Qingzhou, Five-Spirit Mountain.
A sudden blizzard had turned the mountains white-haired. Quite a few pilgrims followed the mountain paths toward the Golden Summit of the main peak.
Dressed in black-and-yellow Daoist robes, Lü Yan sat cross-legged on the cliff behind the main peak. The saber and sword wounds on his body still throbbed faintly, but compared with the pain in his heart, these bodily injuries truly amounted to nothing.
After his defeat at Fire Phoenix Valley, Lü Yan had abandoned his useless martial nephew and rushed back to Northern Zhou. His experiences in the Southern Border had been far too humiliating. Now even the pilgrims offering incense were whispering behind his back, saying things like:
"I heard the head of Five-Spirit Mountain got beaten up out there..."
"His face was black-and-blue, and he couldn't get out of bed..."
As a cultivator specializing in the fire arts of the Five Elements, Lü Yan also had quite an explosive temper. These words truly kindled a nameless fire in him, but the facts were what they were. As the dignified second-in-command of Northern Zhou's Daoist Sect, he could hardly declare:
"I can't deal with Xie Jinhuan of the Southern Dynasty, but you think I can't deal with you people on my own side?"
If he really did that, his reputation would be utterly ruined. For now, he could only stay home and seethe, secretly pondering how to reclaim his dignity.
Going to the Southern Dynasty to settle accounts with Xie Jinhuan was certainly out of the question. If he ran into Lu Wuzhen, not only would he fail to collect his debt, he would have to hand over the Fire-Command Edict too.
But if he did not go, he would carry this anger into his coffin without ever quelling it. Keeping it