Among all the Saints Chen Kuang had ever encountered, the Martial Saint was by far the most disgraceful, he had even been "humiliated" by Chen Kuang in a direct confrontation.
And yet, even Chen Kuang himself had. never doubted the Martial Saint's actual might.
Just the fact that he had used some secret method to forcibly elevate a body that was originally only at the Qi Opening Realm to the level of a Second-Grade Daoist Shore Realm, even if only temporarily, was already something unbelievably terrifying!
This kind of technique might not appear earth-shattering on the surface, but it was without question a divine miracle beyond mortal comprehension.
Comparable to the Eastern Saint playing Go across the stars, or Wangshu sealing an entire province's Spiritual Energy with a single finger.
That was also why the body had become extremely unstable.
In particular, because the Martial Saint had to control the body personally, he couldn't extend his spiritual sense outward, and his awareness was dulled.
That alone was what gave Chen Kuang an opening to fake his death and escape.
At the time, Chen Kuang had assumed that the original owner of that borrowed body... was most likely already dead.
The injuries Chen Kuang inflicted during that battle, to a Daoist Shore Realm body, were only superficial flesh wounds, seemingly not serious on the outside.
But the truly severe damage had been internal.
To forcibly raise someone from the Qi Opening Realm all the way to Daoist Shore Realm, the price was almost certainly the destruction of the body!
If such a thing required no cost...
Then the Martial Saint would be too heaven-defying even for the Heavenly Dao, even the heavens themselves would have to bow before him.
But of course, the one paying the price wasn't the Martial Saint himself, but the "volunteer" whose body he had taken.
And yet, Chen Kuang never imagined that the original body's owner might still be alive.
And now, in this very place, be had come across that familiar green headscarf.
Chen Kuang's gaze grew strange as he stared at it.
In the world of Cangyuan, there was no cultural metaphor involving green hats, so when he'd seen the scarf before, he hadn't thought much of it, he only assumed it was a simple ornament.
But now, here in the Yang Kingdom, there was a specific regulation:
Male relatives of courtesans must wear green headscarves.
Now, within the Yang Kingdom, and in the back courtyard of a brothel no less, that green scarf was clearly not just an accessory.
It was a social marker.
No matter how glamorous courtesans might appear, they were ultimately of low caste, and their children, naturally, inherited that status.
That boy... was most likely a child born of a courtesan.
Liu Qingcheng also noticed Chen Kuang's line of sight.
She followed his gaze to the green headscarf and asked in a low voice, confused:
"White Dragon Senior, what is it about that headscarf? Is something wrong?"
Chen Kuang shook his head slightly.
"Just... I think I may have run into an old acquaintance."
"Wait here. I'll go take a look."
As he finished speaking, he leapt up from the back courtyard to the second floor, looping around the corridor to look down from above into the main hall of the Golden Phoenix Pavilion.
Inside, guests were loudly discussing the current events. There were mortals and rogue cultivators alike.
The tables were covered with broken cups and overturned plates, evidence of some earlier conflict.
Now that the Spiritual Energy had been sealed, cultivation-level differences were erased.
It was a perfect moment for long-held grudges to explode.
Chen Kuang scanned the room and immediately spotted a familiar dark-skinned youth.
The boy wore the uniform of a menial worker.
He was quietly going about his task, cleaning leftover food scraps with a rag and dustpan,
head down, submissive and silent, completely disconnected from the bustle around him.
His face and body were covered in terrifying scars, just barely healed, the pale tissue still stark against his skin.
Suddenly, a cultivator who had been loudly discussing the current situation stepped backward and his back collided with the boy's elbow as he wiped a table.
Bang!
Elbow met spine.
In theory, the cultivator's greater momentum should have held sway.
But shockingly, he was the one who stumbled.
Startled, he glanced behind him, half-suspecting that he'd bumped into some burly body cultivator.
Instead, he saw a modest-looking servant boy, holding a rag, frozen for half a second, then instantly bowing in panic.
"S-sorry! I wasn't paying attention..."
The cultivator's face turned black.
Damn it, has my power really fallen to the point where I can't even stand up to a servant?!
Humiliated and angry, he sneered and shouted:
"Is that how you do your job?! That looked clearly intentional to me!"
The boy lowered his head further and smiled nervously.
"I didn't see..."
"Didn't see?" the cultivator mocked.
"Sounds to me like you think you're above us now. Now that even immortals have fallen into the mortal world, a little lowly servant wants to climb up by stepping on us?"
The boy stammered again:
"I didn't..."
In truth, it was clearly the cultivator who stepped back first and got bumped, now he was just flipping the facts.
Unfortunately, the boy lacked eloquence, his explanations were clumsy and repetitive.
And now, the cultivator's words had drawn the gazes of other cultivators, none of them were friendly.
For these people, nothing was more infuriating than losing their power and privilege.
Having a mere mortal offend them only rubbed salt in the wound.
The cultivator stepped back, swept his sleeve, and flung the leftover food to the ground.
"Didn't see? Well then, how about you prove it."
Without Spiritual Energy, the contempt cultivators usually kept hidden had now become fully exposed.
They needed moments like these to reassert their superiority.
The boy paused, then obediently bent down to pick up the mess.
Crunch!
But the cultivator suddenly lifted his foot,
stepped on the food, grinding it under his heel.
Then stepped back.
Pointing at the dirty mess, he sneered:
"Eat it. Then I'll believe it wasn't intentional."
The boy froze, hand halfway extended, his entire posture stiff with indecision.
The cultivator said coldly:
"What, unwilling? Then I guess it really was on purpose."
With that, he suddenly drew a sword from his waist and slashed down toward the boy's hand!
In that split second, the boy's expression flickered, a trace of impulse surged within him.
His muscles tensed, the veins on his arms bulging as if he might explode into action at any second.
But in the end, he closed his eyes.
And accepted it.
Clang!
A hand reached out, caught the blade,
and with a flick of the finger, the sword shattered.
The cultivator shrieked and reeled back,
his arm instantly destroyed by the impact.
His bones and tendons all ruptured!
He collapsed to the ground, rolling and howling.
No Spiritual Energy also meant no healing.
A broken arm... stays broken.
All the other cultivators instinctively backed away, staring at the figure who had suddenly descended.
Some found him unfamiliar, others thought he looked vaguely familiar.
Chen Kuang casually dropped the remaining half of the blade and extended a hand.
"Get up. A bunch of worthless posers like that, what's there to be afraid of?"
"Back then, when you stood before me and punched mountains apart... you sure didn't look like this."
The boy opened his eyes.. and looked up.
And when he saw Chen Kuang's face, his pupils shrank and his entire body shuddered.
"Y-you're not dead?!"
He recognized this man!
How could he not?
That man was a nightmare burned into his mind, someone he had feared, respected and even admired.
Someone who faced the might of a Martial Saint and did not falter, a man worthy of the title of hero.
He had once regretted... that it was he himself who haf "personally" killed this man.
Never imagining, that Chen Kuang would not only survive, but even come back to save him...
The boy stood in a daze, unsure what to feel or do.