Each with His Own Hidden Agenda

Chu Liuxiang silently watched Wuhua, tilting his head with a puzzled look.

That look seemed to say, what the hell did Mount Hua's movements have to do with him?

Nangong Ling, meanwhile, furrowed his brow. This seemed to be the first he had heard of it.

Wuhua simply continued speaking.

"Mount Hua's influence was largely confined to Shaanxi, Henan, and Shanxi. Then the Amorous Young Master opened a safe trade route straight to Capital City, drawing the branch lineages that had split away back into the fold.

"Now Master Kumei has formally announced that Fang Yunhua will become the young sect leader.

"Normally, the heir to the leadership of a major sect would prove his abilities through a few accomplishments.

"For instance, Brother Nangong once traveled thousands of miles to the Great Desert to hunt down the Blood-Drinking Mad Saber, Lu Qianpo.

"So, do you think Mount Hua's recent movements might have something to do with him? Yet, as it happens, these past few days the Beggar Gang has been mired in groundless accusations, and Brother Nangong in particular has come under criticism throughout the martial world. I also discovered that these rumors first surfaced in Shaanxi.

"It all seems rather too coincidental."

"Are you suggesting that Young Hero Fang is plotting against the Beggar Gang, Master?"

Chu Liuxiang admitted that, during his conversations with Fang Yunhua, he had already sensed how deep the man's thoughts ran. But Fang Yunhua had turned the tide for a declining Mount Hua; it would have been stranger if he had not possessed a calculating mind.

Only now, with Wuhua deliberately drawing his attention to it, did he realize that he might unwittingly have become Fang Yunhua's accomplice-or his ally.

Whether he was an accomplice or an ally depended on whether Chu Liuxiang judged the course of this affair to be evil or righteous.

"Brother Chu, you have been investigating something lately, haven't you? And now you have become entangled with the Beggar Gang." Wuhua gave Chu Liuxiang a searching look. "I do not want you to become a blade in someone else's hand."

His words had all but stated outright that Fang Yunhua was behind the storm of public opinion targeting Nangong Ling, and that he was adjusting his moves, to some extent, according to the progress of Chu Liuxiang's investigation.

Or rather, he was using Chu Liuxiang to draw hostility at the forefront, leaving himself free to stir up wind and rain from the shadows.

Nangong Ling, slow on the uptake, finally grasped the situation as well.

"You mean he intends to trample over the Beggar Gang-even over me-to establish his prestige as Mount Hua's young sect leader?"

"This is all merely the master's conjecture. It might only be a coincidence." Chu Liuxiang promptly cut off his speculation. Hadn't Mount Hua only just begun to stir? As for what they intended to do, they might simply be celebrating Fang Yunhua's appointment as young sect leader.

Such baseless speculation proved nothing at all.

Besides, as far as he knew, Mount Hua and the Beggar Gang enjoyed a fairly good relationship. Surely they would not stab fellow allies on the righteous path so viciously in the back.

And compared with Fang Yunhua's side, where not a single person had yet died, Wuhua was continually reaping lives here. That was the case that concerned Chu Liuxiang far more.

Nangong Ling, however, was not nearly as optimistic as Chu Liuxiang.

He knew better than anyone about the petty schemes he had carried out in private to harm Mount Hua. Moreover, his mother, Stone Guanyin, bore a blood-deep hatred for Mount Hua over the destruction of her family, and that hatred had now become mutual.

If Fang Yunhua had uncovered even a few clues, then no move he made against Nangong Ling would truly be excessive.

Nangong Ling's situation was somewhat different from Wuhua's. The latter clearly had something of a mother fixation, so much so that he deeply identified himself as a member of the Huangshan Family.

That made him pay particular attention to Fang Yunhua. Even with Chu Liuxiang before him, demanding his full attention, he never relaxed his watch over the Amorous Young Master and Mount Hua.

Nangong Ling, however, did not identify with that family nearly as strongly. His fixation on his elder brother Wuhua was greater, so much so that, in the original storyline, even after Wuhua poisoned him, he still wore an expression of utter disbelief as he died.

As a result, his efforts against Mount Hua amounted to diligently carrying out an assigned task. Once it was done, he would pay no further attention to what followed.

But things were different now.

He had the rotten luck to become Mount Hua's first target, and now this detestable Thief Marshal was clinging to him like a burr. Yet if he failed to seize the chance to take countermeasures, even if Chu Liuxiang cleared his name promptly as promised, the other side would likely have an even more troublesome second move, a third, a fourth...

He immediately decided to send some men to keep watch on Mount Hua's movements and respond as circumstances required.

He had already chosen who would lead them.

He would send the White Jade Demon Beggar. He had originally been confident that he could keep the man under his thumb, but the man's hatred for Ren Ci ran too deep. He was also the one most likely to extend that hatred to Qiu Lingsu now. To protect Qiu Lingsu, and to preserve his own reputation, Nangong Ling absolutely could not let him remain at his side.

Wuhua also fell silent at the table, as though his earlier remarks had merely been a passing comment.

Yet when he looked at Chu Liuxiang, a faint, knowing smile still lingered in his eyes.

He did not know how close Chu Liuxiang and Fang Yunhua were, but he was certain that if Fang Yunhua made too many moves from this point onward, he would inevitably attract the Thief Marshal's particular attention.

If he could not kill that meddlesome shit-stirrer Chu Liuxiang later, he could always send him over to Fang Yunhua to make a nuisance of himself. That, too, was a fallback prepared in advance.

Then his gaze drifted toward the brooding Nangong Ling. In his heart, he was already ready to abandon this foolish younger brother.

Because Nangong Ling had walked into a dead end.

Qiu Lingsu was undoubtedly an excellent point of attack. The best approach would have been to dispose of her decisively. But under the pressure of these recent rumors, Nangong Ling not only needed Chu Liuxiang to vouch for him; he would surely have to bring Madam Ren out for everyone to see from time to time as well.

The murderer himself had to personally protect such an enormous hidden danger. To Wuhua, that was profoundly foolish.

But there was no helping it. His foolish younger brother valued the power and status of the Beggar Gang's chief almost above everything else. So long as there was even a sliver of hope, he would try his luck. In the original storyline, for instance, even knowing that Chu Liuxiang had uncovered every last detail of his crimes,

he still chose to gamble on a showdown with Chu Liuxiang rather than simply flee.

Because he knew that if he retreated, the career he had struggled for over twenty years and the leadership of the greatest gang under heaven would slip away from him. He could not bear to become an ordinary nobody.

Of the three men present, perhaps only Wuhua had seen Fang Yunhua's more sinister purpose behind this storm of public opinion. He had strung Nangong Ling up and was slowly tightening the noose, while the one holding the rope and steadily pulling harder was Chu Liuxiang, still utterly oblivious to it all.

Without dirtying his own hands at all, Fang Yunhua could easily eliminate a major threat.

And the Thief Marshal's unusual behavior had also begun after his earlier visit to Mount Hua. Continuing this game no longer held much meaning for Wuhua.

Chu Liuxiang, whom he regarded as the opponent most deserving of his attention in the world today, was merely a piece in someone else's hand.

At that moment, each of the three men at the table harbored his own thoughts. After arranging a time with Nangong Ling to visit Qiu Lingsu, Chu Liuxiang hastily brought the most joyless dinner he had ever eaten to an end.