CHAPTER 1337: THE TWO BROTHERS (2)

"Was he handsome?" Mao Yunru immediately followed, her question cutting short Yang Qing’s blissful imagination of bossing around Old Lei.

Throwing a quick resentful glare at her, which was met by a nonchalant side-eye, Yang Qing nodded as he said, "He was."

"Actually, he is the best-looking person I’ve seen," he added. He had even included Gu Xing in that assessment. If his abode looked like a banished immortal’s garden, then that figure looked like the banished immortal himself.

If that figure ever came and asked him to give up ownership of his abode, Yang Qing wouldn’t dare utter a single word of protest. He’d pack his bags and leave, thinking it only right for such a person to have the place, all for the very, very low price of a single purple-grade art and some pointers on how to elevate his own art to that realm, too.

Yang Qing quickly touched his face, coughing and laughing sheepishly when he realized his lips had once again curled into a crazy grin, drawing a judging, exasperated look from Mao Yunru and a wry smile from Dai Chen.

"What was he like?" Dai Chen asked after a sip of his wine.

"Where did you meet him?" Mao Yunru immediately interjected, feeling that was higher on the priority list than knowing what he was like. Looking at her eager gaze, it was clear to both of them what her intention was.

But alas, her intentions were doomed to go unrealized—and Yang Qing was all too glad to be the one to plunge that hope-killing dagger into her. Of course, he wouldn’t show it, but inwardly, he was jumping for joy that it was him.

Lowering his gaze slightly, he let out a soft sigh, followed by a deeply apologetic smile as he softly and slowly said, "In Sage Mountain."

"Oh," Mao Yunru said, deflated as she reached for her wine for respite.

"Yes," Yang Qing said, taking great care to mask his petty smug grin behind a look of remorse. This was one of those rare moments when he rather appreciated the Order’s stingy arrangements.

The Sage Mountain was among the special cultivation sites where being a member of the Order and having merit points simply wasn’t enough to gain entry. You had to meet specific criteria, and for Sage Mountain, it was creating a cultivation art or evolving one by an entire grade.

Yang Qing’s inward glee as he secretly savored Mao Yunru’s pouty mood was interrupted when he sensed Dai Chen’s gaze on him.

What? he surreptitiously asked with his eyes when he turned to find Dai Chen looking at him oddly, with a gaze that seemed to suggest he had seen through his true expression hidden behind that mask of sympathy.

The slight shake of Dai Chen’s head, the exasperated sigh, and the alternating looks he gave between him and Mao Yunru more than confirmed to Yang Qing that he had seen it.

Coughing sheepishly and trying to cover his tracks, Yang Qing hurried to pull the conversation along. "I didn’t get to talk to him," he said, referring to Dai Chen’s earlier question. "He seemed to be in deep meditation inside some strange hut located deep in the mountain," he added as he went on to explain how he’d ended up there and described some of what he’d seen.

"That being said, though I believe it was likely him, there’s a chance it wasn’t, and maybe it was some other mysterious figure from the Order," Yang Qing said as he sneakily reached out for his braised pork, hoping Mao Yunru was too low-spirited to have an appetite. She wasn’t. She quickly slapped his hand away and pulled the plate even closer to herself, then pulled her seat further from him when she felt the distance still wasn’t safe enough.

Hiding his displeasure, Yang Qing continued, "But let’s say it was him. I don’t know if he’s a mythical race member, even if his achievements are worthy of one.

If he was, then that would mean Dean Zhu Lao is one too. After all, they’re brothers, and as far as I know, Dean Zhu Lao is human," said Yang Qing, though the slight frown on his face showed he felt uncertain about parts of his own statement.

"They could be brothers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re blood related," Mao Yunru leisurely remarked as she moved on to the last spare rib.

Watching her intentionally take her time devouring it, whatever faint guilt Yang Qing had felt over gloating about her lack of access to Sage Mountain vanished with every bite she took.

"Besides," Mao Yunru continued, her eyes fixed on the spare rib as her tongue brushed away the bits of sauce on her lips. "Mmh, this is really good," she remarked in satisfaction before taking another bite and picking up where she left off. "It’s not entirely certain that Dean Zhu Lao is human either.

His achievements, though not as stupendous as his brother’s, aren’t exactly common either. How many cultivation arts has he upgraded over the years? How many gold-grade arts are among them?

As a creator yourself," she said, looking up at Yang Qing, "you should have a better idea than anyone how difficult it is to achieve what he has. Being just talented isn’t enough to justify it. He’s a monster just like his brother, which, now that I think about it, makes it possible they are blood related, given their feats," she added.

"If I had to guess who’s most likely to be mythical race members, it would be those two," she said firmly before finishing off the last piece. Luckily for Yang Qing, he was too engrossed by her words to notice.

"That could be the case," he murmured thoughtfully, with Dai Chen nodding along in agreement.

Mao Yunru was right. Dean Zhu Lao’s feats were extraordinary; it was only because he had an even more extraordinary brother that people tended to overlook them. But if one looked closely, his achievements were just as monstrous. He had over a dozen gold-grade arts tied to his name, and one of them was even the Order’s signature cultivation art, the top-tier gold-grade art, Phantom Void Steps. Who knows how many lives have been saved by this cultivation art that he created all so he could sneak out of his abode without his wife knowing.

Yang Qing couldn’t help but wonder if, given his feats, Zhu Lao also had a purple grade art to his name, or perhaps had even contributed to one of the four his younger brother created. After all, when Yang Qing developed the Brilliant Ray Fist Art, while his insights formed the backbone, he had consulted others like Kang Huilang, Dai Chen, Yi Jie, and the rest of his circle to build upon it. Maybe it was the same with the Zhu brothers.

Or he created one, and it’s just never been publicized, thought Yang Qing.

At the institute, they were always told by the instructors that whenever they fought someone, they were to punch them with their entire strength, but at the same time, hide that they were as skilled with throwing daggers as they were with throwing punches, and wait until the opponent assumed that throwing punches was all they knew. When the opponent was stuck in that rhythm and assumption, that was when you introduced the daggers, and if the daggers weren’t enough, show them you were just as skilled in kicking techniques, too. If even that didn’t finish the job, then detonate all talismans you had on them and overpower them with your wealth.

The emphasis was on having a trump card wrapped in another trump card, wrapped in another, until you had an onion layer of trump cards. Only fools kept one.

Given how insidious his organization was, would it reveal how many purple grade arts it owned? Even he hadn’t known Ren Shu had one until he handed him the Universal Resonant Light purple grade art. And if a deputy medical valley master had one, what about the dean of Cultivation Art Dissection Studies?

"I’ll have to ask Ren Shu if the two are mythical creatures," thought Yang Qing. He had already planned to ask him about the mythical races anyway, so he might as well add this on.

Hours went by with Yang Qing, Dai Chen, and Mao Yunru sharing drinks and good conversation before the latter two had to leave—one heading back to work and the other to meet her friends—leaving Yang Qing once again in the comfort of his own company in his abode.

As he was getting lost in the many thoughts swirling in his mind and what he should start with, he was stirred by a faint pop, like the sound of a bubble bursting.

"You’ve finally broken through," he said with a smile as he walked over to the green flame tree.