Chapter 1277: What Cannot Be Said
Qi Xuansu raised his hand and waved away the smoke. “How do you know if I haven’t asked Qi Jiaozheng?”
Madam Qi supported her right elbow with her left hand while holding the pipe level in her right hand. “When did that happen? How come I didn’t know about it?”
Qi Xuansu said, “Do you remember how I ended up feuding with Wang Jiaohe and Wang Danqing, the father and son? It was that time. Qi Jiaozheng was there, and I asked him about this matter.”
“What did Qi Jiaozheng say?” Madam Qi asked.
Qi Xuansu replied, “Qi Jiaozheng said he didn’t know anyone named Qi Haoran. That was obviously a lie because even the dead Qi Jianyuan knew about my master, so how could the head of the Qi family not know? Looking back now, his denial only proves how extraordinary my master was. There’s definitely more to the story.”
Madam Qi clicked her tongue. “More to the story? What kind of story?”
Qi Xuansu said, “Let’s go through this from the beginning. I’ve always wondered why you couldn’t save my master. With your level of cultivation and advanced knowledge of what would happen, it made no sense, unless you didn’t want to save him. But then I realized something—I never actually saw my master die. The last time I saw him, he shouted for me to run. Then I was chased by the Inn’s assassin and lost consciousness. Everything after that came from you. You told me he died and that you buried him in the cemetery under the Requiem Division in Jade Capital.”
“In that situation, of course I believed you. I understood clearly that my master’s cultivation was mediocre and that he couldn’t have survived a siege. I had no reason to doubt it. But that assumption only holds if my master really was the man I believed him to be and if you truly just happened to pass by.
“But now that I know you weren’t just passing by and that everything was within your control, all of my assumptions went out the window. Was my master really just a regular fourth-rank Jijiu Daoist? After all, you’re also only a fourth-rank Jijiu Daoist. What if all this was just a staged play? After I passed out, the fight ended, everyone dispersed, and you came in to clean up the aftermath.”
Madam Qi clicked her tongue. “Impressive imagination. It’s a shame you don’t write novels.”
Qi Xuansu said, “Madam Qi, I may not be exceptionally smart, but I’m no fool.”
“That much I admit.” Madam Qi nodded. “You’re not stupid. If you were, you’d still be kept in the dark, believing a mother just fell from the sky and that you could rely on her to rise to the pinnacle of the Daoist Order.”