By the small lake, on the wooden terrace table, sat clear tea. Gu Xiechen, clad in black, and Xiang Hua, clad in white, faced each other across the table.

“What about the Chief Guest Elder? You’re truly unmoved?” Xiang Hua took a sip of tea to wet his throat, looking at Gu Xiechen with surprise.

“What’s the rush? We don't even know what that girl’s intentions are.” Gu Xiechen lightly patted the water surface, startling the nearby small fish into fleeing. He shook his head.

Earlier, in the banquet hall, thanks to Fu Yaming’s strenuous mediation, neither side had erupted into an outright conflict, and the matter of betting with spirit stones naturally dissolved without resolution. Gu Xiechen had calmly finished dinner after rejecting Jin Cheng’s proposal to appoint him as the Chief Guest Elder of the Hook Breakers group. Citing fatigue from the past few days, Gu Xiechen returned to his room to rest. Perhaps it was an illusion? When Gu Xiechen refused Jin Cheng, he thought he saw a faint, relaxed smile flicker across Fu Yaming’s lips.

“Jin Cheng… that woman!” Fuyao Fan gently fanned the cool breeze, and Gu Xiechen narrowed his eyes, quietly listening to every rustle and sound in the surroundings.

“That woman?” Xiang Hua sneered. “She counts as a woman? Alas. But didn’t you notice, that woman actually resembles someone?” He paused. “In demeanor and temperament, she is very similar.”

“Oh? Who?” Gu Xiechen already had an answer in his heart, but he genuinely wanted to hear Xiang Hua’s expert opinion.

“That damned Siren!” Xiang Hua spat out the words, grinding his teeth. “That dead woman looks almost exactly like that dead pretty boy. Ugh, I was initially interested in flirting with her, but seeing her face… I don’t want to feel like I’m hugging Siren every time I hold her! Even if I won’t experience physiological yang addiction, if I end up with a… psychological yang disorder, I’ll be the loser.”

Speechless, Gu Xiechen shuddered violently. The terrifying image of Xiang Hua embracing Siren lasciviously made every hair on his body stand on end.

His spiritual sense, which had been lazily covering a distant palace, suddenly detected movement from Fu Yaming and Jin Cheng. Gu Xiechen signaled to Xiang Hua, and the Seven Emotions and Six Desires Bewitching Talisman pulsed with a faint light, enveloping his entire body. He silently dissolved into a cool breeze blowing in from the side. Mo Liqing, who had been reclining on a sofa in the palace room just moments before, sprang up with a sudden jerk, twisted his body, and instantly transformed into the likeness of Gu Xiechen. He swaggered over and sat down opposite Xiang Hua.

“Come on, let’s down a whole jar?” The transformed Gu Xiechen stared wide-eyed at Xiang Hua.

“One jar isn’t enough! For a real man, ten jars!” Xiang Hua Lixuan grew excited, pulling jar after jar of aged fine wine from his storage pouch without pausing.

The door to the palace room suddenly opened from the outside. A maid cautiously poked just the tip of her head in; she swiftly glanced at the two figures sitting opposite each other, drinking. Abruptly, Mo Lishou’s heavily made-up face lunged right up to the maid’s face, and he bellowed in a muffled voice, “Hey, girl, what are you looking for? Are you admiring my subordinate?”

The maid shrieked and, clutching the hem of her long skirt, turned and fled. A short while later, the intelligence that ‘Gu Xiechen’ was heavily drinking with Xiang Hua promptly landed in certain parties’ hands.

Having already walked far from the palace, Gu Xiechen looked up at the sky. The Wind-Summoning and Rain-Calling technique recorded in the Great Wilderness Scripture rose at his will. Dark clouds rapidly piled up in the sky, and a fine, drizzling rain began to patter down. Nodding with satisfaction, Gu Xiechen once again experienced the exhilarating feeling of wielding the power of heaven and earth effortlessly.

Unleashing the Water Evasion technique from the Supreme Yin Scripture, Gu Xiechen’s body dissolved into vapor and merged with the fine rain.

Fu Yaming and Jin Cheng, escorted by several Hook Breakers ability users, emerged from the palace and settled into a small shuttle craft. Just as the water vapor that was Gu Xiechen attached itself to the top of the shuttle, the craft lifted silently into the air, ascending without a single sound toward the dark, sprawling mountains in the distance.

The technology incorporated into this shuttle was incredibly advanced. It lacked the common plasma thrusters at its rear. Its speed rapidly broke the sound barrier, yet it produced no sonic boom whatsoever. The small, petrel-shaped craft moved like a phantom across the high altitude, covering several thousand kilometers west of the City of Glory in just over thirty minutes, arriving above a vast mountain range.

Gu Xiechen’s divine sense locked onto Fu Yaming and Jin Cheng inside the cabin. Both were absorbed in watching the scenery outside the viewport. Only after the shuttle entered the mountainous region did Jin Cheng lazily yawn and ask, puzzled, “Sister Yaming, are you really going to cooperate with this Xiechen? Do you know what I saw on him just now?”

Fu Yaming frowned slightly and said, “You shouldn’t have provoked him that way. That was a very direct insult to him.”

Jin Cheng nodded with lingering fear, her brow also knitting. “When I spat that bit of saliva, I hadn’t considered that point. But I regretted it quickly enough.”

Her seductive eyes rolled back, overlaid with an eerie purple glow. Deep within her pupils, two profound vortexes could faintly be seen slowly spinning. These were a pair of miraculous eyes that seemed capable of seeing through space and traversing time. Jin Cheng spoke in a low voice, “What I saw on him—the people who died directly and indirectly by his hand—number no less than a million. I highly doubt his identity as a mercenary. No mercenary would kill so many people; not even the leader of the Star Alliance’s largest pirate group, the ‘Frenzied Demon’ Clan, has…”

A million people killed directly or indirectly by himself? Gu Xiechen’s eyes widened in astonishment. He began counting on his fingers, calculating carefully. Perhaps even more? The ones killed directly, there were hundreds of thousands on Paradise Planet alone. Indirectly? Who knew how many people had died from the weapons he sold during his years with the Gu Corporation? And how many soldiers of the Hardwood Defense Company had been killed on the battlefield? If all that counted as dying indirectly by his hand, then a million seemed like a low number!

“Interesting ability. What is this girl’s power? Prophecy? Or time recollection? If it’s a prophetic ability, it’s truly formidable. If it’s time recollection… then the most suitable job for her isn't as a pirate; she should be a criminal investigator!” Gu Xiechen maliciously assessed Jin Cheng’s ability in his mind.

“A million people?” Fu Yaming was clearly startled by the number. But in the next moment, she grew excited. “Isn’t that even better? If he has the capability to kill a million people, the current Yafike Kingdom needs exactly someone like him. Jin Cheng, what you said has only strengthened my confidence in forging an alliance with him!”

Glancing sullenly at Fu Yaming, Jin Cheng crawled into Fu Yaming’s embrace like a slug, gently running her fingers through the woman’s short hair.