The Royal Mandate Sets Out

Ban Ji's expression was gloomy. "Yes. At first, when I learned from Pi Fuxie that Ning Zhuo possessed a mechanism puppet with Golden Core-level technology, I wanted to seize it for myself."

"So I first investigated his background, then sent him a Flying Letter expressing my wish for a spar."

"Who could have imagined that this Foundation Establishment Middle Stage youth would actually be comparable to Situ Xing?"

"The odds of that were less than one in a million."

Ban Jie rolled her eyes. "So you're saying your luck was bad?"

Ban Ji said, "Precisely because of that, he is my Human Tribulation."

Ban Jie shook her head. "He has your challenge letter in his hands now. He already holds the initiative. He can avoid battle, but if he produces that challenge letter, you must fight!"

Ban Ji gritted his teeth and said nothing.

Ning Zhuo was an outsider. The force behind him remained veiled in mystery, with no reputation at all within the Flying Cloud Kingdom.

That was Ning Zhuo's weakness, but it was also an advantage. At the very least, the chances of forcing Ning Zhuo to fight by leveraging the prestige of one's faction were negligible.

Ban Ji, by contrast, was not in that position.

His situation resembled Situ Xing's and Zhu Fenxiang's. If someone started with the Ban Family, Ban Ji could not possibly refuse a challenge.

In this regard, he differed from Pi Fuxie.

Pi Fuxie had directly refused Ning Zhuo's challenge back then, and it had been perfectly natural. The Pi Family itself had begun as demonic cultivators before turning to the righteous path; that was in their very bones.

Ban Ji was different. The Ban Family had been a righteous-path family from beginning to end. Ban Ji's cultivation of demonic arts was an