Zuo Qingshuang raised an eyebrow slightly, and Xu Chongshan also knit his brows.
Neither of them knew what Li Nanchen was playing at.
Inviting guest elders had indeed been common practice during the early days of Zhujige Pavilion.
Back when the sect was still small and weak, guest elders were brought in to bolster their strength and ward off invading enemies.
Now, however, Zhujige Pavilion stood proud as one of the seven great sects of the Eastern Domain.
The pavilion was brimming with talent and crowded with formidable experts.
They had long moved past needing guest elders to shore up their ranks.
Even with the Pavilion Master—the greatest martial artist among them—and the other elders in secluded cultivation within Xuanji Cave, no one in the Eastern Domain today dared to make trouble at Zhujige Pavilion.
Besides, the Pavilion Master and the elders were merely in seclusion.
They weren't dead...
If some formidable enemy truly attacked, they could simply call them out.
It hadn't come anywhere close to needing outside help.
Though instinct told them something was amiss, this was Li Nanchen's first time exercising his authority as acting pavilion master. As second in standing only to the Pavilion Master himself, Zuo Qingshuang and Xu Chongshan were not inclined to brush him off lightly.
Thus, neither spoke up in opposition right away.
Li Nanchen lightly clapped his hands, and footsteps soon rounded the corridor from the inner gate.
When she clearly saw the group of people emerging behind Li Nanchen, Zuo Qingshuang slammed her palm onto the table, her face blazing with murderous intent.
"Li Nanchen! Where did you come to know such evil heretics?!"
Xu Chongshan rose slowly to his feet, sword intent suffusing his entire frame.
His gaze swept across each of them in turn, and he said coldly:
"Qingyangzi, Ghost Scholar, the Monk of Ultimate Bliss... and three others too ashamed to show their faces?
"Why not show your true features and let us see who you really are?"
The Zhujige Pavilion disciples in the hall broke into an uproar.
Qingyangzi, Ghost Scholar!
Both were notoriously renowned heretics across the jianghu of the Eastern Domain.
They were labeled evil heretics not because they all cultivated demonic arts, but because their way of doing things ran completely counter to the righteous path.
Qingyangzi was originally a disciple of Taixu Dao, one of the Eastern Domain's seven great sects.
He had learned Taixu Dao's authentic Daoist martial art, the Yuqing Skill.
Yet as he cultivated it, whether from cultivation deviation or the unmasking of his true nature, he began to slaughter innocents indiscriminately on the pretext that "Heaven and earth are indifferent, treating all things as straw dogs," claiming that this was the only way to draw close to the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth.
Unable to tolerate such desecration of their sect rules, Taixu Dao not only expelled him, but also dispatched numerous experts to hunt him down.
Yet to everyone's surprise, across countless bloody clashes, Qingyangzi was not purged by Taixu Dao. Instead, he slaughtered many of their disciples, causing his infamy to skyrocket.
From then on, he moved like a phantom, his tracks nearly impossible to trace.
Though Taixu Dao never ceased their pursuit, they had never succeeded.
As for the Ghost Scholar, he was originally an ordinary scholar.
In this era of declining imperial authority and rising warlords, he had studied diligently for ten years, only to suffer all manner of humiliation and bullying. Finally realizing the utter uselessness of scholars, he tore his books of sages to shreds, yet by a twist of fate obtained the opportunity to learn martial arts.
Once he achieved success, he exacted ruthless vengeance.
He didn't just slaughter every person who had ever tormented him—he skinned them alive and crafted their hides into shadow puppets.
If it had stopped there, it would merely have been an eye for an eye, a grudge settled with blood.
Yet from that moment on, he seemed to savor the thrill of tyrannizing the weak. He grew completely reckless, paying no heed to intention, good, or evil. Anyone who displeased him was met with bloody slaughter, their skin peeled away to make shadow puppets for his ghostly plays.
That was how he earned the name Ghost Scholar.
Yet the martial arts he practiced had nothing to do with the demonic path... it was simply that his hands were soaked in blood, no less than the Monk of Ultimate Bliss, who truly practiced demonic arts.
If any one of these three appeared in the jianghu, the righteous sects would immediately cry out for their heads.
Yet Li Nanchen had actually invited them to serve as guest elders of Zhujige Pavilion?
It was the greatest absurdity in the world!
If this came to pass, not only would Zhujige Pavilion's hard-won reputation over the years go up in smoke, but the sect would instantly turn into a den of fiends.
Xu Chongshan, however, kept his eyes fixed on the final three whose heads and faces were concealed. He felt an unsettling, familiar revulsion emanating from them,
as if they were bitter nemeses he had not seen in years.
"Xu Chongshan, after all these years, your hound's nose is as sharp as ever!"
A chilling voice came from beneath a black hood. The speaker threw back his cowl, revealing a deathly pale face.
The instant he saw that face, Xu Chongshan lost all control over his expression.
He let out a furious roar:
"Guan Tianyue?! Take this to your grave!"
Raising his index and middle fingers, the sword at his side suddenly leaped from its scabbard into his grip. The sword qi coiling around him instantly fused into the blade, condensing into a single pinpoint of sharp radiance that struck straight for the man's vital chest points.
The crowd in the hall gasped in shock.
As their martial uncle, Xu Chongshan was always steady and composed. He oversaw Zhujige Pavilion's Disciplinary Hall, stern and unyielding, feared by every disciple in the sect.
Yet rarely had anyone seen him lose his composure like this.
The fury and killing intent in his voice were entirely unprecedented.
What they did not know was that behind this lay an old, secret tragedy.
This Guan Tianyue had been an expert of the Black Fiend Cult. Years ago, during the joint campaign against the cult, Xu Chongshan's fiancée had been abducted by him.
By the time Xu Chongshan tracked her down, not only had every drop of her blood been drained by Guan Tianyue, but her corpse had also been subjected to horrific violation.
A loving, devoted couple had been shattered in an instant, leaving him utterly alone in the world.
That monstrous hatred had subsequently been poured entirely into the campaign against the Black Fiend Cult.
He had personally struck Guan Tianyue off a cliff with his own hands.
For thirty years, Xu Chongshan had never stopped longing for his fiancée, nor had a single day passed without him blaming himself. If only he had been more cautious back then... even just a little more cautious, the outcome might have been different.
He had climbed down that cliff where he struck Guan Tianyue more than once, searching for his corpse to grind his bones to dust.
Yet he had never found it.
Now Guan Tianyue had suddenly reappeared. Face to face with his mortal enemy, blood rushed to his eyes—how could he care about anything else?
Though Xu Chongshan hated the injustice of heaven for letting Guan Tianyue cling to life for thirty years,
this was undeniably another chance to exact his blood vengeance!
Thirty years of hatred vented into this single strike.
The frigid sword intent that surged forth nearly tore the mountain gate's great hall apart.
Even though Guan Tianyue had thirty more years of cultivation to his name, his eyelids twitched violently at this moment.
He turned his palms over, and the Black Fiend true qi around him condensed into near-solid form.
Buzz!
The sword tip was before him in an instant. The Black Fiend true qi could barely withstand the blade's edge as Xu Chongshan pressed inward.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
The Black Fiend true qi roiled incessantly. Guan Tianyue's pale face flushed with blood as he exerted every ounce of his might to resist this lethal strike.
Yet he could only watch helplessly as Xu Chongshan's sword drove inch by inch toward the space between his brows!
Chapter 35