A Scandal

“Pfft.” Having held out for only a quarter of an hour, Li Qinghong and Xi Chang were steadily fighting with vicious intensity. Thunder and moonlight collided in the sea, blasting up boundless churning waves, but Li Quantao’s face was as pale as golden paper, his life hanging by a thread. He had fought all the way here and was already thoroughly exhausted. Having previously been besieged by two demonic cultivators, he bore wounds all over his body, his strength waning more and more as the fight dragged on. With a single lapse in vigilance, he took a demonic cultivator’s palm strike squarely to his chest. “Hiss—” His vestment had long since exhausted its magical light and was tattered beyond measure, yet it was still of some use. Taking such a blow did not instantly send him plunging into the depths of the sea, but his flesh was nonetheless eroded by white qi, exposing ghastly white bone beneath. Li Xizhi cast repeated sidelong glances. Li Quantao took several more spells in succession, his robes drenched in coughed-up blood. Just as Li Xizhi prepared to brave the spells of two enemies to lend a hand, he saw several figures flying over from afar. “My lord! We are late!” Li Xizhi’s heart sank at once. Looking up, he saw two more cultivators riding the wind toward them. The one in the lead had hair as white as snow, seemingly just as formidable. ‘The enemies have reinforcements again…’ Li Xizhi felt a surge of dread. Hearing Yu Yuwei let out a deep sigh not far away, he watched the old man gently raise his hand, thick purple fire flaring from it. Li Xizhi recalled that when this old man fought Tuoba Chongyuan, he had gouged a talisman from the palm of one hand, and the wound had yet to heal. Yet now he took out the jade blade once more and thrust it into the palm of his other hand. A crisp, resonant clink rang out, and a snow-bright, glistening little talisman leapt from his palm. The old man gave a fierce roar: “Hai!” *Ding…* Two streaks of purple flame sprang forth like flood dragons, fully crawled over with incantation scripts, dazzling and brilliant. In an instant, the old man aged visibly, but instead of hurling the fire dragons at the enemy before him, he swept them to the left and right. The two fire dragons held off the demonic cultivators facing Li Qinghong and Li Xizhi respectively. Having swallowed a medicinal pill, the old man’s cheeks flushed crimson as he raised the great cauldron in his hands high, bursting with intense brilliance. “Go!” He shouted. Li Xizhi at his side finally found his opening and spat out his final Xuanlei, dazzling white light flaring instantly. “Rumble!” A ring of white light detonated in the sea. The clap of thunder sounded like mountains collapsing and the earth splitting, shaking the seawater into surging torrents and kicking up vast clouds of steam, which immediately transformed into a dense deluge of purple lightning that blasted outward, blinding all who looked upon it. Li Qinghong had been watching the battlefield closely. Forcing her opponent back with a Xuanlei, she disengaged as well. The Queqingling upon her immediately shone with a blue-white luster, empowered by purple thunder, and she vanished into thin air. Scooping up Li Quantao, Li Qinghong darted away through the water, showing not the slightest hesitation or attachment to the two left behind, flying into the distance without once looking back. Just earlier, amid the intertwining purple fire and thunderous light, Li Quantao had been rescued by Li Qinghong. The old man’s voice had drifted faintly into his ears—not loud, yet it had left him stunned: “Li Encheng, that heartless wretch, never dared say much to you. My younger sister studied alchemy under him, but secretly bore you and left you behind… You should have called me Eldest Uncle.” “You should have stayed far away from all this! Drawn close out of gratitude, you will sooner or later be dragged down. Better to protect yourself early on! Li Xizhi may seem grateful to you, but he is suspicious by nature, and those fathers and sons who threw their lot with the Ning family are like wolves. Facing them, Qingdu will inevitably harbor different motives; drawing close to the Qingdu Li family is no good thing!” The old man’s voice had been hoarse. Li Quantao had listened in stunned silence, a few blood-muffled chokes slipping from his throat. While the rumble of thunder still raged in his ears, he suddenly understood everything. Since childhood, Li Quantao had never seen his mother. He had asked his father and elder brother several times, but had never received an answer. Now that he understood the whole truth, it truly was an ugly scandal. ‘What a line about how heartless the Yu family is… how selfish and cruel the Yu family is! Who knew it was just my father’s guilty conscience? Not only did he keep it tightly concealed until his death, but he even shifted the blame, guarding against me ever finding out the truth! Hahahaha!’ ‘No wonder he never spoke of it to me… No wonder I could never learn a thing no matter how hard I asked.’ Beside grief and indignation, he suddenly felt deep doubt toward what his father and brother had drummed into him in the past: ‘Earlier, when Yu Yuwei dragged his feet during the demonic disaster, refusing to go all out, it wasn't to harm me! He just wanted to harm Brother Zhi so as to sever my ties with the Qingdu Li family!’ Yu Yuwei’s attitude had always struck him as bizarre, and now he finally knew why. When Tuoba Chongyuan overran Baixiang Valley, Yu Yuwei had initially fled to Salt Lake, yet he had traveled ten thousand li to see Li Xizhi. Thinking back now, it was all just to see him, Li Quantao. Li Qinghong fled with Li Quantao in her arms for a time. His consciousness was already blurring, his vision awash in red as he clutched at Li Qinghong, staring blankly ahead. Li Quantao swallowed the bloody froth, his mouth filled with a metallic, bloody taste. He lay quietly in Li Qinghong’s embrace, his heart filled with indescribable complexity. Flying for nearly a quarter of an hour, he finally began to slowly recover, hearing Li Qinghong ask with concern: “Hurry and take a pill. Can you still hold on?” “I can hold on!” Xi Chang shuttled out from the purple-and-white lightning, coughing twice and spitting a bit of bloody froth into his palm. His eyes flickered with strange light as he watched Li Qinghong and her companion transform into lightning and vanish in the distance, sighing: “What exquisite Xuanlei… It seems to be Ce Lei Bo Yun Fa Dao!” The subordinate followed his gaze and asked, “My lord! Shall we pursue them?” “Pursue?” Xi Chang chuckled, “Can we even catch them?!” Breaking through the sea’s surface, he took flight, gazing into the distance, and murmured, “That old man stayed behind. Capture him first to question him; that purple fire is rather intriguing.” “My lord!” The subordinate seemed to gradually realize something was amiss and said, “My lord, haven't you heard that Jiangnan no longer has any Taiyin heritage… even though it was the site of the Yuehua Yuan Mansion back then…” Hearing this, Xi Chang gave a soft chuckle and replied, “Jiangnan was indeed where Yuehua Yuan Mansion once stood. Though its methods were secrets of secrets, even Real Person Donghua passed down quite a few Taiyin methods. Do you know why none of them can be cultivated?” Seeing the subordinate shake his head in silence, Xi Chang smiled: “Do you know why? What did the Yuehua Yuan Mansion use to cultivate Taiyin? Could it have been precious treasures like Changqing Yin Qi or Yuanguang Yinghua?” “Wrong.” Xi Chang laughed heartily, shaking his head and gnashing his teeth as he said: “They damn well used Taiyin Moon Essence!” “Every single one of them refined qi with Taiyin Moon Essence! What extravagance! What utter extravagance! Wouldn't that be equivalent to Mingyang using Mingfang Sky Stone to refine qi, or Qingxuan using Fuyuan Tai Mi to refine qi? Ever since the Moon Mansion faded into hiding, what manual could possibly produce results?” The subordinate was too stunned to speak. Xi Chang muttered to himself: “If I could obtain a portion of Taiyin Moon Essence…” “The Purple Palace would be within reach… That is the Purple Palace…” He paused, then smiled and continued, “After all, Jiangnan was once home to the Immortal Mansion; quite a few orthodox ways still endure there.” He sighed, quickly collecting himself, and commanded: “Let's go…”