Ch. 28
Chapter 28: They’re Nothing But a Bunch of Good-for-Nothings, Living Only to Make Fools of Themselves
Though her heart was full of confusion and helplessness, Cheng Si said nothing more.
At that moment, she finally understood Cheng Yu’s real pain.
No matter how much you said, all you would ever receive was perfunctory dismissal and shirked responsibility.
She lowered her head in confusion and looked at her own hand, pale and utterly bloodless.
Then she gritted her teeth and made a decision.
“If none of you will do anything about Second Brother, then I’ll go find him myself!”
“Si’er!”
“Little Sister!”
The others immediately called out to stop her. How could she casually go out while her body was still in poor condition?
But Cheng Si refused to listen and turned to walk out.
Yet before she could even take half a step, she was held fast by a terrifying pressure of Internal Energy and could not move in the slightest.
The power of a peak Ninth Rank expert—Internal Energy released outside the body!
With reddened eyes, she turned back to look at her father.
Cheng Zhenjiang’s hand pressed against the table trembled without end, and his entire face twitched with rage.
“You refuse to listen to your parents and insist on siding with an Imperial Hound of the court. Is this what you learned at Snow Mountain Palace?”
“Do all of you think I’m easy to talk to now, and that you can do whatever you please?!”
His roaring voice carried Internal Energy with it, making the entire room tremble.
“Mother.”
Cheng Si’s face was pale as she looked toward Zhao Xichun with reddened eyes, hoping her mother, who loved her the most, would plead for her.
But to her surprise, Zhao Xichun shook her head as well.
“Si’er, don’t use your sick body to threaten your parents. Your second brother is already acting rashly and immaturely. How can you learn from him?”
She had already all but lost one son. She could not allow her youngest daughter to be willful as well.
“Don’t even think about going to find that rebellious son!”
Cheng Zhenjiang continued shouting angrily, “I think you learned this same unfilial and unrighteous sickness from him! Yue’er, take your sister away and don’t let her run around!”
“Yes.”
Cheng Yue hurriedly nodded and pulled her ashen-faced younger sister out of the room.
With the two sisters gone, not a trace of the joyful reunion atmosphere remained.
Only sorrow and anger were left behind.
Cheng Zhenjiang drank a mouthful of hot tea and panted heavily as he tried to suppress the fury in his heart.
No evil bandit, no monstrous fiend under heaven had ever made this great hero as agitated as this.
Who could have thought he would be driven to such a state by his own children?
“Brother Zhenjiang.” Zhao Xichun, who had been bowing her head and wiping away tears all this time, looked at him tearfully.
“No matter what, Yu’er is still our own flesh and blood. No matter how terrible he has become, we still cannot just stand by and watch him walk into an abyss and never turn back.”
Though she had already asked Zhao Yi to look after and protect Cheng Yu, that was only a temporary measure.
Could they really sever ties forever?
In this world, there was no such thing as blood relations truly being cut off!
“Sigh!”
With the fury of someone who hated iron for not becoming steel, Cheng Zhenjiang let out a long sigh, then forced a trace of gentleness onto his face as he looked at his wife.
“Sigh, do you think I truly want this?”
“That rebellious son is safe and sound right now, so let him run into a few walls first. Once he understands that without chivalry and the righteous path, one cannot go far, he will naturally realize his mistakes and come back to kowtow and apologize to me.”
He too felt helpless about it.
But as a father, he could not take the initiative to resolve this matter. If he did, it would make it seem as though he were yielding.
That was something Cheng Zhenjiang could never accept in his heart.
He believed that chivalry itself would teach Cheng Yu what was right and what was wrong.
Once Cheng Yu found himself unable to move a single step forward, he would naturally come back and apologize to him, his father.
“If he comes back to admit his mistakes and kowtow to me, do you really think I, as his father, would let my son die?”
“Mhm. I only hope Yu’er will understand sooner and admit his mistakes, so that we can make up for these eighteen years of kinship lost in separation.”
Zhao Xichun wiped away her tears and nodded.
“The urgent matter now is the real reason we came to Jiangnan.”
Cheng Zhenjiang let out a breath and looked at Cheng Feng with satisfaction again.
“Now that Feng’er has broken through to the Fifth Rank and his strength has advanced by leaps and bounds, helping him climb several more places in the Human Ranking is the great matter for our Cheng Family and the River-Severing Sect.”
This youngest son was the one who gave him the least worry and the most pride.
So young, yet already with such cultivation—perhaps in the future he could even break into the top ten of the Human Ranking. His future was limitless.
He was the hope of the family and the sect!
What was even rarer was that Cheng Feng had learned and put into practice the chivalrous path Cheng Zhenjiang himself upheld.
In the jianghu, he enjoyed the fine reputation of the “Young Northern Alliance Leader.”
The moment he thought of this, Cheng Zhenjiang felt that all the countless resources and efforts he had poured into Cheng Feng had been worth it.
Zhao Xichun also looked at Cheng Feng with loving eyes.
This youngest son had gathered twice as much of her love and was the most thoughtful of all.
Hearing this, Cheng Feng nodded obediently and cupped his fists.
“Thank you, Father and Mother. Still, since Little Sister said that Second Brother may be in danger, I feel we cannot simply do nothing. Why don’t I go lend him a hand?”
He forced himself to suppress his disgust toward Cheng Yu and made the request against his true feelings.
Just look at what a good child he was!
Cheng Zhenjiang and Zhao Xichun nodded in satisfaction.
“There’s no need. You’re at the stage where you need to build your reputation, so don’t get involved in that messy business. Just cultivate in peace. As for your second brother’s affairs, we know how to judge them.”
“We came all the way to Dragon Abyss Prefecture in Jiangnan this time in order to ask Sword-Forging Manor for a good sword above Human Grade for you. That is the truly first-rate important matter!”
“Yes!”
Cheng Feng nodded. Obtaining a sword from Sword-Forging Manor would greatly improve his overall strength.
As for his parents saying they would temporarily ignore Cheng Yu, as a famed young hero in the jianghu, Cheng Feng was naturally no fool.
On the day Zhao Xichun went out, Cheng Feng had already asked and found out exactly where she had gone.
His mother had gone to ask his maternal grandfather Zhao Yi to deal with Cheng Yu’s matter.
At the thought of Zhao Yi, that old and improper grandfather of his, Cheng Feng felt more disdain than familial affection.
Still, Zhao Yi had once been a renowned Heaven Ranking martial artist, a Grandmaster whose realm had since fallen.
He was also an important part of Cheng Feng’s network and resources.
So even if Cheng Feng disliked him, he could not openly fall out with him.
Yet the moment he thought of Zhao Yi meeting Cheng Yu, an inexplicable trace of resentment arose in his heart.
That fellow was once again ruining the harmony of his family!
He was truly hateful to the extreme!
Since he had already severed ties, why not just disappear completely to some place where no one would ever see him again?
An Imperial Hound of the court with no chivalry or moral virtue at all—if he stayed alive, it was only a waste!
He secretly made up his mind that he would definitely make his parents give up on that unfilial and unrighteous creature completely.
As for a son, having him alone was enough!
...
Qingjiang Prefecture.
Pingpo County, which bordered Qinghe County.
The Pingshan Sect, which had once dominated the region so thoroughly that the local government and the local Jinyiwei Banner Office had been squeezed to the point of having no room left to survive,
had now lost its former flourishing and awe-inspiring appearance.
All because a black-clad mounted force from Qinghe County had arrived, and the moment they opened their mouths, they demanded to search for evidence in a case.
A few words of disagreement later, bolts rained down, and saber-light and sword-shadows flashed everywhere.
No matter how the Pingshan Sect imagined it, they could never have expected that, against the mere forces of a single Jinyiwei Banner Office, they would have no power to resist at all.
In an instant, the accumulation of several generations was reduced to ashes.
【The host has swept clean a disrespectful force and displayed the standing of the Jinyiwei. Reward: Comprehension of a Movement Technique!】
Cheng Yu was currently supervising the Jinyiwei subordinates as they busied themselves everywhere, dragging out one sect member after another and carrying out endless quantities of gold and silver treasure.
“My lord, what should we do with these people? Take them back to Qinghe County to work the coal mine?”
Cheng Yu shook his head.
“That would be too troublesome. Have their relatives contact other relatives and ransom them back. Whoever cannot be ransomed will be executed on the spot.”
Faced with this group that called itself a jianghu sect but in truth committed every sort of bully’s crime imaginable,
he felt not the slightest psychological burden in killing them.
“You dog slave of the Great Qian dog emperor! You dare kill my disciples? I already sent someone to fetch this county’s Jinyiwei. You’ll pay dearly for this!”
A middle-aged man whose limbs had all been broken lay on the ground shrieking miserably.
He was the master of the Pingshan Sect.
In recent days, when he had heard that the Qinghe County Jinyiwei were slaughtering jianghu forces everywhere, he had mostly felt anger and disdain.
But now that the killing had come to his own doorstep, all he felt was despair and hatred.
“This county’s Jinyiwei? They’re nothing but a bunch of good-for-nothings, living only to make fools of themselves.”
Cheng Yu let out a cold, indifferent laugh and walked away with his hands behind his back.
That one step away allowed the middle-aged man to see that on the pillar behind Cheng Yu, right at the main gate of the sect, a corpse had been tied up.
It was actually the local Jinyiwei General Banner Captain who had colluded with him!
“You madman! So it really was you, you madman!”
The middle-aged man had never imagined that this Jinyiwei would even kill his own colleagues. In panic and despair, he screamed.
Only now did he recognize him!
In all of Qingjiang Prefecture, there was only one man who dared act in such overbearing and tyrannical fashion—the Qinghe General Banner Captain, Cheng Yu!
The very man whose name made countless jianghu martial artists turn pale and wish to get rid of him as quickly as possible!
In the midst of his terror and regret, a Jinyiwei drove a Xiuchun Saber into his heart.
He had actually dared insult the great General Banner Captain Cheng. He was asking to die!
“My lord! This Iron Palm Sect really is connected to the case!”
Cheng Yu took the account books, letters, and other materials his subordinate presented and began reading them.
“Again to Dragon Abyss Prefecture? Why do they need so many laborers there?”
Cheng Yu frowned slightly.
As the confiscations and investigations continued, all the deeper clues were pointing toward Dragon Abyss Prefecture.
That place was not some barren wasteland in need of labor for development. On the contrary, it was the most prosperous land in all of Dragon Abyss Path.
And what made it even more special was this: unlike Qingjiang Prefecture, where the various forces were tangled together in a complex web, Dragon Abyss Prefecture was under the absolute dominance of a single power.
A single great sect renowned throughout the entire jianghu of Great Qian, controlling the overwhelming majority of one prefecture’s resources and population.
It was almost like a state within a state.
“Sword-Forging Manor...”
Cheng Yu softly repeated the name of that sect, and a cold light appeared in his eyes.