First it had insulted the Nanhong Seven, then the assembly of the Seven, and finally it had turned the spearhead straight on one of the Sect Masters.

If she simply went on sitting there quietly.

The Jade Sea Sect Dao-son did not think the Cloud River Sect would be willing to aid a sect as spineless as that, and stand against two Dragon Palaces of such enormous power.

She could see from the way the Cloud River Sect elders' faces had changed that she was not making trouble for herself where there was none.

These people had truly begun to doubt what strength the Nanhong Seven had left, and there was even something dismissive in the way they thought of Nanhong itself.

And it did not stop there. The Dragon Consort's birthday feast had gathered the greater part of Xihong's powers under one roof, and once word of this got out… there was no imagining what would come of it.

What was more, this sea-serpent demon was plainly making the whole thing up, disparaging them to the utmost of its ability.

Leave everyone else aside.

The Jade Sea Sect Dao-son's thinking was simple. She had never meant to expose her identity. But she had at least to prove, in front of the Cloud River Sect's cultivators, what strength the Nanhong Seven had now, and that the attitude of these seven great sects was not the soft, easily bullied thing others imagined it to be.

Which was why she had used the pretext of taking up an immortal sect's quarrel, meaning to take the sea-serpent great demon's insolence down a peg.

What she had not expected was that a pretext perfectly ordinary in Nanhong should be recognized as wrong in Xihong the instant she used it.

The Jade Sea Sect Dao-son felt the eyes turned on her from all around growing colder. Demon and cultivator alike, who had been needling one another only a moment before, had with one accord taken up a posture of standing together against an outsider.

Most of these powers probably had no grievance with the Nanhong…