Qin Anwu approached what used to be the Qin Residence and found the main gate half-open. He stepped inside and scanned the front courtyard. No one else was visible, only Qin Fang sitting at a stone table, drinking wine, with not a single dish on the table.
He walked over to the stone table, frowned, and asked, "Uncle, where are the others?"
Neither the Immortal Emperor without ego nor the original owner of this body had any affection for him.
Qin Fang looked up, his hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot, and face a mess—a stark contrast to his usual clean and tidy appearance. Seeing Qin Anwu, he twisted his lips into a smile that was on the verge of tears. "Anwu, you're here." He grabbed his wine bowl, sloshing the contents. "They're gone, all gone. The entire Qin Residence, only a lonely old man like me is left."
Qin Anwu frowned. "Didn't I tell you all to move out? Why haven't you moved by now?" He disliked him, and he disliked his family; he just wanted them to leave this courtyard.
Qin Fang burst into laughter. "They all left, only I didn't. I was waiting for you to come."
"Now that I'm here, you can leave," Qin Anwu said.
Qin Fang suddenly sobbed loudly. "They're gone. Xianmei, Datong, and all the servants, too. I went out for a while, and when I came back, they were all gone."
Ah, there's more to this story. This "gone" isn't the same as that "gone."
After a quick thought, Qin Anwu asked, "Zhang Fuyuan is also gone?"
Qin Fang whimpered, "Gone. Not only are they gone, but everything movable in the house is also gone."
Qin Anwu scanned the surroundings and only then noticed that all the rooms had their windows wide open, and they were empty. It seemed Zhang Xianmei and her group had truly left. If Qin Fang wasn't lying, he must have been abandoned.
Pitiable people often have hateful traits, and he was a true embodiment of that.
The two brothers had lost their parents early and relied on Qin Zhuan's desperate efforts to improve their lives. Later, Qin Zhuan gave him cultivation techniques and medicinal ingredients, wanting him to cultivate properly. However, he sold many of the ingredients for wine, and by the age of fourteen, he was only at the third stage of Qi Nurturing.
Later, he met Zhang Xianmei and her two children, who relied on each other. He became infatuated with her. Despite Qin Zhuan's warnings that Zhang Xianmei was untrustworthy, he still did as he pleased, even secretly stealing money and medicinal ingredients from home to support them. When Qin Zhuan discovered this and seriously confronted him, he threw a tantrum, crying and declaring that if he wasn't allowed to marry her, he wouldn't acknowledge Qin Zhuan as his brother. Qin Zhuan couldn't bear to lose his younger brother, whom he had raised since childhood, and also for the sake of appearances, he could only agree, but he also made a demand: from then on, he must focus on cultivation. Qin Fang agreed.
So they got married, while Qin Zhuan was still a bachelor.
After the marriage, Zhang Xianmei's family of three all followed Qin Zhuan, living in the house he bought and enjoying the cultivation resources he acquired. It must be said, their cultivation talent wasn't bad. Zhang Xianmei, whose situation was similar to his, only began systematic cultivation after the age of 17. By the time she was 35 or 36, she reached the Eighth Stage of Qi Nurturing, and Zhang Fuyuan also reached the Sixth Stage.
After their three siblings reached a cultivable age, he often complained to Qin Zhuan that their cultivation resources were insufficient, saying that the three siblings were still young and there was no need to invest so many resources in a hurry. Ultimately, it was Dai Linglong's persistence that ensured the three siblings' resources.
It was clear that Zhang Xianmei had leaked information about Qin Zhuan's movements to Zhang Yuan, leading to Qin Zhuan and Dai Linglong's disappearance after being ambushed and surrounded.
After their disappearance, he couldn't wait to become the Prefectural Lord, wishing he could immediately erase all traces of Qin Zhuan's family. To be so impatient, he was truly foolish.
Now that he couldn't become the Prefectural Lord and Zhang Xianmei and her group had disappeared, he was left alone here, drinking wine, looking at his nephew with a "face full of suffering."
Qin Anwu naturally ignored him, turned around, and walked towards the main gate. "Uncle, if they've already left, then you should also leave. I'm going to buy a lock and lock the main gate."
He took two steps, then turned back and added, "Uncle, isn't Qin Huitong at the Blazing Fire Sect? You should go find him."
By the time he returned with the lock, he was the only one in the courtyard; Qin Fang had also left. Good that he's gone; it means one less bother.
He locked the gate, walked a few tens of feet down the alley, then turned back for a look. After a moment of hesitation, he turned his head forward again and continued walking out of the alley. His next stop was the Information Gate.
Captain Guo Qi wasn't there, but the prefecture soldier Song Yi still handed him some of the latest letters. After reading one of them, he asked, "Are all the people from the Information Gate out?"
Song Yi nodded. "Except for me and a few others on shift, everyone else is out."
"Whose order?"
"From the province."
"Have they found any traces of those people from Dali Kingdom?"
Song Yi shook his head, offering no reply. He didn't know if he was unclear or simply couldn't say. Qin Anwu merely asked casually and didn't insist on a definitive answer; their relationship wasn't that close.
Leaving the prefecture army's compound, he exited the prefectural city and headed west. After traveling several dozen miles, he heard dense footsteps from around a bend ahead and quickly ducked into the woods behind some scattered rocks.
Soon, a group of prefecture soldiers appeared, squabbling noisily. Many of them were injured. Upon reaching the scattered rocks, someone shouted, "Can't go on, let's rest a bit." Immediately, others seconded, "Exactly. If we're not killed, we'll die from running." A person who looked like a captain finally gave the order to rest there.
About sixty prefecture soldiers immediately collapsed to the ground, losing all semblance of dignity.
Suddenly, a voice rang out: "This operation must have been leaked."
"I think so too. Otherwise, before we even arrived, Qi Refining cultivators and those at the later three stages of Qi Nurturing wouldn't have ambushed us like that. They clearly intended to wipe out all three hundred of us."
"Exactly..."
Qin Anwu listened to their conversation and also felt their encounter was extremely strange. He re-evaluated the situation in Tan Prefecture. Before, he only knew that Tan Prefecture was very peaceful. After reading the letters from the Information Gate, he became aware of many undercurrents, but hearing them speak, he realized it was far from that simple.
They hadn't chatted for long before another team arrived, nearly a hundred strong, almost all injured, from light wounds to severe ones. Relatively speaking, this group appeared more orderly and more like an army than the previous one. Among the injured, he saw Wang Fuli; at this moment, he was missing his left arm. Although he was missing an arm, he still gripped his large saber tightly.
After the severely injured personnel were laid down, he saw Guo Qi. He had a scarred face, and his breastplate was shattered, revealing bloodstains. This team didn't plan to stop and rest but continued forward. As they passed the resting spot of the earlier group, a verbal conflict erupted.
Later, someone in the moving team vented their anger, calling the earlier group deserters who disregarded their comrades' lives and deaths; they claimed there was a traitor among them, which was why they fled before even seeing the ambush. The earlier group also refused to yield, saying the later group was just feigning pity and putting on a show, otherwise, given that the ambushers were either Qi Refining cultivators or at the later three stages of Qi Nurturing, they would have already been wiped out.
Each side argued their point, and the emotions of the crowd surged with indignation, leading to a chaotic brawl.
Qin Anwu felt it was no longer interesting to listen, so he intended to leave and continue forward, seeking those who had set the ambush. Just as he was about to move, he noticed people running down from the mountain behind him, some at the Qi Refining Stage, and others at the Qi Nurturing Stage. Were they planning another ambush?
He immediately changed his plan, picked up two stones, threw them towards the prefecture soldiers, and then ran towards the hillside.