Chapter 406

Nine days later, Feng Jin Huang sits meditating beside a mountain lake, but she cannot hold her calm. Every time she closes her eyes for more than a few breaths, the memory returns: a naked man looking down at her from the cliff’s edge, his bleeding arm, his powerful body, and the foot he planted on her face. Shame, humiliation and hatred boil over, and she erupts, screaming and swinging blind punches that scorch the lake dry and level the green hills around her. In that fit, the narration states, even ten Fang Yuans fighting together could not match her destructive force, and she vows to tear him apart limb by limb and burn what is left to ash. ^{ch. 406}

A few hundred miles off, her parents watch from a mountain cottage: Fairy Bai Qing, a rank six Gu Immortal, frets at the window while her husband Feng Jiu Ge tries to calm her with tea. Bai Qing presses him to act: their daughter, always victorious until now, lost the Hu Immortal Inheritance, was trampled underfoot, and for the first time saw the bare body of a man her own age. ^{ch. 406}

Feng Jiu Ge answers that the setback has an upside: for all Feng Jin Huang’s talent, she cannot match Desolate Ancient Moon, Ren Zu’s daughter, who failed countless times, while Feng Er has only ever known victory, and that gap is her real weakness. Neither of them will always be there to protect her, he says, so a loss now will help her stand on her own once they are gone. ^{ch. 406}

He admits he has already sent a warning letter to Immortal Crane Sect over the humiliation, and threatens to go settle matters personally with He Feng Yang if nothing comes of it. Bai Qing urges caution. She reminds him that when he once attacked the top ten sects, Immortal Crane Sect was among the sects he struck. Reassuring her, he privately reflects that none of the ten sects in the Central Continent could currently stand against him. ^{ch. 406}

Born to the demonic path, Feng Jiu Ge had once trained in secret until he reached rank six Gu Immortal, then emerged to challenge every hero in the world and beat back every sect that answered, forcing the ten sects to team up against him. Undaunted, he fought on across some ten million miles before suddenly changing tactics and going for the yellow dragon, and the ten sects lost badly. Fairy Bai Qing of Spirit Affinity House eventually reformed him through genuine love, and he has since risen to rank seven with her sect’s backing. ^{ch. 406}

At Immortal Crane Sect’s Shang Qing pavilion, the supreme first elder slams Feng Jiu Ge’s letter on the table, furious at its demands, but does not dare destroy it: the letter itself is a transformed rank five letter sending green bird Gu, and ruining it would alert Feng Jiu Ge directly. The supreme second elder counsels agreeing to the demands regardless, given Feng Jiu Ge’s rank seven cultivation and Spirit Affinity House’s backing. ^{ch. 406}

Lei Tan, a rank six Gu Immortal at odds with He Feng Yang, demands to know why He Feng Yang has defended Fang Yuan at all when the man is not even their disciple. He Feng Yang answers that Fang Yuan’s brother, Fang Zheng, leads this generation’s elite disciples, and when Lei Tan scoffs that one disciple’s relative is not worth this cost, he replies that even triple the compensation owed to the nine sects would be cheap beside a Hu Immortal blessed land, let alone a fixed immortal travel Gu. ^{ch. 406}

Several of the listening elders begin to grasp his meaning, and Lei Tan, frowning, presses him to say plainly what he means. ^{ch. 406}