Once they were done eating, Fang Zheng said, "Shall I take you to the scene of the crime?"
The father and daughter duo exchanged glances. This was not why they were here. However, it was why they had been called here, and so it would seem odd if they refused Fang Zheng's request. As they walked towards where Fang Zheng said the incident had happened, they asked him questions regarding the village.
"We had heard that there was a Blood Path demonic Gu Master on this mountain as well," Tie Xue Leng said.
"Oh, that," Fang Zheng said. "Yeah, there was one that my elder brother had to deal with. His name was Zuo Chen."
"No, not that," Tie Xue Leng said. "I mean before that."
Fang Zheng frowned. "I can't really think of any demonic Gu Master who was on our mountain." He was telling the truth, because despite first gen Gu Yue's actions, he still did not consider that person in question to be demonic. To Fang Zheng, there was a division between demonic cultivators and righteous path cultivators. Being part of a clan meant that one was righteous, regardless of their actions. Many righteous path cultivators could be hypocrites, not all of them were upstanding people like Fang Yuan or Qing Shu, after all.
And Tie Ruo Nan found that Fang Zheng did not seem to know all that much. Despite being Fang Yuan's younger brother, he had only been at the scene of the fighting and had his elder brother chase away the demonic 'crane-wielding Gu Master,' as he called it. But they could not get much more out of him. As it was, he knew which points to keep his mouth shut on.
When the topic came to the new changes in the Bai and the Xiong clans recently, particularly the Bai Clan's external elder. "Yes," Fang Zheng said. "I heard that this lady, Ling Ding Ching, is trying her best to work as an elder of the Bai Clan, despite her disability."
"Disability?" Tie Ruo Nan asked. They had not heard of something like that, and she seemed perfectly able when they had seen her. "What kind of disability?"
"The worst kind- the fact that she's a woman," Fang Zheng said.
Now, he was saying that in the context of the fact that he knew that Bai Ning Bing had been a man before and such a change would be greatly mentally scarring. He did not reveal the full details of this to them, of course. What he had said was more of a slip of a tongue that he was inwardly chastising himself for, therefore deciding to keep quiet for the time being so that he wouldn't reveal anything else.
However, as you can imagine, this tiny slip of the tongue did put an odd impression on both of them.
'Are we still in the Southern Border? Where did this kind of Northern Plains attitude come from?' Tie Xue Leng wondered.
He glanced over at his daughter, wondering what she was thinking.
Needless to say Tie Ruo Nan's head was reeling. Fang Zheng had seemed like such a polite and upstanding youngster up until now. This statement had seemingly come out of nowhere and threw here for a spin. She hadn't thought there was this kind of side to him! Not to mention, it would be one thing if he had said something like this to her father. But the audacity to say it while she was here?
'Hey you dumb boor! If you really think that, then why don't we have a fight and see who's really 'disabled?'' she thought. She wanted to challenge Fang Zheng, but held off on it. It woudn't do to cause that kind of commotion here, and there was important work to be done.
Fang Zheng, for his part, barely noticed this change and continued walking like before.
Tie Ruo Nan though, thought that she really hoped that his twin brother also wasn't the same way. No, how could someone gain a reputation like Gu Yue Fang Yuan's if they behaved like this?
The rest of their journey was far more silent interrupted only by the odd question or two, Fang Zheng oblivious to the cold attitude the two of them had towards him now.
"So this is where it happened," Fang Zheng said.
The area had once been used for the academy's field test, but was now barren of most of its foliage. That might make finding clues either, though Tie Ruo Nan felt there was some other issue with it. "Fang Zheng, with such damage done to the area, we likely won't be able to find anything."
"Oh, is that so?" Fang Zheng said, disappointed. He had thought that given how famous they were, they might've been able to find something. And maybe in a different time they would've been able to -before Bai Ning Bing's detonation, that is.
"We'll see what we can find," Tie Xue Leng said.
Fang Zheng went into detail regarding what had happened. "So, he was right there and then leaped out of the bushes. Then, there was a fight and..."
While his testimony was detailed, no signs of what had happened remained.
"This unique gu worm that he used - Testicular Torsion Gu, does your clan still have it?" Tie Xue Leng asked.
"Well that ah..." Fang Zheng said, trailing off. "My brother refined it from Rank 3 to Rank 4. I don't think that there would be any clues there then..." Refinement completely purified a gu worm, removing any prior traces or impurities it might have.
"No clues we can get from there then," Tie Xue Leng said. "In that case, is there still a body to examine?"
"Yes! The old clan head had it preserved in case you happened to drop by. We couldn't find anything on him, but you probably can!" Fang Zheng said hopefully.
The only other thing that he'd really wanted after having his cultivation crippled other than seeing his aunt and uncle get their comeuppance was to find who was responsible for sending that demonic Gu Master who'd done it in the first place.
Even his brother had been unable to deduce any clues, and he'd almost lost all hope given recent events. Whatever traces might've remained were wiped away by the ice- so he felt. But there was still a small shred of hope in his heart. The corpse was still intact, meaning that there could be clues there.
On the way back, Fang Zheng still lead the way, with the two trailing behind him.
"I don't really like him," Tie Ruo Nan whispered to her father, no longer feeling very sorry for what had happened to him. "Do we still need to keep this up?"
"We may found something else while taking a look at this," Tie Xue Leng said. "Remember that we might stumble upon something that might help us with our true mission..."
Tie Ruo Nan nodded, though she still shot a nasty look at Fang Zheng, who was still marching on ahead, blissfully unaware at the hostility that he'd provoked.