Ch. 21
Chapter 21: If There Aren’t Any in the River and You Can Still Catch Them, Doesn’t That Just Show How Good Your Fishing Skills Are?
Cheng Feng wanted Cheng Zhenjiang and his wife to remain at the River-Severing Sect to protect him and give him guidance.
Hearing that, Cheng Zhenjiang nodded in satisfaction. As expected of his son.
Breaking through to the Fifth Rank had already brought him so many gains. Both his talent and diligence were extraordinary.
Zhao Xichun said helplessly, “I’m sorry, Feng’er. Your father and I have matters to attend to outside, so we may not have time to stay with you. How about this—I’ll have the Great Elder stand guard for you instead. He’s at the Eighth Rank, so he’ll be more than enough to solve your problems.”
When Cheng Feng heard that he could not keep his father and mother at the River-Severing Sect, he felt somewhat displeased.
Still, he put on an understanding expression.
“Thank you, Mother! I only thought that sorting through my gains was a major matter related to my breaking into the Human Ranking, so I... However, if Father and Mother have something to do, then of course I shouldn’t force the issue.”
What an understanding child. All his painstaking effort in raising him had not been wasted!
If only that rebellious elder brother of his were half as obedient as his younger brother.
Then he would not have been so angry.
Zhao Xichun had just been about to nod and praise him when she suddenly heard Cheng Zhenjiang speak beside her.
“We should stay and protect Feng’er after all. Breaking into the Human Ranking is a major event that concerns his whole life. Not the slightest carelessness can be allowed!”
With a Heaven Ranking expert like him present, if Cheng Feng gained even a little more, he might be able to move up another place.
“This...”
Zhao Xichun, who doted greatly on her younger son, was troubled at this moment as well.
She wanted to go look for her eldest son, but she also wanted to stay and accompany her younger son. Still, she quickly made her decision.
“Then what about Yu’er? He may be in danger!”
Cheng Zhenjiang thought about it. Cheng Feng’s matter was the top priority, so he could not personally go and look for Cheng Yu.
Nor did he want his own people to interfere in the Jinyiwei’s affairs, lest a bad reputation be left behind.
In the end, he arrived at an answer.
“How about this—let my father-in-law go. Isn’t the old man just traveling in the North right now? You can go find him. No one would find it strange if he meddled in the Jinyiwei’s affairs.”
“My father?”
Hearing Cheng Zhenjiang’s words, Zhao Xichun nodded. Her father really was a good candidate.
A top Ninth Rank grandmaster of great renown in the jianghu.
The Heaven Ranking eccentric, Zhao Yi.
He acted strangely and always went alone.
He did things as he pleased, paying absolutely no mind to the so-called views of jianghu chivalry, so no one would find it strange if he interfered in the Jinyiwei’s affairs.
And for a maternal grandfather to solve problems for his grandson could not be more fitting.
The only problem was that Zhao Xichun would need to put in some effort to beg Zhao Yi.
The Eccentric Zhao Yi had an odd temper. His likes and dislikes were clear-cut, and his conduct was impossible to predict.
And most importantly, he very much disliked Cheng Zhenjiang as a son-in-law.
...
The next day.
By the side of a broad river with endless mud-sand and surging waves,
an old man wearing a bamboo hat sat fishing with a bamboo rod in hand, utterly unconcerned about the enormous billows at his feet that were enough to swallow hundreds or thousands of people.
Even well-meaning passersby who came to warn him found it useless.
Instead, he gave them a plump golden mandarin fish weighing more than ten jin.
The passerby scratched his head in confusion. “He fishes but doesn’t eat them. What a strange old man.”
Hearing this, the old man merely smiled and continued fishing.
As he fished, he suddenly took out a faintly glowing jade pendant and, smiling, turned to look at the figure in the distance.
“How did a daughter who’s been married off suddenly think to come see an old man that nobody cares about?”
Zhao Xichun, her face full of worry, forced out a smile, came before her father, and bowed.
“Father.”
When Zhao Yi saw his daughter like this, the smile on his face disappeared at once.
“You were living perfectly well as Great Hero Cheng’s wife, so why do you look like this? Did that brat Cheng Zhenjiang make you angry again?!”
The moment Cheng Zhenjiang’s name was mentioned, Zhao Yi’s expression became extremely ugly.
When he was young, he had been too busy and had long been away from his daughter’s side, so he had spoiled her doubly from childhood onward.
Now that the daughter he had raised with his own hands was upset, a father’s heart was filled with unbearable anger.
“Didn’t he promise me that he would treat you well and never let you suffer any grievances?”
“That stinking brat! Did he use all that rotten talk of his to upset you again?”
Zhao Yi cursed furiously, and with a swing of the fishing rod in his hand,
he actually split open a gap in the rushing, surging river.
An instant later, the severed giant wave crashed forward, kicking up monstrous sprays, while the fish and shrimp in the river were blasted onto the shore.
This was the power of a top Ninth Rank martial artist, a Heaven Ranking powerhouse only one step away from Grandmaster.
A casual gesture from him was already terrifying to such a degree.
“It wasn’t Brother Zhenjiang who made your daughter angry. I was just too worried about my Yu’er.”
Zhao Xichun lowered her head and explained.
Zhao Yi frowned. “Who is Yu’er? Did Cheng Zhenjiang take in another disciple?”
Everyone in the world knew that Great Hero Cheng loved taking in disciples and had countless students under his command.
He treated every one of them generously and taught them everything he knew.
“If he dares upset you over that, this old man will definitely storm River-Severing Mountain. He doesn’t even know how to cherish my two granddaughters, yet he’s busy looking after other people’s children!”
Zhao Yi spoke in a strange, mocking tone.
If his own daughter had not been bewitched and swept away when she was still young, he would never have exchanged another word with someone like Cheng Zhenjiang.
That man’s mouth was always full of lofty principles. It was one thing for him to twist himself into knots, but he also liked forcing others to do the same.
He hesitated over everything, fearing this and fearing that.
Zhao Yi hated that sort of person the most.
“Yu’er isn’t Brother Zhenjiang’s disciple. He’s the son we lost in the great fire all those years ago...”
Hearing that, Zhao Yi’s old face instantly darkened.
“The great fire? During the great fire, Yue’er was with you, and Feng’er and Si’er hadn’t even been born yet. Where did this other son come from?!”
He widened his eyes, utterly shocked by his daughter’s words.
Tears streamed uncontrollably down Zhao Xichun’s face.
“At... at that time, there was another child who went missing and was never found. Brother Zhenjiang and I were afraid you’d be heartbroken, so we didn’t say anything...”
“Afraid I’d be heartbroken? I think that fellow was afraid I’d cripple him!”
Hearing this, Zhao Yi flew into a rage and threw down the fishing rod in his hand as he shouted.
Back then, Zhao Yi had been overseas. When he heard that, during a time of domestic troubles and foreign threats, enemies Cheng Zhenjiang had made because of his temper had seized the opportunity to retaliate against his daughter’s family,
he had flown into a furious rage, rushed back to Great Qian, and avenged them by slaughtering all those enemies.
That had provoked a terrifying hidden old monster Grandmaster, who had wounded him.
Yet Cheng Zhenjiang, the very root of all that enmity, had instead turned around and blamed him for killing too much and creating too much karma.
Zhao Yi had been enraged beyond measure. For the sake of his daughter and grandchildren, he had not completely torn relations apart, but they had almost ceased all contact.
If he had known back then that his own flesh-and-blood grandson had been lost because of it, he absolutely would not have let the matter rest so easily.
Even if it cost him his old life, he would have made those true culprits, together with the old monster behind them, repay it with their lives.
And then he would cripple that useless son-in-law, Cheng Zhenjiang, as well!
In the eyes of the Eccentric Zhao Yi, everyone aside from his relatives could be destroyed!
He looked angrily at his daughter, his beard bristling upright. “Why didn’t you tell me for all these years?”
“We were afraid you would worry, and you were injured after all...” Zhao Xichun lowered her head, her face full of sorrow.
The moment Zhao Yi heard that, he knew it had to be Cheng Zhenjiang’s idea, because he was afraid Zhao Yi would begin a slaughter.
He really was injured, but even injured, a dignified Ninth Rank martial artist was someone whom not many in the jianghu could threaten.
The anger in his heart was boundless, but when he saw his daughter’s sorrowful appearance, his heart softened again.
“By your account, hasn’t my eldest grandson already been found? Then why are you worried again?”
“That child, he...”
Zhao Xichun had come precisely to ask her father to protect Cheng Yu, so naturally she no longer concealed anything.
She told him everything about Cheng Yu’s situation and the personality he had developed.
As well as some of what he had gone through at home, and what happened afterward.
“...Yu’er is too hasty and too ruthless in the way he does things. By now, I fear he has already provoked trouble he cannot resolve, so I wanted to ask you to come out of retirement and watch over your own grandson.”
“Ask me to watch over him? As his parents, you drove the child away and now want someone else to watch over him?”
Even though he had been worried about his daughter’s mood just a moment ago, Zhao Yi could not hold back at this moment.
Were these parents even doing anything human?
Their son had been lost for more than ten years, and they had not gone to look for him. After finally finding him again, they forced him away, and now they were pushing the responsibility onto someone else.
They were even making an elder like him work to make up for their mistakes.
“That’s not it!”
Zhao Xichun hurriedly defended herself. “It’s because Feng’er’s breakthrough to the Fifth Rank requires Brother Zhenjiang and me to watch over him, so...”
“Excuses! Even if the two of you can’t leave, is he not a dignified sect master and martial alliance leader? Can’t he casually send out even a single person?”
Zhao Yi directly exposed the hypocrisy in his daughter’s words. “In the end, isn’t it just that you think my grandson matters less than his pointless reputation!”
The greatest danger facing Cheng Yu came from within the Jinyiwei itself.
As his father, there would have been no problem with Cheng Zhenjiang handling it personally. But if he sent people as the Martial Alliance Leader of the North, then others would seize upon that as a weakness.
But could even one weakness compare to his own son’s circumstances?
“Brother Zhenjiang’s identity is unusual, so naturally he has to take more things into consideration. That’s also for the children’s future good...”
“Hmph! Excuses. Saying so much just means you don’t care. If you really cared, would you have forced him to the point of severing ties with you?”
Zhao Yi pitied his poor grandson and angrily tore apart Zhao Xichun’s excuses.
Hearing Zhao Yi say this, a trace of sudden realization surfaced in Zhao Xichun’s mind.
Had she really not cared for Cheng Yu as much as she had imagined?
For someone who had always believed herself to be a good mother, this was impossible to accept.
“That’s right. If I were truly a competent mother, if I truly loved my child enough, would I really have stood by step by step and watched things reach this point?”
More than ten years adrift, countless chances during the half-month after their reunion, and after Cheng Yu left...
She had countless opportunities to act and change everything.
But she had done nothing!
Tears instantly fell like raindrops, and the guilt and sorrow in Zhao Xichun’s heart reached their peak.
“Yu’er, Mother is sorry!”
“Sigh.”
Seeing his daughter so heartbroken, Zhao Yi’s heart ached terribly as well.
It was because he had spoiled this daughter so much that she thought the world revolved around her, making her overly naive and simple—even to the point of becoming foolish enough to do harm.
Later, after she followed someone like Cheng Zhenjiang and listened too much to all the flattery about being a hero’s wife, she had come to live ever more selfishly...
“Stop crying, daughter. I’ll go. My own grandson—whether you tell me or not, I have to go.”
“Anyone who dares touch Zhao Yi’s grandson hasn’t been born yet.”
“Th-thank you, Father.”
Only then did Zhao Xichun’s grief ease a little.
“Once Feng’er’s matter is over, I’ll definitely treat Yu’er well and make it up to him!”
Zhao Yi shook his head helplessly.
“Go back. If you keep crying by the riverside, that brat will just think you’re making him lose face.”
“Mhm. Oh, right, Father. If you have time, you can go see the other children too. They miss you very much.”
“Especially Feng’er. He said that after breaking through to the Fifth Rank, he would definitely bring you honor and not let those people in the jianghu speak nonsense about you!”
Zhao Xichun wiped away her tears and left in sorrow.
As Zhao Yi watched his daughter leave, he turned around and expressionlessly looked toward the surging, muddy river.
“Come out. If your skill isn’t up to par, then stop making a fool of yourself.”
The moment those words were spoken,
a figure wearing a golden mask silently emerged from the already raging river.
The man’s powerful inner force was completely undisguised.
Only his appearance was extremely strange.
Tied around his waist with a rope was actually a string of large fish, each one a golden mandarin fish weighing more than ten jin.
The masked man scratched his head. “Mister Zhao’s martial arts are unmatched. I never thought the turtle-breath concealment technique I used would be completely unable to hide me from you. I’ve made a fool of myself.”
Zhao Yi glanced at him.
“I also couldn’t tell what concealment art you used... it’s just that you hung the fish very well. Next time, don’t.”
The masked man froze.
So the flaw had come from the fish he was secretly hanging for Zhao Yi below the water.
No, wait. He was a dignified Eighth Rank expert, and he had practiced for so long. His hands were as steady as could be.
With one end hanging fish, he could tie tofu to the other end and still not have the fishing line cut through it.
How had Mister Zhao discovered it?
Zhao Yi said blandly, “Could you at least use some common sense when secretly hanging fish? Where would mandarin fish come from in this Red River?”
The masked man stood there blankly, never expecting that such a place would reveal the flaw.
His flattery had landed right on the thigh of a Jiangnan beauty!
After standing there dumbly for a long while, the masked man finally spoke.
“If there aren’t any in the river and you can still catch them, doesn’t that just show how good your fishing skills are...”