They had clearly just managed to avert the crisis, but who could have guessed that, at the crucial moment, some brat who had appeared out of nowhere would come along and ruin everything?
With the Luo Clan beyond his reach for now, Yan Huishan could only vent his anger on Sanbao.
"What are you looking at? Get lost, and shut the door!" At Yan Huishan's furious shout, the sparse crowd still lingering outside Yan Mansion scattered like birds and beasts, afraid the Yan Clan would take their anger out on them.
After all, the Yan Clan was a tyrant in Lushan Town. The Luo Clan could afford to provoke them, but the rest could only look up to them.
"Luo Clan, just you wait! Wuji, the future of our Yan Clan rests in your hands!" Yan Huishan was in such a foul mood that he couldn't even bring himself to look more closely at his son's injuries. Looking utterly dejected, he went into the inner residence alone.
Sanbao and the others returned to Luo Mansion, chatting and laughing. As soon as they reached the gate, a guard hurried over.
"Young masters, hurry to the ancestral hall. The clan head is waiting for you."
The smiles vanished from the faces of the Caiyang brothers. They exchanged a glance and gave bitter smiles, knowing they'd gone too far today and wouldn't escape punishment.
Sure enough, when they entered the ancestral hall, the clan head, Luo Dingyi, sat in the main seat, his face dark. In the hall, the brothers Kai Feng and Kaiyu also sat with furrowed brows, their heads bowed in silence.
"Grandfather, Father, Second Uncle."
"Uncles, Big Brother, Second Brother."
"Hmph. You and your nephews certainly stole the show today, didn't you?" Old Luo asked sarcastically.
"Grandfather, the Yan Clan went too far. How could we possibly—" Luo Caiguang protested.
"The Yan Clan went too far, so you thought you could take over a thousand people to cause trouble for them? What a display of power!" Old Luo mocked him before his grandson could finish.
"Well, Grandfather, we didn't mean to. Who knew those busybodies would—" Caiyang tried to explain.
"Enough. Not another word. Our Luo Clan's ancestral rules are clear. What you did today plainly violated them. Punishments: Kaiyu, confined to the ancestral hall's secret chamber for a year; Caiyang, assigned to the Copper Mine for a year; Caiguang, forbidden to leave the mansion for a year. Sanbao took part as well, so he's forbidden to leave the mansion for half a year."
After speaking, Old Luo walked straight out of the ancestral hall. The others looked at one another in bewilderment, but Luo Kaifeng, the eldest, exchanged a glance with Sanbao, as if they had understood something.
"This is awful. I can't go out for a year? That's as good as killing me!"
"You've got it much better than I do. I have to spend a whole year at the Copper Mine." The Caiguang brothers shook their heads in turn and left.
Luo Kaiyu didn't say much. He shrugged at Sanbao and the others, then drifted away as well.
"Second Brother, wait. Was that a Heaven-grade Spirit Skill you used just now? That was incredible!" Unable to contain his curiosity, Sanbao finally asked.
"You silly boy. Hahaha!"
Luo Kaiyu didn't answer. He merely glanced at his elder brother, Luo Kaifeng, then laughed as he left. Sanbao was baffled, so he turned his questioning gaze to Luo Kaifeng.
"All right, Sanbao. Let me explain," Luo Kaifeng said with a smile.
"Sanbao, you said our Talent Family is far stronger than ordinary Spirit Cultivators. Apart from our innate gifts, which make our bodies far superior to ordinary people's, what other major advantage do we have?"
"Our innate divine abilities. Was Second Brother using one of our Luo Clan's innate divine abilities just now?" Sanbao immediately caught on and said in sudden realization.
"Yes and no. What your second brother used doesn't count as an innate divine ability, but it was transformed from one. Besides our Luo Clan's most basic innate divine ability, the Folded Space Claw, we have another called the Illusionary Space Golden Body. When the Golden Body reaches perfection, it can transform into the body of a Kunpeng, soaring through the sky and rising ninety thousand li."
"The Folded Space Claw? The Illusionary Space Golden Body?"
Sanbao immediately recalled his all-night conversation with Old Luo a while ago.
As descendants of the Purple-Eyed Golden Peng, the Luo Clan possessed several extremely powerful innate divine abilities. But activating them was no easy task.
Take the Luo Clan's most basic innate divine ability, the Folded Space Claw. One needed to reach at least the Spirit General level to use it—and that was for someone with a high-grade Luo Clan bloodline. Those with a low-grade bloodline needed to reach at least the Spirit King level.
The requirements for the Illusionary Space Golden Body were even higher. Even those with a mid-grade bloodline needed to reach at least the Spirit Sovereign level, while those with a low-grade bloodline couldn't activate this ability at all. Naturally, someone with a true-grade bloodline had it much easier and needed only to reach the Spirit Commander level.
Of course, those were only the minimum requirements. Whether one could truly activate the ability still depended on individual talent and opportunity. Take the Luo Clan, for example: only two people had currently mastered the Folded Space Claw. As for the Illusionary Space Golden Body, even the clan head, Luo Dingyi, had yet to activate it.
What Luo Kaiyu had used today was merely the Nine-Turn Golden Body, the preliminary Spirit Skill required for the Illusionary Space Golden Body.
Even so, its power far surpassed that of ordinary Spirit Skills.
For a member of the Luo Clan to master the Illusionary Space Golden Body, they first had to perfect the Nine-Turn Golden Body, thereby awakening the innate divine ability known as the Illusionary Space Golden Body.
"Big Brother, can I cultivate the Nine-Turn Golden Body?" Sanbao asked sheepishly, practically drooling at the thought.
"Of course. It's a mandatory Spirit Skill for our Luo Clan members. And then there's the Nine-Fold Claw, the preliminary Spirit Skill for the Folded Space Claw. These two Spirit Skills can be used for both offense and defense, and they're extremely useful. Whether or not you can activate an innate divine ability in the future, they'll still be vital tools against your enemies."
"Father gave the order long ago. We were just waiting for you to reach one-star Spirit Scholar. Since you've asked today, I'll give them to you a few days early."
After speaking, Luo Kaifeng took Sanbao out of the ancestral hall. On the way, he naturally gave Sanbao a thorough explanation of how to cultivate the two Spirit Skills.
"Third Brother, although these two Spirit Skills are only the preliminary skills for innate divine abilities, their grade is no lower than that of ordinary Earth-grade Spirit Skills when it comes to our Talent Family. So bringing them to perfection won't be easy..."
After a long, earnest lesson, Luo Kaifeng carefully placed the cultivation manuals for the two Spirit Skills in Sanbao's hands and told him to memorize their contents as soon as possible, then return the manuals.
Sanbao nodded, then got up to leave.
No wonder Second Brother Luo Kaiyu had been so astonishing today. As it turned out, the Nine-Turn Golden Body he'd used was a top-tier body-tempering Spirit Skill.
Spirit Skills were divided by grade into low, middle, high, Earth, and Heaven. In terms of function, they were divided into offensive and defensive skills.
Body-tempering Spirit Skills could, in a sense, also be considered defensive skills. But unlike ordinary defensive Spirit Skills, their main purpose was to temper the body. Once the body was strong, any offensive Spirit Skill would naturally be easy to use.
Unlike the ordinary offensive and defensive Spirit Skills that were as numerous as cow hairs, every body-tempering Spirit Skill was extremely precious. A top-tier body-tempering Spirit Skill like the Nine-Turn Golden Body was beyond the reach of ordinary Spirit Cultivators. Only a clan with such deep foundations as the Luo Clan could possess one.
Of course, another reason the Nine-Turn Golden Body was so powerful was that it had been custom-made by the Luo Clan's ancestors for their bloodline. An ordinary Spirit Cultivator couldn't cultivate it even if they wanted to.
After all, the physical talent of the Luo Clan bloodline far surpassed that of ordinary Spirit Cultivators.
After obtaining the cultivation manuals for the Spirit Skills from Luo Kaifeng, Sanbao hurried back to his Training Room and quickly settled into cultivation.
All he had to do now was reach the minimum requirement for cultivating Spirit Skills—one-star Spirit Scholar—as quickly as possible.
Sanbao didn't take the clan head Luo Dingyi's punishment of "not leaving the mansion for half a year" to heart at all. In fact, in the nearly two years since he'd come to the Luo Clan, he'd hardly ever gone out.
These days, almost everyone in Lushan Town talked about the great clash between the Luo and Yan Clans. Thanks to Luo Kaiyu's Startling Swan Strike, the Luo Clan's reputation and standing in Lushan Town had reached unprecedented heights.
Yet the Luo Clan's direct descendants inside Luo Mansion showed no inclination to boast. In the eyes of the guards and servants, their masters were actually more low-key than usual.
In fact, ever since the Caiyang brothers had been punished, Luo Mansion had grown much quieter. After all, there were only a handful of young people in the mansion. Apart from the young and inexperienced Luo Caiyue, there was only the Third Young Master, who rarely left his room.
"Big Brother, don't you think the masters of the Luo Clan are strange? They're obviously incredibly powerful, yet they keep themselves cooped up beneath Deer Mountain. With the strength of our Luo Clan, I reckon we could even make a name for ourselves in the capital, Lijing."
"What do you know? It's called keeping a low profile while biding our time."
"I think the strangest one isn't anyone else. It's the Third Young Master. He's a kid barely into his teens. He used to spend every day drawing in the back hills, and now he locks himself in his room every day. He doesn't seem to be cultivating, but he doesn't seem to be playing either."
"Exactly. The Third Young Master really is strange. I heard he almost died of an illness last year. Look at him now—he's still as skinny as a monkey."
"Keep your voice down. If the masters hear you, they'll skin you alive!"
During their free time, several guards in Luo Mansion's rear courtyard struck up a conversation. None of them paid any attention to the fact that a recently arrived guard committed their every word to memory—and soon passed it all on to the Yan Clan.
So that skinny monkey wasn't just anybody. He was actually the nephew of Luo Dingyi, the Luo Clan's head.
"What nephew? I say he's definitely Luo Dingyi's illegitimate son."
Inside the Yan Mansion's council hall, all of the Yan Clan's leading figures were present except for Yan Gaojin, whose legs had been severed. After learning the basics about Sanbao, one of them spoke.
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