The second vial contained an activator, which would instantly trigger the poison. It too, came in the form of black vapor to deceive the enemy into thinking it was the same poison again. (Yun Siye colored all of his deadly poisons black for this reason).

Lu Fei smiled viciously and tossed the second vial, pushing herself to close the final gap between her and her companions.

Yun Siye and Qing Zheng had taken care of the guards at the gate, the first with his poison, and the second - surprisingly - with a fan.

“Nice job, fool!” She greeted. “You’re actually useful!” Qing Zheng stuck to his decision to ignore her. Lu Fei let out a puff of irritation at being ignored, looking back at the guards.

They were still running towards them, but visible chunks of flesh were falling off their bodies. Their cries of agony rang through the air as they rotted apart, and conveniently enough, no other guards came running to check out what was happening.

Qing Zheng side-eyed Yun Siye.

“Why did you kill them? I thought we were going to stall them.” He shrugged as he continued to keep Qie’s formation active, the formation spirit taking its sweet time answering for no particular reason other than to allow for some dialogue.

“I’m not sure,” Siye answered, furrowing his eyebrows. “I had this urge take a roundabout way of escaping, so we could have a gripping, intense escape, which obviously fell flat, and was forced to instead showcase my talents unnecessarily to introduce them so when they’re brought up again, their explanation doesn’t have to be clumsily shoved in later.”

“What?”

“He means that he was being an extra piece of shit when he could’ve just poisoned everyone to death. It’s not like we couldn’t. And our Master would bail us out anyway.” Lu Fei translated.

“Oh.” Qing Zheng squinted at Yun Siye. “Why didn’t you just say that? Were you trying to look cool? If no one understands you while you’re trying to look cool, you end up looking more like an asshole.” He lectured.

Qie finally appeared, his trembling figure looming over the three cultivators. His eyes flickered around, searching for a certain person. After confirming that he wasn’t there, he straightened up, an imposing aura establishing itself.

Too bad it was wasted on these people, who had just witnessed his cowering. The spirit gave an awkward cough.

“What do you want?”

“Get us back home.” Qie gave an assessing look to Qing Zheng.

“Him too?” Yun Siye rolled his eyes.

“Yes, him as well.” The formation spirit narrowed his eyes at his creator’s second disciple.

“You’re explaining this to Master.”

...

Di Jinming was sipping on a cup of tea, reading a book when three figures appeared at the gates, all of them falling over as they landed on the balls he had covered the ground with earlier.

Putting down his cup on the red table, he stood up, glee evident in his eyes as he advanced on his fallen victims.

“Who’s the stray?” Qing Zheng’s head jerked up at being called a stray, but the insult he was going to say died on his lips when he saw the white mask and green robes.

“A-are you Di Jinming?” He asked fearfully. Yun Siye and Lu Fei both picked themselves up, bowing in fear and respect to their senior disciple.

“First Senior Brother, we’ve retrieved the item you’ve asked for.” Siye spoke, still keeping his head down. He waved his hand, and a plain golden ring appeared. Kneeling down, he offered up the ring with both hands, trying not to tremble.

Di Jinming picked it up, turning it to and fro at different angles, inspecting it. He continued to do so for a couple of minutes, but no one dared to move. Yun Siye knew that his First Senior Brother had long since identified whether it was the correct ring, but was drawing it out to make them more nervous.

After some more nerve-wracking seconds, Di Jinming smiled at his little juniors, though they couldn’t tell because of his mask.

“Good job, but...” Yun Siye and Lu Fei had relaxed when he said “good job,” but the words after it made them tense up again.

“This is actually part of a set, you know?” Di Jinming basked in the mental screaming the two disciples did, content with their distress.

“It seems you’ll have to go back now.” Lu Fei spoke up quickly.

“Yes, we’ll do it right now!” What angry guards? What possibility of being convicted and executed? What enraged Purple Emperor? Their First Senior Brother was more terrifying to them at this moment.

“But wait,” Di Jinming help up a hand to stop them. “There’s more! You see, there needs to be a penalty for such a sloppy job.” He rubbed his chin with his hand, seemingly deep in thought.

“How about... no, that’s too boring. Hmm, I know!” He gestured dramatically to the balls they had fallen over on earlier.

“You have to decorate the palace with these balls.” Lu Fei blinked in confusion at the suspiciously easy punishment. Yun Siye had the same thoughts, and cautiously rolled over one of the balls, inspecting it.

The white ball was the size of a head, and when it turned over to display some words, his face turned ugly.

Proudly displayed on the ball in bright pink were the words “Yun Siye was here. Lu Fei too!” Quickly, he inspected another ball nearby.

“Fight me, Baldy!” was the message on it. Siye recognized the scheme for what it was.

It was an open secret that the Purple Emperor was bald. He went through painstaking measures to create a wig that would grow on its own and look exactly like real hair, all to hide his lack of real hair. No one knew why he didn’t simply get a specialist in body manipulation to deal with his baldness, but a popular rumor was that he contracted some rare disease that made all of his body hair fall out and prevented it from growing back.

This was naturally a sensitive subject for the Purple Emperor. While the disciple duo could have gotten away with stealing from him, even Chu Cheng couldn’t stop the Purple Emperor from going after them if they mentioned his baldness. They were in the wrong, after all.

Di Jinming would then get more entertainment from watching the Purple Emperor chase around his junior disciples.

Dread creeping up on Yun Siye as he continued to read through the insults, he fell into resignment towards his fate of facing off against the Purple Emperor.

Yun Siye, in fact, had a huge chance of beating the Purple Emperor through his poisons. It was just that if he defeated the current one, he would be forced to take up the title of the “strongest” cultivator in the seventh realm, causing endless headaches for him as he floundered around to keep the various powers and sects of the seventh realm in check. Which his First Senior Brother would definitely laugh at.

On the other hand, Lu Fei also had a good chance of beating the Purple Emperor. Only, the Purple Emperor was considered very attractive, even bald, and she would inevitably get distracted while fighting him.

In other words, this either meant that Yun Siye would take up the unwanted (to him) mantle or his Third Junior Sister’s life would be at risk.

Despite his childish antics, Yun Siye was the most reliable disciple out of all of Chu Cheng’s students. His pranks were generally not life-threatening (his spotless record was only stained due to some mysterious force’s interference with the Murong Clan) and he would defend his juniors if needed. He wouldn’t let Lu Fei die.

Procuring thread from his space ring, Yun Siye began to string the insult balls together to hang them. Lu Fei caught on to his idea, and helped him collect them, silently handing him a ball that said: “What shoe polish do you use to get it so shiny?”

...

Murong Yingyue wondered if she would still survive if she killed herself right now.

As Sovereign Shui, her father gave off the image of a cool and collected healer, benevolent to the masses. He would often travel around the realms, healing the “lost causes” and giving them a new chance at life.

(This was actually because he was terrible with directions and would get frequently lost, prompting him to heal people and ask them for directions in return. Of course, this was misconstrued as him wanting to go around to heal even more people.)

This behavior made him the most popular Elemental Sovereign among the commoners, and his good deeds were praised and written into history.

Murong Zili was a legendary healer that lived up to his title, able to cure every disease or ailment he came upon.

Which was why Yingyue was trying to figure out if she would really die with a miracle maker like her father around.

As for why she wanted to end herself?

Her father had teleported them to some area near the Gusty Plains, instead of the Windy Plains. They had decided to seek out a village to ask for directions, but before Murong Yingyue could tell her father to disguise himself, they had teleported fight in the middle of a bustling market.

Naturally, popularity came with drawbacks. Everyone, their mothers, and their dog’s previous owner’s second cousin twice removed wanted to meet him or ask him to heal someone.

Crowds clamored around her father but still managed to keep a respectful radius of 3 feet clear from him. Murong Yingyue had shrunk herself down and was being jostled around in a pocket inside her father’s sleeve.

Her existence was a secret - mainly to protect her on her trips in the lower realms, and to give her some privacy.

Although she wasn’t happy about a secret identity adding to her main character probability, if this was the kind of reception her father gained in the ninth realm where people were already used to him strolling around, she was thankful she had agreed to hide her identity.

“Sovereign Shui!” A shrill voice managed to cut through the roar of the crowd. “I’m a huge fan of yours! Can you sign my shirt?” Maintaining the image of a kind but cold person, she felt Murong Zili give a nod of acknowledgment to the person. To her surprise, when she peered out from the sleeve to look at the fan, she saw a stout, burly man with hairy arms scramble towards her father. The fan turned to face away from her father, offering up his back for him to sign.

Murong Zili conjured up a brush and ink, signing his name with a flourish.

“I hope you can continue to support those in need and help provide opportunities to those who are capable. Donating isn’t the only way you can help.” Her father was the founder of the largest charity organization in the realms. It aided those born with disabilities and gave scholarship opportunities to talented cultivators with poor backgrounds. One in twenty cultivators who had risen up from being normal mortals had been helped by this charity.

Her father was a force that the Celestial Emperor didn’t dare offend. In fact, the Celestial Emperor would practically grovel at her father’s feet everytime she was dragged off to visit the Celestial Palace with Murong Zili.

Again, this was why her identity needed to be concealed. There were people who wanted power, and holding his daughter was the cliche, but effective strategy to control him.

They weren’t numerous, but the fact that there was still the occasional lunatic who would try to attack him personally proved that she would still be at risk.

“Of course! I’ll always hold your teachings close in my heart!” Was the adoring reply.

Murong Yingyue tried not to gag at the sickeningly sweet reply. Disgusting! Did you just rip off that overused line from some dialogue between a student and master about to part? This is why I hate crowds! They never say anything original!

“Sovereign Shui-”

“Excuse me! Could you-”

“Hey! Stop shoving me! Sovereign Sh-”

“Please-”

“-butt itches-”

“I have a-”

“-ease sign my underwear!”

“What’s so good about him?” The last person was immediately jumped on by the fans, her screams silenced by the roar of approval in taking out the unbelieving heathen.

Her father held up his hand, and the crowd instantly fell silent. The woman who had been attacked scampered away from the pile of people which had formed on top of her, fighting her way through the throng of villagers and away from them. Far away from them.

“Apologies to anyone who wanted speak with me, but I have an urgent case in the Windy Plains to attend to. Could someone give me directions to there?” The people surged again, all of them stepping over each other to speak to their idol.

One man stepped out, casually shaking off the grasping hands trying to restrain him. He promptly smacked another contender down, stepping over the fallen ones. There was a collective, last-ditch attempt at taking down the man, and dozens of arms reached out to create a barrier between him and Sovereign Shui.

However, the man pushed through, bursting through to the other side. With a manic glint in his eye, he knelt down in front of Murong Zili.

“Sovereign Shui, use this unworthy peasant as you wish!”