Chapter 171: The Mad Puppeteer (Patreon)

Qingge let herself drop onto her bed face first.

“Ugh…”

This had been one stressful night, and her tired mind was still trying to process everything she had learned.

Elder Zhong had a daughter – that was the obvious conclusion that she and Elder Shi, who had arrived not long after her, had drawn from what Zixin had heard. She hadn’t been named directly, but she was the only female head of a pillar family beside Elder Xia and no one else made any sort of sense.

This alone was an earthshattering piece of information. For a number of different reasons, cultivators very rarely sired children that late in their life. By the time someone had reached the Dao Contemplation Realm, any partners or lovers they may have had had usually long passed away and they rarely socialized outside of a small group of fellow elders and direct subordinates, so it was unlikely for them to find new ones.

Even if they did have a partner, having children with them was still a rarity. Those belonging to multi-generational cultivation clans would usually have passed on their bloodline much earlier, so there was little tangible benefit to it. On the other hand, a child that they became attached to could turn into a dangerous weakness that any rivals would not hesitate to try and exploit.

That was almost certainly the reason Elder Zhong had kept the existence of her daughter secret. For good reason, as it was exactly what had now happened: Her daughter was now in the hands of Elder Xia, who was using her to blackmail one of the most powerful Pillar Families in the Lunar Peaks Sect.

Qingge left her bed behind and started pacing around the room. Despite her fatigue, the turmoil in her mind simply wouldn’t let her rest.

The identity of the daughter was still technically up in the air, but Qingge thought it very likely that she was the girl they had known as Liting Fei, one of the two missing disciples. For these two things to be connected just made too much sense not to be the case.

Unlike the missing boy, Ye Wudi, whose family they had been able to contact without issue, the letter they had sent to the Fei Family had, as Elder Wei had had his allies from Moonlake City let them know, mysteriously disappeared. Beyond that, the family had barely even known of the girl’s existence, much less that she had become a disciple of the Lunar Peaks Sect. All of that just reeked of a coverup.

How Elder Xia had learned of it, Qingge could not say, but she was almost certain that she was behind the disappearance. Ye Wudi had likely either been kidnapped as a distraction from the true target, or he had stumbled upon the attempt by accident and had to be taken as well.

One problem remained though: Despite all she had learned today, Qingge was still struggling to connect all of this to Master Wei’s framing for the assassination of Yifei Xia.

They were connected, that much was obvious, but how? What was it that Elder Xia was having the Zhong Family do that she wouldn’t have been able to accomplish on her own?

Well, for one, they had probably helped smuggle whoever was the fire cultivator that had committed the murder into the sect. But that couldn’t be everything. It just wouldn’t be worth it.

However Elder Xia was keeping Elder Zhong’s daughter captive, she wouldn’t be able to keep that up indefinitely. Of all the families and other groups on the peninsula, the Zhong Family was perhaps the best equipped to locate and free a hostage. Even if they had to be extremely careful, it was just a matter of time until Elder Zhong’s daughter was free again. And once that was the case, the Xia Family would have made an unbelievably dangerous enemy. Meixiu Xia had to know that.

So, whatever she was having the Zhong Family do had to be very meaningful for her in some way, to be worth the risk.

Qingge sighed. She felt like she was moving in circles. Physically and metaphorically. She really ought to get some sleep for now. Maybe, with a rested mind, she’d have better ideas about Elder Xia’s intentions.

Forcing her mind to shut down, she slipped out of her robes and into her nightgown before returning to her bed and burying herself beneath her blanket. It had been days since she had slept and her eyes practically fell shut on their own.

But as she tried to drift off towards sleep, Qingge couldn’t help but continue turning her questions over in her mind again and again.

No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t help but shake the feeling that she was missing something obvious.

Elder Xia had used the Zhong Family to assassinate a senior member of her own family and frame her master for it, to get him banished from the sect. That way, even if the primary scheme were to be revealed, the Zhong Family would be bearing fallout, instead of her.

Qingge pried her eyes open once more, staring at the ceiling.

But that just didn’t make sense! Getting her master banished from the sect for three years was highly inconvenient to the Reform Faction’s plans, but in the grand scheme of things, it would at most delay them. Yes, it was convenient for the pillar families’ faction, but not when one considered that she was tearing that very faction apart in the process.

As soon as he returned to the sect, Liu Wei would continue to push for his ideals and nothing short of killing him would change that. And no matter Elder Zhong’s skill, that was something even she would never be able to accomplish. Killing him would only ever be possible through the coordinated efforts of several of the sect’s most powerful cultivators, including Patriarch Zhao…

…

…

A terrible thought began to form in Qingge’s mind.

What if all of this, the entire plot surrounding the banishment of her master, had merely been a preamble to Elder Xia’s actual goals?

Master Wei had told her that, of all the sect’s elders, Meixiu Xia was perhaps the most dangerous. A brilliant manipulator, a ruthless schemer and with an ambition bordering mania. Even more of a megalomaniac than Elder Bai, but with a mind to back it up.

She had to know that she couldn’t control Elder Zhong forever. And she had to know that she would return for revenge.

And that could only mean one thing, the thing Qingge had been feeling she was missing: Elder Xia wasn’t planning for the Zhong Family’s matriarch to survive this ordeal.

She knew that Elder Xia had asked the Zhong family to do something relating to her master, even after the assassination had taken place. Something that they had attempted to refuse and argue with her over, which had led to Elder Xia sending Yue Zhong the severed hand of her daughter.

What if that something was feeding Master Wei evidence that pointed to the Zhong Family as perpetrators? What if Elder Xia wasn’t just shifting the risk of a potential fallout onto the Zhong Family, but was actively trying to escalate matters between them and her master? If she needed someone to kill Elder Zhong before she could turn on her, her master was the obvious weapon to resort to.

And then? The Pillar Families wouldn’t take the death of one of their own lying down. They would retaliate. Ma Rong, his strongest ally, was shut off in closed cultivation and even if he wasn’t, the Reform Faction still wouldn’t be able to stand against their combined might.

Yue Zhong could not be allowed to survive Elder Xia’s scheme. Master Wei was being set up as a weapon against her. And if he killed the head of a pillar family without express permission from the sect, he would die as well, or at best be chased from the peninsula forever.

Qingge drew a deep breath to calm her mind. In the aftermath of such an event, both the Pillar Families and the Reform Faction would be critically weakened. Only the Xia Families members, having the best excuse to stay away from any direct fighting as the sect’s best healers, would come out mostly unscathed. Meixiu Xia would be perfectly positioned to pick up the pieces.

Not just that, with Elder Zhong and Master Wei’s death, she would actually be in quite the good position to become Sect Matriarch at some point in the future. At the fifth stage of Dao Contemplation, she wasn’t nearly the most advanced cultivator in the sect, but at about three hundred and fifty years, she was also significantly younger than most of her peers.

Ambition bordering on mania. If this was truly the plan she had laid out, Master Wei’s description of Elder Xia would be quite accurate indeed.

There was still a critical flaw to this theory though: Master Wei wasn’t someone who was that easy to provoke into reckless action. Even if he was fooled and believed that it was Elder Zhong who had framed him, Qingge didn’t think he would attack her directly, even if the sect denied bringing any repercussions on the Zhong Family through the legal way. Indeed, she had a hard time thinking of anything Elder Xia could have the Zhong Family do that could provoke him into attacking them directly.

In fact, in all the time she had spent at his side, first as his assistant, then as his disciple, Qingge had really only seen him truly enraged twice: Once when he’d arrived at the Battle at the Roaring Thunder Sect, and once back she’d confronted Elder Bai about his involvement in the smuggling operations in Moonlake City and he’d tried to attack her…

A chill ran down Qingge’s back and she sat up straight. When Elder Bai had attacked her.

Then, as if on cue, the door to her room opened with a quiet creak. For a moment, Qingge thought she might have somehow woken up Daiyu, but then a slender female figure, dressed in flowing black robes, stepped inside.

Her hair was dark as the night, her body wrapped in living shadows and her face pale and void of emotions, like a porcelain mask.