"Yangg Yan, what's done is done. What are your plans now?"
After Yangg Yan killed Yangg Jun, Nie Yun dealt with the last servant. Though the man was slightly stronger than him, once the fight began, he was dead in under three moves, meeting the same fate as Yangg Lin.
With all three trackers dead, Nie Yun collected the money from their bodies and stood aside, waiting for the emotionally overwrought Yangg Yan to compose himself.
Nie Yun's original plan was to lure out Yangg Jun and resolve a future crisis for Yangg Yan. He'd never expected, however, for the man to reveal the cause of his mother's death.
Yangg Yan was a filial son. He had left the family in the first place because his mother had passed away from what he thought was an illness. Now that he knew she had been murdered, he was filled with self-reproach, unable to find peace even after taking revenge with his own hands.
Nearly an hour passed before Yangg Yan finally rose from the ground. Seeing that his friend had calmed down, Nie Yun spoke.
"My plans? I'm going to place my mother's memorial tablet in the ancestral hall!" Yangg Yan said, taking a deep breath as he clenched his fists.
"I'll help you," Nie Yun said simply.
"Thank you!" Hearing the youth's simple, seemingly casual offer, Yangg Yan's eyes reddened.
His mother hadn't been the official wife, so getting her tablet into the ancestral hall was next to impossible. He knew he would face all sorts of opposition and immense difficulty. Yangg Yan himself lacked the confidence to see his decision through. Yet, the young man before him had agreed to help without a second thought. 'This friendship... this bond!'
Yangg Yan knew that from this day forward, Nie Yun was not just a friend. He was a brother. A brother for life.
"Now that Yangg Jun is dead, the branch families and other powers that followed him will be in an uproar," Nie Yun advised. "You just reached the Qi Sea Fifth Layer and haven't stabilized your foundation yet. You'll have a much better chance of success if you wait until your Cultivation is consolidated before you go."
"Yes, I know." Yangg Yan nodded and looked at the youth before him. "I'll come find you in three days."
"Alright." Nie Yun nodded, relieved that his friend hadn't lost his composure.
The Yangg Family was one of the Four Great Families of Luoshui City. Even with his newfound strength and the Refinement of the Fiery Flame Axe, Yangg Yan's odds would be grim if he tried to force his way in. Nie Yun was glad he understood that.
"I'm leaving." Yangg Yan knew they had become true friends, and there was no need for more words. He turned and walked away, disappearing into the depths of the forest a moment later.
'Time for me to head back, too.'
Seeing him disappear into the distance, Nie Yun pushed off his feet and sprinted toward his own branch family's residence.
Between the auction and the ambush, by the time Nie Yun returned to his family's residence, the eastern sky was already brightening with the first light of dawn. Another night had passed in the blink of an eye.
'Hm? What's that?'
Just as he was about to sneak back to his room, Nie Yun suddenly spotted a figure on the small hill in the backyard. The person was facing the rising sun, absorbing the East Coming Purple Qi.
This Purple Qi, also known as Profound Yang Qi, was the breath of life born from the first ray of sunlight to break through the darkness and touch the earth. It was said that absorbing it could alter a Cultivator's physique, clearing their meridians and making their body more suitable for Cultivation.
Having lived two lives, Nie Yun knew all about this Profound Yang Qi. While it did have some benefits for the body, it was nowhere near as miraculous as the legends claimed. At most, it would leave a person feeling energized for the day.
WHOOSH!
As he was lost in thought, the figure on the hill exhaled a long, slow breath and stopped. When the person turned around, Nie Yun froze.
"Dad?"
He never imagined that the person in the backyard practicing breathing exercises with the East Coming Purple Qi would be none other than his own father, Nie Xiaotian—the man everyone thought was just a drunk.
'What's he doing, practicing with Purple Qi? Isn't he just a washed-up degenerate who only knows how to drink?'
"Hm?"
Nie Yun's surprised cry seemed to startle his father on the hill. The man whipped his head around, and upon seeing his son, his expression immediately turned cold. "What are you doing here?"
Because of the resentment he'd held, his relationship with his father in his past life had never been good. His father had always been distant whenever he saw him, acting as if he didn't care about his son at all.
"Why were you practicing with the Purple Qi?"
'Judging by how skilled he is with the breathing exercises, he must have been practicing for years. But I thought his Qi Sea was destroyed, making it impossible for him to cultivate? What's the point of absorbing Purple Qi then?'
"What Purple Qi? You're seeing things. I just drank too much out here last night and passed out. I'm only just now waking up."
A flicker of panic crossed Nie Xiaotian's face when his son mentioned the Purple Qi, but he quickly suppressed it with a dismissive snort.
His father's attempt at a cover-up was decent, but who was Nie Yun? He saw through the act immediately. He decided not to press the issue, laughing instead. "Oh, maybe. The sun's not all the way up yet. I could have been mistaken."
With that, he started walking toward his father. "Dad, I haven't had a chance to really talk with you since I... woke up. Since we ran into each other this early, let's chat for a while…"
Hearing Nie Yun call him "Dad" so naturally, a faint, excited blush rose on Nie Xiaotian's cheeks. He quickly turned his head away. "My flask is empty. I need to go get more wine."
And with that, Nie Xiaotian walked away without a backward glance.
'Hm?' Seeing his father act so strangely, Nie Yun's brows furrowed.
'In my past life, I was always sulking and resentful toward my father, and he deliberately avoided me, so we barely spent any time together. All I knew was that his Qi Sea had been damaged during an incident of Entering the Demon Realm, leaving him unable to cultivate ever again. But now... it seems things aren't that simple at all!'
'My father was a cultivation genius who could operate all Seven of his Great Dantians at once. How could someone like that have succumbed to Entering the Demon Realm?'
'Even if he had, at worst his Dantians would have been damaged. His Qi Sea shouldn't have been completely shattered, right?'
'Besides, even if my father's strength plummeted after Entering the Demon Realm, he had still earned the family the honor of a Luoshui Golden Shield! Luoshui City only produces one of those shields every five years. With such a great contribution under his belt, would he really be cast aside just because his power waned? Would our entire branch family be allowed to fall into such a miserable state?'
'None of this adds up!'
'In my past life, before the Demon Race invasion, I spent my days wallowing in self-pity, too lost in a daze to ever consider these questions. After the invasion, all my family was dead. The memory brought nothing but heart-wrenching regret, so I never delved deeper. But looking at it now, something is definitely wrong!'
'Could someone be deliberately targeting our branch of the family?'
A sudden thought struck Nie Yun.
'That's it. If someone wasn't targeting our branch, how could it be a coincidence that my father's Qi Sea was destroyed, leaving him unable to cultivate? Or that my younger brother, Nie Tong, would be bitten by a poisonous snake, causing his legs to petrify?'
'If I hadn't been reborn, then according to the original timeline, my sister would have been set up and assaulted, and my mother would likely have been pushed off a cliff over that Pengxin Snow Lotus... All of it feels like a conspiracy, a dark cloud hanging over our branch of the family!'
'To orchestrate something against our family like this, it must be an insider. But who?'
If he had only the experiences of this life to go on, Nie Yun would have been clueless. But as someone who had lived two lives, memories of his past flowed through his mind, and suddenly, a name surfaced.
At that thought, Nie Yun's gaze fell upon his father, who hadn't gotten far. He called out in a clear voice, "Dad, what are you hiding from me? Does it have something to do with Nie Haotian?"
"You…"
The words had barely left his lips when Nie Yun saw his father's body go rigid. The murky haze in his eyes vanished in a flash, replaced by a Radiant, piercing glint as he slowly turned around.