Fang Che wiped his blade on the motionless Su Yue's clothes, then casually pointed the tip of his knife at Su Yue's right knee as if by accident and chuckled softly, "It's always a bit uncomfortable to have a heart-to-heart between brothers with an outsider listening in, don't you think?"
His voice was very gentle.
Su Yue shrank slightly.
His dull gaze shifted, resting on the decapitated body of his brother, where fresh blood gushed out of the neck, spreading across the rocks and dripping off the edge.
Drip, drip.
His eyes met his brother's, which were still wide with confusion even in death.
Su Yue trembled all over.
Turning to Fang Che, his gaze suddenly filled with boundless fear.
"Devil!"
He screamed.
He tried to draw his sword but instead felt thick stickiness in his hand.
It was the blood sprayed by his brother.
Suddenly, everything in front of him felt so unreal.
"A devil?"
Fang Che smiled, "Worse than your Su Family?"
Su Yue roared and lunged forward with his sword, only to be stabbed in the knee without hesitation by Fang Che, the gleaming knife tip emerging from his leg, stained with blood.
His blade had always been poised right there.
In his fury, Su Yue had charge right onto the blade's point.
A gruesome scream barely escaped before a mercilessly thrown stone smashed into his mouth.
With a plop, shards of the stone mixed with teeth fell out.
Su Yue fell backward, a foot already firmly planted on his chest, right below his throat.
The tip of the foot pressed against the throat, leaning and pushing down slightly.
The pressure caused the Adam's apple to sink in a bit.
"Don't yell. Let's have a good talk, you and I. By the way, you can help me sort out some thoughts,"
Fang Che said earnestly, "Big Brother Su, I need your help."
Su Yue completely fell apart.
Hearing Fang Che's gentle and serious voice, his entire body couldn't stop trembling.
He could have never imagined that this younger brother, who had been so obedient to him for many years, would suddenly turn into a monstrous fiend.
His entire being exuded a cold indifference as if human lives were nothing but grass.
Now he had forgotten his hatred, left only with fear.
Tremblingly he asked, "Talk... about what?"
"Talk about your identity in the Su Family, about your purpose, about how you started to associate with me, to influence me since you were twelve, what exactly do you want to accomplish?"
Fang Che patted Su Yue's face with the flat of his blade, making a smacking sound, "I want you to talk about these things I want to hear, understand, Brother Su?"
Su Yue's trembling grew more severe.
Fang Che sighed, "To be honest, I quite despise you, using an inexperienced child, exploiting the child's natural rebelliousness, using the sensitivity of a child who lives with his maternal family and feels inferior, to execute your plans. So twisty and bendy, tsk, where could that compare to the satisfaction of wiping all of you out directly?"
Su Yue's lips quivered, intense pain almost leaving his mind blank.
But Fang Che was in no hurry.
He was collecting his gains beside.
The spoils he had garnered from the Su Family members were indeed bountiful.
He had no reservations about Su Yue; with his past life's combat experience, even if Su Yue's cultivation were several levels higher than his own, he would not fear.
Especially since this one had been pampered and was of poor character.
His spirit had been shattered by a series of blows and now, with one leg incapacitated by Fang Che, a counterattack was even more out of the question.
What was more important was... when he killed Su Yun and injured Su Yue, he notably felt a slight movement of the Five Spirits Gu within him.
And a bloodthirsty malevolence surged up suddenly, amplifying his killing intent.
Fang Che's heart chilled, as he began to understand something.
"So that's how it is."
He then accessed the Infinite Scripture to completely suppress the Five Spirits Gu, and his mind cleared up.
Then he quietly muttered to himself, "So it really is like that!"
...
Moments later, under Fang Che's relentless questioning, a crumbling Su Yue finally began to speak.
Although he didn't know much, it was already enough for the current Fang Che.
To put it simply,
The Su Family and the Fang Family both belonged to those Martial Arts Families of the ninth level, but what set them apart was that, twenty years ago, due to an accident, the Fang Family suffered heavy losses and their family power never recovered.
For many years, they were on the brink of being downgraded.
Meanwhile, the Su Family had secretly joined the Wei Wo Zheng Sect under the Yixin Sect earlier and, with the covert support of the sect, remained very stable.
Therefore, they harbored ambitions early on, knowing that if they could swallow up the Fang Family's influence, they might be upgraded to an eighth level Family.
The ranking of families consisted of twelve grades. The twelfth grade is the weakest, belonging to families that have just been established; the eleventh grade is the branching out phase, the tenth grade is effectively an enhanced eleventh grade, and the ninth grade is the stabilization period.
A Ninth level Family could already be said to be quite vast, with at least hundreds of people of the same bloodline, and would have a Martial Arts Grandmaster to lead them.
Twenty years ago, one of the Martial Arts Grandmasters from the Fang Family, Fang Xingmeng, died unexpectedly during a mission.
Fang Qianyi, known as the cultivation prodigy of the Fang Family, went missing along with her best friend while out playing.
Two years later, Fang Qianyi returned with a child, who was Fang Che.
This caused significant shock at the time.
The Su Family launched attacks on multiple fronts: they suppressed the Fang Family's business, obstructed them in the Martial Arts, and even hindered them in their tasks at the Guardian Hall.
They applied pressure from all sides.
As Fang Qianyi's Martial Arts cultivation improved over the years and she gradually became a core strength, the Su Family began to lure the then barely teenage Fang Che.
Using all manner of hints and suggestions, they successfully implanted a sense of "living at the mercy of others" in the heart of the rebellious youth.
Once this sentiment emerged, a natural dissatisfaction and hatred towards his maternal grandfather's family followed.
This was used to influence Fang Qianyi—although the child was rebellious, he was still her flesh and blood; being scolded and reprimanded by his grandfather's family must have been irksome, right?
Therefore, for the past few years, life in the Fang Family was anything but pleasant with ceaseless trouble from an uncomprehending child.
On the one hand a crisis loomed with the risk of the family being downgraded, and on the other hand the pressure of tasks was evident. Moreover, there was the challenge of constantly appeasing a wilful and ignorant child...
Those in the know, understood.
After several years like this, the Fang Family found themselves an opportunity: by some stroke of luck, they obtained a fragment of a Treasure Map.
So, Su Yue continued to influence Fang Che...
And this was their last chance.
A high-level practitioner from the Yixin Sect, a branch of the Wei Wo Zheng Sect, happened to pass by Bibo City, searching for the Five Spirit Seeds.
The Su Family promptly pushed Fang Che forward.
If successful, he would become a lapdog of the Yixin Sect. After he completed a few tasks, they would immediately report him. It would be the perfect opportunity to drag the Fang Family down and collect the rewards from guarding the halls.
And if he failed, Fang Che would die on the spot.
Then Fang Qianyi would inevitably go mad: how could a son die in his father's home with no reaction?
So, it was a situation that, in any case, was advantageous for the Su Family.
At worst, it could cause the Fang Family to become disillusioned and deeply wounded.
Once the Fang Family failed to pass the family's evaluation for the Guardian Hall, they would naturally drop to the tenth grade, and their ninth-grade resources would be naturally divided between the Su Family and a few others.
With the covert support of the Yixin Sect, the Su Family was certain to gain even more benefits.
The Su Family had planned everything to the last detail.
But no member of the Su Family could have anticipated...
Their plan, which should have been advantageous no matter how it unfolded, somehow went awry.
Fang Che, the fool who had been manipulated like a puppet, suddenly threw the lineage of the Absolute Sword Monarch into the mix—a fatal temptation for the Su Family.
And so, the elite of the Su Family, in a bewildering turn of events, collectively met their end in these desolate mountains.
And no one knew.
All those in the know had come!—The Su Family trusted no one to stay behind because the envoy from Yixin was on his way.
With the envoy's multitude of methods, if by any chance the intelligence were to be wheedled out of them, would the Su Family still get a share of the "inheritance of the Absolute Sword Monarch"?
The situation was bizarre and convoluted.
Who would have thought that a car, speeding steadily and wildly on the highway, would take such a clear-headed turn into a ditch without any mistakes from those inside?
And that ditch led straight to a cliff that plunged into hell.
...
[New book released, looking forward to everyone's support. Let us walk another journey through the wind and rain of Jianghu.]
[First day of launch, will post four chapters in the morning for a better reading experience, and one more chapter at 6 pm as an accompaniment to your dinner.]