Chapter 4 : Visitors and Scars

Kai calmly walked in and first offered water to Lan Mei before answering the question . She accepted it with trembling fingers and drank in long, desperate gulps.

His past-life memories were gone, but Kai Tianxie still remained.

I turned to the newcomer and said, "Now that I'm looking at you up close, I remember you from those scars."

There was a short scar on her face near the temple—most likely from a beast-fighting incident.

The Eye of Wisdom passively scanned her: currently at the first stage of the Foundation Establishment realm.

"You've come now, which means you've succeeded in breaking through to Foundation Establishment."

She replied, "Yes, but you still haven't answered my question. And why did the sect leader make 'you'—a brat who's only at the Qi Condensation realm—his successor?"

Then Lan Mei shot me a look that clearly said: Who the fuck is she?

I answered Lan Mei, "The last sect leader's only truly good deed was that he accidentally saved her from a beast. But she never joined. That's how things work in the jianghu. Her name is Chao Lingxi."

At that moment, memories flooded back into both Kai Tianxie and Chao Lingxi—memories of what "accidentally" actually meant here.

A few years in the past…

The previous sect leader had been wandering in the wilderness, trying to shoot a rabbit. Instead, he accidentally shot the beast that had cornered Chao Lingxi. He was still drunk at the time.

With lust in his eyes, Woyn Sin tried to guilt-trip her:

"You owe me your life. Why don't you become my disciple in my great sect right now?"

Chao Lingxi: "No, thank you."

Woyn Sin: "We are the greatest sect that has ever existed!"

Chao Lingxi: "Never heard of it."

Back to the present…

Both Kai Tianxie and Chao Lingxi looked a little awkward.

Kai broke the silence. "Why are you here?"

Chao Lingxi: "I heard that man was publicly executed. I only came out of seclusion a few days ago, and rumors were already spreading that someone had taken over that trash-dumping-ground sect."

Lan Mei kept looking back and forth between us while drinking water— gulp gulp.

Kai Tianxie: "Yeah… that person is me."

Lan Mei was still staring at him. She had also heard the rumors but never caught the sect's name. Both women were now looking at him as if waiting for an explanation.

Chao Lingxi asked directly, "Why?"

Kai Tianxie gazed up at the sky, then toward the sect's location, quickly making up a story.

The Crimson Ember Sect did not stand upon some unreachable heavenly peak, but on a broad stone plateau rising gently from the eastern plains. Once, its elevated ground had made it the spiritual center of the surrounding valley, visible from the scattered villages and farmland that stretched across the open lands below. A winding river curved two kilometers to the east, sustaining both mortals and cultivators alike—its waters feeding crops and spirit herbs that once supplied the sect's outer disciples. Now the pavilions were broken, the courtyards overgrown, and demonic chickens nested where elders once lectured.

A short distance to the west, beyond the cultivated plains and past abandoned watch posts, a jagged stone ridge tore up from the earth like a broken blade. The unstable cliff face there was known as a lawless training ground, where reckless disciples tested techniques and demonic beasts made their dens. It was beneath that cliff that Kai Tianxie had awakened in a shattered body, the wind howling through fractured rock before he staggered back toward the ruins of what remained of his sect.

Though the Crimson Ember Sect had fallen into ridicule and decay, its plateau still overlooked the valley. From its broken gates, one could see the plains stretching outward toward the Eastern Wilds, where forest shadows marked the beginning of true danger.

Kai Tianxie looked away from them both and replied, "There were two reasons. First, the sect had declined so badly, and the sect leader had to make me—a random person—the new sect leader because I fed him. That was the only way he could repay me."

Chao Lingxi gave him a skeptical look. "Was he drunk?"

Kai Tianxie: "Yes ; Second… he wasn't even the founder of our sect."

System: —— [Hums] —— A lie detected.——BIG ONE.