Extending an Olive Branch

The Sun Family Compound

The patriarch of the Sun clan sat in the seat of honor. Below him gathered the prominent men of the Sun lineage, along with the patriarch of the Wang clan. Every brow was furrowed, their grim gazes fixed on a man huddled on the floor.

Though the midday sun was at its warmest, the man wore thick, padded winter cottons. He sat directly in the sunlight yet shivered uncontrollably, the hair on his flesh standing on end as if he had been plunged into an icy abyss.

"Patriarch, I cannot practice this immortal art any longer. If I go on, I will die!" his voice trembled in desperate entreaty, and a faint, pale mist drifted from his lips with every word.

The Sun patriarch remained silent, but his brow tightened into a deep, troubled furrow as he pondered the situation.

"Patriarch, in my view, there is a fundamental flaw in this immortal manual! Otherwise, why would everyone who touches it meet with disaster?" a clansman stepped forward, shouting vehemently. "Just days ago, one of our kin burned alive from the inside out in broad daylight. Now Ah Si is frozen to the bone. If we force them to continue, we are courting ruin!"

"Patriarch, we truly cannot go on!"

More and more clansmen joined the outcry. When they had first obtained the remnants of the immortal cultivation manual, they had been insufferably smug. They had envisioned raising their own immortal masters to match Zhou Ping, intending to eventually strip the Zhou clan of every scrap of their livelihood.

Yet out of the entire clan, only two possessed the rare spiritual roots required for cultivation. One had succumbed to a raging internal heat a few days prior, dying in agony, and this second one was now half-frozen. To push further would surely invite an even greater tragedy.

"Old Sun, you ought to command your kin to halt their practice," the Wang patriarch advised anxiously from his seat. "When it comes to the matters of the Immortals, we are utterly blind. We cannot simply grope our way through an immortal manual. How many lives must we sacrifice to test its perils?"

The Wang clan had fared no better. A few of their own had managed to sense Qi through their fragmented manual, confirming their aptitude. But within mere days of refining that energy, abnormalities arose. Their orifices bled, they fluctuated violently between fever and chills, and they showed every sign of sudden, fatal collapse.

Terrified of inviting further calamity, the Wang patriarch had swiftly put an end to their training.

The Sun patriarch, however, remained stubborn. He knew lives had been lost, and seeing the terrifying state of the young man before him only deepened his grim resolve.

Standing up, the Sun patriarch swept his gaze across the room like a wolf tracking its prey. The clansmen quailed beneath his cold eyes, involuntarily stepping back.

"An immortal opportunity lies directly before us! The single chance for our two families to defy the heavens and change our fate is within our grasp, yet you wish to abandon it out of mere cowardice?"

"What does a handful of lives matter? What is a bit of heat or cold?" He stepped forward, his voice thundering in rebuke. "Do you fools not understand? The moment our two houses produce even a few immortal masters, every surrounding village will bow to our commands! Even the great gentry clans and court officials in the county seat will have to treat us with respect!"

"Do not be blinded by our current prominence here in Baixi Village. Look to the county seat-has a single notable house there ever truly looked at us? To them, we are nothing but dirt-stained peasants scraping a living from the soil, entirely because we lack backing from higher authorities!"

"The Zhou clan consists of a mere handful of people. Why, then, does Registrar Lin speak to them with such deference? Why do our two houses hesitate to provoke them? It is solely because Zhou Ping is a cultivator who wields immortal methods! We stay our hands only because we fear the repercussions."

He sank back into his chair, letting out a long, weary sigh.

"What our families lack is not numbers. We lack power and authority!"

"Only with an immortal master in our ranks can we hope to stand on equal footing with those grand lineages. Only then can we secure scholar titles for our youth, forge true paths of advancement, open clan treasuries, and establish academies."

"You simply do not see the larger picture..."

The Sun patriarch sighed inwardly. These peasants who spent their lives tilling the earth possessed ample brute strength but were utterly devoid of foresight. Some had even mocked the Liu family for exhausting their wealth to support Liu Ming's studies, only for the family to end up with nothing.

To a simple farming family, spending silver and labor to foster a scholar seemed a fool's errand; they believed it far wiser to put hands to the plow and harvest more grain.

But without a new path, without striving for higher ground, generation after generation would remain chained to the soil.

Now that an immortal method was within reach, offering a way to alter the destiny of their bloodline, he refused to surrender, regardless of the hardship.

"Old Sun, I comprehend your ambition," the Wang patriarch sighed. "But we cannot throw lives away blindly. We know nothing of the Dao. Crossing the river by feeling for stones in this manner will surely lead to disaster."

"In my estimation, either we have crossed some sacred taboo of the Immortals, or the manual itself is deeply flawed. That is the root of this affliction."

The Sun patriarch lamented, "Do you think I am blind to that? But what choice do we have? If we approach established cultivators for guidance, our two houses will likely be stripped bare and devoured whole."

He was well aware that immortal techniques were fiercely guarded secrets. To protect their monopoly on power, those high-standing cultivators might well slaughter the Wang and Sun clans to ensure no secrets leaked.

"Patriarch, why not mend relations with the Zhou family? We could ask Zhou Ping to guide our cultivation," a clansman suggested hesitantly.

The Sun patriarch let out a bitter laugh. "How can you ensure Zhou Ping would not subtly sabotage our foundation? Why would the Zhou clan ever place their trust in us?"

Zhou Ping was no fool. He knew full well that the Zhou family enjoyed peace only because he was the sole cultivator in Baixi Village.

He rarely even showed his face these days, undoubtedly out of caution, fearing the two clans might band together to corner and assassinate him.

"Patriarch, we could seize the Zhou family elders and use their lives to force Zhou Ping to yield the proper methods," an aggressive clansman urged, refusing to concede.

The Wang patriarch frowned, unable to stomach such reckless talk. "If Zhou Ping proves ruthless enough to abandon his kin, he will slip into the shadows like a hidden tiger, watching us from the dark. We would forge an unquenchable blood feud with a cultivator."

At their core, they were still cautious village leaders. Unless they could completely uproot a threat with absolute certainty-as the Liu family had attempted-they would always leave themselves a path for retreat.

Even their current schemes against the Zhou family were confined to minor, indirect provocations.

The main hall fell into a heavy, contemplative silence.

After a long pause, the Sun patriarch turned to a young man standing near the wall. "Sun Hong, take a trip to the Zhou estate. Find a way to ease the tension between our families."

"Understood, Patriarch," the young man replied, bowing respectfully before withdrawing.

"Old Sun, are you truly abandoning the struggle?" the Wang patriarch asked, surprised.

"Since our current method is unusable, there is no sense in pushing the Zhou clan into a corner. Besides, once Zhou Ping's longevity runs out, his house will naturally decline," the Sun patriarch replied smoothly.

Yet beneath his placid words, a deeper scheme was forming.

Since the stolen manual was a dead end, any future for his clan would have to be extracted from the Zhou family through subtler means.

Previously, when he believed his kin lacked spiritual roots, his plan was simply to outwait Zhou Ping and swallow the Zhou estate upon the man's death. Now that he knew his descendants actually possessed cultivation aptitude, he had to win the Zhou family's trust by any means necessary, coaxing Zhou Ping into willingly instructing them.

He had heard that the eldest grandson of the Zhou house was reaching maturity, and the Sun family had several eligible young daughters. He would orchestrate a marriage alliance between the two houses.

With time, they might well absorb the Zhou clan's legacy without spilling a single drop of blood.

Meanwhile, Zhou Ping and Zhou Minghu arrived back at the entrance of Baixi Village, accompanied by two elderly men.

One was an aging tongsheng scholar who had long surrendered all hope of passing the higher imperial examinations. Zhou Ping had offered a handsome sum to employ him as a tutor for the clan's children.

The other was a lame veteran soldier. Though his eyes were clouded with age, they still flashed with a fierce, blooding aura that commanded instant dread.

Zhou Ping had hired the old soldier to train the estate guards in martial arts. If the retainers became formidable enough, the Wang and Sun clans would not dare act rashly, even during periods when Zhou Ping was absent.

He knew that maintaining a large force of armed guards while his own kin were few carried inherent risks-after all, the human heart was fickle. But faced with immediate survival, Zhou Ping could not afford to worry about distant contingencies. Without strong guards to secure the compound, their lives were in constant jeopardy; worrying about future loyalty was a luxury he would consider only after their immediate safety was assured.

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