In the end, the Pastoral Marshal Prefecture raised its hand high only to bring it down lightly in punishing this vicious incident. After all, no one wanted to offend so many core disciples at once, including the forces looming indistinctly behind them.
Everyone was docked three months' stipend. Hou Ying alone received special treatment: another three years were docked. The reason given was that he had previous offenses and refused to mend his ways despite repeated admonitions.
But the real message was: I may punish you lightly, but that does not mean the Pastoral Marshal Prefecture does not know the truth.
The disciples who had stirred up trouble were summarily dismissed. Only Hou Ying was intercepted again by Daoist Wang and taken to the Commandant Prefecture. Clearly, Jincheng's higher-ups were not entirely ignorant of the twists and turns behind this affair, and they knew his vile nature even better. Wherever he was involved, how could he possibly just drift with the current?
He had to be the chief culprit!
Li Chuping frowned, scrutinizing the disciple before him, deeply impressed by his ability to cause trouble. The key was that this fellow never trapped himself in a fatal predicament afterward. Instead, every incident left him surrounded by an ever-growing body of united support!
He went to Yinling, and the Yinling Patrols submitted to him; he fought in the southwest, and Quanzhen's backbone disciples regarded him as their representative; he defended Xionger, and had the disciples of Xinye, the Buddhist Sect, and Taihao running in circles at his command; he ran wild in Jincheng, and more than fifty elite disciples of the sect vouched for him... If someone like this kept going, Li Chuping did not dare imagine what might happen!
What mattered was that not once had he achieved this ascendancy