Dead

"Sister Qingmo has been cultivating the entire time." As her words fell, the sunlit, elegant pavilion fell quiet for a moment. Xu Yuan was slightly taken aback, then immediately felt that his question had been somewhat redundant. He chuckled softly and said, "Fair enough. With her temperament, what else would she do with so much free time but cultivate?" Xu Xinyao smiled softly at that. Casting a glance toward the wing assigned to Ran Qingmo in the Prime Minister's Manor, she said with a light chuckle, "Oh, right. Sister Qingmo also mentioned that she owes you another favor." Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow. He remembered he still had an unused favor from the big block of ice. How had she ended up owing him another? "Why?" Xu Xinyao tilted her head, thought for a moment, and said in a low voice, "Sister Qingmo probably feels bad about using our manor's Source Crystals to cultivate all these days." "..." Confusion flickered in Xu Yuan's eyes, but his brow soon smoothed out. The authority his father had granted him—almost equivalent to a deputy state-level official—allowed him to rake in millions of taels of silver with the greatest of ease. Now, through everything he had experienced and his rising status within the Prime Minister's Manor, his horizons had broadened considerably. Yet the big block of ice remained merely a disciple of the Sword Sect Master. Although on paper their status seemed similar—one the son of the Prime Minister, the other the disciple of the Imperial Preceptor—in reality, the difference was night and day. After all, The Prime Minister's Manor belonged to the Prime Minister, but the Sword Sect did not belong to the Imperial Preceptor alone. To put it in the terms of Xu Yuan's past life, his current status was equivalent to the child of the sole owner holding one hundred percent of a massive monopoly enterprise, whereas the big block of ice was merely the apprentice of the chairman of a regional corporation. The entire Prime Minister's Manor belonged to his old man; Xu Yuan could take unlimited resources from this "megacorp." The Imperial Preceptor, on the other hand, was just the Sword Sect's chairman. If the big block of ice wanted to use the sect's resources, she still needed the approval of the "board of directors." At this thought, an involuntary smile tugged at the corner of Xu Yuan's lips. He recalled their first encounter, when the girl had been carrying her ink sword and a travel bundle, looking so plain she didn't even possess a Sumeru ring. For over a month now, she had been wildly taking advantage of the manor's unlimited supply of Source Crystals. Given Ran Qingmo's personality, she was bound to feel guilty accepting all of it. Suppressing the urge to visit the outer courtyard to see the girl, Xu Yuan turned his gaze back to his fourth sister before him. Before he could speak, however, Xu Xinyao glanced down at her fair wrist in his grip and reminded him with a warm smile: "Brother, could you let go of my hand? Xinyao still needs to go to the Gewu Academy to gather the array masters." Xu Yuan's gaze froze. Clearing his throat, he released her slender wrist, paused for a beat, and continued asking, "What cultivation realm is she at now?" During their year apart, his cultivation had broken through from the sixth-rank Iron Body Realm to his current fourth-rank Body Integration Realm. From what Xu Xinyao said, the big block of ice's breathing and cycling speed seemed to have met no bottlenecks. But considering that a fellow like Xu Changge hadn't broken through to the Origin Realm until he was nearly twenty, eighteen-year-old Ran Qingmo was likely still lingering in the Grandmaster Realm. Of course, Xu Yuan wasn't asking because he fancied himself capable of challenging a Grandmaster like her from the Body Integration Realm. A person needed self-awareness. He knew all too well how vast the chasm was between the Body Integration Realm and a Grandmaster. Even though his current hardware was maxed out, any ordinary Grandmaster in the manor was beyond what he could handle, let alone a heaven-blessed prodigy who was invincible within her realm like the big block of ice. Mainly, he just felt he could finally pierce her defenses. Xu Xinyao gave her third brother a rather peculiar look before countering: "Brother, do you know what my cultivation is right now?" Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow, extending his spiritual vision to sweep over the girl before him. "Soul Condensation," he murmured. "So you think someone at the Soul Condensation Realm can see through Sister Qingmo's cultivation?" "..." Xu Yuan was speechless. Xu Xinyao let out a soft huff. "For that sort of thing, you ought to ask Eldest Brother or Father." With that, she turned to leave, but after two steps, she halted at the steps leading into the elegant pavilion. Turning her watery eyes back toward him, she said with slight hesitation: "Brother, the array-inscribed artifact Xinyao promised you earlier is finished." "Array-inscribed artifact?" Xu Yuan was taken aback, his eyes filled with puzzlement. Seeing his expression, Xu Xinyao knew her third brother had most likely forgotten. A trace of helplessness surfaced in her beautiful eyes as she casually retrieved a thick, long black case from her Sumeru ring: "This. Though Brother, you probably can't use it right now, since activating these artifacts requires Source Qi. I'll modify it once I head back, then give it to you." The moment he laid eyes on the object, Xu Yuan instantly remembered coveting it back in Shengshan County. A treasure in *Cangyuan* that allowed this fourth sister to slay Grandmasters while merely in the Soul Condensation Realm. A Barrett... cough, the ink case. Staring for several breaths at the black case in the hands of Dorae-Yao before him, an odd thought popped into Xu Yuan's head: *If this thing's power could be magnified dozens of times, could a single shot blow away that Saint in the imperial palace?* While he was pondering this, Xu Xinyao smiled faintly and added in a soft voice, "Xinyao has also crafted a set of defensive array artifacts and Gale Boots for Third Brother, but they all need to be redesigned based on the black Source Qi inside your body." Xu Yuan waved his hand casually and met her gaze with a smile. "I won't be traveling far anytime soon, so there's no rush." "Then Xinyao will take her leave?" "Go ahead. I'll wait here for your news." At his words, Xu Yuan watched her graceful figure briskly depart and disappear from the courtyard. After sitting quietly in the pavilion for several breaths, he rose and headed toward his own wing. Without modern entertainment, without books or fine tea, and unable to cultivate—with the only pastime of visiting pleasure houses requiring him to leave the manor—the only thing left for Xu Yuan was sleep. After lying low for a few days to dodge the fallout from the awkward misunderstanding Xu Xinyao had stirred up, and realizing that neither his eldest brother nor his father intended to pursue the matter, Xu Yuan acquired another pastime aside from sleeping: browsing through the memorials submitted to his old man each day. Naturally, Xu Yuan didn't forget to take the time to contact Lou Ji, asking her to investigate the movements of the Divine Maiden of the Great Desert. At first, the older woman had wanted to refuse, but after his persistent wheedling and pestering, Lou Ji had relented. Even so, Xu Yuan suspected it was mostly because Lou Ji felt obliged after pilfering millions of taels of silver and supplies from his Sumeru ring. Time slipped by day after day. Through the daily influx of memorials, Xu Yuan could clearly follow the trajectory of the war on the Northern Border, and he knew the conflict there was causing the situation across the realm to grow increasingly tense. His old man, who had once appeared occasionally in the inner courtyard, gradually became an unseen figure. Xu Changge left the manor after recovering from his injuries, while Xu Xinyao spent every day busily tinkering away at the Gewu Academy, working on an array to resolve his cultivation problem. The world outside seemed to grow ever more chaotic, yet Xu Yuan maintained his leisurely, routine existence between two points. Until one day, Xu Yuan caught sight of an entry in one of the memorials: *Xu Changtian has been assassinated and killed.*