Unsheathed

Zhu Lian had never seen Zhao Shi before, but he had heard Li Baoping mention the elderly foreign scholar's eye-catching white deer.

At this moment, the sound of Zhao Shi's footsteps and the speed of his breathing were both no different from a normal old man, but even though Zhu Lian wasn't able to detect anything amiss about the old scholar, a sense of apprehension had still immediately welled up in his heart.

Anyone who appeared near the courtyard at this time was very likely to be an assassin, and given the countless disguise secret techniques at the disposal of Qi refiners, Zhu Lian knew that he couldn't afford to get complacent.

When dealing with Qi refiners, one often had to engage in a battle of both power and wits. Zhu Lian had sparred with Cui Dongshan on several past occasions, so he had become aware of just how versatile the treasures in a cultivator's collection could be. Having never experienced such things in the Lotus Flower Blessed Land, his eyes had truly been opened.

In the past, Zhu Lian would've already lashed out and killed the old scholar. Perhaps he would be killing an innocent and defenseless old man in cold blood, but it was better to be safe than sorry. However, now that he had chosen to follow Chen Ping'an and become a citizen of the Great Li Empire, he had changed his ways and become more restrained.

Having said that, just because he wasn't going to kill the old scholar right away didn't mean that he had no way of verifying whether the old man was truly as defenseless as he seemed.

Zhu Lian took a glance at a parasol tree on the side of the path, and a stem of one of its leaves was abruptly severed, following which the leaf shot forth toward Zhao Shi like a speeding arrow.

Zhao Shi remained completely oblivious as he continued to walk along.

Right as the leaf was about to decapitate the old scholar, it suddenly reverted back into an ordinary leaf that drifted down onto the ground.

Having traveled across two continents, Zhu Lian was aware of how lofty a status it was to serve as the mountain master of a Confucian academy. Even if it wasn't one of the seventy-two academies, a private Confucian academy founded by the leading Confucian figures of a nation was still nothing to scoff at.

The mountain master of such an academy would receive protection from the Confucian orthodoxy, much like mortal emperors.