The Gǔyǎn Clan's cold house was exceedingly deserted. Not even a single servant ever came near it.
Yet amid that desolation, a silent malice seemed to surge invisibly back and forth between Li Xuanji in the main house and Granny Lu, the white-haired old woman in the side room.
Granny Lu, possessed by Heavenly Mother's will, spoke fewer than a handful of sentences a day. But whenever she opened her mouth, it was sure to contain a pitfall buried deeply beneath the surface, testing and probing the "substance" of Li Xuanji.
For even a Saint to be so "idle," truly left Li Qingyun, watching the fire from across the river, and Li Xuanji, who called himself the foremost man of the Path of Cautious Cultivation, speechless—and under immense pressure.
Fortunately, Li Xuanji was not fighting this battle of wits alone in the River Mother Clan. Behind him stood Li Qingyun's three great identities.
Whenever the white-haired old woman rasped out a word, Jade Pure's main body in the Three Pure Ones Great Cosmos would first filter through the "malice" for Li Xuanji, ensuring that his answers were steady and, above all, exceedingly sincere.
After the young Phoenix Girl sought instructions from the new family head, He Fan Jian, she sent a whole roomful of Heavenly Skin tomes and secrets of the universe to Gǔyǎn He Fan Liu, the eldest master who had been cast into the cold palace.
To record the "affairs" of the myriad heavens and universes, mundane vessels such as cultivators' jade slips could not preserve even a single word.
The River Mother Clan's solution was simple and savage: they directly flayed the Heavenly Skin from Mayfly Celestial Lords, "tanned" it into paper volumes, and wrote upon it, allowing the records to endure for comparatively long periods.
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