“Looking at it now, though, that agreement has a sizable hole in it.” Ye Tianxie heard him out, then hooked up a corner of his mouth and said slowly, “The world you drew the agreement around is too narrow… Since Lingyun has appeared in this world openly, and climbed onto a Level Ranking watched by hundreds of millions, he’s plainly exposing the Ling family’s ambitions here. Developing and unleashing everything of theirs inside this world — heh, that doesn’t seem to violate the Zuo family’s original agreement with them in the slightest.”

Zuo Pojun nodded again, admiring. “Second Brother, you’re not wrong in the slightest. My old man said exactly the same thing to me a few days ago… When those three names appeared on the Level Ranking, my old man didn’t sleep all night.”

“Oh? Three?” Ye Tianxie frowned heavily.

“The Ling family is the strongest ancient martial house still in existence. That stretch of land belonging to them is another world entirely; the people walking it are the kind of masters ordinary folk only ever see on television. Of the other two among the three families, one is the Cang family — and the Cang family is an esper house, more chilling and more feared than any ancient martial family. The heir in the direct line this generation is named… Cang Chen!”

Cang Chen? The name gave Ye Tianxie a small start. He hadn’t forgotten it — this was the name he had once sat silent over for a long while when he first saw it. Because when the Level Ranking was published for the very first time, this person had charged into the top ten of a one-in-a-hundred-million leaderboard playing a Summoner, the most useless class in the early game! It had genuinely startled him at the time.

An esper family… the Cang family’s eldest son — Cang Chen!

“In that battle against the Mara Palace five years ago, the Sanctuary was gutted; at present only two hundred-odd espers are left. And the Cang family… the people there seem to carry some terrifying hereditary gene. Of the children born to them, one in every three has an innate esper ability. The Sanctuary’s growth depends on netting the one-in-a-million espers from all over the world. And the Cang family alone — this is only an estimate — has no fewer than fifty people with esper abilities in that single house… That is an extremely frightening number.”

Ye Tianxie was silent, and after a long while let out a slow breath. “That is a very frightening number. And the last family? What’s that one?”

A single family holding a quarter of all the espers Huaxia had gathered from across the entire world — “frightening” hardly began to cover it.

Zuo Pojun drew a light breath. “The third taboo family is the most frightening of all. Its overall strength far exceeds the Ling family’s and the Cang family’s; it’s a family you truly cannot provoke… The people there are a pack of terrifying monsters, every one of them. What they excel at isn’t ancient martial arts, and it isn’t esper ability… And to put it precisely, they can’t really be counted as a family at all. They’re an organization — an organization that makes the whole world change color at the mention of it. Its name is… Blood Dream Heaven!”

“Blood Dream Heaven…” Ye Tianxie murmured the name, and in a moment threads of information flashed through his mind. He looked up. “The world’s foremost assassin organization — Blood Dream Heaven is inside Huaxia’s own borders?”

“That’s right.” Zuo Pojun nodded. “Blood Dream Heaven is the most frightening of the three taboo families, and its secrecy makes it more frightening still. The reason it can exist peacefully in Huaxia today is that on top of obeying that agreement, it also has to kill one person a year for my Zuo family… And within Blood Dream Heaven, the men take Blood as their surname, and the women take Dream.”

The men take Blood as their surname, the women take Dream…

The women take Dream…

Ye Tianxie’s mind went straight to a name… the one that had sat high in second place when the Level Ranking was first published — Meng Yuyi. (Meng: “Dream.”)

“Meng Yuyi, Cang Chen, Cloud-Piercing Sword… three names standing for three taboo families, and all of them up on the Level Ranking that symbolizes the highest strength there is. That’s a proof of power, and it’s also a provocation. It looks as though they’ve been lonely and settled too long, and with an opportunity like this they can’t keep still any longer. That’s certainly enough to leave your father unable to sit still either.” Ye Tianxie kept walking, saying it without arrogance or agitation. Whether the three taboo families existed, and whatever they intended to do, really had nothing at all to do with him.

“Uh… that’s how it is.” Zuo Pojun answered, opened his mouth, then flinched and swallowed what he had been about to say.

Ye Tianxie glanced at that look of wanting to speak and stopping short, and said with some amusement, “You went out of your way today to tell me all this in such detail — it can’t be as simple as just wanting me to know. If there’s something, say it straight… All right, let me guess. Did your father happen to mention that if the chance came up, he’d like me to blunt their edge a little? And if possible, to crush their momentum outright?”

Zuo Pojun blinked, then nodded hard and said with an embarrassed laugh, “Nothing gets past Second Brother after all… My old man says that with the strength of you, Tian Moxie, it should be enough to blunt their edge, and besides—”

“One on one, I don’t have to fear anyone. But if these three families mean to make a large move, how could it be only these three people? The best choice would be to build an enormous force in this world, and once it matures, let that momentum seep quietly into the real one. If that’s the case, one man alone couldn’t raise any kind of storm, and crushing their momentum would be a joke. And if they’re only sending a few people here to play around, then there’s no need for me to blunt anything.”

“Uh, but Second Brother…”

“All right, we’re here. Let’s go in first and talk about it later.” Ye Tianxie opened his own front door and walked in ahead of them.

Murong Qiushui tugged at the slightly dazed Zuo Pojun and pursed his vermilion lips. “Fatty, with Second Brother’s temperament, if a day like that really came, do you think he wouldn’t act? Hmm?“

With a dashing wave of his hand, Murong Qiushui followed Ye Tianxie inside. Zuo Pojun rubbed his head and went in at once, beaming.

Stepping into the courtyard, Ye Tianxie’s feet came to a halt. Beside the pool, a woman of city-toppling beauty sat at the water’s edge with an elegant smile, stroking the flowers at the rim with fingers like white jade. And the flowers, brilliant red and dazzling to begin with, were washed out under the radiance of her face like scattered stars beneath a warm sun — every one of them robbed of color.

She rose slowly, and a movement as ordinary as could be traced out a shifting curve that set the mind swaying. Meeting Ye Tianxie’s eyes, Liu Qiyue curved the corner of her mouth, a charming smile surfacing on her cheek; the brilliance of that instant seemed to brighten all the light around her at a stroke. And when her gaze fell on Shattered Star-Heart, walking in alongside Su Feifei, the smile took on a few more traces of a faint, half-there reproach. “Little Brother Tianxie, out of my sight for such a tiny while, and already you’ve picked up another… beautiful confidante, one even your big sister looks at with tenderness.”

Ye Tianxie’s expression colored, and he looked away without meaning to. “Big Sister. When did you get here?”

Zuo Pojun read the room and came scurrying up at exactly the right moment. “Eh? Big Sister, you got the card that fast? Let me tell you, Big Sister, Second Brother has an enormous gift for you in a little while. You’d better prepare yourself — whatever you do, don’t…”

“Oh? Little Brother Tianxie has a gift for me? What kind of enormous gift would that be?” Liu Qiyue showed no surprise at all. Her slender brows curved gently, her lips pressed into a smile, and those beautiful eyes — their light so lush it seemed on the verge of dripping — settled softly on Ye Tianxie’s face. A faint pink rose slowly across features of matchless beauty, and that slightly tipsy, close-lipped smile made her already devastating allure so bewitching it was nearly impossible to hold onto oneself.

A vixen. Big Sister is a goddamn vixen. Zuo Pojun whipped his gaze away, afraid that one more look would put his own eyes beyond his control. Liu Qiyue’s mother was his own paternal aunt; from the time his memory began he had trailed after Liu Qiyue every day calling her sister, and he knew her as well as it was possible to know anyone. Even so, faced with the allure she released in every gesture, he still found it more than he could take.

If even he was like this, never mind anyone else… It was hardly strange that those two boys from the northern Yun family and the southern Dugu family had fought each other bloody over her. But even if they really did fight it out to the death, it was nothing more than their own wishful thinking. They deserved to end up like Tianshan Tonglao and Li Qiushui in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (a classic Huaxia martial-arts novel; the two women are lifelong rivals over one man). They fancied themselves the two finest of Huaxia’s younger generation, one styling himself the “Son of Heaven” and the other the “Son of God,” naively assuming that as long as one beat the other, Liu Qiyue simply wouldn’t choose a third man. But Liu Qiyue’s heart was not on either of them.

“Haha… hahahaha, the weather’s fine today, mild and bright, a good day for taking in the scenery. Fourth Brother, let’s go have a wander around the back courtyard — a bit more flora and greenery does wonders for cultivating the temperament.” Zuo Pojun hauled Murong Qiushui up and bolted for the back courtyard, out of sight in an instant.

Ye Tianxie turned and said to Su Feifei, whose expression was visibly off, “Feifei, take her around the place for now. I’ll talk to Big Sister about that deed.”

Su Feifei flattened her lips but said nothing, and led Shattered Star-Heart off. “Come on, little sister, let me show you around first… hee, it’s as big as I told you, isn’t it?”

What she really wanted to say was… it’s only a deed, so why does it have to be discussed with her alone…

From the moment Shattered Star-Heart stepped inside, her mind had stayed in a hazy, unmoored state — or rather, anyone who entered here would be so stunned by the absurdly luxurious residence that it would take them a while to come round… And when she saw Liu Qiyue, what flickered in her eyes was the astonishment of someone looking at a celestial being. But at once a trace of panic crossed her face, and she lowered her head nervously, not daring to meet Liu Qiyue’s gaze again.

As Su Feifei and the head-lowered Shattered Star-Heart passed by her, Liu Qiyue turned slightly, her voice gentle. “Little sister — have we met somewhere before?”

Shattered Star-Heart’s steps paused, then her head dropped lower still and her hands clenched together nervously; the strain in her voice was obvious. “I… you… no, we haven’t. You must have mistaken me for someone else, Sister.”

Liu Qiyue looked thoughtful, and nodded slowly with a smile. “Then I must have been mistaken.”

(End of Chapter 166)