Back at Huanxi Mountain Villa, Zhang Xiaohua's life returned to its old track. He had thought that after being away from the villa for so long, Nie Xiao Er and the others would surely crowd around him, asking this and that. He had long prepared a heap of lies to fob them off with. Yet in reality, when they saw his return, their eyes merely showed tremendous astonishment, and they exchanged only simple pleasantries and a few words of concern. They did not pursue the reason any further, leaving Zhang Xiaohua terribly frustrated, as though his fist had struck cotton. At the same time, he secretly admired them. The disciples of these famous great sects truly had first-rate composure!
Just as Zhang Xiaohua was about to toss away his lies and save his nose, the buzzing of a swarm of flies still ruined his late-life reputation. Led by Ma Jing, Huanxi Mountain Villa's human-shaped giant flies had long wondered why Zhang Xiaohua's treatment had improved after his injury last time, allowing him to escape their bullying. This time, Zhang Xiaohua had vanished for so long that they had thought he had disappeared from the human world, that the living and the dead now stood on different paths and they would never see him again. Yet Zhang Xiaohua suddenly reappeared before their eyes. How could that not make their spectacles fall off?
So, like flies that had caught the scent of blood, they buzzed around Zhang Xiaohua all day, wanting to know where he had been over the past two-plus months. Zhang Xiaohua had not wanted to pay them any mind, but his skin was too thin after all. Once they had questioned him for long enough, he had no choice but to tell them the nonsense he had prepared to