the future, I’m your own flesh-and-blood son, and a father has to lift up his kid! Give me your shares too, lift me up in my cultivation!”
Old Master Jiang’s face was dark, and the middle-aged man, watching his old father’s expression, pointed at Jiang Yuhuai like he had Parkinson’s: “You, you, you…” With a Demon Pill of a son like this, was there still any chance, other than a chance of zero, of him inheriting the family business?
Jiang Yuhuai looked around, remembered how aggrieved he was yesterday when he had nearly missed his chance in order to rush home for the family rule of “eating together for a harmonious family,” and dropped a heavy bomb right away—
“I want to cultivate! Sell everything in the Jiang family! Send me 500 billion, support my cultivation with the whole strength of the Jiang family! Our Jiang ancestors accumulated virtue for eight thousand generations to produce a peerless sword-cultivator genius like me, and you must support my cultivation!”
The middle-aged man was so angry he was about to faint: “Go investigate! What lousy Wenxin Sect dares to brainwash that fool Jiang Yuhuai like this! Call the police right now and have them all arrested, from top to bottom!”
Jiang Yuhuai’s eyes turned red, and he raised his sword to rush up and fight him to the death: “You cheating, impotent scum, how dare you insult my Master and my Wenxin Sect! This is great disrespect! You’ll be struck by the Heavenly Dao the moment you step outside!”
The bodyguards held him back desperately, but Jiang Yuhuai seemed to have truly cultivated, and a dozen professionally trained bodyguards couldn’t stop him.
Dizzied by the scene of fatherly kindness and filial devotion before him, Old Master Jiang, who had kept up his dignity all his life, also lost his composure, slapped the table, rose, and roared: “Cultivate! I’ll let you cultivate! I’ll take Wenxin Sect and send it to the underworld, and you can go cultivate ghosts!”
“Rumble———”