Zhou Hui’s expression did not betray his inner turmoil as he gazed out of the Hui Family Manor’s tinted windows. Before him stretched out a primly maintained lawn, its perimeter defined by lush, cerulean blue bushes that were arrayed in a neat circle.
A natural stone pathway lead into the lawn, before diverging into four pathways that allowed the visitor to experience a different facet of the flowerbeds his descendants managed so meticulously. A dug-in flower bed that was half-filled with water, to allow for propagation of the Osini Lakebrush, a relatively valuable foundation-establishment rank spiritual plant that had medicinal uses chosen by his children and grand-children to represent the reach and connections of the Legacy Hui Family— for it was not a spiritual plant to be found in the Azlak Plains.
In the multitude of vibrant colors that stretched out before him, Zhou Hui knew that each bed of flower represented a different facet of the Hui Family. Ostentatious wealth, delicate skill, patience and resourcefulness and perhaps the most important of all, the accumulation of generations.
His descendants were of a finer crop than the other legacy families, or so the proud Patriarch of the Sky Division had believed.
The scroll that was held unfurled in his hands told him otherwise.
Meili Zhu had informed him that two of his blood-relation were involved in the plot Zhiquang Yi had been deliberating upon for the last three months. They were branch-family cultivators, of course, third cousins or even farther cousins to his grandchildren from the direct line.
If Zhou Hui was not worthy of being Patriarch, if he had been the man to take revealed knowledge at face-value, then he could resolve the situation by simply having them executed. Sometimes, he wondered if the embrace of ignorance would have been kinder to him, the ability… or perhaps, the lack of it, to see but not know.
But Zhou Hui knew and that burden was his to carry.
He was the reason why the pulse of the Main Line was so overpoweringly strong, while the branch families were reduced to glorified servants that moved at their commands. He only needed to look inwards to see the strings pulling and tugging at the two hapless Inner Sect disciples that did not understand the true nature of the treachery they had been pulled into.
Did his own family, his own inheriting blood, trust his judgment so little?
Were they not capable of understanding that in everything he did, the Hui Family’s interests influenced his actions?
‘I suppose I cannot expect them to understand,’ Zhou Hui thought in the silence of his room. ‘Decades of shared dreams of power and glory cannot be so easily forgotten for greater benefits, even if the extent of those benefits are far greater than they can understand. Exile— I must exile the vessels of treachery for a decade, send them to a subordinate sect where they can be free from Yao Shen’s eye. And then I must be honest and tell Yao Shen before Meili Zhu is forced to, pleading leniency for the true culprits.’
Zhou Hui would be lying if he did not know who it was that had initiated this matter.
His own grandson had always been far too ambitious for his own good.
And now, he had offered a vulnerability to a poisoned flower that only got deadlier as it aged. If Meili Zhu, in her endless calculations, could see a path to become Patriarch of the Sky Division, she would have withheld onto the information— to deploy at a most inopportune moment, thrusting the dagger at his heart when he was at his most vulnerable.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
It was a strategy he had seen play out, after all— claiming the proud Zhiquang Yi as one victim amongst many, his will to resist having collapsed onto itself.
Forcing away the anxiety he felt at Yao Shen’s future judgment, he stretched his Divine Sense outwards.
His Divine sense expanded until it could take in the entirety of the Sky Division in, before zoning in on his targets.
Zhou Hui once again found himself noting how odd the assortment of Yao Shen’s disciples truly were, given how few he had accepted across his life. An orphaned-mortal that turned out to become one of the Sect’s greatest prospects. A junior alchemist that was widely hailed as a prodigy and perhaps the successor of Grand Alchemist Zhiquang Yi’s mantle before he defected to Yao Shen, the Wind Cultivator.
Zhou Hui had been unable to discern the thread of logic in Xiaoli’s actions until just recently, when Meili Zhu had revealed the trump card she had been planning on employing to cow Zhiquang Yi’s ambition. She had done the Grand Alchemist a great favor, sparing Zhou Hui the unpalatable task of executing him.
It was the Patriarch’s solemn duty to guard the Sect against threats that would bring widespread chaos and devastation.
Between Yao Shen and Zhiquang Yi, the Patriarch’s calculus would unerringly tilt in Yao Shen’s direction. And that was all he needed to guide the sharp edge of his blade.
Duyi was both talented and earnest, qualities that Zhou Hui too would greatly appreciate in any disciple. Yet he was a body cultivator whilst Yao Shen was far from it.
As for Yanyue, she worried Zhou Hui the most. If viewed upon subjectively, Zhou Hui could empathize with the girl. Dongmei Xue had always possessed a calculating edge to her that ill-befitted the stature of a healer, yet no Legacy Family would consider speaking up against her unless they were confident in training their own.
Even Zhou Hui would not be inclined to offend the one that could be nursing a near-fatal wound if fate ever decreed such misfortune upon him.
Yao Shen had— and he had done so flagrantly, exacting a steep compensation from Dongmei Xue. Not the natural treasure, of course. No, a reminder to the other legacy families, that no matter how unique or talented a healer was, they were ultimately still just a healer.
The aloof esteem of the Xue Family had crumbled, revealing the ugly calculation behind her poise of grace and wisdom.
Yet, what did he see in this Yanyue, to go so far?
In Zhou Hui’s eyes, she was weak. In cultivation, in the healing arts and political background.
That made her the easiest target.
His divine sense focused upon the skytree, under which the two sect sisters, Shadow and Yanyue were seated.
‘Six… Seven… Nine… Eleven,’ Zhou Hui calculated, noting that the faceless had shifted to faux-appearances. Undoubtedly Meili Zhu had pulled strings and officially ‘admitted’ the false appearances of the faceless in question, who milled about the Inner Sect’s skytree with admiring expressions as they took in it’s grandeur while masking their true purpose.
He also sensed Elder Meili Zhu, who acknowledged him with a pulse of her own Divine Sense. She was watching over the four disciples, as she had been the last three months.
Nodding to himself, Zhou Hui stepped away from the window.
It had become a habit for him, to check in on the disciples once a day before he returned to the many tasks that gnawed at his attention. Never though, had he left his manor since Yao Shen’s departure, the Lumenite Armor hidden in the very room he was standing in—ready to be equipped at a moment’s notice.
He thought back then, his gaze lingering on the serenity of his lawn for a few more seconds, on the terrible cost the Demonic Path had inflicted on their Azlak Plains.
Slaughtered mortals.
Assassinated Elders.
Spreading their deceitful methods within his sect and inserting spies.
How one-sided the assault against their very way of life, their morality had been.
Zhou Hui’s right hand balled up into a fist as he realized that he had been granted an opportunity even his ancestors had been denied— the power to strike back.
“Just you try,” He softly whispered, before departing the room.