Lu Heng's hearing was exceptionally sharp. Hearing Cao Ying's complaint, he could not help but laugh.
"Can't be helped. I cultivated too quickly, so my seniority rose quickly too."
Cao Ying stumbled, nearly tripping over the hem of her own skirt.
She shot Lu Heng an annoyed glare, silently cursing him as an unbearably arrogant man.
Yet every word he said was the truth, leaving her without even the confidence to argue back.
He was only twenty, yet he had already become a Guest Elder of the Pill Tower in the Central Plains.
It was a height many people could never reach in their entire lives, yet he had attained it at just twenty.
"I think I understand now. The monstrous junior from Jia Nan Academy that Sister Yue mentioned in her letters back then must have been you."
"When Sister Yue wrote home to the Cao Clan, she said the Inner Academy had produced a monster even more outrageous than the Pill Tower's geniuses. I thought she was deliberately exaggerating."
"Now it seems Sister Yue was actually being too restrained."
Cao Ying sighed helplessly.
The two passed through the bustling medicinal herb market of the Inner Domain.
Along the way, countless cultivators in alchemist robes of various colors greeted Cao Ying.
Cao Ying was enormously famous in Saint Dan City; practically no one failed to recognize her.
When those alchemists saw the usually haughty Cao Clan enchantress honestly leading an unfamiliar young man, shoulder to shoulder with him no less, every one of them froze in shock.
After crossing three main roads that ran through the Inner Domain, an enormous crimson estate of imposing grandeur appeared at the end of their sight.
Its towering walls were constructed from exceedingly rare Flame-Sun Warm Jade. Above the main gate hung a