"Hahahahaha! Good! Good disciple! Quickly, rise!"
Wang Juechu's wild and joyful laughter completely shattered the very last shred of Lin Tianhu's illusion.
He watched that child kneeling on the ground, kowtowing and pledging allegiance to Sect Master Wang Juechu, as his entire world turned gray and white.
That hand stretched out mid-air trembled slightly, finally dropping powerlessly.
Finished.
It was all over.
The Qilin Child he had brought back with his own hands, the Apprentice Ceremony he had meticulously planned, the future of the Outer Blade Hall rising in his fantasies.
At this moment, all of it became a colossal joke.
He could even sense the gazes cast by those surrounding colleagues.
There was sympathy, there was pity, but much more of it was schadenfreude and undisguised mockery.
Lin Tianhu's aged face swelled to a pig-liver color, shifted from red to blue, and finally settled into a deathly, ashen pale.
He felt as though he were not standing in the Council Hall, but stripped of his clothes and thrown into the Marketplace, watched by millions of people.
And the instigator of all this, that "Xiao Feng" whom he once regarded as a precious treasure, was at that moment being personally helped up by Sect Master Wang Juechu, his face full of kindness and approval.
"From today onward, you are my Wang Juechu's Final Disciple, and also the future hope of our Seven Profound Sect!"
Wang Juechu's voice was resonant and impactful, directly setting the tone for Han Feng's identity.
The surrounding hall masters immediately trimmed their sails to the wind, stepping forward one after another to cup their fists and offer congratulations.
"Congratulations to the Sect Master on acquiring a fine disciple!"
"Congratulations, Junior Brother! If there are any errands in the future, just come to my Flying Bird Hall!"
"Junior Brother Han is immensely talented, truly the fortune of our sect!"
Those cries of "Junior Brother" and "Junior Brother Han" sounded so grating to Lin Tianhu's ears.
He watched Han Feng, who was surrounded by the crowd at the center, with that tender, youthful face wearing a just-right expression of flattered surprise.
Yet Lin Tianhu read within it a trace of calmness and detachment he had never seen before.
He did not fail to understand.
He simply refused to accept it.
This brat had never regarded him as a true master from the very beginning.
He himself was merely a stepping stone for him to climb upward.
Having figured out this point, Lin Tianhu only felt a surge of Qi and blood roil within his chest, a sweetness at his throat, almost causing a mouthful of dark blood to spew out.
The next day, a piece of news spread like it had grown wings, reaching every corner of the Seven Profound Sect in a mere half day.
The Sect Master had taken on an apprentice!
And the one he accepted was a new disciple who had entered less than ten days ago, Han Feng!
"Have you heard? That Han Feng spent only seven days practicing the Positive Yang Force, which our outer disciples take several years to master, all the way to the fourth layer!"
"My goodness! Seven days? I practiced for three years and only just got the Qi Sensation!"
"More than that! I heard from friends in the Inner Sect that the Sect Master personally tested him in front of all the hall masters, and his talent is encountered once in ten thousand years! He snatched the person right out of Hall Master Lin's hands on the spot!"
"Hall Master Lin? That is truly... too miserable."
"Who is to say otherwise? I heard Hall Master Lin returned to his hall with a dark face yesterday, hung Senior Brother Li Feiyu up and beat him thoroughly for having a loose tongue, only to find out later that the biggest mouth of all was himself speaking after getting drunk..."
The gossip spread wider and wider, growing increasingly absurd by the telling.
When the news reached the jianghu outside the Seven Profound Sect, the version had completely spiraled out of control.
"Have you heard? A peerless monstrosity has emerged in the Seven Profound Sect, mastering a divine skill in seven days, and he is already a Second-rate Master!"
"What second-rate? The version I heard is first-rate! He killed an ox with a single palm strike!"
"You are all behind the times! The latest news is that that genius has already stepped into the Innate Realm, and the next-generation sect master of the Seven Profound Sect has already been secretly decided!"
Regarding the storms and rains of the outside world, Han Feng naturally knew nothing about them, nor did he care in the least.
At that moment, he had already moved out of that small, crude outer disciple courtyard and settled into an independent courtyard in the core area of the Inner Sect.
Green bricks and dark tiles, small bridges and flowing water, pavilions and terraces, everything was fully equipped.
The courtyard was even outfitted with two pretty-faced maidservants dedicated to looking after his diet and daily living.
"Is this the treatment of a quasi young sect master?"
Han Feng lay on the soft and comfortable bed, feeling wonderful inside.
Regarding the "betrayal" in the Council Hall yesterday, he felt not the slightest bit of guilt.
Are you kidding.
One was an outer sect hall master with limited prospects.
The other was the supreme authority holding the resources of the entire sect in his hands.
Anyone with a functioning brain knew how to choose on this multiple-choice question.
Lin Tianhu treated him well simply because he valued his talent and wanted to use him as capital to climb higher and a tool for showing off.
In essence, it was no different from his own use of him as a springboard.
Everyone was acting for profit, so there was no question of who let whom down.
On the very first day of becoming the personal disciple of the Sect Master, his courtyard gate was nearly broken through.
Not a few high-ranking figures of the sect came to visit, carrying generous gifts under the pretext of "elders paying a call on a junior."
The plump hall master of the Four Seas Hall sent a chest of East Sea Pearl worth a thousand gold.
The lean hall master of the Flying Bird Hall sent a century-old wild mountain ginseng.
Vice Hall Master Ma of the Artifact Refining Hall, the very drinking buddy who had screwed over Lin Tianhu, even sent a short sword that could slice through iron like mud.
Their purpose was self-evident, all to forge a favorable bond in advance with himself, the nailed-down "future giant."
Before you continue