The hall fell silent for a moment.
A brief silence, with only the sound of breathing.
Then all three spoke almost at once.
"What?" Ning Fengzhi rose halfway from his seat.
"Taking a master?" Chen Xin's silver brows furrowed.
Whoosh!
A white afterimage flashed.
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, his hand had already seized the young man by the collar and lifted him bodily into the air.
"Explain carefully."
Chen Xin's voice was as soft as wind drifting from afar. Yet the chill in his eyes made the young Soul Master hanging in his grip 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 only went to enroll in school—how did she end up with a master?"
His tone was as cold and sinister as a freezing wind rising from underground.
Ning Fengzhi's brows also drew together tightly. Yet he did not move. He remained seated, fingers pressed against the armrest, calmly watching the young Soul Master dangling in Chen Xin's grasp.
"Put him down. Let him explain."
Chen Xin loosened his fingers. The moment the young Soul Master's feet touched the ground, he staggered a step. His Adam's apple bobbed twice before he found his voice again.
"Y-Young Miss was drawn to a fortune-telling stall near the south gate after entering Suotuo City."
He began from the beginning.
From the middle-aged man who claimed he could tell the position in which his wife had conceived, to the old farmer who found a Gold Soul Coin in the corner by the back gate. From Ning Rongrong stepping forward to condemn the swindler out of righteous indignation, 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 knitted deeply together.
Chen Xin and Gu Rong exchanged a glance.
"Isn't that just a con artist?" Gu Rong's voice rose several degrees. "He found two shills to put on an act. Childish tricks."
Chen Xin did not respond, but the curve of his lips had turned cold.
The young Soul Master continued.
"Young Miss refused to back down and argued with the fortune-teller. In the end, they made a bet and had him divine an answer to a question Young Miss posed."
"And then?" Ning Fengzhi asked.
The young Soul Master took a deep breath.
"The fortune-teller... got everything right."
The air in the hall turned abruptly cold.
"Young Miss's name, age, identity, hobbies, background, and purpose for coming to Suotuo City." The young Soul Master's voice grew quieter and quieter. "Even your name and identity, Sect Master... all of it, without a single word wrong."
Gu Rong's face went completely dark.
"Someone is plotting against Rongrong!" He slapped the pillar beside him, and a dull boom echoed through the hall. "They dare set up a scheme against our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect!"
He turned toward Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin, his deeply sunken face filled with unquestionable certainty.
"I absolutely refuse to believe this is really a coincidence!"
Chen Xin said nothing. Yet as he stood there, the temperature around him had already fallen 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 completely blank.
Not calm. It was the emptiness that came after every emotion had been gathered in and compressed.
He spoke, his voice utterly flat.
"The person Rongrong ultimately took as her master was this man?"
The young Soul Master nodded. "Yes."
Ning Fengzhi closed his eyes briefly. 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 forceful, but everyone present could hear what lay suppressed beneath it.
Sweat began to bead across the young Soul Master's forehead.
"The Sect Master's orders before departure were... that we could only intervene if Young Miss faced 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 possibly know about our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect? How could he know Rongrong's hobbies?"
He took one step before the young Soul Master. The angle from which he looked down, combined with that terrifyingly withered face, was enough to make someone faint on the spot.
"His cultivation must have been higher than yours! You simply couldn't see through him!"
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 eyes that were usually so indifferent they bordered on merciless.
"Interesting."
Ning Fengzhi was silent for several seconds.
"An ordinary young man..."
His fingertips tapped lightly against the armrest twice. The light in his eyes flickered uncertainly, making it impossible to tell what he was calculating.
"Continue." His tone became gentle again. "Since you saw him as an ordinary person, and Rongrong considered him a fraud, how did she ultimately end up successfully taking him as her master?"
The young Soul Master swallowed.
"After the fortune-teller divined Young Miss's information, Young Miss still didn't believe him. She questioned whether he was a thief who had planned it all in advance. But..."
His voice began to tremble again.
"But then the fortune-teller said something."
Three gazes locked onto him at the same time.
"What did he say?" Ning Fengzhi asked.
"Stop dragging it out!" Gu Rong snapped.
Chen Xin did not speak, but his entire presence was like a drawn sword, its cold gleam pressing down on everyone.
The young Soul Master took a deep breath.
Using every bit of strength in his body, beneath 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 gold-inlaid, jewel-carved jade grandmaster chair beneath Gu Rong exploded into powder in an instant.
It had not been crushed beneath him. Rather, the surge of Soul Power he failed to restrain in that moment blasted the entire chair apart from within, turning it into debris that scattered through the air.
The fragments were still drifting through the air.
A raging storm erupted around Chen Xin. His aura, like tangible sword edges, 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 straight to the ground, sprawled on all fours and unable to move. His face was pressed against the cold jade tiles, and even breathing became a luxury.
And upon the sect master's seat.
Surging blue Soul Power spread around Ning Fengzhi's body without warning.
He stood up.
In those eyes that were always warm 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 loss of composure had already been forced back into the depths of his chest. He straightened up and pressed one hand against his collar, his movements unhurried, as if smoothing the wrinkles caused by that uncontrolled outburst.
Then he stepped down from the sect master's seat.
His leather shoes struck the jade-brick floor, every step carrying a measured rhythm. His usually gentle and elegant face had become a piece of flawless white jade, utterly unreadable.
He stopped before the young Soul Master.
Ning Fengzhi looked down at his subordinate sprawled on the ground. His voice was as still as a bowl of water without ripples.
"Get up."
The young Soul Master shakily climbed to his feet, his knees still trembling.
"Tell me everything that happened afterward, word by word." Ning Fengzhi's tone carried no threat whatsoever. It was so gentle that it almost sounded like casual conversation. Yet everyone present could hear that what lay beneath that gentleness was more frightening than rage.
Before his words had even faded—
"Ha!"
A short, nearly mocking laugh burst from the right.
Gu Rong's two-and-a-half-meter frame rose from the remains of the grandmaster chair that had been reduced to dust. A strange smile hung on his corpse-like, withered face. Combined with his sunken eye sockets, that smile was ten times more terrifying than when he did not smile.
"Our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's thousand-year pursuit."
His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping over dry bones.
"A thousand years! An answer that generation after generation exhausted themselves seeking, yet could never obtain!"
He slapped the pillar beside him, sending wood chips flying.
"And some teenage brat solves it so casually just by setting up a shabby roadside stall?"
He turned toward Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin.
"Isn't that laughable? Ha! What an eye-opener! In over ninety years of life, 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 hawk-like sharpness shot from the cloudy old eyes deep within his sockets. "Someone has their eyes on us."
His gaze swept toward Chen Xin.
"Old Sword!" His voice rose several degrees. "You tell me—which faction is behind this? The Heaven Dou Royal Family? Spirit Hall? The Clear Sky Sect? Or the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon?"
He stepped forward, his astonishingly large frame leaning slightly forward with emotion.
"Or have these bastards joined forces to make a move against our sect?!"
Before you continue