Ch147 – Outbreak of Explosive Anger
Moments later, the guard captain gave the carriage a vicious glare and turned around. “Let’s go. We’ll see who can outwait whom!”
Lin family’s pupils looked at each other and nervously glanced at the two carriages up front.
Lin Zezhi furrowed his brows, “What should we do now?”
Lin Xuanzhi’s voice came through the carriage door, “Sit back and wait silently.”
Lin Zezhi’s irritation was written on his face as he grit his teeth, “What good will waiting do? If those families behind us lose their patience, then they’ll come and cause trouble for us. By then, we’ll have to contend with both the guards in front and the families at our back.”
Lin Yan also felt a rare moment of unease and nodded. “Yes, there’s some truth to what he says as well. It’s not a solution to just wait like this. If we cannot handle this well, then we’ll offend the many families behind us, which will be greatly detrimental for our Lin family in the upcoming compet.i.tion.”
However, Lin Xuanzhi remained impa.s.sive. “Continue waiting, it’s not time yet.”
Lin family’s pupils could only go back to their carriages one by one to wait in fear and apprehension without knowing what they were waiting for.
The people behind them, however, would no longer wait.
Before long, two young men came up from behind with dark expressions.
A youth stood next to Lin Xuanzhi’s carriage and knocked on the door as he said unkindly, “I say, you guys may not want to enter the city, but don’t obstruct other people’s path.”
Lin Xuanzhi asked, “Which family do you belong to?”
The young man lifted up his face and answered proudly, “West Continent’s Gu family.”
“As a third-cla.s.s family, aren’t you worried that they will frisk you as well?” Lin Xuanzhi asked lightly.
The youngster was stunned, “Aren’t they just going to search your family?”
Lin Xuanzhi chuckled, as though he had heard a good joke.
“What are you laughing for?” The young man frowned.
Lin Xuanzhi explained, “I was laughing because you haven’t even noticed that other people are looking down on you in wanton contempt, and are still ignorant of it all.”
The other youth asked with an unhappy expression, “What do you mean by that?”
Lin Xuanzhi said lightly, “If these people only wanted to search my Lin family, then it’s fine. But they actually want to search all the third-cla.s.s families in the lower rankings. Before, there were several second-cla.s.s families who jumped the queue and cut before the third-cla.s.s families – you saw it as well. I’m afraid that this Huangfu family wants to suppress us with a preemptive blow. I just don’t know whether your families are willing to receive this blow or not.”
After they heard this, the two young men exchanged glances and saw the surprise in each other’s eyes.
Lin Xuanzhi continued, “From a glance, you two are also young. However, I don’t believe that you haven’t heard about the humiliation the Gu family suffered at the gate of Sky Peak City during the Hundred Families Gathering a hundred years ago. It’s not impossible for history to repeat itself.”
All of a sudden, the surprise in the two youngsters’ eyes turned into anger.
“We will report this matter back to our families.” The young man left after speaking.
After the two men left, Duan Yuyang looked at Lin Xuanzhi in astonishment, “It’s as if you’re going to drag all the aristocratic families into the water.”
Lin Xuanzhi glanced at him. “If we don’t blow things out of proportion, then how can we enter safely without offending anyone?”
Duan Yuyang asked, “How do you know they will believe it?”
Lin Xuanzhi scratched under Ah Bai’s chin, “Because it’s not as though this kind of situation hasn’t happened in the past Hundred Families Gathering before.”
Huangfu family was not the only one. n.o.body knew what kinds of crazy things several elite first-cla.s.s families in Sky Peak City were thinking about at the Hundred Families Gathering a hundred years ago, but they had joined forces and thought up various ways to make things difficult for individual third-cla.s.s families at the city gate. Although not all of them had been frisked, the nature of their hara.s.sment was still enough to annoy those third-cla.s.s families.
At that time, the third-cla.s.s families didn’t resist and instead suppressed their anger as they entered the city with a belly full of fire.
However, in the compet.i.tion afterwards, the third-cla.s.s families who were bullied seemed to have been triggered and unexpectedly formed an alliance.
Although the third-cla.s.s families were relatively weak, their numbers were high. Those few elite first-cla.s.s families actually lost quite a lot of young sprouts, and one family even fell directly into the ranks of a second-cla.s.s family; it was simply terrifying!
Since then, situations where people made things difficult right from the beginning never happened again in subsequent Hundred Families Gatherings.
But this was the psychological shadow that the Hundred Families Gathering left for the third-cla.s.s families.
Before long, news that the city lord’s guard dogs were preparing to search all the third-cla.s.s families spread like wildfire throughout the entire queue.
The disciples of the third-cla.s.s families suddenly became furious.
“f.u.c.k, the Huangfu family really likes to bully people. Laozi has never felt this insulted in all my life!”
“Want to search me? He he, why don’t you search over honourable me’s dead body?”
“What dog fart elite first-cla.s.s family, isn’t it just cowards using their owner’s power to step on the weak?”
“Your mother! You want to reenact the events from a hundred years ago?”
“Let’s humor them and continue waiting. We’ll see who can outwait whom!”
“What’s wrong with being a third-cla.s.s family? Are third-cla.s.s families pushovers that can only meekly accept being slaughtered? It’s the Hundred Families Gathering; who knows which family will reach the top!”
“Moreover, why is it that you only spare a glance at the invitation cards of second-cla.s.s and first-cla.s.s families before allowing every single one of them to enter, but our people have to be stopped and searched with magic tools. Isn’t this clearly looking down on us?”
“He, the wind blew on the river’s east side thirty years ago but now blows on the west side. Laozi will sit here today and refuse to leave!”
Despite the outbreak of explosive anger behind him, Lin Xuanzhi himself did not move, as if everything was within his expectations. He boiled water, brewed tea, and sipped his tea leisurely and gracefully without an ounce of worry.
After a while, several third-cla.s.s families in the back sent people to find Lin Xuanzhi.
After sending off an amba.s.sador from a third-cla.s.s family, Yan Tianhen wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. “Dage, I really didn’t imagine that not only would these families not drive us away, but they would also come to show their support for us to continue waiting here and even express good will towards us. This is really…astonis.h.i.+ng.”
“Unbelievable.” Duan Yuyang rubbed his chin as he laid down on Hu Po, “Although they are all aristocratic families, the more distinguished they are, the more independent they are. Unless their relations.h.i.+ps with certain other families are as firm as iron, they are more likely to have a close-knit group within the family, and there would not be many interactions among the different families. I didn’t expect that ten families would actually come forward to support you at this time.”
As he said that, Duan Yuyang looked at Lin Xuanzhi admiringly, “Aren’t you too incredible?”
Lin Xuanzhi put down the tea cup in his hand, “It’s nothing much; I just took advantage of these families’ sore spots.”
The Lin family fell from a second-cla.s.s family to a third-cla.s.s family only a hundred years ago, so they weren’t actually too affected by the events of the Hundred Families Gathering a hundred years ago.
However, the vast majority of third-cla.s.s families had always been third-cla.s.s families. That deep-rooted hatred was still fresh in their memories even after a hundred years. At this time, as long as someone told them that an elite first-cla.s.s family from Sky Peak City wanted to have them relive their past nightmares, these families that had learned from their previous experiences would certainly jump at the chance to form an alliance early on to compete with the elite family head-on.
Lin Xuanzhi grasped precisely this mindset in order to confidently spout nonsense and turn a provocation aimed at the Lin family into one whose goal was to ridicule and provoke all third-cla.s.s families.
Lin Xuanzhi’s method was not without poison.
It didn’t take long for Lin Xuanzhi to send another two amba.s.sadors away, and soon afterwards, he received a reply from the supervising officers of those two families.
Duan Yuyang kept looking at Lin Xuanzhi, “It’s one thing to drag this many people underwater, but you actually still intend to take the initiative to cause trouble? Why don’t you just ascend to the heavens right now?!”
Lin Xuanzhi glanced at him. “They wasted so much of my time. Should I have just endured it silently?”
Duan Yuyang choked for a moment, then said in exasperation, “You’re great, you’re great. I’ll wait and see how you kill those watchdogs.”
“Look forward to it.” Lin Xuanzhi narrowed his eyes and waved a broken bell at his waist, calling for a Lin family death knight who was silently following behind the caravan.
Lin Xuanzhi give him a few orders, causing a strange expression to appear on the death knight’s face. However, as a death knight, he naturally followed the Lin family supervising officer’s orders to the letter. Thus, he did not say anything and nodded before going back to his original standby position.
The gate guards were still waiting for the families behind, blocked from entering the city, to make trouble for the Lin family. At that time, they could use “keeping peace and suppressing riots” as an excuse to attack the Lin family and let them have a taste of the consequences. However, they waited and waited but still could not see anyone starting a fight with the Lin family despite observing, from their high vantage point, many people running to and fro between the Lin family and the families behind them.
“Tsk, this situation doesn’t seem quite right.” The chief guard gradually felt that something was wrong.
The subordinate beside him smiled, “What’s wrong with this? If we wait some more, then those people will definitely not be able to tolerate it any longer. After all, the Lin family was also pretty famous once.”
The chief guard felt that this was very reasonable and nodded his head as he patiently waited.
He thought to himself that the Lin family’s brat sure was stunning, especially his aura that seemed as though he was untouched by the dust of the mortal world. Such a beauty was born to provoke people.
It’s time. Lin Xuanzhi opened his originally slightly-closed eyes and gently laid his fingers upon the broken bell on his waist.
A thread of fireworks exploded in the sky. All of a sudden, over ten guards from the secret alliance of the third-cla.s.s families received the same order and rushed up toward the gate at the same time.
The gate guard hadn’t even reacted yet, and the city gate was only halfway closed when it was struck with a “Guang!” by countless attacks from multiple directions.
“What’s the situation?”
“They’re attacking the city! Hurry and report to the city lord, report it to him immediately!”
A 10-chi tall cultivator with a red face and black body swung an iron hammer and directly smashed a guard’s head. He sneered, “Search your grandmother! Those who offend me can die!”
The chief guard who was originally daydreaming while sitting in the city wall’s fort room was suddenly shocked awake and jumped up, rus.h.i.+ng out the city gate. He saw the two sides already embroiled in a fight.
The chief guard’s heart immediately sank as his legs became soft, causing him to nearly kneel on the ground.
He had been on duty here for over forty years and witnessed many people try to break into the city gate, but this was the first time in his life seeing such a coordinated and simultaneous attack on the city gate by this many families. At this time, even though he was still unclear why the third-cla.s.s families who originally should have caused trouble for the Lin family have instead colluded with the Lin family and even dared to brazenly attack the city lord’s people, the chief guard was no fool. He already had a faint premonition that the source of this matter was inseparable from the fact that he just caused trouble for the Lin family.
After Huangfu Jin took charge of the family, he had always made friends with various families and rarely bullied others. The Hundred Families Gathering this time was an especially good opportunity for the Huangfu family to expand their network and secure their position. Now, unexpectedly, around ten large families had already fallen out with the Huangfu family before the Hundred Families Gathering even began…
The chief guard broke out in a cold sweat and had no desire to direct the counterattack. He hurriedly fled outside the city, rolling and crawling.
Before he left, he couldn’t resist looking down one last time from the top of the city wall, only to see that Lin family’s procession had retreated several zhang away, the five horse carriages still in their original order.
The man who looked like a fallen immortal stood atop the carriage with an indifferent expression, holding his hands behind his back and overlooking the scene of the intense battlefield with apathy.
The chief guard s.h.i.+vered inexplicably. In the end, just what kind of ghost did he provoke?
—
Editor’s Little Theater:
LXZ: *exists*
Everybody: An immortal beauty has come!
YTH: My Dage is such a beauty, almost as beautiful as me!
LXZ: My Ah Hen is the most beautiful of them all!
Everybody: ….
Editor: (^^ゞ