Although Li Yan had wanted to make some acquaintances after entering the inner valley, he later focused on passing the first two assessment ranks, so he still spent his time cultivating and refining pills.
Still, during that time, he had met some people, but they had only been nodding acquaintances.
Later, he had considered that if he truly wished to befriend people at the time, he likely would not have been able to befriend anyone capable of helping him.
His status and standing had both been utterly ordinary. There was nothing about him worthy of others' regard.
Therefore, he decided to wait until his alchemy rank had risen. Over these years, Li Yan had not merely failed to gain any reputation—within the sect, he was simply an unremarkable nobody.
After Cheng Kuanghan found himself a backer, he too had initially been ordered about at every turn. But he was an old hand at the ways of the world, and by playing both sides and smoothing every path, he endured it.
Yet whenever others ordered him to do something, he hated Li Yan and the pair of sisters even more, especially Li Yan.
He had also investigated the pair of sisters.
What surprised him in the end was that the sisters had entered for only half a year before a Heaven-rank alchemy grandmaster took a fancy to them and brought them away as medicine attendants.
Do not be fooled by the fact that they were not that Heaven-rank grandmaster's disciples and were merely two medicine attendants. They were already people he could not afford to provoke.
Cheng Kuanghan could only swallow his resentment and no longer dared trouble the two of them, transferring all his hatred to Li Yan instead.
Originally, Cheng Kuanghan had planned for all four of them to