"You saw me having too easy a time of it and went out of your way to find me something to be angry about, is that it?"

Zheng Qian drew her gaze back, her very breathing gone slightly unsteady, and could not help sending the words to Liu Qianyun by voice transmission.

She could understand that stubborn Elder Liu. He was perhaps the only man in the Nanhong Seven willing to acknowledge that this confounded Nanyang Sect Master existed at all.

As for the other allied sects, they left Shen Yi alone not out of any regard for the Nanyang Sect itself, but out of regard for the rules.

The years were long, and rises and falls were ordinary things.

Nobody could promise that his own turn to fall would never come.

If someone swallowed Nanyang openly, it would set a precedent.

And "sharing life and death" would become so much empty paper.

So the allied sects held themselves back.

But that did not make Shen Yi actually a Sect Master. In everyone else's eyes this was a pack of small fry out of the hidden deep, playing at keeping house.

A Dao-merging treasured site, precious beyond price in all Hongze — how could it truly be left in the hands of a young man newly into Return-to-Void?

Once the allied sects had settled on an answer among themselves, the remaining six held any number of White Jade Capital elders and personally transmitted disciples. Any one of them could merge his Dao with Nanyang in short order, and produce another Dao-merging great cultivator.

So when the time was right,

these natives would certainly be absorbed by the great allied sects. It was only a question of who was willing to pay more.

That was the larger situation, and no single Elder Liu could change it.

Had he been a true Sect Master it would be another matter; as a steward, to offer up one's life and one's whole cultivation would be no more than proper.

A false Sect Master.

And here was her good sister running about for him —…