A Man Should Be Like This!

"Thank you, Sister An Qing!"

Xia Yu bowed slightly, then turned and left.

An Qing stood there, stunned for a long moment. The corners of her lips lifted slightly, and a rosy blush swept across her cheeks.

"That fellow called me his older sister? Am I that old?"

When he returned to the city lord's residence, the crowd had yet to disperse.

Seeing Xia Yu return alone, quite a few people wore odd expressions.

"Young Master Xia, where is the Seventh Princess?"

At last, Lu Tianxiang could not resist asking.

"The Seventh Princess? You mean Sister An Qing? She left."

Xia Yu answered casually, then walked over to Xia Yao and said with a smile, "Sister, let's go."

Xia Yao nodded.

As soon as Xia Yu and Xia Yao left, the people from the Myriad Treasures Pavilion followed.

Duanmu Wenshan was the first to follow them, utterly deferential.

"Sister An Qing?"

Looking displeased, Lu Tianxiang turned to Zhu Kang and said, "Lord Zhu, I want every piece of information you have on Xia Yu."

"All right." Zhu Kang agreed readily.

Xia Yu's background could not have been more ordinary.

Aside from that ordinariness, there were a few inexplicable things.

For instance, why had Xia Yu's cultivation suddenly skyrocketed?

No one knew!

Much later, Lu Tianxiang said gravely, "It seems the one who triggered the heavenly phenomenon wasn't Xia Longfei, but Xia Yu."

"From the look of things, that does seem to be the case." Zhu Kang nodded.

"Hmph, that bunch of fools in the Xia Lineage!" Lu Tianxiang snapped.

"They certainly are a bunch of fools."

Not only did Zhu Kang nod at those words, but the heads of the Xu Gong Zhang families nodded as well.

The prowess Xia Yu had displayed in that battle had left them wide-eyed and slack-jawed, shaken to the core.

In just half a month, he had gone from having a shattered dantian to reaching the origin command realm. It was like a dream.

They had never even heard of such speed.

Moreover, the strength Xia Yu had displayed made him unquestionably the strongest person in Huai City.

A sixteen-year-old in the origin command realm, the strongest in Huai City, someone capable of triggering a heavenly phenomenon-and his own people had framed him and even driven him out of his Lineage.

If that was not stupidity, what was?

"Prepare a gift. I'm going to the Myriad Treasures Pavilion to pay Young Master Xia a visit." Lu Tianxiang made his decision.

"We'll go too." Zhu Kang and the others stepped forward.

But when they arrived together at the Myriad Treasures Pavilion, Xia Yu was already gone.

"Young Master Lu, Lord Zhu, esteemed Lineage heads, Young Master Xia left Huai City a quarter of an hour ago," Duanmu Lin said.

"Then... where was Young Master Xia headed?" Lu Tianxiang asked.

"I'm not sure of his exact destination either. From what Young Master Xia said, he may be going to Capital City."

After a moment's thought, Duanmu Lin told them the truth.

When Xia Yu left, he had not instructed him to keep this matter secret.

Lu Tianxiang fell silent for a while, then turned and left.

On the way back, the head of the Xu Lineage approached Zhu Kang and said quietly, "City Lord, about the Xia Lineage..."

Zhu Kang raised his head and said thoughtfully, "Aren't you afraid Young Master Xia will return?"

"Young Master Xia said himself that he was no longer a member of the Xia Lineage." The head of the Xu Lineage smiled. "I think he might actually prefer what we're doing."

"How will we divide it?" Zhu Kang raised an eyebrow.

"Equal shares among the four of us."

"Agreed." Zhu Kang nodded.

Xia Yu had no idea that, right after he left Huai City, the city lord's residence and the Xu, Gong, and Zhang Lineages divided up all the Xia Lineage's property.

The Xia Lineage was left with only part of its ancestral residence.

Without Xia Hongji and the others, the Xia Lineage was too fragile to withstand a blow. It did not even put up a fight.

Overnight, what had once been one of Huai City's four great Lineages vanished like smoke and clouds.

Meanwhile, Xia Yu was traveling to the Lu Prefecture Government with Xia Yao and Duanmu Wenshan.

A water route from the Lu Prefecture Government led straight to Capital City.

Traveling by water was more comfortable, while the overland route required crossing mountains and ridges.

Upon reaching the Lu Prefecture Government, Xia Yu did not pause at all, boarding a ship bound for Capital City.

Duanmu Wenshan arranged everything.

Duanmu Wenshan even paid all the expenses.

By now, Duanmu Wenshan was practically Xia Yu's attendant.

If anyone learned that Duanmu Wenshan of Lu Prefecture had become a sixteen-year-old youth's attendant, countless jaws would probably drop.

Even people within the Myriad Treasures Pavilion came forward to urge Duanmu Wenshan not to behave this way. It was simply too embarrassing.

Duanmu Wenshan acted as though he had heard nothing. What did they know of Young Master Xia's background?

What a joke. All I'm doing is running a few errands. Can't they see I'm already on the verge of becoming a King-Tier Alchemist?

Duanmu Wenshan believed that once he had time to stop and refine pills, he would definitely become a King-Tier Alchemist.

Over the past few days, he had sought guidance whenever he had a spare moment.

To his immense astonishment, he discovered that Xia Yu's attainments in alchemy were extraordinarily high.

Many of his approaches to alchemy had never even occurred to Duanmu Wenshan, and they even carried a faint hint of ancient alchemical methods.

Yet he also had his doubts: Xia Yu seemed not to understand many simple matters.

For that reason, Xia Yu had even asked him for several books on the fundamentals of alchemy.

This left Duanmu Wenshan rather bewildered.

Only after thinking it over for a day or two did he slap his thigh and exclaim that he finally understood.

In alchemy, the fundamentals were extremely important. To a certain extent, the solidity of one's foundation determined how high one could rise.

It was just like constructing a tall building. The foundation was crucial, and how securely it was laid determined how high the building could stand.

Thus, Xia Yu was constantly reinforcing his fundamentals.

He would probably never have imagined, even on his deathbed, that Xia Yu actually knew nothing about basic alchemy.

After all, the nameless old man had simply crammed the alchemical methods for pills of King Tier and above into his head.

Duanmu Wenshan's arrival neatly filled that gap. Xia Yu was not one to stand on ceremony, so naturally he seized the opportunity to learn.

A Pill Master was a practitioner of a truly noble profession.

They enjoyed an exalted status and immense wealth.

Xia Yu understood one thing very clearly: cultivation required a great deal of money, and he was so poor he did not have a single coin. Otherwise, he would never have tacitly allowed Duanmu Wenshan to follow him.

Once he learned alchemy, he would no longer have to worry about lacking money for his future cultivation.

Moreover, powerful pills would be tremendously beneficial to his cultivation as well.

Xia Yu spent the journey studying.

Of course, he did not neglect his cultivation either.

For twelve hours each day, he operated the Heaven-Incinerating Furnace, absorbing a staggering amount of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy.

And he absorbed it by gulping it down like a whale.

His cultivation was sheer plunder, leaving nothing for anyone else.

During the few hours when Xia Yu did not activate the Heaven-Incinerating Furnace, it still operated on its own. Though much slower, its absorption was unceasing, and the quantity remained astonishing.

Had the ship itself not belonged to the Myriad Treasures Pavilion, someone would probably have investigated long ago.

In truth, people had tried to investigate, but Duanmu Wenshan had stopped them all.

The crew had discovered that the ship was consuming spirit stones particularly quickly on this voyage.

The ship was equipped with formations. It was driven not by sails, but by spirit stones.

Normally, a dozen or so low-grade spirit stones were enough for a day's travel.

Now, however, a dozen or so low-grade spirit stones lasted half a day at most.

A little over ten days later, Duanmu Wenshan entered Xia Yu's room.

"Young Master Xia, we've reached Capital City."

"Capital City!"

Xia Yu rose and went to stand at the bow.

Xia Yao had already arrived ahead of him.

Ships of every description shuttled back and forth across the broad river.

Seeing such a bustling scene for the first time, Xia Yu and Xia Yao were filled with astonishment.

On the distant riverbank towered a colossal stone statue, with sword-like brows, bright eyes, and a face as sharply defined as if carved by a blade. Its longsword pointed forward as it gazed imperiously upon the world.

"Young Master Xia, Capital City's harbor is behind that statue," Duanmu Wenshan explained. "The statue depicts the first emperor who founded the Great Xia Dynasty, An Qi, the forefather of the An Lineage."

As the ship passed beside the statue, Xia Yu looked up at its imposing figure, over a dozen zhang tall, his eyes shining.

A surge of heroic spirit rose in his heart.

A man should be like this!