Chapter 113: 113. Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

113. Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

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Lady Bai did not notice her husband's small movement; her full attention was now on the little servant who had come to report. "Why aren't you hurrying to invite the Immortal Elder in!"

At her words, the little servant's face immediately fell. "Reporting to Madam, the Immortal Elder only stood at the door for a little while, said he still had matters to attend to regarding the Ascension Ceremony, and then he left!"

"Ah!"

Whether it was disappointment or relief, Lady Bai could not say. Upon hearing this, she sat back down in her chair, her brows furrowing.

Finishing the chicken drumstick in her bowl at a leisurely pace, Atian thought for a moment, but still did not reach out her chopsticks to take a second one. Right now was absolutely not a good time to draw Lady Bai's attention.

"How could he just leave like that?" Lady Bai muttered. "I was planning to have a proper chat about Xin Li's situation."

"Give it up. It's perfectly clear he doesn't want any entanglement with us," Master Bai, who had finally caught his breath, was quite philosophical about it. "Once that brat stepped through the gates of the Beihai Sword Sect, he has nothing to do with us anymore. No matter how much we worry, it's useless. Besides, haven't we still got Atian?"

Hearing the two words "Atian," Lady Bai, who had just been looking displeased, was instantly overjoyed. She turned her head to look at the quietly seated girl, reached out and took the maiden's hand, and said in a sorrowful tone: "Atian, Mother only has you now."

Atian's spirit jolted at these words. Knowing whether she could eat another chicken drumstick hung on this very moment, her eyes were immediately brimming with spreading tears, and she called out "Mother" in a voice that wound through a hundred turns.

Master Bai rubbed the goosebumps on his arms.

Lady Bai, however, was thoroughly satisfied and gave her another chicken drumstick, feeling that this little daughter-in-law simply could not be more considerate.

Yes, a little daughter-in-law.

Master Bai and Lady Bai were not Atian's parents. The only reason the three of them could sit together eating in such harmony was that Atian was the Bai family's daughter-in-law—in name only.

To explain this clearly, one has to mention the Beihai Sword Sect and the "brat" Bai Xinli, who had caused Lady Bai's emotions to fluctuate.

As an ordinary merchant family in Qixia Kingdom, even though they knew there were people in this world who pursued immortality and possessed heaven-shaking, earth-shattering powers, the Bai couple had never imagined that such an astonishing pie could fall from the sky and land on their own home.

Becoming an immortal was a story that only existed in storybooks.

An Immortal Elder was an otherworldly master beyond their reach.

That said, in fact, one of the top immortal sects that could be counted among the finest on the entire Yuanguang Continent—the Beihai Sword Sect—was located right within Qixia Kingdom. Every fifteen years, it would fling open its mountain gates and harvest a crop of "leeks." Even the Bai family, living in such a remote little town, could hear news of the Ascension Ceremony.

And the Bai family's only son, Bai Xinli, happened to catch the opening of the Ascension Ceremony when he was five years old.

Master Bai, who had been wholeheartedly cultivating his son for the imperial examination path, had originally not planned to join in the fun. One in ten thousand people in this world had the aptitude for cultivation, and his ancestors for generations had all been ordinary folk. He had no intention of daydreaming. But he could not withstand the fact that all his relatives and friends were utterly enamored with that so-called Ascension Ceremony, willing to bankrupt themselves to send their own children to try their luck.

Master Bai mulled it over. In such a fanatical atmosphere, his family's idea of wholeheartedly cultivating scholars was utterly unconventional. If word got out that they despised the Immortal Elders, wouldn't that bring disaster? Moreover, Bai Xinli had never been good at mixing with others since childhood. What if, in the future, his peers gathered to reminisce about their Ascension experiences, and he alone had nothing to say—wouldn't that make him even more of an outcast?

Don't doubt it—bragging about which level one reached in the Ascension Ceremony back in the day was an evergreen topic of small talk in Qixia Kingdom.

After imagining the tragic scene of his own son being ostracized by his peers and only able to cry secretly at home, Master Bai, after discussing it with his wife, decided to take his son to participate in the Ascension Ceremony as well. In any case, his family was not short of money, and he absolutely could not leave any regrets in his child's childhood.

Thus, Master Bai set out on the journey with his son, who was only five years old. And when he returned, not only was he escorted back by a cultivator of the Beihai Sword Sect, but the child holding his hand had also been replaced by an even younger little girl.

Bai Xinli had entered the Beihai Sword Sect and formally embarked on the Xiuxian, while the little girl Master Bai brought back was Atian.

According to Master Bai, Atian was an orphan girl that the father and son had picked up around the Beihai Sword Sect.

"That brat of ours saw the little girl and couldn't even take his eyes off her," Master Bai complained to his wife while drinking. "I thought, if he liked her, bringing her back as a little daughter-in-law wouldn't be out of the question. But who would have known! He actually got selected!"

He poured himself another cup. "I figured, on this trip I lost my son, so I absolutely couldn't come back empty-handed! So I brought the daughter-in-law back with me."

Lady Bai was stunned by her husband's divine logic and wanted nothing more than to rush up and scratch up his old face. Fortunately, her reason still remained, and she knew this matter had absolutely nothing to do with the little girl, so she did not take out her anger on the innocent Atian.

Once selected by the Xiuxianmen, a disciple had to sever all mortal ties, which meant that his parents would completely exit Bai Xinli's life. For him personally, this was a tremendous immortal fate, but for the Bai couple, it was hard to say whether it was a blessing.

Fortunately, just as Master Bai had said, losing a son but gaining a daughter-in-law, the couple truly did raise Atian as their own daughter, and they raised her for fifteen years. Since Lady Bai had not become pregnant again over these years, they had even made up their minds to take a son-in-law into the family for Atian.

The daughter-in-law was about to become a sworn daughter, and the three of them were living quite sweetly.

However, this did not mean that Master Bai and Lady Bai had forgotten they still had a biological son. The Beihai Sword Sect would periodically send someone to check on the situation of these disciples' relatives, and this was the only chance they had to get news of Bai Xinli.

This was also the reason Lady Bai had been so worked up earlier.

"It's Ascension Ceremony time again," Lady Bai put down her chopsticks. "Fifteen years have passed in the blink of an eye."

She did not bring up the previous topic again, as if she were simply discussing this once-every-fifteen-years grand event.

On the Yuanguang Continent, cultivators were not an ethereal legend. Setting aside the Beihai Sword Sect, even common folk knew there were three other immortal sects that rivaled it. As for other scattered sects, they were too numerous to count, though their influence was far less impressive, and mostly only locals knew their names.

The honor of being able to shake the entire continent merely by opening one's mountain gates to take in disciples belonged only to the Four Great Immortal Sects. Each sect's time for taking disciples was different, but for the people of Qixia Kingdom, the other three great immortal sects were too far away, so the Beihai Sword Sect was naturally the first choice.

"Does Atian want to go participate in the Ascension Ceremony?" she asked with a smile. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Once you pass twenty, you won't have the chance anymore."

"That's right, that's right," Master Bai chimed in. "Our family has money anyway, so just think of it as broadening your horizons."

Thus, two pairs of eyes turned together toward the silent girl, waiting for her answer.

They could not leave any regrets in their child's childhood. Even with the precedent of their son, the Bai couple still stuck to their parenting philosophy, even though at Atian's age, it was really hard to call it "childhood" anymore.

Atian was in the prime of her youth. She had delicate, beautiful features, and every frown and smile carried a captivating charm of its own. Coupled with her tall figure and slender waist, nearly every young man in town had done the foolish thing of lying on the Bai family's garden wall to peek at her.

And then, they were beaten to a pulp by the beauty they were peeking at.

Bai Tian, eighteen years old, beautiful as a flower, kicked the constables north of town, punched the butcher Zhang south of town, swept the entire town without a rival. Even the town's number one rake gave this young lady a wide berth.

Lady Bai had spent all these years dedicated to cultivating Atian into a proper lady. Though the results were debatable, she had long since mastered a calm and steady general's demeanor, and she explained her little daughter-in-law's unbelievable martial prowess with breezy nonchalance: "Probably takes after her birth parents."

With these words, Lady Bai became the spiritual idol that other madams vied to emulate.

To be fair, when Lady Bai said she wanted to take Atian to the Ascension Ceremony, she really wasn't just saying it off the top of her head. She genuinely believed, from the bottom of her heart, that her little daughter-in-law might actually have some hope of being selected. If she really could ascend to the heavens in a single step, it would also be a way to repay fifteen years of companionship. If she didn't succeed, Lady Bai would just pretend she had never given birth to a son, and from then on treat Atian as her own biological daughter.

As it happened, Master Bai thought the same way.

Atian, the focus of all this attention, bore the hopeful gazes of her two elders, lowered her head shyly, presenting a perfect picture of a refined maiden, with absolutely no trace of the girl who had only yesterday broken two of Wang Laowu's ribs with a kick.

"Father and Mother mustn't tease their daughter," her voice was like a babbling brook, and sounded indescribably pleasant. "The Ascension Ceremony is about to be held; there's no way we can make it in time."

The couple exchanged a glance upon hearing this and immediately deflated. Since the Beihai Sword Sect's name contained the two characters "Beihai," its location was practically self-evident. Compared to Guangkai Town, where the Bai family lived, it was at the opposite ends of Qixia Kingdom, north and south. For ordinary people on foot, it would take at least one or two months.

Lady Bai's sudden burst of enthusiasm was deflated, and she felt she had let Atian down. When they had sent off Bai Xinli, they had begun planning half a year in advance. Even though Atian was unaware of this, it did not prevent Lady Bai from feeling ashamed of her own favoritism.

Master Bai saw what was on his wife's mind and opened his mouth to smooth things over, but before he could utter a single word, he was interrupted by the little servant who burst in.

The little servant rushed in through the door and shouted like a greenhorn: