Unsheathed

Chen Ping'an only took a few glances at them before moving aside to let them pass.

After traveling around the cultivation world for extended periods of time, he had witnessed all kinds of strange things in the mountains and all kinds of weird and wonderful people in the mortal empires. His experience and observation skills were much better than before, so he was seldom surprised by what he saw.

There were those from official families of the Water Combing Nation in the convoy, and they were accompanied by light cavalry guards who had bows on their backs and sabers by their sides, with the ends of their quivers looking like accumulated snow. There were also calm and steady members of the cultivation world who were carrying their sabers on their hips in reverse.

This was the unique saber-bearing method of cultivators from the Unruly Saber Villa, something that would leave a deep impression on other people.

Chen Ping'an recognized the burly man carrying a huge ox horn bow on his back. This person was called Ma Lu, and he was the subordinate of Wang Shanhu who had become engaged in a conflict with him at the waterfall of the Sword Water Villa. Wang Yiran had loudly chided Ma Lu at the time, and it could be seen from his response that the Unruly Saber Villa had a fairly good culture. Wang Yiran's success today wasn't all thanks to Han Yuanshan.

Since Chen Ping'an was aware of the transaction between the Sword Water Villa and Han Yuanshan, and with Su Lang failing to challenge and defeat Song Yushao in swordsmanship, it could be said that everything was already set in stone. Chen Ping'an didn't do anything even though he recognized some members of the convoy, and he instead moved off the road and slowly walked toward the distant mountain forest. He was responding like the wanderers in the cultivation world who felt inferior to officials.

Subordinate Ma Lu was faithful to his duty, and he glanced at the passer-by and carefully examined him for a while before averting his gaze and not thinking much of the person.

There were three women sitting inside one of the carriages, with one of them being Chu Hao's wife and the daughter of the previous alliance leader of the Water Combing Nation's martial arts world. She had always viewed the Sword Water Villa and the Song Clan as mortal enemies, and she had played a huge role behind the scenes back then to have Chu Hao lead the large army of imperial soldiers to encircle and attack the Sword Water Villa.

The two other women were slightly younger, but both of them were wearing hairstyles and hair ornaments that signified their statuses as married women. One had the surname Han, and she had a baby face that still carried some hints of childhood. She was Han Yuanxue, the younger sister of Han Yuanshan. As a descendant of Mount Xiaochong's Han Clan, she had married a champion scholar who had compiled and edited texts in the Imperial Hanlin Academy for three years. His official rank wasn't high, only being at the sixth-rank, but he was a most respectable official from the Imperial Hanlin Academy, after all. Moreover, he was incredibly skilled at Buxu poetry, and the emperor who admired Daoism also held him in high regard. He had a powerful backer in Mount Xiaochong's Han Clan as well, so he was destined to enjoy a bright future.

The other woman was a young and gallant-looking lady. She was none other than Wang Shanhu, Wang Yiran's only daughter. Compared to Han Yuanxue who was from a powerful mortal clan, Wang Shanhu had married a man who was even younger and more successful. He had become a third-rank champion scholar at eighteen, and it was rumored that he had only lost two places because the emperor wasn't fond of child prodigies. Otherwise, he could have easily become the champion scholar.

He was already a prefectural overseer of the Water Combing Nation, and it was truly a rare feat for him to become a high-ranking official in his thirties in the Water Combing Nation, where the emperors past and present all discriminated against child prodigies in the imperial court. Moreover, the prefecture that he oversaw was coincidentally the Green Pine Prefecture that bordered the Sword Water Villa. They were in the same province but not the same prefecture.