Chapter 411 Weapons Drawn
Bi Keyun felt only the strangest sensation of suspicion at Yan Guilai’s words, that there was more to what he said than that.
“A toast to you all, Chu Xun, Uncle Yan. Thank you for your timely assistance today,” Yao Baiyue said hastily, hoping to break the ice.
“It’s my duty to keep my own daughter-in-law safe,” Yan Guilai grinned, feeling pleased with himself. “I’ll do my best to help you win this wife, son!”
But on the other hand, Chu Xun nearly spilled his wine at what he just heard.
Yao Baiyue too was stunned when she heard Yan Guilai.
Yan Guilai’s tactless remark wiped the smiles off the faces of Bi Keyun and the Chamber’s Elders, earning him instead unfriendly glares from them.
“Master Yan, I respect you as head of your house and your assistance in saving the Chamber. Let us not forget our manners in spite of the revels,” Bi Keyun said coolly.
“If only I could give this idiot a knock on the head,” scowled Chu Xun quietly to himself.
“Please don’t misunderstand, Lady Superior. Master Yan’s only trying to say that he admired Lady Baiyue so greatly that he hopes that in the future, he’d find a daughter-in-law that shares the same qualities as she does. It’s just a comparison, just a simple comparison,” Chu Xun said quickly, trying to defuse the situation.
But the blundering Yan Guilai refused to admit just that. Instead, he mistook Chu Xun as wanting to railroad him so that he himself could win Yao Baiyue to be his own wife! He glared at Chu Xun, “My friend Chu Xun, there is an order of precedence to things like this. What’s more, my son Wushuang is a friend of yours. I’m sure you know it’s nowhere near friendly to covet your friend’s wife. Everyone knows for how long Wushuang has been pining for her!”
Chu Xun was left utterly flabbergasted. He did not know what to say, and he needed not to. Before he could yelp a syllable, Bi Keyun was already boiling with anger.
“You are a senior, Master Yan! What you just said were words unbecoming of your stature and dignity! Or do you think you can come here to the Chamber and have your way however you like?” Bi Keyun slammed a fist into her table, causing every piece of tableware to rattle and jump. “So this is your true purpose is it, Yan Guilai? It’s not so much as offering us assistance as coming here to force a marriage, is that not? You’re trying to bully us eh? Do you seriously take us as pushovers?!”
“Bully?! My son Wushuang and Lady Baiyue here have been in love with each other for so long. We might as well take this as an opportunity to come clean with the truth. Why do you think Chu Xun came and helped? It’s because he’s friends with my son Wushuang! Surely this is a kindness that you might want to repay? Well, you can and it’s simple. Just let Baiyue marry my son and we’ll be closer like family—”
“That’s enough, you brute!” snapped Bi Keyun angrily.
“What are you talking about, Lady Superior? It is not right that man and woman should marry? Or do you think my son is not good enough a match for the successor of the Chamber of Lead-Glass?”
Bi Keyun was flushed with such rage that she was literally panting for breath. Her chest heaved again and again as she glowered, “And here I thought I should be grateful for your so-called kind assistance for saving us. Yet after everything, you’re no different from the Zangs! Birds of a feather!”
Turning bitter, Yan Guilai growled, “It’s time the Chamber changed its rules, Lady Superior. We’re not living in the Dark Ages now. How could you still cling to those outdated traditions and practices? If you want to be single all your life, no one’s stopping you. But to force even your acolytes and protégé to do the same? That’s madness!”
Bang!
Bi Keyun’s face was the color of a tomato and her eyes flared with fury. With one furious kick, she smashed the dinner table, chucking numerous pieces of tableware into the air.
“All ye of the Chamber, heed my call! The Yan Family are dishonest and depraved folk with nefarious designs upon the Chamber! Drive them out!”
“Lady Superior! Please calm down! I’m sure Master Yan did not mean what he said!” Chu Xun persuaded hastily.
“Silence!” the Lady Superior of the Chamber snapped viciously at him like a lashing serpent in its wrath.
A resigned Chu Xun could only turn to Yan Guilai, “Master Yan, we should first take our leave for now before you say something you’ll regret.”
“I’d not hear anything more from you!” Yan Guilai snapped instead, much to Chu Xun’s amazement, “How could you! She is your friend’s future wife!”
Chu Xun was stupefied. “How could I?! My friend’s future wife?! What on earth is going on here?!”
“Baiyue, do be frank to the Lady Superior. Aren’t you in love with my son Wushuang? Don’t worry, you can speak freely in my presence,” Yan Guilai now said to Yao Baiyue.
But the young lass was only so nervous and flustered that she nearly broke into tears much less telling what Yan Guilai wished to hear.
“Baiyue, you tell me. What is going on? Tell me that this brute Yan Guilai is lying. Don’t worry, you can tell me. You can trust me to defend you,” Bi Keyun said to her protégé.
“I-I… I-I can’t…” Yao Baiyue’s eyes turned moist and red. On one hand was the father of the man she loved, while on the other was her teacher and surrogate parent who has always wanted nothing but only to leave her the best. To be caught in such a tug of war was like that her darkest nightmare came true.
“Tell us, Baiyue. Tell us that Yan Guilai is lying. We’ll rather die defending your honor than suffer you being unjustly wronged!” clamored the ranks of Elders too.
“What lying?! Just go out and ask anyone yourself. The whole world knows about the love between Baiyue and Master Wushuang! It’s only because you stubborn and obstinate fools who have always been in the way of what should be a perfect love story!” retorted a Yan elder.
“Shuddup, you sniveling filth!” lambasted Bi Keyun at last. She swiveled to face Yao Baiyue and said very slowly, “Tell me, Baiyue. Are the things they say true?”
“T-teacher… I-I…” Yao Baiyue could not bear to utter the one answer that would devastate her teacher as tears welled in her eyes.
At a complete loss of what to do, she could only plead to Yan Guilai, “Please, Uncle Yan… Please say no more…”
Bi Keyun’s face immediately turned into the color of chalk, and so did the college of Elders of the Chamber too.
The truth could have not been any more obvious. Through Yao Baiyue’s reactions, no one could doubt that Yan Guilai was true after all. The entire leadership echelon of the Chamber had not realized the truth until now.
Plop! Bi Keyun’s knees gave way as she collapsed to the floor, her gaze lost and distant with utmost disappointment. She just could not believe it was true.
For all her life, Bi Keyun strived only for the express purpose of preserving the Chamber by devoting her focus and attention to her training and cultivation as well as her abstinence from want and desire. She followed the tenets of the sisterhood to the letter, staunchly believing in their cause to a fault that she never once wavered.
“Teacher,” Yao Baiyue hurried to her teacher to help her up, but instead, the older woman shoved her violently away.
“Worthless ingrate! How dare you succumb to desire! You’ve ruined our honor! The honor of this Chamber’s leadership which had endured for centuries until this day! How am I supposed to explain myself to the forebears of this ancient order when I pass to the afterlife in the future!?”
“Teacher, no!” cried Yao Baiyue, her face now streaming with tears.
“It’s fine, Baiyue. If they’re not willing to accept you, the doors of the Yan Family house will be opened to you forever. At any rate, you’re better off with us than having to spend the rest of your life like a nun.”
“Please, Uncle Yan. Please, say no more…” Yao Baiyue begged between sobs and chokes.
Shing! Shing!
The cold glint of steel flashed all around them. The Elders of the Chamber all had their weapons drawn and pointed at every Yan member in the hall.
“We’d rather fight to the death than have you stand here and dishonor the good name and sacred traditions of the Chamber, Yan Guilai!”
“Are you idiots?! Look at what year it is! It’s all about freedom now! Freedom to love and freedom to marry the person you’re in love with! Nothing survives the washing of time through intransigence! If this is really what you want, why not change this sisterhood into a monastery of nuns and be done with it?!” barked a Yan elder hotly.
“Please, everyone! There must be a misunderstanding here somewhere! We need to calm down!” Chu Xun urged, feeling himself wedged between the anvil and the hammer, “Please have a seat and calm down!”
One of the Chamber’s Elders regarded Chu Xun and said to him, “We know how much fear your name commands, Devil, and we know you’re skilled and dangerous enough to be feared by all. But at the same time, we also know this: you’re a friend of Yan Wushuang. So, if you’re standing with the Yans on this to push us off the edge, so be it. We’d rather die than allow ourselves to be terrorized.”
“...” Chu Xun could find no words to counter that remark. Grimacing at what a messy kettle of fish this affair had become, he could only raise his hands in defeat and shrugged, gesturing his intent to not take sides. There was nothing else he could do right now.
“I only want to say this: there must be a misunderstanding somewhere here and we need to calm down and remember that we still have common enemies in the Zangs and the Macro-primate Race.”
“As if the Yans and the Zangs are any different. They’re just two peas in a pod, equally wanton and evil!” spat an Elder of the Chamber sharply.
“What ‘wanton and evil’?! Watch your tongue! We came to provide assistance and this is how you thank us? Who is actually ‘wanton and evil’, I wonder,” retorted another Yan elder with displeasure.
“Enough! Silence, all of you!” Bi Keyun burst out when she finally regained her composure, lashing out with steel and force.
“Obey my command, all ye of the Chamber! I want every Yan within the premises of the Chamber to be executed immediately if they are not withdrawing in three seconds.”
Carried by the force of her Internal Breath, her voice reverberated across every corner of the Chamber’s grounds, causing every structure and edifice within the grounds to tremble.
“Savage woman, you dare lay a hand on us!?” snarled a Yan elder belligerently.
“Please, Master Yan. Sound the retreat,” urged Chu Xun, “Nothing good will come to Wushuang and Yao Baiyue if a fight breaks out here.”
Yan Guilai fell into contemplative silence before growling darkly, “We’ll withdraw.”
“There is it, we’re leaving!”
Chu Xun needed to raise his hands to show his intent of peace; the Yans were withdrawing as demanded.
Acolytes of the Chamber followed the Yans across every inch of the compound as they retreated, their swords fully drawn and kept them aimed at them threateningly. It was only until the last Yan man was more than a few hundred meters away, did they finally calm down.
Chu Xun narrowed his eyes at Yan Guilai, scowling quietly, “This is all your fault, you buffoon!”
That did not go unnoticed. “What are you glaring at me for? This is your fault!” Yan Guilai erupted.
Chu Xun stared at him blankly with disbelief. But he was hardly the only one. Several Yan elders could not understand what was going on too. “Why is all this the Devil’s fault?!”
“What does this have to do with me? We would not have been driven out like beggars if you had not shot your mouth off!”
Yan Guilai gave him a nasty look, “Stop pretending. You think I don’t know what you’re thinking of?”
A puzzled Chu Xun stared bewilderedly at him.
“Still pretending, eh?” Yan Guilai looked daggers at him, “You might fool everyone else, but not me! You think these eyes of mine can’t see that you’re interested in Yao Baiyue?!”
“...” Chu Xun was utterly speechless. “Me?! Having thoughts about Yao Baiyue?! Why don’t I even know that myself?!”
“Don’t give me that look,” scowled Yan Guilai with disgust. He really believed Chu Xun was pretending. “Do you think I won’t realize the reason for your railroading me? You want the Chamber to remember that it was you who came to their aid, not us. You have great powers and you’ve saved the Chamber this time. Perhaps you might do that again. But you want Bi Keyun to know it was you and only you so that when you ask for Yao Baiyue’s hand in marriage, that old hag would never be able to refuse you, am I right?!”
Chu Xun was literally dumbfounded by the accusation. It was all he could do to stop himself from giving the older man a tight slap into his face.
“What are you talking about, you old fool!? Yao Baiyue is the beau of that bratty son of yours and she loves him too! Anyone with half a brain could see that! I did not try to railroad you; I only tried to stop you from making that proposal because the timing is not right! Do you think saving them would make them uproot the ways and traditions that have been embedded for centuries into their livelihoods? If it’s really that easy, then why do you think Yao Baiyue had kept this a secret for all this while!? Why do you think the Elders and Bi Keyun of the Chamber were unaware of their open-secret love affair? That eye of yours, you say? You’d better get a doctor to look at that brain of yours for Heaven’s sake!” bellowed Chu Xun to vent his frustration before he lost control of himself.
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