Feng Yuhan vomited and vomited, taking quite some time to recover. But when she looked up, she discovered that Qian Chongling had long since disappeared.
Feng Yuhan was not surprised. Many powerful figures were like divine dragons whose heads appeared while their tails remained unseen. She supported the unconscious Xiao Huo and left the alley.
Early the next morning, Qian Chongling, who had stretched his muscles a little at Lu Yuan's Lu Family estate the night before, gave a lazy stretch before leisurely making his way out of the Longxing Hotel.
As soon as he stepped out of his room, a noisy discussion reached his ears. It came from the diners on the first floor.
"Have you heard? Something seems to have happened to the Lu Family," a burly, rough-looking man said.
"The Lu Family holds a hereditary viscount title. What could possibly have happened to them?" asked the tall, thin young man accompanying him.
That question seemed to open the floodgates, and the diners began talking over one another.
"Something really did happen."
"Early this morning, a night watchman passed the Lu Family estate and caught a noseful of blood. Guess what happened?"
At that point, the burly man paused. He picked up a bite of food, then raised his cup to drink, only to discover that it was empty.
"What happened next?" His curiosity evidently piqued, the tall, thin young man pressed him.
"Want to know?" The burly man raised an eyebrow, a teasing look on his face.
"Of course!" the tall, thin young man replied. He had been traveling with the burly man for less than a year and was especially interested in this sort of thing.
Hearing his answer, the burly man smiled faintly and pointed at the empty cup before him. "Then pour me some wine!"
The tall, thin young man filled his cup as they spoke. "Come on, big brother, keep going..."
Just then, the burly man turned toward him and said, "All right, I'll keep going..."
"But when the night watchman screwed up his courage and went inside to look, he found corpses strewn all over the ground!"
Everyone present froze at those words. The Lu Family was something of a local tyrant in Longxing City, yet someone had wiped out the entire household!
Three rounds of wine and five courses of food later.
The diners were still discussing who had wiped out the Lu Family, while the true culprit, Qian Chongling, was already far away.
It was one thing for a trifling Lu Family to bully men and tyrannize women, but they had actually dared to threaten him. Though he usually seemed quite benevolent, someone who made so many great sects across the continent fear him like a tiger was, in truth, more nuclear than benevolent.
With a patriarch like that, it was not hard to imagine how the Lu Family usually behaved. They had even dared to declare that they would kill him!
If Qian Chongling did not wipe out their Lu Family, who else would he wipe out? So he had wiped them out, and that was that. Such things were commonplace in this world anyway, happening all the time.
Countless small families like this rose and fell. Only the so-called Upper Three Sects had remained unchanged over these thousands of years; even the Lower Four Sects were occasionally replaced by newly risen families.
The sky was clear for ten thousand miles, and the sun shone brilliantly.
Looking up at the sun that had remained unchanged for ten thousand years and feeling its warm glow, Qian Chongling strolled out through Longxing City's western gate.
"Benefactor, please wait."
A gentle female voice sounded behind Qian Chongling. It was the married couple, Feng Yuhan and Xiao Huo.
"Oh, it's you two." Qian Chongling had already noticed that they had been waiting there for a long time and had a fair idea of their purpose, but he did not point it out.
"My name is Xiao Huo. Thank you, benefactor, for saving my wife and me." As he spoke, husband and wife bent their knees and knelt, then knocked their foreheads heavily against the ground.
Seeing Xiao Huo's gesture, Qian Chongling did not stop him. Expecting repayment for a favor was not his style, but repaying kindness with kindness and grievances with justice was how he conducted himself. Besides, he was fully deserving of this kowtow from Xiao Huo and his wife.
Had he not happened to be traveling through the area, Xiao Huo would undoubtedly have died, just as Lu Yuan had said, while Feng Yuhan would naturally have been repeatedly violated until she died. Qian Chongling could be said to have given them both a second life.
After a moment, Qian Chongling stepped forward and helped them up. "I simply followed my heart. There's no need to dwell on it."
"May we ask your honored name, benefactor? We will surely erect a longevity tablet for you and make offerings every day!" they asked after rising.
"There's no need for offerings. My name is Qian Chongling."
"We wouldn't dare be disrespectful. Then from now on, we'll call you Old Master Qian." Seeing that Qian Chongling did not object, the two breathed a sigh of relief.
But hearing the name Xiao Huo seemed to remind Qian Chongling of something. He asked, "Young man, your name is Xiao Huo, correct?"
"Yes, my name is indeed Xiao Huo."
"Then do you have a younger brother named Xiao Yan, and does your family live in Wutan City?" A trace of a smile appeared at the corner of Qian Chongling's mouth as he asked with a chuckle.
Unfortunately, Xiao Huo was not a transmigrator, had no cheat, and was not from Blue Star. Naturally, he had no idea what Qian Chongling meant.
Looking utterly bewildered, he said, "I'm the eldest son in my family. I have two younger sisters and a younger brother, but none of them is named Xiao Yan."
After a pause, he continued, "My family lives in Holy Soul Village, in Fasinuo Province in the southwestern part of the Heaven Dou Empire."
"Are you looking for someone named Xiao Yan, Old Master?" Xiao Huo asked.
"No."
Now it was Qian Chongling's turn to be stunned. Could it really be such a coincidence? Someone he had casually rescued actually lived at the very first destination of his journey across the continent.
Qian Chongling's first destination was the so-called Holy Soul Village, later known as God Soul Village, where Third Brother, the source of this continent's evil, had grown up.
Whether this Holy Soul Village and that Holy Soul Village were the same place remained open to question, however. After all, in this corner of the world called the Douluo Continent, countless villages followed that naming pattern. There were plenty of Emperor Soul Villages, King Soul Villages, and the like.
"Holy Soul Village, hmm? Is there someone named Jack in your Holy Soul Village?" Qian Chongling asked Xiao Huo.
In the original timeline, after Ah Yin sacrificed herself, Tang Hao became a Titled Douluo and was hailed as the youngest Titled Douluo. He seemed to have been forty-four or forty-five at the time, and it was around then that he went into seclusion in Holy Soul Village.
Jack had already been the village chief of Holy Soul Village then, and five years later, he looked to be in his sixties or seventies. Thus, when Ah Yin sacrificed herself, Jack should have been in his sixties, roughly the same age as Secret Chamber Douluo Qian Xunji. Soul Masters looked younger.
(If Qian Xunji became a Titled Douluo at fifty, then gaining one level every three years would put him at level ninety-five at sixty-two. That was already giving him plenty of credit.)
In other words, if it really was that Holy Soul Village, then the so-called Old Jack should now be about the same age as Qian Xunji, his great-great-grandson-around six or seven.
Seeing her husband unable to answer a single question, Feng Yuhan puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. "Old Master, this fool rarely goes home. He doesn't know how Holy Soul Village has changed over the past few years."
"I vaguely remember that the village chief's grandson is called Jack. He's seven this year."
"Unfortunately, he has no soul power and cannot become a Soul Master."
Hearing that, Qian Chongling immediately brightened. It truly was a coincidence: this young couple was heading the same way as he was. He said, "Then that settles it. I also happen to be going to Holy Soul Village to see an old friend."
"Better to arrive at the right moment than arrive early. How about traveling with me?"
Feng Yuhan and Xiao Huo naturally had no objections, and so a group of one elder and two youngsters, one woman and two men, came into being.
Before you continue