The madman's smile

"Lord Clan Leader, I've tried everything, but even with the legendary rank 4 gu, World Healing Breeze, I could only manage to delay Liu Wi's death." An old man with gray hair, using a cane to stand, speaks to Clan Leader of Feng Zhi clan in a low and respectful tone.

"Damn it, how can a damn rank 4 gu do nothing against a mere rank 2 gu!" Clan Leader Feng Zhi says with a furious voice before punching the wall hard, causing the few people around to feel pressure and fear amid the fury of a rank 4 gu master.

"Even knowing that this gu is in Liu Wi's heart, we can't do anything!" The tone of the clan leader still carries great hatred and fury, but a large part of it is now replaced by despair and melancholy.

All the other people in the room remain silent, afraid of receiving the clan leader's fury directly if they even make the slightest noise at this moment. Regardless of everyone in this room being members of the same family, no one wants to provoke more anger from an already furious rank 4 gu master.

Of course, this is completely justified fury, as everyone in the room can imagine how painful it must be for a father to see his son lying in bed suffering endlessly for several days while slowly dying, and as a father, you can do nothing to save your son or alleviate his pain completely, only being able to delay his death for a few days.

"Lord Clan Leader, I understand your anger, but there's nothing healing gu can do to deal with this new met--" When the old healer, who is the most qualified in the Feng Zhi clan, begins to explain again, he is cut off by the furious look of the clan leader, which seems to say that if the old man continued speaking, he would die before he could blink.

*sigh* The old man sighs before bowing his head slowly and walking to the door of the room, withdrawing to wait outside with other elders who no longer have the ability to enter the battlefield, as everyone who can is trying to hold the front line, which is now in a precarious situation.

"Ah... it's been four days already, according to that bastard, he won't last a week no matter what we do... if that's the case, I'll personally ki--" Inside the recovery room, the clan leader begins another of his furious rants before being interrupted.

"Liu Bai! Stop this and come stand by our son's side now!" There are very few people in all of Longhua Shan Mountain who would have the courage to speak out against Liu Bai, the clan leader of Feng Zhi clan, so few that even this person who spoke now, his wife, was not one of them, but he guesses that in the face of a mother's pain in losing her son, the fear of provoking him doesn't seem very significant.

Bit even after hearing such a huge insult against him, Liu Bai doesn't have a rage outburst, but instead, with a heavy expression on his face, he walks to the side of Liu Wi, who is lying in bed surrounded by four women: one his mother, another his wife, and the other two his sisters.

"I'm sorry, my son, your father is truly useless, unable to even save you..." In the eyes of the world, his son is the powerful and fearless Piercer of the Heavens, but to him, as a father, his son is just a child despite his fame and power, and now seeing his son in such a situation without being able to do anything brings a feeling of helplessness that is rare for a rank 4 gu master.

And it's not like he hasn't tried everything to save Liu Wi, because he tried everything within his capacity. In fact, his first attempt was to reach an agreement with his son's executioner, the infamous Blood Prince, so that he could explain how to cure Liu Wi in exchange for various resources or Feng Zhi Clan yielding positions on the front line.

At first, he even thought this was possible when he received an information path gu from the Blood Prince, which he presumed would have the demands for a means to cure Liu Wi. So, as he mentally prepared for the extortion he would receive, as he read the gu.

But after seeing the content of the gu, his mood was even worse than he expected because the content of the gu was not demands made by the Blood Prince, but rather him explaining not so detailedly which gu he used, what its effect was, besides saying that the gu was in Liu Wi's heart and that he wouldn't have more than a week to live, going so far as to describe now in detail the process of pain and suffering he would go through during that time.

In the gu, the Blood Prince says that he sent the gu just as an act of his own will, as he wanted the Piercer of the Heavens to know the reason for his death and how much pain he would have to endure, but the clan leader knows that this is an attempt to make him lose his composure and end up making foolish decisions in the war that is already in a precarious situation.

"Mother... I'm sorry... for making you worry so much--... argh!" Liu Wi speaks with difficulty in a state of half consciousness, half hallucination, as the pain he has been enduring these past days hasn't allowed him even a few moments of rest.

His mother, who is holding his hand by his side, has tears in her eyes as she tries to comfort him, as well as his sisters and wife doing the same, while the clan leader remains silent.

-----------

*POV Elders outside the room*

"It's really a pity to see such a talented young man with a bright future like Liu Wi go like this..." An old man who appears common and seems to be around seventy years old but is easily identified by his wooden leg and arm, which move perfectly as if it were a mechanic prosthetic, what is the effect of a gu.

"I think Elder Lao De is being too pessimistic... I believe Heaven has our concerns in mind and will help us," Cai Bo, a short old man of no more than 160 cm, says, trying to increase the positivity of the other elders in the corridor.

"Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case, Elder Bai Xo... and now, with the constant and relentless advance of Clan He An, Liu Wi's health won't even be our main concern," Zhi Yu, the old healer who was responsible for trying to cure Liu Wi, says, but even after using a treasure passed down by his family for generations, they couldn't solve the problem that is causing Liu Wi's horrible fate.

"Since I was responsible for Liu Wi's healing, I saw the information on how the gu is in his heart..." As the old man speaks, all the elders irrelevant in how they feel in this situation listen attentively. "...even if we don't know how the gu works, I imagine that healing Liu Wi won't serve any purpose if we don't destroy the gu... but that much is impossible when the gu is in his heart."

"This young Blood Prince is truly a genius... not only for creating the gu but also for this strategy." Amidst the silence after Zhi Yu's explanation, a murmur that made all the elders nervous to hear.

The elders don't even need to imagine who the crazy one was who publicly praise the assassin of the clan leader's son as if it were something normal to do because everyone recognizes the voice of an old man who appears to be in his nineties while sitting comfortably in an armchair.

"Hmm, if he had just killed Liu Wi, what would he gain? Revenge fulfilled and a rank 4 coming to kill him... but now he managed to make this rank 4 paralyzed besides spending a bunch of valuable resources as if there were no tomorrow... meanwhile, he also gives his enemy a much slower and more painful death... simply brilliant!" All the elders try their best to distance themselves from the old man in the armchair, as they know they don't have the same level of power to say such things without being punished. In fact, just being close to the old man can end up getting them punished.

The reason why the old man won't be punished is because of something that dates back to his youth because at that time, when he was just another mortal living in one of the villages belonging to the Feng Zhi clan, he was lucky enough to find an inheritance that awakened his aperture, allowing him to cultivate up to rank 3.As it gave him the rank 3 Crazy Thinker gu, which greatly increased his intelligence and insight but also made him a bit crazy.

So soon after this discovery, the young Lou Co did what only a madman would do, and instead of cultivating in secret until he became strong enough, he actually went to the Feng Zhi clan and demanded that they hire his services to find more inheritances of this kind of inheritance.

Of course, under any normal circumstances, this would only end with his death, but as everyone on Longhua Shan Mountain knows, the inheritance Lou Co found was special and rare because anyone who tried to steal the inheritance from the one who found it would not only go mad but also have a terrible fate.

Now this doesn't explain why the clan leader hasn't killed him since the few rank 2 and 3 inheritances he helped find throughout his life wouldn't save him from Liu Bai's fury, but what explains it is the fact that the inheritance he found, like the others he helped find, and 90% of the inheritances found by gu masters on Longhua Shan Mountain, were all left by the same person.

This person, according to legends, was one of the legendary immortals who chose Longhua Shan Mountain to be his final resting place, leaving behind an inheritance that would allow someone in the future to become his heir and ascend to become a legendary immortal like him.

So amid the fear of what the punishment for killing one of the heirs of this immortal would be, as well as the greed of the possibility that Lou Co could lead them to the complete inheritance of this immortal, both the clan leader and the elders were prevented from harming the old madman.

"Well, it's not like Elder Lou Co is completely wrong--" One of the bolder elders begins to speak but quickly stops while looking at the door being opened with a look of despair.

Gracefully, two beautiful young women with sad expressions on their faces leave the room, both with white hair that would enchant an person from earth but is the most common hair color in the Feng Zhi clan. Amd along with their exquisite and dazzling dresses and their natural beauties, they seem like celestial beauties.

Quickly, all the elders in the room, excluding Lou Co, greet the two extremely respectfully, as both are daughters of the clan leader, and although Feng Hua is an adopted daughter, she has always been treated equally to Liu Wi and Liu Xiao by the clan leader, so the elders do the same.

But none of the elders know what goes through Feng Hua's mind as she walks calmly beside her sister Liu Xiao because if they knew, they would be extremely shocked.

*POV Feng Hua*

"He An Chen Wei... he's truly ingenious... this method reminds me of those used by legendary demoniac Martial Daoists from my world..." Feng Hua doesn't feel very sad about Liu Wi's situation because unlike the image the clan leader portrays to outsiders, she was never treated equally by him and her siblings, so she never became close to them.

But of course, she has to maintain the image of a sad and worried sister for her brother's life in front of others, despite feeling some resentment toward this family that treats her only as a political tool they adopted to take from the

"Hmm...who knows if I betray the Feng Zhi clan and join the He An clan, I could use my intelligence and beauty to get closer to him..." Feng Hua isn't an innocent girl who believes in loyalty to the clan she was born into in this world or anything like that, especially after the last lesson she had in her past life in another world.

"...I owe loyalty to myself...but what if that's betrayal to others..." She ponders as she recalls the last words she heard before being killed by one of her father's trusted men who betrayed everyone and took control of the city her father governed before killing her father and all those loyal to him.

She came from a world where martial artists called Martial Daoists practiced various forms of martial arts that allowed them to strengthen their bodies to the point where a Martial Daoist could defeat an entire army alone.

But she wasn't one of them since despite being the only daughter of the governor of a medium-sized province, she never practiced martial arts since she was born with a fragile and unfit body for martial arts practice so she could only read about these techniques as well as started reading about pill manufacturing that helped in training.

But she never had the opportunity to learn deeply about these pills since shortly after starting to study them one of her father's trusted men betrayed everyone to gain power which in the end would end in success for him so she had a cruel death while she was still young.

And so unlike what she expected she came to this world that after recovering from the melancholy and sadness of seeing her father and loved ones as well as herself being killed she had a great increase in enthusiasm since now with a healthy body and knowledge of great techniques of high quality that she had memorized she could quickly rise to become a powerful Martial Daoist.

But this enthusiasm quickly faded when she found out that the people of this world do not practice martial arts but obtain their powers using Gu which she initially didn't think would be a problem, in fact it could even be an advantage since no one could compare to the martial arts used by her.

Unfortunately, she found out that this would not be the case because of something called Gu, well to put this in perspective the strength that would be necessary years of diligent training of a Martial Daoist who uses techniques of medium to high quality could be obtained in less than two months by any Gu master who uses a strong rank 2 strength Gu and not to mention rank 3 or 4 Gu.

And this is only valid for the comparison of strength since after seeing the capacity of the Gu from the Wind Path used mostly by the clans and awakening a B grade talent she decidedly decided to abandon the martial arts system of her old world while adopting the Gu cultivation system.

"Hahahaha... what a beautiful lady... truly a beauty from another world... hahahaha" The old man called Lou Co murmurs in a low and hoarse voice that only he hears as he looks at the young Feng Hua walking with her sister out of the mansion where everyone is.