When Tang Hao walked out of the Clear Sky Sect's mountain gate, his steps felt as heavy as if they had been filled with lead.
He did not look back.
He was afraid that if he did, he would not be able to stop himself from swinging the Clear Sky Hammer at the massive bluestone plaque engraved with the three words "Clear Sky Sect."
The memorial tablets in the ancestral hall—his father Tang Yuan's, and those of all his ancestors—flashed through his mind one after another.
He had knelt, paid his respects, and kowtowed until his forehead was bruised blue.
Yet in the end, all Tang Xiao could give him was a single sentence: "Look into it further."
Look into it further.
Those were the three words Tang Hao hated most in his life.
Back when Spirit Hall's army had been pressing down on them, the Clear Sky Sect had sealed its gates and hidden away. They had used the same words: "Look into it further."
They looked and looked, until his father had been looked to death, Ah Yin had been looked out of existence,
and he had been looked into a useless man hiding in Holy Soul Village, hammering iron.
Now his son had been trampled beneath someone's feet, Fang Fan had been made Pacifying-the-State King in Heaven Dou City, and Tang Xiao still said, "Look into it further."
He suddenly felt that this sect had been rotten from its roots.
The cowardice rotted into its bones was more despairing than any external enemy.
He knew he could not stay long.
Back in the inner hall, the way several elders had looked at him had already changed.
After years of keeping their gates shut, the Clear Sky Sect was now dirt poor. The elders looked at the Soul