Tang Chen didn't move. He only tugged at the corner of his mouth, revealing a mocking smile. His hoarse voice sounded as though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper.
"Think about what? Think about how my whole life, I, Tang Chen, have been a joke? Or think about how the Clear Sky Sect has been passed down for twenty thousand years, only to end up as a dog your Angel Clan can never tame?"
"You're still putting on a brave face."
Qian Daoliu pulled the seal from the wine jar, and the rich aroma instantly filled the air. He filled both empty cups, then pushed one toward Tang Chen.
"Back then, on the Far North Ice Plains, we swore an oath before the corpse of the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion. We swore that there would never again be Evil Soul Masters wreaking havoc in the Soul Master World, and that there would never again be the suffering caused by sects preying on one another..."
"Have you forgotten all that?"
Tang Chen's body stiffened abruptly. His hand hanging at his side clenched into a fist.
How could he forget?
Sixty years ago, amid the blizzards of the Far North, two young men in their early twenties had stood in the blood of a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast and sworn an oath beneath the snow-filled sky.
One had wanted the Clear Sky Sect to stand atop the continent, and the other had wanted the light of the angels to shine across the mortal world. They had vowed to be each other's right hand for life and to uphold justice together.
But later, the Spirit Hall and the Clear Sky Sect had drifted further and further apart. Their sectarian feuds and struggles for power had eventually put the two brothers, once willing to