"……"

Xuanqing sat upright in the Founding Ancestor's hall, watching quietly beyond the Nanyang Sect, a little more of a smile on his face.

A prodigy, so called, has Primordial Purple Qi upon him.

His road must hold a thousand perils and ten thousand dangers, and the envy of small men; but it will never lack for able people to help him either.

Not that this is any airy business of fortune.

When a man is dazzling enough in himself, other people are not blind.

This Clear-Moon Sect elder could not conveniently protect Sect Master Shen's Dao outright, his standing being what it was; but if the Yan family could be recovered, the South Dragon Palace would have to think twice before striking again.

Killing a Return-to-Void cultivator might perhaps be done without a sound; but once White Jade Capital cultivators fought, the whole of Nanhong would shake with it.

There would be no hiding it from the Nanhong Seven's eyes and ears, and no pretending not to know either.

And when that time came, however unwilling the six Dao-merging colossi might be, they would have to stop and think: their own young Sect Master waylaid and killed abroad, and all the many powers of Nanhong watching, and the Seven behaving as though they saw nothing — how were they to hold their footing in Nanhong afterward?

That was what a White Jade Capital Dao-protector meant.

"There is no need to enter the sect. Another day, when Shiqian has leisure, he will make ready a congratulatory gift and come to pay the Nanyang immortal sect a proper visit."

Liu Shiqian declined it politely. "I will wait here until Sect Master Shen has finished, and we can set out together."

For a White Jade Capital cultivator to set foot inside a Dao-merging treasured site that was for the moment unclaimed was too presumptuous by far.

A gentleman does not stand beneath a leaning wall.

Liu Shiqian had no wish to test his own Dao-heart with a temptation of that order.

"Next time, then."

Shen Yi saw what the man's misgiving was…