Unsheathed

"Has the Deity Night Travel Banquet at Cloud Drape Mountain concluded already?" Chen Ping'an asked.

The river god nodded and replied, "You might not have expected this, but three formal gods of the Great Li Empire's previous Five Mountains visited Cloud Drape Mountain to attend the banquet. In addition to them, there were also many deities from the vassal states of the empire. There's never been such a grand Night Travel Banquet since the founding of the Great Li Empire.

"Mountain God Wei, the host of this banquet, was truly outstanding in his elegance. I'm not bragging about my superior for the sake of it, and Mountain God Wei's divine aura was truly far too unexpected and outstanding. Many female deities became attracted to him at first sight, and they continued to linger around, reluctant to leave, even when the Night Travel Banquet concluded."

The river god of the Embroidered Flower River seemingly felt wholehearted admiration toward Wei Bo, the familiar mountain lord of Go Table Mountain.

Chen Ping'an was reminded of Downtrodden Mountain, where he was unexpectedly treated as a pervert and libertine by someone. On the other hand, just take a look at Wei Bo!

After taking a seat in the brightly lit main hall, the river god waved his hand and dismissed the small number of ghost entity maidservants.

He retrieved two pots of wine containing the water fortune essence of the Embroidered Flower River, tossing one to Chen Ping'an and enjoying one himself.

The river god was clearly an old acquaintance of Lady Chu, and he didn't beat around the bush as he frankly told Chen Ping'an why he was hosting him this time. He didn't have the unrealistic expectation of Chen Ping'an putting aside his grudges and becoming friends with Lady Chu, but he hoped that Chen Ping'an wouldn't fight to the death with her.

Afterward, the river god gave a detailed recount of Lady Chu's relationship with that scholar from the Great Li Empire, describing how she was once a kind young woman who was deeply in love with the scholar. However, the river god also didn't shy away from the many brutal things that Lady Chu had done after mistakenly thinking that she had been betrayed by her lover. The pitiful corpses that were planted in the backyard and treated as "flowers and plants" by her were still untouched, even until today. There was a thick aura of resentment as the yin souls refused to disperse, and it was very likely that the large majority of them would never be freed from their misery.

The river god also appeared mournful as he talked about the tragic fate of the scholar, with his expression solemn as he drank a sip of wine and said, "Before the recent rise of the Great Li Empire, scholars with slightly more ambition were all subject to cold gazes and discriminatory treatment. The more talented a scholar was, the more they would be targeted and suppressed. This scholar is one such example, and one of the people who preyed on him back then was a descendant of a powerful clan in the Great Sui Nation. And now, this person is still a high-ranking official in the imperial court!"

The river god looked outside the hall and said with emotion, "This is a muddleheaded matter, so how can we speak reason and solve it fairly?"