The ceremonial wine had been flowing for less than twenty minutes, yet the air in the main hall already tasted sour.
What started as stiff, polite toasts quickly soured into something uglier as cups slammed down harder than necessary. Voices rose. An elder from the collateral branch, a thin man with a sharp face named Mu Feng, pointed across the table at Mu Tianhao with a shaky finger.
"You speak of unity, Tianhao, but everyone here knows you've been siphoning the best rift shards to your own line for years!" Mu Feng's face was flushed, veins popping out on his neck. "Now you want to tie our entire bloodline to these Li outsiders just so your precious daughter can keep playing her little ice games? How many of us are you willing to throw to the void for one alliance?"
Mu Tianhao's jaw tightened. He set his cup down with a softer poise but his knuckles were white. "Watch your tongue, Feng. The Li family brings resources we need. Without them, the next resource war will crush us. Or have you forgotten how the last one left three of our outer branches starving?"
A woman from another collateral line... Mu Lihua, an elder with a reputation for having a sharp tongue, let out a bitter laugh. "Starving? Please. Your daughter gets the finest cultivation chambers, the purest yin stabilizing herbs, while the rest of us scrape by on scraps and now you want us to smile and call it 'harmony' because some Li boy is willing to marry her? How convenient."
The Li young master, seated directly across from Mu Qinglan, shifted uncomfortably. His face darkened. "If the Mu family is already this divided, perhaps my father was right to hesitate. We came here in good faith. If this is how you treat your own blood, what kind of alliance can we possibly expect?"
Mu Qinglan sat perfectly still beside her father, her expression cold and unreadable but her fingers gripped the edge of the table just a little too tightly. She had not spoken since her demonstration, yet the weight of every accusation seemed to land on her shoulders.
Xuan Ye moved slowly through the lower tiers, slipping between bodies of outer disciples like smoke. No one paid him any mind "he was still the crippled trash they expected to see sacrificed later" With every step he took, he drifted closer to the inner circle using the rising noise as cover.
"Family loyalty,"" he thought, the words flat and held that 'matter of fact' in his mind. ""One cup of wine and it's already cracking like cheap pottery. Decades spent on preaching bloodline and preservation and what, now... now they're ready to tear each other apart over who gets the bigger share."" ""Pathetic. All of it pathetic.""
An elder on the far left suddenly stood, qi flaring around him in angry red sparks. "Enough! If the main line wants to sell us out, then I say we take what is ours right now!" He reached for the hilt of the blade at his side.
Another elder lunged across the table. Cups overturned with wine spilled across the polished stone like blood. Two guards rushed forward to separate them, but their movements were sluggish, faces flushed and eyes glassy from the toxin. One guard stumbled, knocking into a servant who dropped her tray with a loud crash. The sound only fueled the shouting.
"You dare raise your voice to me in my own hall?" Mu Tianhao roared, finally losing his composure. He slammed his palm on the table hard enough to split the wood. "I have carried this sect on my back while the rest of you hid behind your petty grievances!"
Mu Lihua sneered. "Carried it? You mean hoarded it! While your daughter practices her precious ice techniques in private chambers, my branch has lost three promising juniors to rift starvation this year alone. And now you want us to celebrate an engagement that benefits only you?"
The Li young master rose to his feet, hand on his sword. "This is madness. My family did not come here to watch a house devour itself."
Mu Qinglan finally spoke, her voice cold and cutting. "Enough. All of you. This is beneath the dignity of the Mu name."
Her words only seemed to enrage them further. Another elder shouted back, "Dignity? Shut up!! Your dignity is the only thing being protected here, girl!"
A scuffle broke out between two groups of guards near the side entrance. One man shoved another, qi flaring wildly. A table overturned. More wine spilled, and the smell of fermented spirit herbs mixed with sweat and anger filled the hall.
Xuan Ye kept moving, weaving through the outer crowd as arguments spilled into physical shoving matches. He was now only twenty paces from the inner circle, close enough to see the vein throbbing in Mu Tianhao's temple, close enough to watch the way Mu Qinglan's icy aura flicker with her fury barely contained.
He sent a light pulse through the Chain link.
In the servant area, the woman's breath hitched sharply. She was still trying to serve but her legs were shaking, the plug inside her kept everything sealed tight, turning every small movement into a private torment. She pressed her thighs together, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood but she did not drop another tray. Through the link came a wave of raw, humiliated need mixed with darker aura... excitement at the chaos she had helped create.
Xuan Ye's expression never changed.
""Humans are a fragile and cunning being..."" he thought. ""One minute they call each other brother and sister, and the next... THIS."
A guard near him staggered, eyes bizarre from the toxin, then he collapsed against a pillar. Another guard tried to help him up but was shoved aside by an angry elder demanding order. The hall was descending into open disorder... shouts, overturned tables, scattered wine and the first flashes of uncontrolled qi.
Xuan Ye took another step forward.
He was almost in position now.
The ancestral altar waited behind the growing storm, silent and ready.
PERFECT...
Soon the chaos would be absolute.
Soon he would reach Mu Qinglan.
Soon the real show begins.