In the Lu family’s Fragrant Pavilion, Lu Zhenlong was carefully putting away the go board.
This board was the witness to her victory over Mo Hua. She had to treasure it so she could show it off later.
Madam Lu watched her daughter with an unreadable look in her eyes.
After a moment, she spoke. "Zhenlong."
Lu Zhenlong turned her head. "Mother, what is it?"
Madam Lu hesitated, then said, "You and that Young Master Mo, weren't you enemies?"
Lu Zhenlong nodded. "Yes, we’re enemies."
"Then why were you just laughing and chatting with him so happily, and even took his hand to write secret words on his palm?"
"Does that look like enmity to you?"
Madam Lu paused, then asked, "So what do you think of Young Master Mo as a person?"
"As a person?" Lu Zhenlong froze. "He’s just... like that. Cunning, scheming, vicious, terrifying, unbeatable. But I beat him on the chess board. What else is there to say?"
Madam Lu sighed inwardly. Her daughter could be very clever at times, and at other times she was simply beyond help.
Madam Lu shook her head, said nothing more, and turned to leave.
But Lu Zhenlong suddenly called out, "Mother..."
Madam Lu stopped and looked back at her.
Lu Zhenlong bit her lip and asked softly, "Mother... what kind of person is the eldest young master of the Earth Sect?"
Madam Lu was surprised. "Why do you ask?"
"I’m just curious," Lu Zhenlong said.
Madam Lu’s gaze flickered; she too seemed unsettled. After a moment, she gave a light sigh.
"Hasn’t the Old Ancestor already told you? The Earth Sect’s eldest young master has extraordinary talent and excellent character. He’s a rare good match."
Lu Zhenlong merely said, "Oh."
Madam Lu stepped forward and gently stroked her daughter’s delicate, pretty face. "Don’t overthink things. Focus on your cultivation."
Lu Zhenlong nodded. "Mm."
Madam Lu said no more and left.
Only Lu Zhenlong remained where she was, her expression complicated. The garden that had always been full of birdsong and flowers now felt strangely cold.
After leaving Lu Zhenlong, Madam Lu returned to the reception hall and sat alone, frowning deeply.
Not long after, a young man in rich gold-and-jade robes walked in. "Mother."
It was Lu Zhenming.
Madam Lu looked up at him but said nothing, then lowered her head and continued brooding.
The rules of a great house were strict. Lu Zhenming, as her son, did not dare disturb Madam Lu, but after hesitating for a moment, he still could not hold back.
"Mother, you’re not thinking of marrying Zhenlong off to that Mo fellow, are you?"
Madam Lu looked up at that. "Is there something wrong with that?"
"Mother!" Lu Zhenming grew anxious and lowered his voice. "Is that Mo even a good man?"
Madam Lu said, "Why isn’t he a good man?"
Lu Zhenming’s face darkened. "He frequents brothels. He has a murky relationship with the Flower Queen in the pleasure quarter."
Madam Lu smiled faintly, then looked at Lu Zhenming. "If he goes to brothels and has an affair with the Flower Queen, how do you know about it?"
Lu Zhenming froze, his face turning iron-gray. "I... heard it from others."
Madam Lu’s gentle gaze carried a hint of severity as she looked at her son.
Lu Zhenming dropped his gaze, not daring to meet his mother’s eyes.
In the end, Madam Lu said nothing and merely sighed, a little helpless.
When the boys of a great house grew up, hot-blooded and raised in luxury, they could not restrain themselves when it came to matters of men and women, and picking up bad habits was the most troublesome thing.
Yet a mother could not beat them, could not scold them, and could hardly bring themselves to warn them.
But that Young Master Mo; although the outside world said he was arrogant, overbearing, and improper in all sorts of ways, the moment Madam Lu saw him, she found that his temperament was pure and his eyes were as clear as water.
He had clearly never been tainted by women; he was as chaste as jade. Add to that a face that lived up to his name, and it was all the more rare.
When he played chess with Zhenlong in the pavilion, they had looked very much at ease together.
Zhenlong was always clamoring that she was going to teach this Mo Hua a lesson.
But when they actually met, she was as docile as a kitten.
Madam Lu felt a tremor in her heart and sank into thought.
Seeing this, Lu Zhenming was also alarmed and hurriedly said, "Mother, you can’t really be thinking of pushing my sister into a fire pit... This Mo Hua is black-hearted and vicious."
Madam Lu cut him off. "Then what do you think of Zhenlong marrying the eldest young master? You and he have quite a good friendship."
Lu Zhenming’s expression turned heavier. "The eldest young master... is not a good match either."
Madam Lu sighed, as if unwilling to discuss the matter any further. She only said, "The Old Ancestor has his own plans for Zhenlong’s marriage. Don’t worry about it. Also—"
She paused and then grew more serious. "Keep a close eye on the Lu family’s estates, and don’t keep running around with those young masters."
"The Old Ancestor values you and intends to groom you. The clan’s elders also have hopes for you. But don’t actually think that the next generation of the Lu family is entirely yours to decide."
"In the coming days, you need to produce some accomplishments and do some real work, so the Old Ancestor and your father can see."
"Do not squander opportunities. Treasure them. You cannot make any major mistakes."
Scolded by Madam Lu, Lu Zhenming felt a chill inside. He cupped his hands and nodded. "Yes."
Madam Lu waved a hand. "Go."
Lu Zhenming’s gaze was heavy, and he bowed. "Your son will take his leave."
After Lu Zhenming withdrew, Madam Lu remained seated in the reception hall. Her face, elegant and calm as a jade platter, shifted through several expressions.
"Ming’er is a man. He can use his own efforts to win advancement and power."
"But Zhenlong is different. With her lively, impetuous nature, if she does not settle on a good match and gain support, then once the wind rises and the clouds surge, when the larger situation begins to stir... it will be hard for her to get by."
"The eldest young master may have poor moral character, but with the Earth Sect backing him, he is still the best choice."
"As for Mo Hua... he is indeed a good child. But his spiritual root and core grade simply don’t measure up. His formation talent is excellent, but it takes too long to come to fruition..."
Madam Lu sighed softly.
"The gate of a great clan has never been a place of gentle winds and soft rain."
At the Little Luan Mountain Blessed Land.
After Bai Qingcheng brought Mo Hua back, she sent him to rest, then went to find Immortal Rong for a private talk.
The two first talked about Fangcun Mountain.
But Fangcun Mountain was cut off from the world, and many matters required careful planning and long-term deliberation.
Naturally, no progress could be made in just a few days.
After a while, Immortal Rong asked how Mo Hua’s business with the Lu family had gone.
Bai Qingcheng’s expression turned somewhat strange.
"I really didn’t expect that Mo Hua would be so good at charming young girls..."
"That pampered girl Zhenlong only spent a short time with Mo Hua before she was laughing and talking with him, even taking the initiative to grab his hand and write secret words on his palm."
"Do you think Mo Hua is really a fox spirit in human form, born with an innate talent for seduction?"
Immortal Rong was speechless, then after a moment’s thought, said, "With a face like that, it’s only natural young girls like him."
Bai Qingcheng shook her head. "It’s not just a matter of his face."
A face was only skin and bone, merely a visible exterior.
She instinctively felt that it would make more sense if Mo Hua had fox-spirit blood.
Immortal Rong remained expressionless and asked, "So, did the Lu family agree?"
Bai Qingcheng paused, thought for a while, and let out a soft sigh.
"That girl, now the lady of the Lu family, has gained a lot of shrewdness."
"On the surface she was still very cordial, calling me Sister Bai, but there was no telling what she was thinking inside."
"If I had to press the marriage for Mo Hua and make Zhenlong nod, the Lu family would have no choice but to agree. Even the Lu family’s Old Ancestor would have to show me face."
"At worst, I could add more betrothal gifts on Mo Hua’s behalf and give the Lu family more benefits."
"But the problem is exactly that."
Bai Qingcheng shook her head. "A marriage alliance is meant to bring two families together. If I’m too forceful, it will turn out badly. A melon twisted from the vine is never sweet."
"And if it was simply because I was throwing my weight around, and the Lu family’s upper echelons came to resent it, that would be bad."
"The Lu family’s upper echelons naturally wouldn’t dare to do anything to me. But if they took that anger out on Mo Hua, making things hard for him openly or secretly, that would only harm him."
Immortal Rong was fairly objective and calm. "It’s no wonder the Lu family didn’t agree... In the final analysis, Mo Hua’s spiritual root and core grade are fatal flaws."
"When it comes to spiritual root inheritance, a lower-middle grade spiritual root and lower-upper grade core essentially rule out the possibility of producing an higher-upper grade spiritual root, and there will almost certainly be no bloodline awakening."
"In marital alliances between great houses, the inheritance of spiritual roots and bloodlines is actually the most important consideration."
"No matter how capable Mo Hua is, once marriage enters the equation, he can never cross that threshold."
"For a truly great family, a legitimate daughter with an upper-grade spiritual root or above would generally be unwilling to form a formal Dao companionship with Mo Hua and bear his children."
On the matter of marriage, great families could be so cold-blooded and calculating that they were almost inhuman.
In extreme cases, they would entirely discard human emotion and arrange marriages according to the genetic logic of animal mating, in order to optimize breeding.
Immortal Rong’s specialty was the Dao of Alchemy and Bloodlines, she was well versed in slicing open and dissecting flesh and blood.
"Of course," Immortal Rong added, "forming a formal Dao companionship is out of the question, but taking him as a lover would be the first choice."
After all, Mo Hua possessed heavenly beauty, with too-refined features; moreover, he was spirited and trim-boned, handsome and otherworldly, his aura incomparably clear and cold.
How many ladies of great families would want to keep such a youth as a "little lover"?
And if he were a lover, then his poor family background would actually become an advantage: he could be manipulated at will.
The water in this was deep indeed.
Immortal Rong could only hint at it, not speak too plainly.
Bai Qingcheng certainly understood; this was exactly what she was worried about.
Lover, mistress, kept man, outside favorite, plaything, intimate companion.
With Mo Hua’s face and talent, he was simply the ideal candidate for every one of these roles.
It was not only men who were lustful in this world; women were equally so.
Behind the gilded facades of the great families, the depravity within sometimes defied imagination. It was not just the men who were disordered. Some noble, powerful women of the great houses went even further in their appetite for pleasure.
In every sense, Mo Hua was in danger.
Bai Qingcheng understood all this, but...
"Even so..." Bai Qingcheng sighed. "I still need to find him a proper fated match, so he has a big tree to lean on."
"Marriage has always been beset by difficulties since ancient times."
"Now that his master is gone and his mother is only a loose cultivator, if I, as his martial aunt, don’t look after him, who will?"
Moreover, Bai Qingcheng knew she had been the one to "beat apart the mandarin ducks," and she felt some guilt, so she was all the more eager to find a good marriage for her little martial nephew.
Immortal Rong understood her thoughts, but it was not easy for her to say anything more. Se only found it strange. "You said... Mo Hua’s mother is a loose cultivator?"
Bai Qingcheng’s eyes flickered and she nodded, but she said nothing more, to keep Mo Hua’s secret.
Immortal Rong, however, frowned slightly, finding it impossible to understand. She muttered inwardly, "How is that possible... She’s a loose cultivator?"
"How could a loose cultivator give birth to a 'monster' like this?"
Inside a guest room at Little Luan Mountain.
While Bai Qingcheng and Immortal Rong were still worrying over Mo Hua’s marriage, spiritual root inheritance, and bloodline, Mo Hua was in his room, activating a formation to block sound and using a secret art to seal off causality.
When all this was done, Mo Hua spread out a folded sheet of paper and wrote two archaic characters on it.
Xirang.
Mo Hua stared at these two characters, frowning, and fell into thought.
These were the two characters Lu Zhenlong had written in water on his palm, to keep them secret.
And these two characters were not unfamiliar to Mo Hua.
After a moment of thought, he took out the Tian Clan formation collection that Elder Tian of the Earth Sect had just given him.
At the end of the formation foundation jade slip, on top of that pile of nameless, incomplete formation drafts, were written two similar large characters:
Xirang.
Mo Hua’s brow tightened slightly.
Or rather, they were the same "Xirang" that Lu Chonglou, the head of the Lu family, and Lan Tianshi, the Earth Sect’s Feather Transformation Immortal, had mentioned repeatedly.
Were they the same concept as the "Xirang" in Elder Tian’s collection of the Tian family’s formation drafts?
Mo Hua had also previously looked through some cultivation classics.
According to the classics, the so-called Xirang was a divine object from antiquity.
Legend said it possessed the power of endless vitality, a "divine soil" that would never be depleted and would never be destroyed.
But such things were only legends. In the real cultivation world, did a divine object like Xirang truly exist?
Why would the Lu family head and the Earth Sect’s Feather Transformation Immortal repeatedly mention this divine object?
And what did the broken formation manuscripts in Elder Tian’s Tian Clan formation collection have to do with "Xirang"?
If the grand scheme behind the deep marriage alliance between the Earth Sect and the great families was related to "Xirang"...
Then what exactly was this "Xirang"?
What karmic entanglements would it drag in?
And among those entanglements, what terrible, unknown secrets would be involved?
Mo Hua sat alone, his expression shifting, his sea of consciousness spinning at high speed. Deep in his eyes, black and white colors unconsciously surfaced.
People, events, and karmic threads from all over Kunzhou flashed through Mo Hua’s sea of consciousness.
"Elder Tian was persecuted."
And in Elder Tian’s formation collection, there was a broken formation draft named "Xirang." This meant the word Xirang was very likely connected to formations.
"Lu Chonglou and the Earth Sect’s Feather Transformation Immortal frequently discussed Xirang, which means this matter is of enormous significance, enormous stakes, and enormous scale."
"Xirang is a legendary divine object from antiquity, connected to the earth, endlessly regenerating."
"Connected to formations, enormous benefits, enormous scale, connected to the earth..."
The answer was almost about to surface.
Amid the rising and sinking of cause and effect, a flash of insight shot through Mo Hua’s mind, and his heart jolted involuntarily:
"Could the Earth Sect and the Four Great Families be planning to join hands to build an..."
"Earth-attribute Xirang Grand Formation?!"