After the thousands of disciples saw Yu Ziqian, they breathed a sigh of relief.
“Senior Brother!”
“Senior Brother is alive! That’s great!”
“I told you he was blessed with good luck! He definitely won’t die!”
“With his talent, he definitely has his ways of surviving.”
Tianming noticed that Yu Ziqian had completely changed amidst the cheering. He took out a fan, unfolded it, and lightly fanned himself with a cool expression. It gave him an aura of control and assuredness.
“He really knows how to act.”
At that moment, a green light appeared in front of Yu Ziqian. “Oh disciple of mine, I finally found you. After I heard about the ambush, I hurried over in fear of losing you! That would be a horrible waste of talent! The dogs of the Supracloud Sanctuary didn’t uphold even the most basic of common decency and did something like that. Don’t worry, though. Now that I’m in the picture, they’ll pay the price!”
The white-haired man wore a loose azure robe and had messy hair. However, his gaze was sharp. He only relaxed when he had made sure that Yu Ziqian was completely fine.
“Master, calm down. Those losers can’t even touch a hair on me,” Yu Ziqian said, clearing his throat.
“As expected of my disciple. You act and present as the cream of the crop!” Jiang Qingliu shot him a thumbs-up in front of everyone, much to Tianming’s shock. He had completely no idea how Yu Ziqian had actually convinced his master so thoroughly. Was the master in on the con as well?
“Senior Brother is amazing as expected!” Yu Ziqian was praised to the high heavens by his fellow disciples.
“Now, stay put and prepare to depart.” Jiang Qingliu’s mood was so good that his mustache seemed to perk up. He shot his personal disciple a look of complete satisfaction.
At that moment, a voice uncontrollably broke out. “Master, all of you! You’ve been lied to by him!” Mo Yuling expressed her truth, looking rather distraught as she did so. “Yu Ziqian doesn’t have a constellation at all! When he was pursued by the ones from the Supracloud Sanctuary, he was even weaker than a Heptaglory Sky ascendant! He only survived because some strangers came to save us! Think about it! He’s basically been secluding himself without fighting anyone in the past years. While he’s strong during the few times he does fight, his victories are all weird! He must’ve used some kind of trick! He’s just a conman that’s trying to get the sect’s resources despite being someone normal!”
She felt much better after saying her piece. She turned her shaky eyes toward Yu Ziqian and said, “Senior Brother, I really wasn’t explicitly trying to go against you. However, the Voidsky Realm isn’t the Azuresoul Palace! If you keep spreading your false reputation like that, you’ll eventually have to face contestants as powerful as you say you are. You’ll embarrass the entire sect and us fellow disciples! I can’t let a conman like you let all of us down!”
Everyone was flabbergasted at what they heard.
“What’s wrong, Sister Mo? Senior Brother has always treated you well.”
“That’s right. He looked after you so much. How could you say that to him?”
“Seriously… when Senior Brother defeated a third-level constellier half a year ago at the age of eighteen in front of tens of thousands of witnesses, including many seniors, he used his constellation. How could that be fake?”
Nobody believed her no matter how sincere she appeared. Many of them had personally witnessed that fight.
“Mo, stop messing around,” Jiang Qingliu said, clearing his throat and waving for her to come over.
“Master!” Mo Yuling knelt and began to cry. “I really wasn’t messing around! I was on the run with him and he really isn’t as strong as you think he is! You also inspected him and found no trace of injury, right? How could he emerge unscathed from battle? I’m really worried that he’ll embarrass the whole Azuresoul Palace in front of all the other sects! It won’t be hard for him to prove himself either! Just have him fight some of us! Of those here that respectfully call him Senior Brother, at least a third of them can defeat him!”
The Myriad Solar Sects all had a chief disciple for each generation that was acknowledged to rank above all other disciples of the same generation.
“Enough nonsense!” Jiang Qingliu was growing rather mad. He had personally nurtured Yu Ziqian, so receiving this kind of doubt and challenge, and from his other personal disciple no less, was infuriating. Yu Ziqian was his pride and joy.
“Master, the reputation of the Azuresoul Palace is at stake!” She kowtowed with all the force she had, still shedding tears.
“How about this…” said a white-robed youth. His hair was interwoven with streaks of white and black. One of his eyebrows was black, and the other was white. If it weren’t for Yu Ziqian’s acting, this youth would look far more eye-catching. “Senior Brother, fight me and show them a tenth of your power. That’ll be enough to make Sister Mo shut up.”
He seemed to have a calm personality, though he stared daggers at Yu Ziqian with a fierce desire to fight.
“It’s Bai Junce…”
“How arrogant of him to challenge Senior Brother.”
“Even though he’s the head instructor’s disciple, he wasn’t a match for Senior Brother five years ago during their duel. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Tianming closely watched Bai Junce. “He’s only in his twenties, but he’s about as powerful as Sovereign Xi…” That could only mean that he was powerful enough to rank in the top thousand among the Myriad Solar Sects. “No wonder Sovereign Xi said that she was the weakest of heptabanes.”
The divine moonrace’s dream was to cultivate with a nova source once more. The difference was more than staggering.
Everyone turned their eyes to Yu Ziqian. They thought he would be troubled, but he looked completely calm. “Bai Junce, you weren’t my match five years ago. Are you worthy of me fighting you now? Don’t worry, I’ll properly school you once we get back to the Azuresoul Palace.”
His confidence and demeanor was definitely not that of a faker. It was pure confidence that only a true genius could possess. Though Mo Yuling still wanted to say something, Jiang Qingliu lost his patience. He glared at her and snapped, “Alright, stop wasting time! Let’s go!”
“Master, I came across three friends who want to travel with us,” Yu Ziqian respectfully said.
“Do as you please.” Jiang Qingliu stared deeply at him.
“Master, do you doubt me?”
“I already bet my reputation on you, so I hardly have a choice now.”
“Then I won’t disappoint you, master.”
“Let’s make it clear. If you cause trouble for me, I’ll be the first to skewer you, got it?”
“Don’t worry. Have I ever messed up when it really counts?”
“If you do, the both of us will be ruined and the Azuresoul Palace will no longer have a place for us. In the past few years, you’ve been a black hole, consuming countless of the sect’s pills. You know what this means.”
“Of course! I have much to thank the sect for. I’ll definitely pay them back,” Yu Ziqian said.
“Forget paying them back, just make sure to not leave me in ruins.”
As the master and disciple pair were chatting, Tianming and the rest got on the back of the azuresky qilin. Now, they could just rest on the back of the speedy qilin without having to toil their way to the Voidsky Realm.
……
The azuresky qilin ran across the vast ground, circled by blazing winds the whole time. Tianming and the others sat in a corner and watched Yu Ziqian keep up his act the entire time as he was showered with admiration, surprised at how he was able to do it so well. There were too many people here, so nobody really noticed how they got up. There were around a hundred senior elites leading the group apart from Jiang Qingliu, one of whom was named Qing Zi. She was a famous person in Azuresoul Palace. Like Bai Junce, she was also a disciple of the head instructor. Though she was over a century old, her outer appearance resembled a woman in her twenties. She stood together with Bai Junce as they watched Yu Ziqian.
“Senior Sister, do you think there’s something off about him as well?” Bai Junce asked.
“Yes.”
“Even though he’s just the disciple of Jiang Qingliu, the resources he gets are ten times ours. If we’ve been nurturing a weakling this whole time, it’d truly be a huge joke,” Bai Junce said.
“He’s been laying low the entire time, and only really fought a handful of times. How’d it feel to fight him years ago?” Qing Zi asked.
“It felt real.”
“But Mo Yuling is his junior. She probably wouldn’t lie about this.”
“Something must be wrong. His reputation is too great, and even the whole sect is swayed. There’s just too many people whose reputations are at stake if he fails us.”
“We might still make it if we expose him in time.”
“But Jiang Qingliu is protecting him and preventing us from acting. We don’t even have a chance to make our approach. Does that old fart want to double down on his mistake?”
“Look over there,” Qing Zi said, pointing at Tianming and the rest.
“The three outsiders? Are they Yu Ziqian’s friends?”
“That’s right. I asked Mo Yuling about them. She said they were the ones who saved him. They’re also heading to the Voidsky Realm and they don’t seem to be constelliers.”
“What is your plan, Senior Sister?”
“Since they’re his friends, his reputation is tied to them. Maybe try creating some conflict and mess with them. If we humiliate them and Yu Ziqian doesn’t stand up for them, let’s see what happens.”
“What if Jiang Qingliu shamelessly protects him?”
“Don’t worry about that. Let me deal with it. We must create a conflict and fully expose Yu Ziqian before we arrive at the Voidsky Realm.”
