That year, Ji Dengqi had knelt behind his father, trembling in the biting autumn wind. He had watched as the Wan clan head slowly hoisted his father up, spat upon his blood-streaked face, and lightly sneered:
"So the Ji family amounts to nothing more than this."
With his head bowed, tears streamed continuously down his face and dripped from his chin, soaking his thin autumn robes and wetting the cracks between the brick pavers beneath him.
Forcing his head up, he saw a youth in lavish robes standing quietly behind the Wan clan head, watching him with a cold, mocking smile.
Only later did he learn that youth was Wan Xiaohua, the young master of the Wan family.
Wan Xiaohua had stood sneering, while Ji Dengqi had knelt weeping.
What sort of humiliation was this? The Wan family had launched a surprise raid on Mount Huazhong. In a mere nineteen breaths, they breached the mountain-protecting grand array that had taken three years to construct, slew the incumbent head of the Ji family, and dragged out every last Ji family member—even those still fast asleep in their thin inner clothes.
Twenty-nine Ji direct descendants, most of them clad only in thin undergarments with bedsheets draped over their shoulders, knelt trembling before the courtyard, watching with their own eyes as Ji Dengqi's father—the young master of the Ji family—was subjected to utter disgrace.
Beyond the collapsed courtyard walls, a sea of mortals—mortals who lived under the Ji family's rule—knelt as well, watching the direct lineage of their former immortal masters endure every indignity: clan women stripped of their draped sheets, curling into trembling balls, and clan men pinned beneath boots, struggling helplessly.
Every night he dreamt of that scene, Ji Dengqi's eyes would bulge in fury, tears would pour unceasingly, and he would sit back up to cultivate anew.
The Wan clan head had delivered a brutal kick to his father's body, sending blood spewing from his lips as he slumped limply to the ground. Ji Dengqi had wept as he clung to the man's leg, crying out:
"Our Ji family will be your dogs! Under the Tangjin Sect, we will watch the Yu family for you! We will pay tribute year after year..."
The man had sneered, kicking Ji Dengqi away so hard his vision spun and two teeth were knocked out. Laughing heartily, he said:
"The two sects have long been mortal enemies, and countless families have perished along their border. If not for our fear that wiping out your Ji family would leave us directly bordering the Yu family, would our Wan family have let you live? Your Ji family may want to be dogs, but our Wan family wouldn't dare take you."
Wan Xiaohua had followed behind the man, watching Ji Dengqi with a beaming smile brimful of contempt.
The man looted every scrap of the Ji family's wealth and led away the haughty Wan clansmen, leaving behind a ruined Mount Huazhong, an utterly disgraced Ji family, mortals looking on with strange gazes, and corpse after corpse strewn across the courtyard.
Three days later, his father died as well. His Xuanjing Wheel had been shattered by the kick, and his spiritual qi dissipated until death claimed him. As he lay upon the couch, groaning weakly, Ji Dengqi pressed his ear close through tears, hearing his father's faint voice:
"Do not forget... the hatred... of breaching our array... and killing... your father."
Ji Dengqi bit his lip until it bled, and ascended to the position of family head.
Ji Dengqi began killing. He killed every mortal who dared raise their eyes to look at him, spilling torrents of blood until his hands were dyed crimson, until no one dared recall the night the Wan family ascended Mount Huazhong. The thirteen-year-old boy developed a penchant for smashing those mortals' heads right before their eyes, reveling in the sight of dripping gore.
Two years later, news arrived that left Ji Dengqi ecstatic yet bitterly regretful: that man, possessing Qi Refinement cultivation and consummate mastery of arrays, had met a violent end in Mount Dali at the hands of an enemy. The Wan family's glorious era had finished singing even its dying refrain; Wan Xiaohua, hastily taking over as family head, contracted their territory once more, and all their lands to the east fell to the Lu family.
"Still, it's not enough. Wan Xiaohua is more talented than me, and the Wan family has deep roots. This is far from enough."
Fortunately, opportunity arrived. The young sect master of the Tangjin Sect came to Lake Wangyue in search of a strand of heaven-and-earth spirit qi. Ji Dengqi attended to him like a dog, currying favor and amusing the bored young man beneath the tree under the cold gazes of a retinue of guards. Finally, the gold-robed young man burst into laughter and asked what he wanted.
He knew full well this man was not asking what he wanted, but rather what right he had to ask for anything. Ji Dengqi replied that this dog wanted nothing; this dog wished to present a woman.
Ji Dengqi noticed the cold detachment in the eyes of the many guards flanking the gold-robed man. In a low, fawning voice, he said:
"Your Highness needs someone attentive at your side—someone with spirit apertures and decent talent to attend to your personal needs."
Ji Dengqi offered up his own sister: an innocent, naive girl blessed with spirit apertures, a twelve-year-old girl who used to hug him with a smile and call him brother. The girl wept behind her hands, choking with tears yet speaking with resolve:
"Brother, I want revenge too."
And so he watched as his sister lay upon that man's bed, her fair, tender little feet dangling and swaying over the foot of the bed. He dared not weep, nor did his sister dare cry.
His sister left with the young master, becoming his maidservant. Thereafter, pills and cultivation resources were sent to the Ji household year after year. Ji Dengqi cultivated day and night, forgetting food and sleep, until he finally broke through to Qi Refinement. The entire Ji family's first reaction was neither celebration nor cheering, but tears of overwhelming emotion.
He immediately executed the elderly Wan cultivator at the peak of Embryonic Breathing stationed on the lands the Ji family had once lost—Wan Xiaohua's uncle. Only then did he discover that Wan Xiaohua atop Mount Huaqian was merely at the Yujing Wheel.
No one could have anticipated it—no one could have imagined that the Wan family's Qi Refinement cultivator would die so abruptly, or that he, Ji Dengqi, would ascend to Qi Refinement in a mere dozen or so years.
Yet the grand array left behind by the Wan family's ancestor, Wan Huaqian, was as tough as a tortoise shell. Ji Dengqi harassed them on and off for over a decade. Seeing the Wan family reach out to neighboring clans and slowly regain their footing, he grew so consumed with hatred that he lost sleep night after night.
A few nights ago, Ji Dengqi received a letter from his sister saying that the young sect master of the Tangjin Sect was heading to Lake Wangyue once more. He read the letter over and over, a plan already taking shape in his mind.
After so many years, that man had returned to Lake Wangyue, still searching for that strand of heaven-and-earth spirit qi. Ji Dengqi did not know what wondrous spirit qi compelled him to seek it time and again, but the situation had visibly turned in his favor.
He had his sister let slip the deep, blood-soaked feud between the two families, while deliberately exaggerating how utterly impenetrable the Wan family's grand array was. At last, he provoked the man's competitive pride. The gold-robed young man laughed heartily:
"Centuries ago, Wan Huaqian was indeed extraordinarily brilliant, an array prodigy recognized across the three sects. For Yu'er's sake, this young master will test the depth of this array."
And so Ji Dengqi led the clansmen of the Ji family, clutching long sabers, slowly coming to a halt at the foot of Mount Huaqian. Behind him, the Ji family members wore leather armor, silently gazing together with him at Mount Huaqian, where white light flickered.
"Where are your reinforcements, Wan Xiaohua?"
Ji Dengqi muttered to himself:
"No matter how many Qi Refinement cultivators come, it will be useless. Your Wan family's ruin falls on this very day. Your reinforcements, your trump cards, will accomplish nothing."
Suddenly, a profound sense of destiny welled within Ji Dengqi. The gazes of his father and grandfather seemed to watch him silently from behind, waiting for him to trample Mount Huaqian into dust.
"Behind our Ji family in this battle stands the unstoppable momentum of the Tangjin Sect. Human strength has its limits—something you cannot see, and could never foresee."
Tears suddenly streamed down his cheeks once more. The expression on his face and the resolute look in his eyes no longer carried any trace of servility. Surging malice and an unceasing wave of grief converged within Ji Dengqi's body, making his short frame of flesh and blood appear exceptionally solid—so much so that nothing in this world could ever make him seem small again.
Chapter 67