The words landed.
And nearly every Li disciple present stared, eyes stretched wide in disbelief.
The Clan Head took it worst — the injuries he'd only just stabilized collapsed on the spot, and fresh blood burst from his mouth:
"Ancestor, how can you..."
Wasn't this an indirect confession that everything in the image-recording mirrors was TRUE?
How could they confess?
How COULD they?
"Fool!" the Old Ancestor snapped, disappointment sharp in his voice:
"Do you imagine this is something you can un-happen by refusing to admit it?
Plenty of people can judge whether that mirror footage is genuine. Will you silence every one of them?
It cannot be hidden!"
The Old Ancestor sighed heavily:
"A wrong is a wrong.
You can kill one witness. You cannot kill the world.
As things stand, you would do better to beg that girl to take her mirrors down early — every day sooner is one day less of the Li Clan's shame on public display."
The Li Clan Head stood rooted, a man with the soul knocked out of him.
In the Li Clan's main hall, Ning Ruan brought out her mother's memorial tablet.
The Li Clan's Second Master — dantian ruined, both legs now ruined besides — was lifted from his wheelchair like a marionette.
And knelt, sprawled and graceless, before the tablet.
Li Yu tried several times to rush forward. She was blocked each time.
She opened her mouth to shout.
But before her throat could make a sound, the Old Ancestor's arts had already sealed it.
All she could do was watch as Li Su bowed his head, in utter humiliation, to a slab of spirit wood.
"I was wrong."
"I deserve death."
"I should never... never have done those things..."
"I failed you. Failed you both, mother and daughter..."
"I have sinned..."
The once-dashing Second Master of the Li Clan seemed to have aged decades in a moment — spine bent, head hanging.
The hoarse words dropped out one at a time, soaked in unwillingness and hate.
Ning Ruan went on toying with the black sphere in her hand.
Now and then she tossed it lightly upward — and, under a courtyard of hearts stopping as one, caught it neatly again.
Li Su raised his head, hollowed out.
Bloodshot eyes fixed dead on Ning Ruan:
"Is it enough?
Are you satisfied?"
Ning Ruan looked back at him with a mild smile:
"Reasonably satisfied. The only pity is that my mother wasn't here to see it."
Then —
she turned that unhurried gaze on Li Yu, who stood strangled by the world's greatest injustice, grief-mad and furious:
"Did you hear all that?
HE and your mother were the guilty ones.
Spread any more nonsense about me and next time I'll just — BOOM. Straight to the explosions."
Ning Ruan stowed the memorial tablet, smiling pleasantly.
Accepted the storage bag the Li Clan personally handed over.
And, under a courtyard of gazes stewing in equal parts hatred and helplessness, swaggered up onto the Scarlet Feather Kite:
"Oh, right.
My mirrors stay up for now.
Leave them alone, and once the spirit stones run dry, they'll stop on their own.
But if you dare take down one, I'll hang up two more.
I have plenty, after all."
The last insolent line delivered —
Ning Ruan finally rode the Scarlet Feather Kite away.
Leaving the assembled Li Clan blinking at one another, until at last one disciple burst out in fury:
"What is that supposed to mean?
If someone ELSE steals a mirror, it lands on OUR heads too?"
Utterly, cosmically unreasonable!
Those were image-recording mirrors, damn it. Who could look at one and NOT covet it?
Not wanting to steal one — THAT would be the medical condition!
The Clan Head clutched his chest, desolate:
"From today, Li disciples guard the mirrors in shifts... see that no one steals them..."
The mirrors already hanging were disaster enough.
If the number DOUBLED, it wouldn't be long before every soul in Qingyun Province had heard the story.
"Clan Head, we..."
"I'm so angry I could die..."
"She's ONE light-element spirit master. What gives her the right to be this brazen..."
"..."
The Li disciples seethed, every one.
And could not refuse the Clan Head's order.
All that remained was to curse, impotently, the madwoman who escalated to explosives at the first sign of disagreement.
Deep in the forbidden ground of the Li Clan's rear courtyard.
A white-haired old woman — the Li Clan's Third Ancestor — was at that moment transmitting to the Old Ancestor:
"Was it truly right, what we did today? After this, I fear the young ones' spirits will take no small beating."
The Old Ancestor sighed, long and low:
"My only regret now is that all those years ago, when we learned of the matter, we shielded Li Su and his wife at all."
The Third Ancestor sighed with him:
"We learned far too late. Hanyue and the child had already met disaster. You and I both searched — not a trace to be found.
And with little Yu newly born... if we had truly executed her parents, what would have become of the child?
There was nothing to be done but let the wrong stand.
Only — who could have guessed that fifteen years later... that girl would come back. And her grievance against this clan runs deep indeed..."
The Old Ancestor was silent a while.
Then said, low:
"Back then, Hanyue was grievously wounded, self-detonated her dantian, and leapt from a cliff. By every natural law, delivering that child safely was already an impossible miracle.
Surviving the birth herself? Out of the question.
And if the girl was raised by strangers — why would her hatred of the Li Clan run this deep?
Unless... one thing keeps returning to me.
When that girl was still in Hanyue's womb, I sensed — faintly — that she was drawing in spiritual energy.
I meant to examine it closely. Then mother and daughter met their end, or so we thought.
So I suspect... that girl... may have awakened sentience while still inside the womb."