Chen Ping'an quickly inspected his surroundings to ensure that there was no one else around aside from Ruan Xiu, and only then did he latch onto Li Baoping's hand as he said in a gentle voice, "Let's go somewhere else."

The bank of the creek was normally quite a peaceful place, but ever since that time when Chen Ping'an sensed that there was something dirty in the creek, he had become very reluctant to venture into the water.

In her despair, Li Baoping had informed Chen Ping'an of Ma Zhan's death without thinking, but as soon as she blurted out the reason for her visit, she immediately regretted her decision because Chen Ping'an wasn't alone. Li Baoping had already met Ruan Xiu once before on the Azure Cow Ridge. 

At the time, the Golden Boy and Jade Girl of the Daoist Sects had also been present. One of them kept a pair of large fish, one red and one green, while the other had a pristine white deer, and both of them had ties with the Li Clan. Of course, visually speaking, Ruan Xiu didn't appear to be a bad person, but she was precisely the type of person that Li Baoping was terrified of in her current state. 

Despite their previous encounter, she didn't know Ruan Xiu very well at all, and Ruan Xiu appeared to be quite kind-hearted, but Li Baoping could never be sure if Ruan Xiu would suddenly stab her in the back someday. After all, she had just suffered a similar betrayal, and before she even knew what had happened, Ma Zhan was already dead.

Initially, Ma Zhan and Cui Minghuang had traveled together like a pair of long-lost friends, discussing the classics and quoting poetic phrases to one another while drinking to their hearts' content. In the words of Li Huai, Cui Minghuang had to have been either Ma Zhan's illegitimate son or his grandson. Otherwise, there was no way that they could've shared such a close bond. 

No one could've anticipated that Cui Minghuang would suddenly turn on Ma Zhan, resulting in the latter's death. According to Ma Zhan, there were two particularly outstanding figures among all of the scholars following the teachings of Confucianism on Eastern Treasured Vial Continent, and they were nicknamed the old gentleman and the young gentleman. 

Cui Minghuang was the vastly...