Murong Zili appeared briefly back home, startling Murong Yingyue. He was alone, and he had several bruises on his face.

“Hello! Yueyue, I need to borrow your uncle a bit.” Grabbing Feng Wulin, Zili teleported back out of their house and left Yingyue staring at where they just were.

Meanwhile, at Feng Wulin’s house, two men appeared in front of Feng Ran, one sheepish and the one other disoriented.

“Well? Explain.” Feng Ran said coldly. Feng Wulin turned an accusing gaze to his brother-in-law.

“Ahem...well dear, the truth is that I was really distracted preparing an anniversary present for you, so I didn’t pay attention to that old scroll. Your brother was helping me prepare the present and he handed it over to an independent contractor to work on it.”

“Is this true?” She asked her brother, who felt irritated. Just a few seconds earlier, while they were traveling through the rip in space, Murong Zili had bribed him into agreeing to whatever he said. While this kind of statement would have already enraged him, what he was offering as a bribe made him want to puke out blood in anger once he heard Murong Zili’s cover story.

The man had told him that he would give his sister an especially precious anniversary present if he helped deceive Feng Ran. Actually, Murong Zili’s track record for getting nice anniversary presents for his wife was pretty good, but the prospect of seeing his sister even happier was too good to pass up for Feng Wulin, this hopeless sis-con.

And now, here he was, using the bribe as the actual cover-up. Murong Zili wasn’t really even losing anything! This was a rather out-of-character move for Murong Zili, who acted like an idiot so much. It was surprising that he finally made a good excuse for something.

“It is.” He replied stiffly, and felt despair well up inside of him when he saw his precious little sister’s gaze soften at his confirmation.

Don’t trust this stupid idiot! Your husband is a sneaky bastard. Feng Ran, don’t get pulled in!

Feeling like someone was pulling his intestines out with a toothpick, Feng Wulin stoically endured the affection showing between the two.

“Zili, you can stay and finish discussing this matter with my brother. I’ll be going back home first.” Feng Ran told him, a gentle smile on her face.

“Okay dear! See you soon!” Murong Zili waved to her with an idiotic smile stretching his face as she teleported away. However, the moment Feng Ran was gone, his face went blank, and the bruises disappeared.

“Feng Wulin.” Then, like a classic villain, Murong Zili gave him a disdainful smirk. Gliding gracefully towards him, without a single hint of the bumbling fool from before present, he lifted a hand to grasp gently at the other man’s chin. Lifting Wulin’s head to look into his eyes, Zili blinked lazily, like a sleeping predator.

“I didn’t know you wanted me dead that badly.” He spoke conversationally, as if he wasn’t talking about attempted murder. Feng Wulin glared at him, slapping his arm off.

This is why I don’t like this bastard! Two-faced son of a half-price whore!

“My, my. What a hateful expression. Do you really not like this brother-in-law of yours?”

“No matter how much you calculate your actions, you can never win me over. Not when you hide your true face behind so many masks.” Then, as an afterthought, Feng Wulin added on another statement. “It seems you have trouble endearing yourself to your own daughter. How pathetic.”

“Isn’t that what makes her so charming? She’s very cute when she acts so much like Feng Ran, pretending that she doesn’t care about anyone.”

“Of course! My wonderful sister and niece are-” Feng Wulin shut his mouth, realizing he was agreeing with his hated enemy.

“But this conversation isn’t about them. It’s about those assassins you hired.” With a flick of his fingers, the two cultivators from before appeared, frozen in place with ice. Murong Zili tapped the two of them shattering the ice. X collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath, while Shuo Henduo’s body hit the ground with a dull thud. X looked up and caught sight of first Murong Zili, then Feng Wulin and paled.

“I-” Before he could say anything else, Zili lashed out with spiritual energy, smashing his face in. Blood splattered in an uneven arc across Wulin’s polished hardwood floor, and leaked from the wounds on X’s head.

Feng Wulin curled his lip at the mess made. The two Sovereigns were both unaffected by the pain of those below them and unrelated to them, indifferent to the fact that one of the cultivators had died a short but brutal death, and the other still barely hanging on due to Murong Zili’s excellent control over his energy.

People died all the time, why should they care so much? It was a mindset that most high leveled cultivators shared, and what made Murong Zili’s facade as Sovereign Shui stand out so much.

X made a garbled sound of horror as he realized his role as a pawn in the powerplay between the two men, more blood gushing from his face as he did so. Lying helplessly on the ground, he knew that he wouldn’t live, not when he witnessed the real personality of the cultivation world’s “Beloved Sovereign Shui.”

Belatedly, he realized that he was truly a fool to think that he could really take down a Sovereign. He had grown overconfident, seeing the scatter minded behavior of Murong Zili and assuming that underneath the stoic Sovereign was just a simple, foolish man.

Then again, X already acted like an idiot. The confirmation of his (lack of) intelligence shouldn’t surprise him. He frequently engaged in self-destructive behavior because he needed something to take the edge off the crippling emotional pain of seeing his family slaughtered in front of him when he was only a child.

You know, like most other cultivators, except they mostly channeled their angst into something productive for society or into some personality quirk.

“So, my dearest brother-in-law,” Zili said, addressing Feng Wulin, “are you going to tell me why you called my attention to you? Or do I have to stain your Grand Jeweled Tiger Skin rug?” He gestured to the glossy, pristine black pelt lying in the middle of his living room, with a head attached to it, a gleaming leaf-shaped ruby embedded in its forehead. “I hear it’s very hard to clean those. Even more so for blood.”

“Peh.” Feng Wulin gave a irritated glance to X. “As if you would. You’ve been eying that for centuries, since your cult couldn’t get it for you. And especially since the one that appeared twelve years ago was cooked into a stew by some reclusive cultivator.”

“I can’t help it! I’ve been meaning to prepare one for my Yueyue, but they’re practically extinct!” He whined unbecomingly.

“Yingyue doesn’t even like those kinds of useless gifts! Did you know that she sells off all of your gifts with a profit margin of at least 35%?”

Murong Zili looked at Feng Wulin like he had just used his own rug to wipe his ass and lit it on fire, then pissed on it to put out the flames, all while he was still in his living room. Wulin brushed off his reaction.

“Anyways, I called you here because- Are you even listening to me?”

Zili only stared blankly into the air. A few seconds later, he walked over and sat on Feng Wulin’s couch, and conjured a jug of alcohol and a glass. Filling the glass, Zili brought the jug to his mouth and polished it off in under two seconds. With a second’s deliberation, he downed the glass, too.

Wiping his mouth, he responded to Feng Wulin with a vindictive gleam in his eye.

“Feng Ran thinks you’re annoying when you start clinging on to her.”

Moments later, Feng Wulin joined Murong Zili on the couch, the two mighty Elemental Sovereigns both nursing alcohol that was at least 150-proof and having a moment of introspection while X slowly bled to death on the floor, wheezing for air and choking on the blood that he vomited from anger at his situation.

...

Di Jinming hummed a happy little tune while strolling along in a dark and foreboding cave, with a nice meat shield (read: his brother) in front of him and triggering any sound-based formation traps.

Di Tianzheng let out a miserable scream when a vat of particularly virulent liquid spilled on top on him.

Still humming and now tapping his foot slightly, Jinming waved his hand, pulled his younger brother out and haphazardly sloshed more spiritual energy-infused water on him. After the wounds healed up, Jinming cast another cleansing art on him.

“This is gross,” said Tianzheng, shaking out bits of flesh from his clothes (actually, his brother’s - they had a formation on them to make them waterproof and unstainable, but only the clothes, not the person). “Can you stop dumping water on me? That can barely be called a cleaning art, it's only good for small pranks.”

“Don’t wanna waste more energy on you. Shut up, keep moving.” He said in a childish voice, pouting and puffing his cheeks out and looking away. Di Jinming caught sight of a barely visible symbol on the wall - a filled crescent with small triangles surrounding the outer part with their tips pointing outwards - and his eyes lit up. Without warning, he pressed it, and it gave way to his touch, the raised carving sinking into the wall and becoming parallel with the rest of the cavern wall. He was teleported away with a slight click.

...

Jinming let his face sharpen into his normal cool expression while scanning his new surroundings.

It was another section of the Cavern of Scriptures, dotted with more of the strange symbols on the walls. He stood in the center of the dome-shaped area, which had tunnels branching out of it, further than what he could see.

“Finally...” He murmured aloud and very uncharacteristically. “This is it.”

With confident strides, he navigated the area, walking through the tunnels with complete surety as to where he was going. Di Jinming didn’t pause as he chose which direction to go on forks in the path and eventually, he entered an enormous cavern that was filled from the floor to the roof with carved symbols. They all protruded the slightest out of the surfaces they were on, showing the great amount of effort put into them to carve out the surrounding material around the words.

In the middle of the cavern was a small pedestal with a small gold statue placed on top, deceptively innocent.

So Di Jinming casually grabbed it, snatching it without a single thought and uncaring of the consequences. Activating a space talisman, he disappeared, back to his master’s home.

Di Tianzheng heard a loud rumble in the cave, and he paled. Turning around, he paled even further when he realized that his older brother had disappeared. He made the most logical choice he could think of, and ran for the entrance as quickly as possible.

The place had begun to quiver, and by the time Tianzheng was safely outside, the entire structure was shaking. With an open mouth, he watched as the Cavern of Scriptures, an important historical site and filled with valuable information from the times of old, collapsed pathetically into rubble.

He felt his heart stop, and Tianzheng clasped his chest with his hand... only to find that there was something inside of the inner pocket of his clothes. Reaching inside with dread, he extracted a neatly folded note that was slightly wrinkled from when he pressed his hand on his chest.

Shakily, he opened the piece of paper and read it, eyes straining to decipher the messy scrawl.

Guess waht? You’re favourite bro decided to help u out. He helps u wit ur debt and made getting jade suuuper ez. But now u gotta get all the jade. XOXOXO~

Tianzheng fainted from it all: the collapse of an ancient structure, the new terms of their agreement, the barely legible handwriting, and the atrocious grammar.

(Especially the last one).