Yue Wuxiang's eyes shifted slightly at those words, clearly somewhat surprised by the Yang Clan's purpose.
He then looked toward Xue Qingluan, a trace of sinister severity flickering in his gaze.
Back on the Eastern Expedition battlefield, as the price of intervening in the war, he had cast aside this cultivation companion of his daughter's as a pawn to be sacrificed.
He had thought that, having fallen into Tiger Chasing's hands, Xue Qingluan would not have many years left to live before her soul returned to the Yellow Springs.
Yet under Consort Xi's arrangements, she had entered the Yang Clan and become the cultivation companion and maidservant of Yang Lingrui.
At that time, such a small change had not drawn the attention of Lanyue Sect's upper ranks.
After all, in the Northwest's landscape at the time, the Yang Clan had merely been a chess piece under the Tiger Chasing Dynasty's rule.
In Yue Wuxiang and the others' eyes, Xue Qingluan's entry into the Yang Clan meant, at most, becoming a fighter for hire. There was no future to speak of.
Yet the affairs of the world were impossible to predict. In the blink of an eye, more than ten years had passed. That female cultivator whom he had once regarded as a dispensable sect castoff had ridden the rising tide of the Yang Clan's ascent, earned the name of a true Heavenly Talent, and returned to her old grounds.
And now, her status and position had undergone earth-shaking changes from what they had once been.
She was no longer that pitiful, weak little cultivator whose life and death he could decide with a single word.
Under Yue Wuxiang's gaze, Xue Qingluan showed not the slightest fear. Stepping forward, she said, "Sect Master Yue, it has been a long time. I