Hearing this, Tianzhu halted.

“National ruler, my apologies. Tianzhu is on guard duty and cannot linger.”

He gave the Windstill national ruler only the slightest bow, not so much as glancing at the people around him from the corner of his eye—as though the whole crowd of onlookers were transparent, offering no opening for anyone to detain him.

And it wasn’t just the Windstill national ruler—everyone present, everyone who had witnessed this scene, was beginning to understand. This Tianzhu, along with those other two companions of equally extraordinary strength, most likely were not warriors of the lower realm. They had to be from the Upper Heavenly Realm. With their pride and their power, they had no interest whatsoever in getting to know anyone from the lower realm. It was only because that Titan Young Lord just now had been mistaken by Hulei for some ordinary spoiled brat, provoked with sharp words, that Tianzhu had shown himself to protect him.

To get acquainted with a man like Tianzhu under normal circumstances—

would have been utterly impossible.

Guard he might be, but his true station might well be far, far higher than that of the Windstill national ruler himself!

Naturally, the Windstill national ruler, far from being angered by the man’s rudeness, was instead delighted… the more arrogant Tianzhu’s attitude, the greater his origins had to be, and the more it proved just how noble this Titan Young Lord’s station truly was.

Getting acquainted with Tianzhu was proving a bit difficult—but that wasn’t the point. Currying favor with this Titan Young Lord was the truly important thing!

The Windstill national ruler looked again at classmate Yue Yang, and the delight shining in his eyes was exactly that of a man beholding some marvelous mountain of treasure beyond all price. And, mind you, he was one of the more composed ones—the seasoned, steady Steward Ye kept swallowing hard, suppressing the excitement in his heart, while as for Gold-Tooth, he had long since burst into tears, weeping as though the tears cost nothing at all, streaming down in torrents.

The white-bearded fox-clan elder who had sowed discord earlier now stood with all the color drained from his face.

Terrified this young master would hold a grudge.

He wanted to apologize, but his station wasn’t high enough, and he didn’t dare step forward.

“Titan Young Lord, please forgive Hulei’s moment of madness just now.” That Hulei, having narrowly escaped death, simply dropped to his knees.

The moment he took the lead and knelt, the friends beside him, along with the fox-clan elder, all clattered to their knees to beg forgiveness. Whether or not any wrong had been done, so long as this young master could be magnanimous, then everything would be fine.

Face or life—which mattered more?

Life, of course. If you were dead, where would the face come from?

Nor did anyone find it improper for a group of Sky-rank powerhouses to kneel. On the contrary, even the Windstill national ruler privately praised this Hulei who had taken the lead in kneeling to beg forgiveness—a man of substance, one who could bend and stretch as the situation demanded, who kept the bigger picture in mind. Even a blind man could see that this Titan Young Lord was no arrogant, high-and-mighty brat. On the contrary, he was a young scion of some great house—harsh of tongue but soft of heart, and brimming with compassion. You could tell from the way he’d just pardoned Hulei: this young master must have entered the world only recently, understanding little of its cruelty, still in his growing years, still fond of dividing things by good and evil rather than weighing strength and connections.

Had he been traveling the world for a long while, the family behind him would hardly have sent a powerhouse like Tianzhu to secretly protect him.

Most likely his elders, knowing him for a troublemaking little imp, had done so out of caution.

Yue Yang waved a hand, magnanimously signaling that it was all forgotten.

From that single gesture, the Windstill national ruler could keenly perceive that this young master probably didn’t care much for cumbersome ceremony—likely he’d played the grand young lord for too long, developed a taste for novelty, and, only recently out in the world, no longer wished to live the old life of being fussed over by a host of attendants and having his every command answered by ten thousand voices.

Only now did Hulei and his Sky-rank companions secretly let out a breath of relief.

That was close!

Thank goodness they hadn’t blown things up just now. Had anyone actually struck at this grand young lord, matters would absolutely not have ended so simply. No—had the Windstill national ruler not arrived to step in and save them, they likely wouldn’t have gotten off so lightly at all.

At this thought, Hulei and the others stepped forward again to thank the Windstill national ruler.

“Hahaha, as they say, no fight, no friendship—a man’s bonds are all forged with his fists!” The Windstill national ruler, reckoning that classmate Yue Yang was still in the hot-blooded, impulsive fever of youth, put on a show of heroic bravado. He seized the chance to draw close to Yue Yang, warmly inviting this young master of untold noble station to a little gathering at his residence—coming within a hair of physically dragging him along.

“Windstill national ruler, please wait a moment. I still have some business to settle.” Classmate Yue Yang naturally had to keep him dangling.

“I wonder what other matter my young Titan friend has—just say the word, and Windstill has ten thousand men, before him and behind, at your command.” The Windstill national ruler felt he was truly fortunate this time. To think a young master from a great house of the Upper Heavenly Realm had come traveling through his own territory—if he could forge this connection, then his prospects hereafter would know no limit.

“A trifle. No need to trouble the national ruler.” Yue Yang waved him off, then turned to instruct Fengji and Keen-Eye Jinyun: “Go find Zhongguan and the others. What kind of guards are these fellows, anyway? Sure, I gave the lot of them a bit of leave, but when I need them and can’t find a soul—that’s just too annoying. If they’re still nowhere to be found in ten minutes, then tell them I’m firing them, and they needn’t ever come back!”

“Huh?”

“Captain, look—quick!”

“Young master, sorry we’re late getting back—here, this is the roasted flying-dragon wings you love, fresh and piping hot! Fengji, what happened?”

Five shadows came flying back cradling platters and dishes of fine food. The instant they saw a ring of people gathered around Yue Yang, they rushed back at top speed to take up guard on his left and right—first offering fawning greetings to Yue Yang, while the tall-crowned man who seemed to be their captain quietly asked Fengji what had happened.

Only then did everyone realize these were the openly-stationed Sky-rank guards.

The strongest of them possessed the strength of Sky-rank tier three.

The rest were not far behind.

Two were Sky-rank tier two, another two Sky-rank tier one, and lastly there were Fengji and Keen-Eye Jinyun—quasi-Sky-rank and below-Sky-rank.

What struck Hulei and the others as strange was that the Sky-rank tier-three guard captain, though of the same rank as himself, seemed to have strength surpassing even his own peak Sky-rank tier three—faintly able to press down on him by a head. It was an oddness beyond words.

The Windstill national ruler, however, knew what was going on. These guards, especially the man wearing the treasure crown, already possessed a supremely powerful will of mind.

That was the earliest awakened form of a god’s will.

Possessing this unshakable, supremely powerful will, this openly-stationed guard captain crushing the same-ranked Hulei was, of course, no problem at all! What’s more, this crown-wearing guard captain still had strength in reserve—likely on par with his own personal guard captain, Balle, both of them Sky-rank tier four. How could Hulei and his lot possibly be mentioned in the same breath? In a word: there had never been any need for Tianzhu to act at all. This crown-wearing guard captain, Zhongguan, could have dispatched Hulei on his own. It was only because they had gone off to buy fine food for their young master, leaving him unguarded, that the secretly-lurking Tianzhu had shown himself.

Thinking it through this way, the Windstill national ruler privately raised his estimate of this Titan Young Lord’s station by several more degrees.

A guard corps combining the seen and the unseen—such foresight and boldness were simply not something an ordinary family could produce. Even if he wasn’t from one of the Four Great Families, this young master was surely a scion of some exceedingly noble great house!

Fengji gave a light cough. “You missed a whole lot of exciting stuff!”

Zhongguan, the guard captain, played along in perfect concert, his face betraying not the slightest trace of a rehearsed script, and asked with the acting chops of a leading man: “What did we miss?”

“Get lost, all of you—take those platters away. Right now this young master’s got a belly full of anger…” Classmate Yue Yang kicked the fellow flying with one boot, and Zhongguan, that cockroach, long since accustomed to Yue Yang’s punches and kicks, immediately flew right back, producing genuine-seeming deference, his acting skill dialed straight up to one million: “Young master, don’t be angry, don’t be angry, this humble one will see to it at once! Fengji, have you gone mute?”

“Ah—the young master wants to catch that pair of Wild Bulls and make them into guards!” said Fengji, hauled up by the collar in Zhongguan’s furious grip, pointing at the Wild Bull Brothers still in the prison cart.

“Hey, hey, this has nothing to do with us!” The pitiful Wild Bull Brothers had been watching the show for ages, only to suddenly find that it seemed to be circling back onto their own heads. The elder Wild Bull hurriedly bellowed in his big booming voice: “I don’t know your young master. Beat each other however you like, but you can’t take it out on us!”

“We didn’t even curse that young master just now…” The younger Wild Bull was nearly in tears.

The two of them were dim, but they weren’t fools.

This young master’s power was not something the two of them could afford to provoke.

Besides, they had no wish to make an enemy of this young master—why, just now he’d even stood up in support of justice on their behalf!

Yue Yang clapped his hands and, before the eyes of the whole watching crowd, spoke a line as naturally as if it were self-evident truth: “Drag Big Dummy and Second Dummy off for me and beat them—hard!”

Everyone was struck dumb.

Good grief!

Are you rescuing people or beating them?

And to talk about beating people with such a clear conscience—probably only a grand young master like you, who’s never once known what suffering is, could pull that off!

Under the sweat-drenched, stunned gaze of every onlooker, Zhongguan the guard captain snapped to attention with a crisp click and saluted: “Yes, sir!” As Heitu and Baima opened the prison cart and hauled out the Wild Bull Brothers, he asked again: “Young master, beat them for how long?”

Without a moment’s thought, Yue Yang said: “Beat them until they’re willing to call me young master!”

The instant these words landed, the whole lot of them keeled over.

A man like Gold-Tooth wished he could rush over that instant, throw his arms around Yue Yang’s leg, and beg piteously—won’t you send someone to give me a beating too?

Take one beating and be taken on as a guard—wasn’t that just too easy? Only now did Gold-Tooth understand why a piece of trash like the fire-eyed Keen-Eye Jinyun had been hired on by this young master as a guard—turns out the fellow had simply been lucky enough to take a beating! Damn, this fire-eyed Keen-Eye Jinyun really had the dumb luck of eighteen lifetimes, to have run into a young master like this!

“No, we will never call you young master—don’t even dream of it!” The elder Wild Bull struggled in fury.

“Let’s talk this over—could you maybe not hit the face…” the younger Wild Bull pleaded feebly.

The whole crowd toppled over at this.

Truly dizzying—on the one side, someone forcibly conscripting them as guards; on the other, a pair who’d rather take the beating than give in. This one beating had Gold-Tooth and his lot positively drooling with envy—it was a beating that would change one’s very fate, and what a pity it wasn’t them being beaten!

(End of Chapter 938)