Creak, creak.
Wind and snow mingled together. Dry snow compressed into chunks, and dense hail hammered against the roof tiles, ringing out like clashing metal.
Liang Qu flicked away a bean-sized pellet of ice, closed the booklet, and listened in a daze.
Such were the times, such was fate.
Senior Brother had explained things in considerable detail—far more than what the booklet contained.
Among the Eight Beasts, the "Sick Tiger" had been born entirely from a chain of bizarre coincidences: talent, experiences, circumstances, all piled together to nurture a towering tree. Calling him a freak was not wrong in the slightest.
Paired with the word "sick" in his title, he carried an even more twisted, crazed, dangerous aura.
"Something like Knocking on the Heavenly Gate must be extremely secretive. How could you know about it so clearly?"
From Perfected Elephant to Young Dragon, countless sages had deduced three solid steps. How could a fourth or fifth step emerge so easily? Liang Qu suspected that the price of taking one would be getting stuck completely—there would be a ceiling, and no way back.
"Haha, aren't you underestimating our intelligence network? Northern Court sends spies to us, and we often send people to Northern Court as well. It was simply give and take. A year or two might stay hidden, perhaps even five or ten years.
"But after twenty or thirty years, so long as all human contact is not completely severed, it cannot remain a secret. By the eighth year after Sick Tiger first Knocked on the Heavenly Gate, we had already caught wind of it. It took less than half a year to confirm. Besides, there is nothing shameful about such a thing."
"How so?"
"Junior Brother, you are a genius. Your perspective and breadth of vision differ from us