After a brief silence, Cui Chan's grandfather asked, "Do you know why I struck you into that stream in front of Ruan Xiu?"0

Chen Ping'an shook his head in response.0

"Ruan Xiu paid a visit to Bamboo Scroll Lake with some sticky rod officials some years ago. You know that, right?" Cui Chan's grandfather asked.0

"I do. In fact, we almost met there," Chen Ping'an replied with a nod.0

"Did you know that while she was there, she killed a boy that the Great Li Empire had been determined to secure?" Cui Chan's grandfather scoffed. "Even she isn't aware that that boy had been chosen by Song Changjing to be his disciple. Back on Hibiscus Mountain, the situation had already been completely clarified. 0

“The Golden Core Tier earth immortal that had taken the boy away was already dead, the ancestral hall on Hibiscus Mountain had been demolished, and all of the vagrant cultivators on the mountain were dead, while all of the Great Li Empire's sticky rod officials were completely unscathed, so why do you think they were unable to bring back that boy, who should've had a bright future ahead in the Great Li Empire?"0

Chen Ping'an didn't know the answer to that question, and he fell into deep thought.0

"The boy that caught Song Changjing's eye was naturally an extremely rare and endowed martial arts prodigy," Cui Chan's grandfather continued. "The sticky rod officials of the Great Li Empire were able to find him because a breakthrough that he had made some years ago had triggered phenomena in several martial sage temples, even though he had only been a martial artist of the Lower Three Tiers at the time. 0

“Martial fortune had always served as the foundation of the Great Li Empire, so this had been a matter of great national importance. Even...0