Chapter 288

Esteemed Huai Yu pursed his lips, “Nonsense! The prophet family’s actions basically deprived Yan Zhonghua of his chance at ever touching the throne, which used to be readily available for him. Of course he wouldn’t let those scumbags off so easily. However, his reasons have nothing to do with me and my precious son.”

Esteemed Lan Yue didn’t give him any face and even poured cold water with his words, “I didn’t say it had anything to do with you either.”

Esteemed Huai Yu glared at Esteemed Lan Yue, his face full of unhappiness.

Esteemed Huai Yu sighed and immediately uttered longingly, “The Demon Realm lacks spiritual Qi and is not suitable for cultivation. It would be nice if the Demon Realm could build its royal palace on a place rich in spiritual Qi, like the Purple Emperor’s Heavenly Capital.”

Esteemed Lan Yue looked at him and nodded. “You can try, but Yan Zhonghua had wantonly put up a huge bounty for you within the Nine Lands. Do you dare return to the Royal Heavenly Capital to try it?”

“I don’t dare, he’ll definitely cut me apart, piece by piece. Besides, I don’t think I can beat him at all now.”

Esteemed Huai Yu suddenly wilted again, slumping dispiritedly in his chair and pouting, “Yan Zhonghua really isn’t anything good. I’ve been gone for so many years, but he still won’t let me off the hook. Moreover, when he said he wanted children back then, I also told him that it was risky to have children; he might not be able to safely raise them. But Yan Zhonghua was still determined to have children, and he even said something about however many I give birth to is however many he’ll raise… Sure enough, the sweet promises men utter in bed are complete rubbish!”

“And whose damn fault was that? If I was Yan Zhonghua and you played me like this, I would have cut you down long ago.” Esteemed Lan Yue kicked at Esteemed Huai Yu, who immediately jumped onto the chair, his image as a wise sage completely gone.

“Aiya, Senior Martial Brother, why don’t you and I get together? In any case, you’re also a ten-thousand-year-old bachelor. I reckon that with this temper of yours, no sweet little Gege will take a fancy to you.”

“Speak properly to me, I don’t care at all about your messy relationship situation.”

Esteemed Huai Yu jumped down from the chair. “Say, Senior Martial Brother, he offered so much money to capture me alive. If I voluntarily tied myself up and appeared in front of him, would he give me that money?”

Dark lines appeared on Esteemed Lan Yue’s face, and he spoke with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “I don’t know, but why don’t you try it yourself? Who knows? Maybe if you act coquettishly in front of him again, he’ll become softhearted and think of all the sweet memories you guys had in the past. Then he will give up on dismembering you into eight pieces and leave you with an intact corpse.”

Esteemed Huai Yu coldly looked at Esteemed Lan Yue, whose words didn’t leave him with any face at all.

If this wasn’t his direct Senior Martial Brother, he definitely would have sewn this person’s mouth shut.

Yan Zhonghua hated him to death. Over the years, it wasn’t like he didn’t take the initiative to find Yan Zhonghua, but all of his attempts were rejected without exception. Yan Zhonghua avoided him and didn’t even want to look at him.

Later when, with much difficulty, he finally endured and stopped provoking Yan Zhonghua, this guy actually put a bounty on him.

What Esteemed Huai Yu hated the most now was to have people bring up his and Yan Zhonghua’s past.

Esteemed Lan Yue allowed Huai Yu to sulk in a corner by himself. “When do you plan to tell Yan Tianhen that you’re his dad?”

“Don’t plan to.” Somewhat jittery, Esteemed Huai Yu, grabbed a spiritual fruit from the fruit bowl, took a few bites, and threw it back to its original place. “I won’t acknowledge him as my son. Ever since I threw him to someone else to raise, I never planned to recognize him as my son again. His dad is Lin Zhan. Even after he goes to the Nine Lands in the future, his dad will still be Lin Zhan.”

Looking at his Junior Martial Brother’s reddened eyes, Esteemed Lan Yue couldn’t help but feel his heart hurting for Huai Yu. He sighed and walked over to him, rubbing his head, “You Ming, don’t be afraid. That child is not that kind of coldhearted person. He will understand you one day.”

“Senior Martial Brother.” Esteemed Huai Yu sniffled and looked at him, “I dare not let him know that I’m his dad. I’m afraid he’ll hate me and despise me, and he’ll even ask why I threw him to be raised by others, or why I gave birth to him knowing full well I was a Divine Devil, bringing him so much suffering… If such a day ever comes, I truly will go crazy.”

Esteemed Lan Yue knew that he really meant it when he said that he’d go crazy; it wasn’t just an exaggerated description.

His mental state was very unstable, which was precisely why Esteemed Lan Yue wracked his brains to bring You Ming from the Nine Lands to the Five Continents so that he could stay with Yan Tianhen. He hoped to stabilize You Ming using this kind of method so that he wouldn’t sink into hallucinations and irritable mood swings from time to time.

Esteemed Lan Yue frowned. He came over and pressed Esteemed Huai Yu’s wrist. “Do you feel unwell these days?”

Huai Yu shook his head, “Not yet. It’s just that I ate some meat a few days ago and felt a little uncomfortable.”

Esteemed Lan Yue loosened his hand. “Continue taking the medicine I found for you. Even if you feel gluttonous, don’t touch meat and the like. If you want to eat something delicious, you may as well come here. Ah Tong has always been a good cook; I’ll have him cook for you.”

“Ay…” Esteemed Huai Yu sighed, feeling very miserable. Not allowing him to eat meat was much crueler than killing him. However, he understood his own problems — it was better to not court death due to his desire for good food.

To be honest, when he goes crazy, even he himself is afraid!

Esteemed Huai Yu looked up at the Esteemed Lan Yue, “Elder Martial Brother, I think the Five Continents are also quite good, so it doesn’t matter if we don’t ever return to the Nine Lands.”

“I came to the Five Continents for the sake of the prophet family, and you… you came here for the sake of the Demon Realm and your son.” Esteemed Lan Yue flatly refuted, “Don’t say childish words; you know what you have to do.”

Esteemed Huai Yu froze for a moment, then smiled. “Senior Martial Brother is right. Ah Hen must follow me back to the Nine Lands. Otherwise, I will not rest assured no matter who he stays with.”

“Sooner or later, he’ll know that you are his dad.”

Esteemed Huai Yu tilted his head. “He won’t; he’ll only know that Huai Yu is his Master and that You Ming is his dad, but he won’t know that Huai Yu and You Ming were the same person to begin with.”

At the very least, even if Yan Tianhen didn’t acknowledge him as his dad, he could still continue to enjoy Yan Tianhen’s “filial piety” as Huai Yu.

Esteemed Lan Yue cast him a sidelong glance. “As long as you don’t spill the beans.”

Just then, the wind chime in the corner of the room rang, and both looked towards the wind chime at the same time.

“Someone is coming.” Esteemed Huai Yu curled his lips, “Why don’t you guess — is it that little disciple of yours?”

Without waiting for a reply from Esteemed Lan Yue, a tall young man dressed in a pale blue Taoist robe appeared at the open door.

The person was like jade, his face like the rainbow.

Lin Xuanzhi gave a simple half-salute, “Greeting Master and Martial Uncle.”

Esteemed Huai Yu sized up Lin Xuanzhi with narrowed eyes, full of criticisms left and right. No matter how he looked, he always felt that this brat didn’t look very pleasing to the eye. He had never seen Lin Xuanzhi before this but had always heard people mention him. Now that he’d seen him, his first impression was that this lad looked like he was carved from the same mold as that oh-so-incredible father of his.

Tsk, tsk, tsk!

Esteemed Huai Yu cracked his knuckles, suddenly getting the urge to beat someone up.

Esteemed Huai Yu resisted the amazement in his heart. “You’re Lin Xuanzhi?”

Esteemed Lan Yue quickly gave Esteemed Huai Yu a look that said “shut up and don’t talk”.

A peculiar expression flashed through Lin Xuanzhi’s eyes but instantly went away. He looked up at Esteemed Huai Yu. “Yes.”

Knowing that he’d made a big mistake, Esteemed Huai Yu immediately made up for his blunder with a smile, “I haven’t seen you for so many days, yet you’re still so handsome and charming.”

Lin Xuanzhi, “…”

Esteemed Lan Yue felt that he couldn’t continue watching this ongoing trainwreck. Although he had brought a subordinate to the Five Continents with him to play the role of Esteemed Huai Yu for many years and had that subordinate deliberately behave in an eccentric and unpredictable manner, not even that poor subordinate of his would flirt with his disciple as soon as he opened his mouth.

You Ming’s temperament hadn’t changed, even after so many years. Whenever he saw a good-looking person, he just had to go up and playfully flirt with them for a bit.

Seeing that Lin Xuanzhi’s expression was a little dark, Esteemed Huai Yu hurriedly remedied “I spoke wrongly just now. It should be ‘more handsome and charming than before’.”

Lin Xuanzhi immediately blushed with shame. How was he supposed to respond to this?

This was his elder and also his Martial Uncle. He couldn’t just reply “You flatter me” or return the praise to the other party, could he?

Now that it had come to this, not even Esteemed Lan Yue could look on any further. He coughed softly, “What can I do for Xuanzhi?”

Lin Xuanzhi came to himself and responded, “I haven’t seen my Didi for many days. When I heard that Martial Uncle Huai Yu came, I specially made a turn here to ask if Ah Hen has caused any trouble for Martial Uncle.”

“Your Didi, ah–” Esteemed Huai Yu stretched out his tone and touched his chin. “This lad is a little disobedient; he couldn’t even control the tiger cubs that he brought. They scared my chickens and ducks so much that they can no longer lay eggs. I’ve been pondering these couple of days whether the two cubs would taste better braised or fried. Otherwise, why don’t Martial Nephew Xuanzhi give me an idea?”

Lin Xuanzhi, “…”

He thought that neither was good.

Lin Xuanzhi smiled faintly, “Martial Uncle is joking.”

“Actually, if you didn’t find me today, I would have looked for you.”

Lin Xuanzhi looked at the malicious smile on the corner of his mouth and immediately had a bad feeling. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s definitely something related to your younger brother. Let me ask you, is your brother’s matter your matter? If he gets into trouble, will you take responsibility for him? “

All right, so it seemed like Yan Tianhen had caused a disaster.

Lin Xuanzhi composed himself, “Naturally. No matter what Ah Hen did, I ask Martial Uncle to please not make things difficult for him on the basis of his young age. You can tell me about it instead.”

Esteemed Huai Yu narrowed his eyes, “Oh, it’s not a big deal either. He just owes this Venerable a great sum of money is all.”

Lin Xuanzhi was shocked. “How much does he owe?”

Esteemed Huai Yu took out a gold abacus from somewhere, his fingers flying over it as he calculated at light speed. One could tell from a glance that he often did this kind of work.

After calculating, Esteemed Huai Yu summed up, “He destroyed a lot of my spiritual plant fields in the past few days, totaling 368 plants, including 200 Second Level high-grade spiritual plants, 100 Third Level high-grade spiritual plants, and also some Fourth Level spiritual plants…but these are not important. The important thing is that there are three Fifth Level spiritual plants included in this number, which are specially grown for the sect. The people on Hundred Refinement Peak should be coming to find me in a few days to ask for these plants. If I can’t take them out, I will lose all my face. Those spiritual plants are not worth any money, but it’s hard to buy my face, even with thousands of gold. If I lose face, how will you compensate?”

Lin Xuanzhi once again felt that his worldview had been severely challenged.

When he saw Esteemed Huai Yu in the past, although he felt that this person was wild and unruly, not very easy to talk to, and that his behavior was somewhat different from that of ordinary people, Lin Xuanzhi still didn’t think that he was as… shameless… as he was now.

Fine, he shouldn’t use such slanderous words to describe Yan Tianhen’s Master, but he truly had never seen a second person who could say such words.

Lin Xuanzhi couldn’t help worrying about Yan Tianhen’s future.

But worrying was worrying; the immediate matter still needed to be resolved.

Lin Xuanzhi asked, “How much does Martial Uncle Huai Yu think is enough to compensate?”

Esteemed Huai Yu clapped his hands joyfully, “Oh! Lad, you’re really considerate, I like it. I will calculate it according to the cost and age of those spiritual plants. Then I’ll even down the total and sell it to you at a lower price. The total amount is 40,000 gold. However, I reckon that Yan Tianhen will destroy more spiritual plants in the future; it’ll be difficult to calculate that amount ah.”