Xie Han stared blankly at Yang Qing, almost as if he had been petrified. For a few seconds, he didn’t move a single muscle—not even to breathe or blink. Then, slowly, his expression thawed as so life returned to his face.
"I can leave?" he asked in disbelief, blinking rapidly as he continued to stare at Yang Qing.
"Yes, you can," Yang Qing replied patiently as he rose from his squatting position.
"I can leave?" Though it sounded like a simple repetition of the question, the way Xie Han said it—along with the look on his face—made it seem more like he was asking himself rather than Yang Qing.
He had already prepared himself to be tortured, sealed, or subjected to so other heinous thod that, while sparing his life, would have all but guaranteed he couldn’t serve as a witness to the day’s events.
"You’re not going to silence , or erase my mories, or place so restriction on to stop from speaking out?" asked Xie Han, as he gave voice to his fears.
"I don’t need to do that," said Yang Qing with a casual shrug. "The Wan Clan already knows I’m here and why I’m here," he added. "Besides, it’s not like you revealing our interaction or the one you had with that other figure is going to impact what I wanted negatively."
"What..." Xie Han stopped himself mid-question, swallowing the words before they escaped. He had almost asked what Yang Qing wanted. Luckily, he caught himself in ti and severely warned himself against prying too deeply into another person’s affairs. He was already on very thin ice as it was; he didn’t need to tempt the odds further of him getting silenced.
Right now, the best thing he could do was calm himself down and slowly get his mind and heart around accepting his current situation: he was getting out of this alive—and not only that, he would be wholly intact, without any kind of restriction placed on him.
He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to clarify it once more with Yang Qing, but his fear of sounding like a nag—and possibly driving Yang Qing into impatience—stopped him from doing so.
Just who is he? Xie Han wondered as he cast a furtive glance at Yang Qing. Years spent as a gang mber, and later moving to the Huang family, where most didn’t like him much, had sharpened his perception, especially the forr, where his life constantly hung in a precarious balance.
He knew how to read people, from their deanors down to certain inherent qualities that revealed more about them: background, capability, and nature. More often than not, those things weren’t mutually exclusive.
Noticing those qualities told him whom to avoid and how to interact with them. In a hostile environnt, especially when strength wasn’t enough, reading those subtleties was one of the key ways to survive.
Who could you curry favor with by bootlicking? Who was likely to stab you in the back the first chance they got? Who was all talk and no bite?Who had better connections? Who was a dangerous wolf in sheep’s clothing?And who was a dragon you shouldn’t even gaze at?
To him, even before exchanging words with Yang Qing, the air around him had already marked him as an extraordinary expert. That was why so part of Xie Han had assud he was affiliated with the illustrious Wan family, whose strength placed them as one of the behemoths of the Azure Sapphire Kingdom.
If he isn’t from the Wan family, could he be from the royal family? Xie Han imdiately halted that thought the mont it appeared, afraid of the implications if it turned out to be true.
A starved cal was still larger than a horse. The royal family of the Azure Sapphire Kingdom may have lost its grip over its territories when misfortune struck them, but even with everything they faced—the surrounding chaos and concerted attacks—they still managed to hold on. They may have lost the rest of the kingdom, but they didn’t lose their ho. No matter what others threw at them, they endured, and not only that, they even managed to force a stalemate.
That alone was a massive testant to their abilities and foundation—a lesson the noble families of the Azure Sapphire Kingdom never forgot.
It was pretty well known that if there was one entity feared throughout the kingdom, it was the Yao royal family. It didn’t matter whether it was the greater noble houses or the smaller ones—all of them, without exception, were extrely wary of the royal family.
Even he, soone treated as an outcast by the Huang family, could openly see the fear they held toward the royal family. And of late, he’d felt that wariness grow—so much so that so of their actions seed to border on desperation. For instance, he’d heard a crazy rumor that the Huang family was considering subordinating itself under the banner of the Wan family, becoming a vassal clan attached to them.
Given how arrogant he knew them to be, that was sothing he never would have expected. Yes, there was a significant gap in power between them and the Wan family—but still, this was a clan of incredible standing within the kingdom, and their foundation was nothing to scoff at. If they were to brandish that power sowhere outside the Azure Sapphire Kingdom, it would be more than enough for them to establish their own kingdom and command respect.
After all, there were plenty of kingdoms out there without even a single seventh-stage palace realm expert, doing just fine—yet the Huang family had one.
With that strength and foundation, while they might not share the sa seat of honor as the likes of the Wan family, they certainly deserved a place at the table. And yet... they were now seeking to leave that table and stand behind one of its mbers like a servant.
Xie Han could hardly believe it.
To him, even though he still didn’t have the full picture—and was operating only on faint whispers that barely painted anything beyond the fact that the Huang family seed worried and were acting strangely as a result—he believed the royal family was likely behind those strange movents.
In Xie Han’s mind, even though the royal family had locked itself away in its mountain and barely stirred over the past century, they had still cast a long, heavy shadow over the rest of the kingdom’s occupants. Which brought his thoughts to Yang Qing.
Here was a powerful cultivator with an undeniable presence, operating calmly and without the slightest trace of worry, in another noble clan’s backyard.
Who could act like that, if not soone who used to own the place before its current owners?
The more Xie Han thought about it, the more convinced he beca that Yang Qing was a mber of the royal family. Who else but they had the ans to sneak into the territories of noble families without being noticed? Who else had the incentive to do so? After all, if they ever planned to strike back—which Xie Han strongly believed they would—they would need a clear, current picture of their soon-to-be victims to plan accordingly.
If what he believed to be true was true... then—
Xie Han hurriedly tried to clamp down on his wandering thoughts. He quickly averted his gaze from Yang Qing and looked down at the ground, afraid that eye contact might alert him—that Yang Qing might sohow know that he knew.
Strangely enough, as frightened as he was by the thought of Yang Qing potentially being royalty, a part of him was also excited. Yang Qing’s presence here presented an opportunity. If the royal family needed information—current information—he was more than willing to fulfill that role.
He’d sell out the Huang family in a heartbeat. He didn’t like them, and they didn’t like him; theirs was a marriage of convenience. He got cultivation resources from them, and in return, they got his services. And as soone raised in a syndicate, grood for murder, it wasn’t hard to guess what those services entailed: murder, torture, kidnapping, fra jobs.
Basically, any dangerous, dirty task that needed soone expendable yet skilled—Xie Han was their go-to. It was only recently, after he broke through and beca a palace realm cultivator, that he stopped getting assigned those jobs, having been nad a guest elder. Though he had no doubt his dirty job days weren’t truly behind him. It was likely the clan was simply preoccupied with other matters or deliberating on what assignnts matched his current abilities.
He didn’t know when, but he was certain that soday in the future, his hands would be stained once more at the Huang clan’s behest, doing the sa kind of work he always had. And who knew—one of those jobs might be the one that finally did him in. That’s if things stayed the sa.
But now, a chance had presented itself.
The only problem was... how was he going to bring it up and sell his services?
He couldn’t just say, Hey, I know you’re from the royal family, and I’ll spy on the Huang family for you, could he? Not when he’d already shown himself to be soone who could easily betray another.
Just as Xie Han was sighing at the thought of letting this chance slip away because of his earlier actions, he heard Yang Qing’s voice once more.
"You’re not leaving?"
"I... I am," Xie Han replied shakily as he rose to his feet.
Maybe it was the tense situation he’d just been through, or the toll his body had taken from the seal and the earlier attack, but his knees wobbled slightly as he got up—sothing that should never have happened to soone who prided themselves on their mastery of movent arts. Luckily, he had his reflexes to fall back on.
Xie Han gave Yang Qing an awkward smile and offered a hurried, nervous apology for the display. Then, finally, he expressed his gratitude for being spared—cupping his fists respectfully and offering a few sincere words of thanks.
If he still wanted to entertain the idea of selling himself as a spy, then this was the perfect mont to do it.
But... he had already shown his traitorous side.
Who would choose a spy who spilled secrets as easily as he did? Yes, one could argue that he’d only done so earlier to preserve his life, but spy work wasn’t exactly safe either. His life would constantly be at risk, which ant the chance of him revealing information to save himself would always be there... and very high.
At least I get to keep my life, thought Xie Han as he stepped forward to say a few final words of thanks to Yang Qing before turning to leave.
But just as he was about to go, Yang Qing’s voice halted his steps.
"Care to make another trade with ?"
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