The imagined rival arrives

The words "old friends" carried a complicated weight in themselves.

Especially when they described the relationship between two factions, their true worth needed to be carefully weighed.

There was no doubt that Mount Hua, with its centuries of history, had plenty of old friends. But Fang Yunhua could confirm one thing: when he joined Mount Hua, at the lowest point in its decline, he had never seen a single one of those old friends lend a helping hand.

Their wholehearted support for Mount Hua now was clearly because the sect had recently made a tremendous splash, grinding the Beggar Gang into the dirt. The other side had not even dared retaliate, ultimately slinking off to cower in the northeast.

As the saying went, the rich had distant relatives even deep in the mountains, while the poor went unnoticed even in a bustling market. This was precisely that situation.

Mount Hua, for its part, received these old friends with courtesy and propriety. Just because they had rushed over to help only after seeing the sect prosper, that was hardly reason to greet them with a sour face.

As for Yuan Suiyun and the Wuzheng Manor behind him...

The original story had indeed mentioned that they were old friends of Mount Hua. Otherwise, how could he possibly have charmed a homebody like Master Kumei into leaving with him?

Now Yuan Suiyun no longer had that opportunity. After all, Withered Plum was still out there throwing herself into her career. Where would she find the time for romance with him?

And clearly, Withered Plum was no longer Yuan Suiyun's target.

As a man of ambition, aspirations, and ideals, he had already opened Bat Island for business. It simply had yet to achieve the resounding fame it would enjoy four years later, which made him particularly attentive to secret intelligence circulating in the martial world.

Among it was one stray rumor.

Mount Hua's apparent revenge against Nangong Ling was actually a means of trampling the Beggar Gang to expand its own sphere of influence.

And all of this had been plotted by the Amorous Young Master. To that end, he had even used the renowned Fragrant Marshal Chu as his blade, driving the Beggar Gang's chief, Nangong Ling, into a corner.

At a glance, this was plainly the work of Wuhua, that fellow who could not rest easy even in death, wantonly ruining Fang Yunhua's reputation while he was still alive. He had deliberately painted Fang Yunhua as a man of soaring ambition, waiting for that image to bring him even greater trouble down the line.

Sure enough, it first caught Yuan Suiyun's interest.

The scheming image of the Amorous Young Master that Wuhua had deliberately spread-was that not precisely the Bat Young Master who embodied the dark side of his own heart?

Moreover, though Fang Yunhua was a few years younger than Yuan Suiyun, they were still of the same generation. For the first time, he found himself eagerly anticipating a meeting with someone.

The gathering storm Mount Hua had stirred up recently gave him an excellent excuse.

What was more, though Wuzheng Manor rarely involved itself in martial-world affairs, it lay west of Taiyuan, within Shanxi-one of the three regions included in Mount Hua's expansion.

What happened next at Mount Hua would therefore be intimately linked to Wuzheng Manor's future development. He had all the more reason to make the trip in person.

Naturally, Mount Hua treated the matter of receiving Yuan Suiyun more seriously than it did its other old friends.

For that purpose, it sent Hua Zhenzhen, now universally acknowledged as the sect's third most important figure.

Hua Zhenzhen had an excellent first impression of Yuan Suiyun. He carried himself with refined dignity and was gentle and courteous. Had she not known beforehand that he was blind, the thought would never have crossed her mind.

Of course, what made her especially well disposed toward him was his high opinion of Fang Yunhua.

In fact, although the beginnings of a "Mount Hua threat" narrative had recently surfaced across Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan, far more people were discussing the Amorous Young Master. Originally, only a handful had known that Fang Yunhua was secretly orchestrating the entire affair.

Yet somehow, the story had spread far and wide. (Wuhua! Stick that mangy head out!)

This led people in the martial world to label Fang Yunhua a deep schemer who was rather willing to stop at nothing.

Hua Zhenzhen was particularly displeased by that. In her eyes, her junior brother would always be flawless. Besides, the Beggar Gang and those two brothers had been at fault in the first place. Was even fighting back in self-defense unacceptable these days? Did good people have to keep letting villains point accusing fingers at them?

Quite a bit of resentment had built up inside her, but she did not vent it in front of Yuan Suiyun.

She looked delicate and easy to fool, yet was actually very difficult to get close to. Yuan Suiyun had originally intended to dig some secrets about Fang Yunhua out of her, but after several attempts, he abandoned the idea on his own.

Over the next few days, he approached other disciples and senior members of Mount Hua.

Apart from confirming that Fang Yunhua, as the sect's young leader, enjoyed an almost absurd level of prestige within Mount Hua, he failed to uncover even the slightest detail about the recent plan.

What he naturally did not know was that, after he first approached Hua Zhenzhen, a young woman who seemed easy to talk to, and probed too far a few times, putting her on her guard, she had already alerted Mount Hua's senior members.

In truth, Hua Zhenzhen's deceptive appearance was far more effective than Yuan Suiyun's. One look at her could genuinely leave someone thinking she was as easy to push around as a lump of soft dough, instinctively lowering their guard.

But anyone who underestimated her was bound to suffer dearly.

Time flowed like water, rushing past.

Before Fang Yunhua returned to Mount Hua, certain rumors spread even faster than he traveled!

Chu Liuxiang had joined forces with the World's Number One Divine Constable, Ying Wanli, to deliver a final verdict on the Beggar Gang affair in an official capacity.

Nothing was concealed about Wuhua and Nangong Ling's connection to Tianfeng Jushiro. Everything was attributed to a long-planned conspiracy by Little Japan, for which the Beggar Gang's former chief, Ren Ci, had already paid with his life.

After this announcement was released, Master Tianfeng formally stepped down as leader of Southern Shaolin. His junior brother, Master Tiannan, took over the position.

They also clearly informed the martial world that Wuhua, overwhelmed by the gravity of his sins, had hanged himself inside the Southern Shaolin Temple.

The two major organizations then jointly expressed their gratitude to Mount Hua's young leader, Fang Yunhua, and Chu Liuxiang for the many clues they had provided and their selfless contributions to exposing this enormous conspiracy.

The Beggar Gang elder Dai Duxing was also pressed into service, like a duck driven onto a perch, with no choice but to serve as acting chief for the time being. He staked his own reputation on a promise to strengthen oversight of the gang members' conduct and never allow another figure like the White Jade Demon Beggar to emerge.

For a time, the campaign against the Beggar Gang's villains, whom everyone had been clamoring to beat down, suddenly lost all its momentum. The major factions tacitly withdrew their hands and began quietly digesting their gains.

The Beggar Gang also began exerting its strength in earnest, striking back hard at the small and medium-sized factions that still refused to stop.

This also showed the entire martial world why the Beggar Gang was the largest gang under heaven. Even after being severely weakened by this upheaval, it still possessed the strength of a first-rate martial faction.

And just as the Beggar Gang began punching and kicking a bunch of clueless weaklings...

Fang Yunhua returned to his loyal Mount Hua!