When everyone turned to look, they finally realized that Yun Long’s right arm had been reduced to mangled flesh, hanging on by a single tendon. It was a bloody, gruesome sight.
"Are we ready to move on?" Gongsun Xin’s cold, stern voice rang out as he glanced at Ye Xuan. "Qingyue, if you have a problem with this, take it up with me. I’m the one who severed his arm."
Ye Xuan nodded, turning back into the carriage without another word.
The beast vehicle continued on its way.
The brief commotion didn’t cause much of a stir. Even if Gongsun Qingyue was furious, he didn’t dare argue with Gongsun Xin. He tossed Yun Long a stalk of Spirit Medicine to stop the bleeding. However, no matter how high-grade the Spirit Medicine was, Yun Long’s arm could never grow back.
Meanwhile, inside Ye Xuan’s carriage, Gongsun Yanran shook her head. "Xuan’Er, why must you clash with Uncle Qingyue? If Uncle Xin hadn’t intervened, how would you have stepped down gracefully?"
"Mother, even if Uncle Xin hadn’t acted, wouldn’t I still have you?" Ye Xuan replied. "I just want to make one thing clear to everyone: anyone who tries to kill me or my family must be prepared to die! Call me narrow-minded or vindictive if you want, but this is simply who I am."
Ye Xuan believed that if someone wanted to kill you and you had the strength to strike back and kill them, yet you chose to endure it, you were either a coward or trash. Regardless, it wasn’t something he could tolerate. As long as the opportunity presented itself, he would strike to kill!
"Xuan’Er, you always have a whole set of theories ready," Gongsun Yanran said. "But what if the other party has a very powerful background? Would you still kill them?"
"Of course I would! Why wouldn’t I? But I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike a fatal blow and leave no witnesses, ensuring my family and I wouldn’t be implicated."
"I don’t even know what to say about this personality of yours. Acting like this makes it too easy to provoke powerful Cultivators. What happens if you don’t clean up your tracks well enough and they find out?"
Smiling, Ye Xuan answered, "Then I’ll just have to grow stronger before they find out. When the time comes, I’ll wipe them all out in one fell swoop!"
Ye Xuan’s words made Liu Ruoxi, who was sitting nearby, chuckle out loud. She even scoffed softly, "Childish."
"What, you disagree?" Ye Xuan raised an eyebrow.
Not backing down, Liu Ruoxi lifted her chin and retorted, "Of course I do! In this world, provoking powerful figures only leads to a dead end. Where would you ever get the chance to grow?"
Ye Xuan let out a disdainful laugh. "Liu Ruoxi, do you know the real difference between a genius and trash?"
"A genius and trash are fundamentally different to begin with!" Liu Ruoxi replied coldly.
"No. The real difference is that no matter what hardships or dangers a genius encounters, they can weather the storm. As the saying goes, they thrive under pressure! Trash, on the other hand, are defeated before the battle even begins. Before anyone can even kill them, they are already so filled with despair that they want to take their own lives. But what if a piece of trash—or what you consider trash—can figure out a way to overcome any difficulty, no matter how immense? Even if he truly was a loser, after overcoming countless obstacles, he would become a genius."
"Fallacy! Trash is just trash. If they could overcome difficulties, they wouldn’t be trash in the first place. Furthermore, even a genius isn’t guaranteed to overcome every obstacle. There are many geniuses in this world who perished before reaching their full potential. If even geniuses can fall, what more needs to be said about trash?"
Ye Xuan smiled. "In your eyes, I’m considered trash, right? To you, the Ye family is nothing more than insignificant ants. But would you believe me if I told you that the Ye family will one day own a city, and I, Ye Xuan, will be the City Lord?"
"You? A City Lord? Hehehe. If you can become a City Lord, then I can become a queen!" Liu Ruoxi laughed as if she had just heard the funniest joke in the world. As someone from the City Lord’s Mansion, she knew better than anyone that for a family like the Ye family to command a city was an absolute pipe dream! It was utterly impossible!
"And what if I actually achieve it?"
"Impossible! If you really manage that, I’ll do whatever you want! But you? Hehehe."
As soon as Liu Ruoxi finished speaking, Ye Ling’Er chimed in indignantly, "If my brother says he can do it, then he definitely can! You’re just too short-sighted, woman!"
"I’m short-sighted? The short-sighted ones are you! You have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to become a City Lord!"
"Regardless, my brother can do it. When that time comes, I’ll have him divorce you! Someone like you isn’t fit to be my brother’s woman!"
"I’m not fit?" Liu Ruoxi was almost driven to laughter by Ye Ling’Er’s sheer audacity. Too lazy to argue any further, she closed her eyes and remained silent.
Ignoring Liu Ruoxi, Ye Xuan turned to Gongsun Yanran. "Mother, I need to ask you something. Does the Gongsun family regularly distribute resources to its Direct Lineage? If so, do you have any resources I might need, like Super Spirit Pills or Spirit Medicine that can directly elevate a Super Spirit Realm Cultivator’s cultivation?"
Initially, Ye Xuan hadn’t wanted to trouble his mother regarding resources, but he really had no other choice. His resource consumption was far greater than he had anticipated. Since he couldn’t enter the Secret Realm for the time being, he had to try every possible method to obtain Spirit Medicine. What little Spirit Medicine he had left on him was nowhere near enough to cover his massive expenditures.
Gongsun Yanran smiled warmly. "I was planning to give you all these resources at once when we got back. Although I haven’t been by your side all these years, every time the Gongsun family distributed resources, I made a point to set some aside for you and Ling’Er. I originally wanted to surprise you both."
With that, she took out two Qiankun Bags. "This one is yours, and this one is Ling’Er’s. Take a look."
"Thank you, Mother." Ye Xuan accepted the Qiankun Bag and sent his Divine Sense inside.
Neatly arranged within the bag were numerous medicinal ingredients—Human Level, Yellow Level, Profound Level, and Spirit Level. Everything one could possibly need was there, along with their corresponding Soul Crystals. There were between three and five thousand Soul Crystals of every tier. A regular Cultivator would consume a maximum of one thousand Soul Crystals per major realm, so the amount his mother provided was more than enough.
"These are... Super Spirit Pills." Soon, Ye Xuan spotted the Super Spirit Pills.
The Super Spirit Pills she provided were mostly of medium-grade quality, with a small portion being high-grade. In total, there were around four thousand pills—three thousand medium-grade and one thousand high-grade. Every time an Elixir’s quality increased by a tier, its medicinal efficacy tripled. In other words, three thousand medium-grade pills were equivalent to one thousand high-grade pills. An ordinary person would need nearly two thousand two hundred high-grade Super Spirit Pills to advance their cultivation from the first layer to the 9th Layer. Combined with the Spirit Medicine, the resources his mother had saved for them were enough for a regular Cultivator to push their cultivation all the way to the 9th Layer of the Super Spirit Realm.
These resources were undoubtedly something his mother had gone to great lengths to scrounge up for him and his sister. Only she knew just how difficult it had been to achieve this.
Aside from the four tiers of Elixirs, there were also three hundred Demon Spirit Pills in the Qiankun Bag. However, they were all only of medium-grade quality. It was likely that the Alchemy Master’s skills had been limited, rendering them incapable of refining such high-tier Elixirs to a high grade. Ye Xuan knew that his mother’s cultivation was also at the Demon Spirit Realm, meaning she could have used these Elixirs herself. Yet, she had still chosen to leave some Demon Spirit Pills for him and his sister.
Ye Xuan’s heart felt warm, yet a pang of sorrow tugged at it. Even though he hadn’t felt his mother’s love all these years, it turned out that it had always been there, just out of sight. Sometimes, we think our parents don’t care about us, but in truth, they are always in some unseen corner, silently giving everything they have for our sake.