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After it was said that the dust of many incidents had settled, everyone successively returned to Fuyao Mountain, finally getting comfy. Yan Zhengming repeatedly ordered people to move some things back from Fuyao Estate.
With such a long time passing, there was a lot of junk. Sect Leader Yan himself was not a particularly organized man, couldn’t remember any of the awful messes that he had made, and was too lazy to put things in order, so he sent Cheng Qian for it. In result, after a long period of strenuously tidying up, Cheng Qian rummaged out a bunch of portraits… of himself.
Yan Zhengming had previously painted countless portraits of Cheng Qian. The majority of them had been destroyed immediately whenever he was heartbroken, but with how many there were, there would always be some fish that slipped the net; a few of them still remained.
The more he saw, the more fond he felt, and quietly hid them away himself. Then, he remembered that Tong Ru had never had time to leave his own portrait behind, while Master’s portrait, he had ruined — and that was saying nothing of his sect-uncle Jiang Peng, who’d been a tragedy from beginning to end. Thus, he got the impetus to make things up to his predecessors.
Cheng Qian’s calligraphy was proficient, but his painting skill was not great, so he ran off to ask the Sect Leader to make the paintings.
Hearing this, Sect Leader Yan aloofly hooked his fingers towards Cheng Qian, telling him to get his ear in close, and then, while wearing the dignified look of an upright nobleman, brought up some vulgar and unreasonable conditions for that, henceforth showing Cheng Qian what a beast in human clothing looked like.
Cheng Qian immediately decided upon where exactly he was going to put this guy out to dry, kicking the Sect Leader right out the Residence of Peace.
In the end, he’d had no option but to get by with seeking out his second senior. Li Yun happily agreed, bringing along one junior sister that was excited to join in on the fun to splash some drawing ink on the second-to-last floor of the Nine-Floor Library Tower.
During that span of time, their hardworking sister rolled up her sleeves, swept away the dust that had accumulated over the years from the floor, and shook open every single portrait of their forebears, preparing them for cleaning.
All of a sudden, she cried out in alarm. “Ah! Second brother!”
Li Yun was diligently working on paper as per Cheng Qian’s instructions, painting with a flourish, and didn’t raise his head. “What is it?”
“You’re on a painting! Little senior, look!” Shui Keng unfurled a portrait that had yellowed from age; the predecessor on it was dressed untidily, his long hair draped loose across his shoulders, and he had a delicate little prettyboy face. Those features, and that expression, were the spitting image of Li Yun’s.
Cheng Qian took another look. Below it clearly read: Zhenren Wenzhu, accepted into the Fuyao Sect on somesuch year and somesuch month, a part of somesuch generation of disciples. He is uncannily adept in bizarre and obscene skillsets, proficient in a divergent sort of path, and entered the Dao while flying his own lone banner, the details of which are unclear to this day. Because he had a set of nine chains at his side, his method for entering the Dao was called the ‘Ninth Chain’.
Back in the Fuyao inheritance, that elder seemed to have mentioned to Yan Zhengming that a Fuyao ancestor had emerged ‘using the Ninth Chain to enter the Dao’, and he had also given that predecessor’s personal letter to Li Yun.
So… had that just been him returning it to its original owner?
After all that fuss, there had only ever been one person in the Ninth Chain.
This second senior that had actually been only one person through all of eternity completed several masterpieces. They were seen by Yan Zhengming, who had heard the news.
Yan Zhengming admired them for a good long while, then gave one apropos evaluation: “Junior, take a rest for a bit. Stop violating the principles of our ancestors.”
Refusing to accept that, Li Yun proceeded to make a danqing of Han Yuan in Nanjiang. One year, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, he brought it over to Han Yuan himself, enthusiastically displaying it for him to see.
After viewing all of it, Han Yuan felt his former feelings for this guy as a sectmate get thoroughly annihilated. Also bringing to mind his experience of being hoodwinked, as he still hadn’t received the true dragon skeleton to this day, he immediately decided to put his new and old hatreds together, and hunted Li Yun all the way to the boundary of Nanjiang… well, that was a story for another time.