Ch. 31
Chapter 31: An Unanswerable Open Scheme
The moment the Li family heard that, they were instantly enraged!
Old Madam Ma in particular was so furious that her whole body began to tremble.
She had never expected that after lowering herself and putting on such a pleasant face to speak to him, Li Mu would still dare to turn hostile!
She was his own grandmother!
What they had not expected even more was that Li Mu would be this arrogant.
He actually dared to threaten the entire Li family.
Compared to the Li Mu from before, the one who had always been meek and submissive and let the Li family knead him into whatever shape they pleased, it was as if...
he had become a different person!
“You unfilial wretch!”
His eldest uncle immediately let out an angry roar, his entire aura surging upward in an instant.
He glared viciously at Li Mu.
Whenever Old Madam Ma gave an order, he was always the first to charge to the front.
But Li Mu showed no fear at all. Instead, he let out a short laugh.
“No wonder outsiders all say the entire Li family was held up by my father alone, while everyone else in the Li family is nothing but useless trash.”
“I can’t help laughing every time I see a waste like you!”
“You’re already in your forties, yet you’re only Yellow Rank, Third Grade. Is your brain full of shit or something?”
“Other than shouting and yelling, I’ve never seen you capable of anything else!”
“If you had even the slightest bit of manly backbone, you’d make your move and teach me a lesson right now! Then I, Li Mu, might actually look at you properly!”
“If you don’t dare, then clutch your head and get the hell out of my sight! Stop barking here like a dog!”
As Li Mu spoke, his true qi also exploded upward with a boom, and his eyes burned with towering fury.
Those words!
They were simply too arrogant!
Every single sentence stabbed straight into his eldest uncle’s sorest spot.
This was no different from publicly slapping him across the face with a thunderous crack!
And the key was that anyone could tell Li Mu was using a provocation tactic.
No matter how cowardly Li Mu’s eldest uncle was, he could no longer stay rational at this point.
“You little bastard, you’re asking to die!!”
With that furious roar, Li Dayong immediately stepped forward and punched toward Li Mu’s chest.
“Don’t attack!!”
Old Madam Ma cried out in alarm and tried to stop Li Dayong.
She suddenly realized it. Li Mu had deliberately provoked him into making a move!
This was nothing less than one of Li Mu’s open schemes.
Vicious to the extreme!
Did you, Li Dayong, really still think Li Mu was a junior of the Li family, someone you could hit whenever you pleased?
In the past, even if you crippled him, it would still have been an internal family matter, and the judicial authorities would have found it difficult to interfere.
But now Li Mu no longer had any relationship with the Li family.
In a public place, a Third-Grade martial artist suddenly attacking a Second-Grade martial artist, and one who was also the champion of the Abyss First Battle at that, was not some fair duel where injuries did not count. This was a crime!
The key point was that it would have been one thing if you could actually beat him.
Li Dayong’s body had long since been hollowed out by years of wine and women. He only had Third-Grade cultivation in name.
Li Mu, meanwhile, was in the full force of his momentum. He had smashed a Third-Grade Abyss monster to death with a single swing of his staff, so what did you amount to?
If Li Mu really beat Li Dayong in public, then that would count as legitimate self-defense. A beating for free!
And the most terrifying part was the chain of consequences behind this incident.
In a high-martial world, no matter how great a force was, if there was no powerhouse with high cultivation holding it down, it would quickly decline.
Your business was someone else’s cake.
When Li Qianfeng was still alive, he had been Ninth Grade, extraordinarily powerful, and more than capable of suppressing the Li family’s industries.
But now, the Li family’s assets were soaring on the strength of their S-rank talent, while their fighting power was stuck at the critical point where Li Xiaohao had yet to grow up and Li Dayong could not shoulder the burden.
If Li Dayong were publicly beaten by Li Mu, it was hard to imagine how many obstacles the Li family’s rise would run into.
Old Madam Ma had always valued calculation above all else, and she instantly understood Li Mu’s intentions.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
The moment Li Mu saw Li Dayong make his move, the smile at the corner of his mouth could no longer be suppressed.
He suddenly stamped his foot, and a golden shield floated up in front of him.
Li Dayong would never have imagined that Li Mu actually dared to resist, so he had not held back his strength at all.
His punch smashed into the shield. Protected by his true qi, he barely managed to preserve his wrist.
But the shield did not move in the slightest.
“What a joke!”
Li Mu could not help but sneer.
Dragon Resonance Final Echo would only explode automatically when the intensity of the attack it received reached its limit.
Li Dayong’s attack had not even reached half of Dragon Resonance Final Echo’s endurance limit!
Li Mu could only detonate it manually, and the blast was so weak that it merely forced Li Dayong to stumble backward.
Immediately afterward, an iron staff came crashing down toward his head.
Li Dayong was still a Third-Grade martial artist after all, so he had a few defensive tricks. He abruptly raised both arms to block.
His forearms turned wooden in color, and he forcefully took Li Mu’s attack head-on.
But his legs could not support him, and he dropped to his knees with a heavy crash.
With a crack, his knees shattered the blue bricks on the ground!
Amid his miserable screams, he ended up kneeling stiffly right in front of Li Mu.
Li Mu held the Thornflower Staff pressed down on Li Dayong, standing proud and tall, his eyes full of contempt.
“Stop!!”
The Law Enforcement Division personnel maintaining order in the square rushed over at once.
There were over ten thousand people in the square today, so the Law Enforcement Division had dispatched a large number of officers to maintain order on site.
As early as when the crowd had begun gathering here, patrolling guards had already started moving closer.
The moment they saw fighting break out, they arrived immediately.
Li Mu flicked his hand and withdrew the Thornflower Staff, the corners of his mouth full of laughter.
From the very beginning, when he started talking to the Li family, Li Mu had already had a purpose.
That purpose had now been achieved.
“What’s going on here?! Who struck first?”
A squad captain from the Law Enforcement Division barked with a frown.
By now, the Li family had all come back to their senses, and more than ten of them started shouting at once.
They all pointed at Li Mu and began accusing him.
“Arrest him! Damn it, he’s the one who hit someone!”
“My husband has already been beaten to the ground by him! Are you blind?!”
“This Li Mu assaulted someone! Hurry up and arrest him!”
The Li family had become completely enraged. No matter how Old Madam Ma tried to stop them, she could not hold them back, and her voice was instantly drowned out by the chaos.
The captain had just been called blind, and his temper flared on the spot. He shouted coldly, “Shut up!”
“I’m not blind! I saw it clearly just now. You people struck first. He was acting in legitimate self-defense!”
“We’re the Li family! Look carefully, the Li family!!”
“My son is an S-rank talent martial artist! Which branch are you from? I know your minister!”
The one who shouted that was Li Mu’s second aunt.
The squad captain wanted nothing more than to curse her on the spot as an idiot.
Even if you did know the minister, could you really shout something like that in public? Was your brain underdeveloped?
“So damn noisy! Take them all away!”
With one order from the captain, more than ten law enforcement officers stepped forward and quickly subdued the Li family.
The captain glanced at Li Mu. “Champion, you’re coming with us too for now.”
They had also watched the First Battle earlier, so they knew the Li Mu standing before them was the champion.
The law placed extreme importance on cases where higher-ranked martial artists attacked lower-ranked martial artists.
If a higher-ranked martial artist casually made a move and seriously injured, or even killed, a lower-ranked martial artist, that counted as harming the nation’s living strength.
Who knew what your intentions were?
What if you were an operative sent by an enemy nation to eliminate young seedlings?
That was the subtle aspect of martial-combat law in a high-martial world.
For martial artists of the same rank, combat was encouraged!
All kinds of arena matches, competitive bouts, sparring matches, and martial training sessions.
As long as it was a duel conducted under lawful witness, the state gave its full support.
Even if it was truly just a clash of tempers, an outright fight, as long as they were of the same rank and the same age, the law would usually turn a blind eye.
But if it was an illegal fight between people of different ages or different ranks, then the iron fist of the law would come down without mercy!
“Alright.”
Li Mu nodded.
Then he turned to look at his mother.
Back when the fight broke out, his little uncle-in-law’s burly frame had already shielded the entire family behind him.
Seeing her son about to be taken away, Yang Suying and Yang Yourong both refused to accept it and stepped forward, wanting to explain things to the officers.
But Li Mu only leaned in and whispered something into their ears.
Under their worried gazes, Li Mu followed the officers into the law enforcement vehicle.
That noisy pack of Li family fools was also shoved into two law enforcement vehicles.
Because Old Madam Ma was too old, the captain alone left her at the scene.
After the two vehicles drove away, the spectators watching the excitement gradually dispersed as well.
Only Yang Suying and Yang Yourong’s family remained at the scene.
They looked worriedly in the direction the law enforcement vehicles had gone.
Yang Yourong shot Old Madam Ma an annoyed look.
Only to see that Old Madam Ma was staring fixedly at Yang Suying.
She looked as though she wanted to devour her alive.
It was all because of her precious son. The Li family had suffered a miserable fall today!
Yang Suying merely glared back at her coldly, completely unafraid.
I was afraid of you when I was still in the Li family. Why would I still fear you now?
Yang Yourong suddenly said in a mocking, singsong tone, “What are you staring at, you old piece of trash!”
“Your eldest son is a coward, your second daughter-in-law is an ungrateful snake, and your precious grandson is a worthless fool that even an S-rank talent can’t save.”
“And those two stupid granddaughters of yours kept making eyes at our Xiao Mu.”
“Even an idiot could tell they didn’t do what you told them to do at all!”
“To them, your words aren’t worth any more than a fart.”
“For all this trash to gather in one family,” “you’ve contributed greatly to that.”
“With you around, the Li family is bound to soar to the heavens sooner or later and prosper gloriously for a hundred generations!”
Yang Yourong delivered that entire speech with perfect cadence and an expression full of ridicule.
At the end, she even rolled her eyes with exquisite precision!
Old Madam Ma’s breathing immediately turned rapid with anger, and her face visibly started going pale!
Li Mu’s little aunt was even more vicious with her mouth than Li Mu was!
In one speech, she had cursed every single member of the Li family!
Especially those four words, “contributed greatly.”
They were the perfect finishing touch!
It was as if the Li family’s ability to produce so many idiots was all thanks to Old Madam Ma’s efforts alone!
That one sentence drove Old Madam Ma’s blood pressure straight to 180!
“Y-you... you!!”
Yang Yourong, meanwhile, curled her lips and quickly stepped back, pushing Yang Suying while dragging her husband and two children away.
And all the while, she kept muttering under her breath, “Oh my, hurry, hurry, she’s about to drop dead. Don’t get dragged into it! Ugh, what rotten luck!”