By rights this should have counted as a happy occasion. The trouble lay entirely with Xuanguang Cave's Zheng Zisheng.

Smiling amiably on the surface, he'd abruptly struck to kill Yu Yuelong, and — relying on his deep foundation — had actually ambushed him into grave injury outright, and made off with that scroll of technique.

Among the Mixed Origin Grandmasters here, only these two had cultivation reaching the upper tier. Zheng Zisheng's plan had been to settle the matter with a vicious strike, then use Xuanguang Cave's name to overawe the rest. What he hadn't reckoned on was that the act would rouse the fury of the crowd. Five against one, and they'd nearly cut Yu Yuelong down all the same — though as the price, he too now bore grave wounds.

"If we still don't act," one of the Mixed Origin Grandmasters said coldly, "then this lot of us needn't even dream of getting so much as a mouthful of soup today."

Something already in another man's hands, a promise already made — and still he'd ambush and seize it by force. Since he wouldn't keep to the rules, then let no one keep to them at all.

"Tch." Zheng Zisheng sneered over at them. "The whole two or three stray cats and kittens of your sects — once I'm out of the cave estate, I'll gather a few fellow disciples to pay them a call, and they'll not one of them get to live, I fear."

That Mixed Origin Grandmaster drew a deep breath and said blandly, "Then we'll simply see to it you don't get out."

To rob a man of his cultivation heritage was to slay his very parents. And besides — that scroll of technique was in Zheng Zisheng's hands now; whoever took it, it was theirs. Xuanguang Cave? Once they were out of the estate, who the devil would know what had happened inside. Grant him face and you'd call him Perfected Master; withhold it, and he was just a Mixed Origin Grandmaster — how much stronger could he be?

"Strike! I don't want…