The two looked into each other's eyes, just like when they first met.

An Zhengzheng still had that calm and indifferent look in her eyes, while Zhou Xu's eyes were filled with a complex mix of embarrassment and surprise.

Things are not what they used to be.

"You...your face..."

Even before An Zhengzheng lowered her hand, Zhou Yu'er could still glimpse a touch of cool beauty.

This kind of beauty is a kind of temperament, a calm and resolute temperament, which can be perceived even without seeing the whole picture.

An Zhengzheng slowly lowered her hand, her eyes cold and aloof.

"How could you get a tattoo..."

Zhou Yu'er was on the verge of collapse; the tattoo had just been done!

The bamboo leaves, symbolizing a virtuous person and resilience, covered her scars, making An Zhengzheng's originally cold and beautiful face look more aloof and less glamorous.

Even the last trace of vulgarity has faded away.

Then why did she bring Zhou Xu here? What for?!

An Zhengzheng said calmly, "I'm afraid it will scare the children again."

"If there's nothing else, I'll be going now." The smell of alcohol was truly awful.

Zhou Xu looked somewhat disheveled. Perhaps in order to see An Zhengzheng, he used a cleansing spell, but his dejected eyes and smell of alcohol could not be removed by magic.

His eyes looked extremely embarrassed, and his lips opened and closed a few times before finally closing again.

An Zhengzheng was about to leave when she heard Zhou Yu'er angrily say to Zhou Xu, "Look at her! She covers her nose when she sees people, she has no manners at all! What kind of person could the An family, a poor and destitute family, raise..."

"Wait a minute!"

An Zhengzheng smiled.

She pointed in the direction of a nearby tavern: "Wine."

Then she pointed to Zhou Xu: "He drank it."

He pointed to the surrounding air: "The stench of alcohol that makes people dizzy."

He then pointed to himself: "I was just passing by and smelled it."

She was so angry she laughed: "Now you're blaming me for being ill-mannered?"

"Who is really the ill-mannered one?"

Zhou Yu'er was speechless. She was too sharp-tongued and even insulted the two of them indirectly!

Seeing that she was holding back her anger, An Zhengzheng suddenly stopped being angry herself.

I strode back to the Hundred Women's Pavilion.

Zhou Xu, who had been silent all along, finally spoke.

"An Zhengzheng, you shouldn't have shown up."

He swallowed hard, as if swallowing back his complicated emotions: "If you had just been a good young lady of the An family, nothing would have happened, but you had to be different... Why did you have to be different!"

These past few days, he's figured it out.

He had never cared about anything related to An Zhengzheng from beginning to end. Just like An Zhengzheng said, he didn't even know what An Zhengzheng liked, disliked, or needed.

That wasn't love; he didn't even care about An Zhengzheng's life or death.

In fact, if An Zhengzheng died, he would be relieved, because he would still be the Zhou family genius who was not threatened, and the number one person in the cultivation world with the best chance of becoming an immortal.

But then An Zhengzheng appeared!

His shock, panic, jealousy, greed, desire to conquer, and desire to control... were all on full display in his only rival, An Zhengzheng.

As for the feelings that grew in him, they were not romantic love between men and women, but worldly feelings of greed, anger, ignorance, pride, and doubt.

No wonder those techniques for severing emotions were ineffective.

"Isn't it better to be like other girls? Why do you have to compete with men for the same path?"

Under the influence of alcohol, Zhou Xu spoke recklessly, revealing all the grievances he had harbored over the past few days.

He questioned An Zhengzheng: "Do you know how fierce the competition is for a man, how much effort is required, and how much responsibility he bears?"

"You rashly entered into our competition, have you ever considered our situation? My father places the family's glory on me, and what about you? As a woman, even if you just laze around and wait to die, you can get married when you reach a certain age, and no one will criticize you in the slightest!"

"Why are you so vicious? Why did you even create the Hundred Women's Pavilion and encourage other women to compete? Have you ever considered where the dowries for the male cultivators who are squeezed out will come from, and how they will cope with such immense pressure to survive?"

He sneered, "An Zhengzheng, you only care about yourself and your female cultivators. You are the truly selfish one."

The fierce questioning came like a torrential downpour hitting An Zhengzheng.

An Zhengzheng remained calm, because she had thought about this question countless times before.

"It wasn't caused by me, nor by women."

"What?" Zhou Xu didn't understand.

Looking at the confusion in his eyes, An Zhengzheng felt a pang of pity for Zhou Xu's foolishness at that moment.

Pity him and the foolishness of the world.

"Your predicament is not my fault."

Her voice remained calm, but what she said overturned Zhou Xu's preconceived notions.

"It's not that I'm asking you to compete, to work hard, or to bring glory to your family. Similarly, the cruelty of competition and the responsibilities that all men bear are not brought about by women."

Zhou Xu's sneer intensified: "Who brought that?"

Could it have appeared out of thin air?

An Zhengzheng sighed abruptly.

"Have you ever considered that when you were competing, women didn't even have the right to compete? And when you shouldered responsibilities, you enjoyed resources that women didn't have?"

"Is it really the women's fault that you're under so much pressure?"

Imagine it as a highly rewarding competition. Men need to compete, while women don't even have the right to compete.

"You only think about the hardship and exhaustion of this struggle, but why don't you think about how many pills and magical treasures your entire family provided for you when you were preparing for the battle? Why don't you think about how much reward you will receive if you win the battle?"

An Zhengzheng told him, "What men face is always the oppression of the weak by the strong."

"It is men, as those in positions of power, and men, as those in a male-dominated society, who make all these demands on you... not women. You shouldn't blame me for fighting for my rights."

“Strong men oppress weak men. And whether they are strong or weak male cultivators, they can oppress women… This is what I want to fight against.”

Zhou Xu found her words utterly ridiculous: "Then the Zhou family has male cultivators who need to pay tens of thousands of spirit stones to get married, while you don't need to pay anything to get married!"

"You shouldn't compare yourself to me."

An Zhengzheng told him, "You should be looking up to female cultivators who are at the same level as that male cultivator. They don't have family support, and they face discrimination even when they're doing manual labor. If they marry the wrong person, even the law... cough cough, even the Heavenly Dao will side with their husbands. And those tens of thousands of spirit stones, are you sure they ended up in their hands, and not in the hands of their fathers, brothers, and brothers?"

"Who can they tell about their suffering? I only wanted to provide the same environment, was I wrong?"

"Have you ever thought about what it would be like if she enjoyed the same resources, the same treatment, and her work was free from discrimination and wage disparities?"

"If your sisters were equally qualified to represent the family, would you still feel this pressure to bring glory to the clan? At that time, would anyone share the pressure you are under now?"

"...So, you're still blaming women?"

She then told Zhou Xu, "And me too. The person I should be compared to isn't that male cultivator, but you, or a man from my clan."

"As children of the An family, the Zhou family should be well aware of the disparity in resources I receive compared to them, right?"