"Let's go!" He Pingsheng flicked his sleeves. "I'm leaving too!"
"Ah, yes, yes..." Old Tong bent forward and hurried after him.
He Pingsheng said, "I never heard you mention you still had a mother?"
"Is your father still around too?"
He Pingsheng respected women and had not casually swept his Divine Sense over her body, so he still did not know the cultivation of the woman from earlier.
"Ah..." Old Tong said, "You don't know, young master. I lost my mother when I was little... Later, my father found another wife..."
Understanding dawned on He Pingsheng's face. "I see... She's the stepmother your father married!"
"She must have treated you well when you were young. That's why you're so respectful!"
"No!" Old Tong gave a bitter smile. "That woman isn't my father's second wife..."
He Pingsheng looked utterly bewildered. What in the world?
Old Tong added, "And she hasn't done me any favors, either!"
"Uh..." He Pingsheng pressed a hand to his forehead, then slowly walked outside.
He could not be bothered to pry into Old Tong's family affairs.
For all he knew, there might be another tangled string of relationships.
Old Tong, however, kept chattering. "My father's cultivation wasn't high back then. He was only in the Divine Command Realm. But not long after marrying my stepmother, he got into a fight outside and was killed!"
"Uh... My stepmother did treat me well!"
"All my skills actually came from her!"
"She taught me artifact refining, taught me cultivation, and helped me manage our enormous Lineage!"
"Later, once I'd grown up, she found another Dao Companion!"
"He counted as my stepfather, I suppose!"
Had He Pingsheng not been holding back his laughter, he would already have burst out laughing.
Good grief!
*So his birth father and mother died, leaving him