"It's just that my Master once had a history with the Ma Family's ancestors and left some old belongings in your esteemed residence. I have come specifically to retrieve them today... I wonder if Master Ma still remembers?"
Upon hearing this,
Ma Dewang snapped his head around.
His face was filled with astonishment.
"May I ask your Master's honored name..."
"Thirteen Wu."
As soon as those two words were spoken,
Ma Dewang felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
He froze on the spot, completely dazed.
Sensing the violent emotional fluctuations from the Old Man before her,
Jiang Yuechu frowned slightly.
The other party's reaction was by no means one of pleasant surprise...
Could it be that the heart material had already been pocketed and used by this old thing?
Wang Ziyu also felt that something was wrong.
The young boy's face darkened, and he said coldly,
"What's this, Master Ma? Is there some problem with that expression of yours?"
Ma Dewang snapped back to his senses, swallowed hard, and said with a trembling voice,
"Since you are the distinguished disciples of Immortal Master Thirteen Wu... is there any physical proof?"
Hearing this,
Wang Ziyu glanced sideways at Jiang Yuechu.
Jiang Yuechu didn't waste any words.
With a flick of her black sleeve, a wooden plaque appeared in her palm.
She casually handed it over.
Ma Dewang took the wooden plaque with both hands.
With just one look, his old face finally broke, and the color drained from it instantly.
His legs went weak, and he nearly collapsed to the ground.
"What exactly happened?"
Wang Ziyu's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately pressed for an answer.
Ma Dewang gripped the wooden plaque tightly.
After a long silence,
He finally let out a bitter smile that looked worse than crying.
"The Immortal Master truly showed my Ma Family the kindness of rebirth back then... That item, this Old Man has always kept it safe, not daring to be even slightly negligent."
The Old Man's voice trembled, his face full of defeat.
"But this wait has lasted over a hundred years without a word. This Old Man only assumed the Immortal Master had forgotten the matter, or perhaps..."
"A few days ago, the Ma Family met with a great disaster. My worthless grandson offended the Demon Emperor of Cold Mountain Ridge."
"To save the lives of these hundreds of people, this Old Man was forced to take matters into my own hands..."
"I have included that wondrous item, along with my eldest granddaughter of the direct line, as a gift to be presented to the Juechen Demon Emperor in exchange for his protection."
Hearing these words,
A look of irritation immediately appeared on Wang Ziyu's youthful face.
"Entrusted by others to fulfill their affairs—since you agreed to keep it safe for my Master, you actually took it to curry favor with a demon?"
Faced with the boy's rebuke,
Ma Dewang's face was streaked with tears as he bowed repeatedly.
"This Old Man knows he was wrong; I cannot atone for my guilt even with ten thousand deaths! The Cold Mountain Demon Emperor is cruel by nature. If the Juechen Demon Emperor did not step in, my Ma Family would have faced total extermination!"
The Old Man fell to his knees with a thud, sobbing uncontrollably.
"A thousand wrongs, ten thousand wrongs, they are all this Old Man's fault alone."
"But now the wedding procession is about to arrive, and that item has already been packed into the bottom of the dowry chest."
"If you two forcibly take it away, once the Juechen Demon Emperor is enraged..."
Wang Ziyu laughed out of sheer anger.
This old thing—even at a time like this, he was still trying to use the Demon Emperor's name to pressure them.
He shook his head helplessly and asked coldly, "What's the background of this Juechen Demon Emperor?"
Hearing this,
Ma Dewang immediately looked up and explained, "There is something you two do not know."
"The Juechen Demon Emperor is one of the top overlords around Region... His strength has long since reached the realm of Ascending the Tower Perfection, and he has hundreds of Great Demons under his command."
"What's even more fatal is..."
Ma Dewang lowered his voice, his expression terrified.
"Rumor has it that the Juechen Demon Emperor has countless ties to the Xirang Lineage deep within Yu Mountain."
"With that connection, ordinary Demon Emperors wouldn't dare to provoke him."
"This Old Man also exhausted the family fortune just to barely establish this connection..."
Now that things had been explained to this extent,
Jiang Yuechu finally understood the whole story.
Regarding the Ma Family's actions,
She couldn't feel much contempt or anger.
The cultivation world was never one for warmth... it was the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest.
To survive in the Yu Mountain Great Range surrounded by demons, the Ma Family wouldn't just give away a granddaughter and a deposited treasure.
Even if they dug up their ancestral graves to offer to the Demon Emperor, it would merely be an act of survival.
But the life or death of the Ma Family had nothing to do with her.
The only thing she truly cared about was that top-grade heart material.
It was good that it hadn't been used yet...
And,
Jiang Yuechu lowered her eyes slightly.
She hadn't expected that this trip, which she thought was just a simple errand to fetch a piece of heart material,
Now seemed to not only have the top-grade heart material within reach,
But also that Juechen Demon Emperor and those hundreds of Great Demons under him—they were all pure, white Dao Cultivation.
Just as she was calculating this,
A sharp, high-pitched announcement suddenly came from outside the estate gates.
"The Juechen Demon Emperor has arrived—"
The voice was extremely piercing, instantly drowning out all the noise in the courtyard.
The guests who had been clinking glasses, whether human or demon, all stopped their movements in unison.
The entire front courtyard of the Ma Residence fell into a deathly silence.
Following that,
The ground shook and the mountains trembled.
Heavy footsteps approached from the distance.
Eight massive exotic beasts, each as large as a small hill, pulled an extremely luxurious bone carriage, slowly stopping outside the Ma Residence gates.
Surrounding the carriage was a dense, black mass of armored Yao warriors holding sharp weapons.
Evil Qi surged into the sky.
Two deer demons with twin horns were the first to step over the threshold.
Clad in heavy armor, their eyes were indifferent.
They scanned the guests in the courtyard, who were as quiet as cicadas in winter, and let out a cold snort.
Such pomp, such pressure.
Compared to a great Cultivator clan like the Ma Family, the difference was stark.
Ma Dewang, kneeling on the ground, shuddered all over.
He jerked his head up, his face full of terror.
At this moment, how could he possibly care about these three debt collectors of unknown depth?
"You three, this Old Man deserves ten thousand deaths."
Ma Dewang scrambled up from the ground, speaking incoherently.
"Afterward, the Ma Family will surely exhaust its wealth to compensate for the Immortal Master's loss."
"But now that the Demon Emperor has arrived, if I am even slightly negligent, the hundreds of people in the Ma Family will lose their heads."
"Please rest in the side courtyard for now; you must absolutely not offend the Demon Emperor's carriage."
With that,
The Old Man didn't even wait for a reply, grabbing the hem of his bright red festive robe.
He stumbled and ran wildly toward the main gate.
His back looked as panicked as a stray dog's.
Wang Ziyu watched Ma Dewang's scrambling figure, wrinkled his nose, and coldly spat out a few words.
"Truly disgusting."
Tiger Cuihua, standing to the side, shook her head and whispered, "Even an ant clings to life, let alone a man... Actually, whether it's a human Cultivator or a demon, once you peel back that skin, the inside is all about profit."
"To survive, for the sake of Legacy—whether it's selling a daughter for glory or betraying one's word, it's all just a means of struggling to exist..."
Wang Ziyu glanced at this tiger full of flowery words.
He couldn't be bothered to argue with it.
He just turned to look at the Girl in Black Robes beside him.
"What now?"
"What now?"
Jiang Yuechu's expression was calm as she straightened her sleeves and stepped toward the front courtyard.
"Time to eat, of course."