Someone Has Set Their Sights on Us!

The hall fell silent for a moment.

A brief silence, broken only by the sound of breathing.

Then, all three of them spoke almost at once.

"What?" Ning Fengzhi half rose from his seat.

"Taking a master?" Chen Xin's silver brows furrowed.

Whoosh!

A white blur flashed past.

In the blink of an eye, Chen Xin appeared before the young soul master. Before the hem of his snow-white robe had even settled, he had already seized the young man by the collar and forcibly lifted him off the ground.

"Explain carefully."

Chen Xin's voice was as soft as a breeze drifting in from afar. Yet the chill in his eyes made the young soul master feel as though his blood were freezing.

"She took a master? What master? Who was it? What happened?"

Gu Rong's voice exploded from behind him. "How were you watching Rongrong? She went to enroll in school, so how did she end up with a master?"

His tone was as cold as a bitter wind rising from underground.

Ning Fengzhi's brows also drew together tightly. But he did not move. He remained seated, his fingers pressed against the armrest, calmly watching the young soul master dangling in Chen Xin's grasp.

"Put him down. Let him explain himself."

Chen Xin released his fingers. The instant the young soul master's feet touched the ground, he staggered a step. His Adam's apple bobbed twice before he finally found his voice again.

"Y-Young Miss was drawn to a fortune-telling stall near the southern gate after entering Soto City."

He began from the beginning.

From the middle-aged man who claimed he had predicted his wife's pregnancy position, to the old farmer who found a gold soul coin at the corner of the back wall. From Ning Rongrong stepping forward to rebuke the swindler in defense of justice, to those two joining forces to retort that she was meddling in other people's business.

By this point, Ning Fengzhi's brows had already furrowed deeply.

Chen Xin and Gu Rong exchanged a look.

"Isn't that just a scammer?" Gu Rong's voice rose several notches. "He found two shills to put on a show. Child's play."

Chen Xin said nothing, but the curve of his lips had turned cold.

The young soul master continued.

"Young Miss refused to yield and began arguing with the fortune-teller. In the end, they made a wager and had him calculate a question Young Miss came up with."

"And then?" Ning Fengzhi asked.

The young soul master drew a deep breath.

"The fortune-teller... calculated everything."

The air in the hall suddenly turned icy.

"Young Miss's name, age, identity, preferences, background, and purpose for coming to Soto City." The young soul master's voice grew quieter and quieter. "Even your name and identity, Sect Master... all of it was correct, word for word."

Gu Rong's face went completely dark.

"Someone is plotting against Rongrong!" He slapped the nearby pillar, and a muffled boom echoed through the hall. "They dare set up a trap right under the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's nose!"

He turned toward Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin, his deeply sunken face filled with unquestionable certainty.

"I absolutely refuse to believe this was a coincidence!"

Chen Xin said nothing. Yet as he stood there, the temperature around him had already dropped below freezing. The killing intent seeping from his bones made the young soul master feel as if an invisible sword were pressed against his throat.

Ning Fengzhi's expression had gone utterly flat.

Not calm. It was the blankness that came after every emotion had been gathered up and compressed.

He spoke, his voice devoid of any fluctuation.

"The person Rongrong took as her master in the end was this man?"

The young soul master nodded. "Yes."

Ning Fengzhi closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, his gaze passed through the entire hall and fell upon some place far, far away.

"Why didn't you intervene at the time?"

The question was not heavy, but everyone present could hear what lay suppressed beneath it.

Sweat began to bead on the young soul master's forehead.

"The Sect Master's orders before departure were... that we could only act if Young Miss was in genuine mortal danger. At the time, we judged that the fortune-teller... was an ordinary person without soul power."

"An ordinary person?" Gu Rong exploded at once. "How could an ordinary person know about the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect? How could he know Rongrong's preferences?"

He took one stride to the young soul master's side. The angle from which he looked down, coupled with that terrifyingly gaunt face, was nearly enough to make someone faint on the spot.

"His cultivation must have been higher than yours! You simply couldn't see through it!"

The young soul master shrank back. "B-But he looked like he was only in his teens..."

"In his teens?"

Chen Xin narrowed his eyes. A hint of amusement suddenly surfaced in those usually indifferent, almost emotionless eyes.

"Interesting."

Ning Fengzhi fell silent for several seconds.

"An ordinary young man..."

His fingertips tapped the armrest twice. The light in his eyes flickered uncertainly, revealing nothing of what he was calculating.

"Continue." His tone became gentle again. "Since you saw him as an ordinary person and Rongrong thought he was a fraud, how did he ultimately succeed in taking her as a disciple?"

The young soul master swallowed.

"After the fortune-teller calculated Young Miss's details, Young Miss still did not believe him. She questioned whether he was a thief who had planned this all along. But..."

His voice began trembling again.

"But then the fortune-teller said something."

Three gazes fixed on him at once.

"What did he say?" Ning Fengzhi asked.

"Stop dragging it out!" Gu Rong barked.

Chen Xin did not speak, but his entire presence was like a drawn sword, its cold gleam pressing down on them.

The young soul master drew a deep breath.

Using every bit of strength in his body, under the gazes of the three great figures, he forced those words out of his throat.

"The fortune-teller told Young Miss..."

"He knew how to evolve the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda into the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda."

Boom!!

The jade grandmaster's chair beneath Gu Rong, inlaid with gold and carved with diamonds, exploded into powder in an instant.

It had not been crushed beneath him. Rather, the soul power aura that had surged out of him beyond his control in that instant had blasted the entire chair apart from within, turning it into fragments that scattered through the air.

The debris was still drifting through the air.

A raging storm erupted around Chen Xin. His aura, like a tangible sword edge, poured from his body and churned the air within three meters before him into a chaotic vortex. Under that pressure, the young soul master was slammed directly to the ground, his limbs sprawled and unable to move. His face pressed against the icy floor tiles, even breathing became a luxury.

Meanwhile, at the sect master's seat—

Surging blue soul power suddenly spread around Ning Fengzhi's body.

He stood.

In those eyes that were always gentle and refined, only one emotion remained.

"What?!"

Ning Fengzhi's voice echoed through the hall for two seconds.

Then he closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, that lapse of composure had already been forced back into the depths of his chest. He straightened, one hand smoothing the collar of his robes with unhurried movements, as though tidying the wrinkles stirred up by that outburst.

Then he stepped down from the sect master's seat.

His leather shoes struck the jade-tiled floor, every step keeping a steady rhythm. His usually gentle and elegant face now resembled a piece of flawless white jade, impossible to read.

He stopped before the young soul master.

Ning Fengzhi looked down at his subordinate sprawled on the ground. His voice was as flat as a bowl of still water.

"Get up."

The young soul master climbed to his feet, trembling all over, his knees still shaking.

"Tell me what happened afterward, word by word." Ning Fengzhi's tone carried no threat at all. It was so gentle that it almost sounded like casual conversation. But everyone present could hear that what lay beneath that gentleness was more terrifying than fury.

Before his words had even faded—

"Ha!"

A short, almost mocking laugh exploded from the right.

Gu Rong's two-and-a-half-meter body rose from the remains of the grandmaster's chair, now reduced to powder. On his face, gaunt as a dried corpse, hung a strange smile. Paired with his deeply sunken eye sockets, it looked ten times more horrifying than when he did not smile.

"The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's pursuit across a thousand years."

His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping against dry bones.

"A thousand years! The answer that generation after generation had sought with all their blood, sweat, and effort, yet never obtained!"

He slapped the pillar beside him, sending wood chips flying.

"And some teenage brat solves it so easily just by setting up a shabby stall at the roadside?"

He turned to Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin.

"Isn't that laughable? Ha! I've really seen something today! In over ninety years of living, this is the first time I've seen something this absurd!"

There was not the slightest trace of amusement in his laughter.

"Fengzhi." Gu Rong's expression darkened, and sharp light like that of a hawk flashed from the murky old eyes deep in his sockets. "Someone has set their sights on us."

His gaze swept toward Chen Xin.

"Old Sword!" His voice rose three degrees. "You tell me—which faction's work is this? The Heaven Dou Royal Family? Spirit Hall? The Clear Sky Sect? Or the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon?"

He took a step forward, his massive skeletal frame tilting slightly ahead with emotion.

"Or have those bastards joined forces to set their sights on our sect?!"