Qian Renxue: I Refuse to Accept It!

The countdown at the top of the bronze scroll reached zero, and a burst of golden light exploded in the middle of the public screen.

[Group Hub: automatic recruitment complete. A new member has joined the group! Real-name registration is in effect on the first day. The current profile name is locked as "First Era · Qian Renxue". First group rule: real names on the first day; do as you please from the second day onward.]

Heaven Dou City, deep within the imperial palace.

The attendants had long since been dismissed, and Qian Renxue was alone, studying the political situation over a sand table, when a bronze screen suddenly appeared before her, displaying a profile name.

"First Era · Qian Renxue," five golden characters.

Her right hand, resting on the edge of the sand table, suddenly clenched, crushing a wooden flag.

"Who leaked my real name?!"

Ever since she had infiltrated the Heaven Dou Imperial Family, she had buried that name deep in her belly, never daring to breathe a word of it even in her dreams. And now it was hanging there in plain sight on the screen?

She hadn't even had a chance to investigate where the screen had come from when the descendants who had been lying in wait began their customary first-day unboxing. Tang Wulin first flooded the public screen with a row of spectator emojis, and immediately afterward, Lan Xuanyu's painstakingly researched posts appeared in rapid succession!

[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: New group member incoming! Same old rules: real name on the first day, so let's start with a two-in-one gift package of background and life route from the "Official History of the First Era"! First post: hard proof of her origins!]

[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: It's written in black and white in the "Official History of the First Era: Spirit Hall Volume": Qian Renxue is descended from the Qian Family of Spirit Hall's previous Pope and from the current Pope, Bibi Dong. She's got both bloodlines! And from childhood, she was ordered to infiltrate the Heaven Dou Imperial Family and lay her plans in secret. She swapped a civet cat for the crown prince, stripped the imperial family of its power, and even intended to take the Heaven Dou Empire without fighting a single battle!]

In the secret chamber, Qian Renxue's breath caught.

She had spent so many years on her covert plan in Heaven Dou, treating it as her highest secret, only for someone to lay it all out before the entire group, point by point, as though reading from an account book?

Before she had even caught her breath, Lan Xuanyu's second research post appeared.

[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Second post: the "Angel God Roadmap" unboxed with hard proof! According to the course of official history, this master infiltrator inherited the Six-Winged Angel Martial Soul and took the "Angel God route"! Sadly, after enduring more than a decade in the Heaven Dou Imperial Family, Tang San ruined her grand plan to steal the nation just as she was about to cross the finish line. Afterward, even though she passed nine trials and attained Angel Godhood, her Godhood still shattered in the final Battle of Godhood, and she fell to Tang San!]

[The Bystander Sees Clearly: In fairness, this infiltration plan dragged on too long tactically. After all, she spent more than a decade of her golden cultivation years reviewing memorials at court. By the time she drew in the net, there was too little room for error. Once her identity was exposed, she could lose the whole game.]

Deep in the Heaven Dou palace, Qian Renxue stood motionless before the sand table, reading the "Angel God Roadmap" word by word.

After reading the last line, "her Godhood shattered," she offered no defense. She merely raised a finger and tapped out a single word in the input box:

[Qian Renxue: Heh.]

She immediately sent a second message.

[Qian Renxue: A book written by a dead man. What gives a history book the right to decide my path for me?]

In the new quarters at Perching Swan Academy, Qin Zhaoye watched this Heaven Dou player's head-on response and lightly tapped the moderator panel.

[Group Owner: History books only record the old roads that were originally taken. If the living want to change course, as long as they can pay the price, this historian is ready to take orders at any time.]

[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Group Owner, your sales skills are incredible! You just handed Big Sister Saintess your card, and now you're pitching a fate-changing package to the Young Mistress! But everyone, look at the member list! Now we really have both sovereigns in the same group!]

The public screen fell briefly silent.

In the Pope's Palace in Spirit City and deep within the imperial palace in Heaven Dou City, two gazes fell on the same screen at the same time, separated by ten thousand miles.

Qian Renxue scrolled upward through the pinned group posts, and her eyes locked on the death notice: "Pope Bibi Dong, died in the Battle of Godhood." In the Pope's Palace, Bibi Dong was staring coldly at the "Angel God Roadmap" on the public screen, which laid bare the defeat in Heaven Dou.

Although neither of them clicked on the other's profile picture, two generations of old grievances in Spirit Hall had already struck sparks across the public screen.

In the Pope's Palace, Bibi Dong raised her hand and lightly tapped the lower right corner of the pinned death notice, stamping her own obituary with an icy "Read" for the whole group to see.

Then she sent her first message of the day to the public screen.

[Bibi Dong: Spending more than a decade plotting for a mortal imperial city-neglecting the root to chase the branches.]

Deep in the Heaven Dou palace, Qian Renxue stared at the blunt criticism. Her fingertips struck the screen hard as she fired back without yielding an inch.

[Qian Renxue: Better than certain people who held power over all of Spirit Hall, only to squander their inheritance until not even a plaque remained, leaving it as a ruin for later generations to buy tickets to visit.]

[Bibi Dong: Does an angel with broken wings have any right to speak of the bigger picture?]

[Qian Renxue: And what gives a Pope who died before the battle the right to tell me what to do?]

Four messages flew back and forth, every one of them confronting the old scores of the Heaven Dou stratagem and the defeat in the Battle of Godhood, yet not a single word mentioned their blood ties as mother and daughter.

None of the descendants watching and eating melons in the group interrupted. Tang Wulin merely posted a row of sunflower-seed-munching emojis, making it clear he intended to watch to the end.

Nuoding Junior Soul Master Academy, in a dormitory.

Tang San watched the two people trading barbs on the public screen, then glanced down at the name "Tang San" mentioned in the route post. For a moment, his heart was a jumble of five flavors.

Two generations of Spirit Hall were facing off across the group, but what about him? He had only just decided to find his father, Tang Hao, and lay his cards on the table after graduation, yet he still had no idea which mountain hollow on the continent his father was hiding in.

His finger hovered over the input box, but in the end he didn't type a single word into the group.

Just as the smell of gunpowder in the mother and daughter's covert battle reached its peak, the Group Hub's golden frame burst open!

[Group Hub: Internal tension in a core faction of the First Era timeline has reached its maximum. A historical wager is now open: "Which will flip the table first, mother or daughter"!]

[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Holy shit! The Group Hub really dared to open betting on this! I know this one. The Young Mistress's "Pope who died before the battle" line just now hit way too hard, so I'm betting 500 Talking Capital that His Holiness the Pope definitely loses patience and flips the table first!]

[The Bystander Sees Clearly: The Pope is more calculating, while the Young Mistress is young and hot-blooded, and her trump cards have just been exposed. I'm betting 500 that Qian Renxue flips the table first.]

Tang Wulin said nothing. He scrolled down to the unselected "Neither flips the table" option at the bottom of the betting panel and silently tapped it five times, throwing in all 500 Talking Capital. The prize pool shot up to 1,500 Talking Capital in the blink of an eye.

In the Pope's Palace and deep within the Heaven Dou palace, Bibi Dong and Qian Renxue both stared coldly at the glaring wager title. Neither said another word, but one rested her hand on an armrest while the other pressed hers against the sand table, and each pressed harder than the other.

In the new quarters at Perching Swan Academy, Qin Zhaoye looked at the golden settlement frame that had appeared on the scroll and raised an eyebrow in great satisfaction.

[Golden report: Settlement for the popularity of Qian Renxue's first-day real-name unboxing and the mother-daughter confrontation. Group Owner credited with 900 Talking Capital.]

Ever since moving into the new quarters, Qin Zhaoye had taken advantage of the academy's peace and quiet to circulate the Ever-Bright Bamboo Slip Art day and night. With doubled cultivation efficiency and medicinal baths paid for by the academy, his cultivation had risen from level 27 to level 29, only one step away from the major hurdle at level 30.

"The Historical Records Soul Ring channel is already closed, so I can only go to the hunting ground and get the third ring myself."

Qin Zhaoye opened the intelligence exchange panel on the bronze scroll, selected the Soul Beast compendium for the Suotuo Western Suburbs Hunting Ground, and tapped to confirm.

[Golden report: Spent 800 Talking Capital to exchange for "Suotuo Western Suburbs Hunting Ground escort intelligence".]

A golden illustrated scroll unfolded across the surface, clearly marking the coordinates of a thousand-year shadow-type Soul Beast's lair in the western suburbs hunting ground, and even its daily schedule.

That night, Qin Zhaoye changed into black clothes for traveling at night, stowed the cultivation manual fragments he had recovered from a former dynasty's hidden cache in the western suburbs a few days earlier in his back case, and left through Suotuo City's west gate under cover of darkness.

At midnight in the western suburbs hunting ground, dew on the blades of grass trembled though there was no wind.

Qin Zhaoye lay behind a slope and narrowed his eyes: that thousand-year Soul Beast was even bigger than the intelligence had described.