"Ah—!!" A heart-wrenching wail ripped through the night sky. Xia Mingde curled up on the ground, convulsing like a dying wild dog.
Bai Ying slowly stepped forward, looking down at the man with a cold gaze.
"From now on..."
"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes."
"Xia Qingdai and the Xia family..."
"All ties have been severed."
Xia Mingde trembled as he looked up at the girl before him, genuine fear finally appearing in his cloudy old eyes. He realized with a start that he had never truly known this daughter.
Even knowing she could slay a Nascent Soul cultivator, even witnessing her intimidate hordes of demons, deep down, he still saw her as that rebellious daughter he could scold and beat at will. Only now, when those emotionless eyes looked down upon him, did he finally understand—
An insurmountable chasm had long separated them.
The girl who once silently endured the scolding was only holding back because of the last vestige of blood ties. And now...
The way she looked at him was no different from how she looked at a pebble on the roadside.
Bai Ying turned and left, the night wind ruffling her clothes. Her wish to avenge Xia Qingdai had been fulfilled; now, all she needed to do was repair the final damage to her body so she could finally leave this place of trouble.
Upon returning to the Princess's residence, Bai Ying immediately went into seclusion to cultivate. Meanwhile, the Xia residence was in complete chaos.
The vermilion gates of the Xia residence appeared particularly eerie in the night. Xia Mingde had barely stepped into the study when he frantically swept everything off the table. A celadon vase smashed against the wall, shards scattering and gleaming coldly in the candlelight.
"Useless! All of you are useless!"
Xia Mingde smashed the study into a mess, roaring with a ferocious expression, "That bitch is living the high life now, with long lines of people waiting to see her outside the Princess's mansion! I, her own father, can't even get through the door!"
The butler carefully served hot tea: "Master, please calm down. Xia Qingdai is, after all, a princess, and she's so powerful; she's simply not someone we can handle..."
"Princess? Impressive?" Xia Mingde whirled around, grabbing the steward by the neck. "That's my daughter! I gave her life!" He shook the elderly steward frantically. "Without the Xia family, she's nothing!"
After venting his anger, Xia Mingde slumped into a grand chair, his chest heaving violently. The candlelight cast flickering shadows on his sinister face, and a wicked plan gradually took shape.
"Go and fetch Granny Wang," he ordered coldly. "And prepare another five hundred taels of silver—no, a thousand taels! I want the whole city to know what kind of beast Xia Qingdai is!"
"So what if she's a princess? So what if she's powerful? Under the jurisdiction of this royal city, she's bound by the Emperor's dragon aura. Weren't all the cultivators we met before following the laws and regulations of the royal city properly? I'm going to show her what happens when she offends me."
The next morning, a shocking piece of news spread like wildfire through teahouses and taverns.
"Have you heard?" A weasel-faced tea drinker lowered his voice mysteriously, "Princess Qingping personally pushed Sister Xia Yuwei towards the monster yesterday! Miss Xia Yuwei was bitten to death by the monster!"
Upon hearing this, a merchant at the next table trembled, and his teacup shattered with a "crack": "Is this really true?"
"Absolutely true!" A woman with a pockmarked face leaned closer, describing the scene with spittle flying. "My cousin works in the patrol camp. He saw with his own eyes that the princess put up some kind of barrier, protecting everyone except Miss Xia Er! The scene... tsk tsk tsk, I heard that Miss Xia Er begged for mercy, but Xia Qingdai wouldn't let her in. Xia Yuwei was torn to pieces alive, not even a single bone was left!"
In a private room on the second floor of the Drunken Immortal Pavilion, Xia Mingde leaned against the carved window, his sinister gaze sweeping through the cracks as he surveyed the growing crowd below. Behind him stood three men dressed in commoner's clothing, fawningly reporting:
"Rest assured, sir, we have already placed men in three teahouses in the south of the city and five taverns in the north."
"Very good." Xia Mingde took out a bag of silver from his sleeve and tossed it over. "Continue to embellish the story, especially making it clear how that bitch harmed Yuwei."
Soon, even more exaggerated versions began to circulate in the streets:
"I saw it with my own eyes!" A burly man with a face full of scars slammed his fist on the table in the teahouse. "Princess Qingping froze Miss Xia with a single gesture, and she was even sneering as those monsters pounced on her!"
"That's not all!" another shill immediately chimed in, "I heard she even used sorcery to shatter the Second Miss's soul, ensuring she'll never be reincarnated!"
An elderly woman dressed in plain clothes suddenly burst into tears: "Miss Yuwei is such a kind person! Last month she even brought rice and medicine to my family, how could she... how could she..." She cried so hard that she almost passed out, attracting the attention of those around her.
Panic spread like ripples. A young man dressed as a scholar suddenly shouted, "Such a ruthless person, if she ever takes a dislike to us..." He deliberately shuddered, "With her cultivation level, slaughtering the entire royal city would be a piece of cake!"
These words were like a drop of cold water splashed into boiling oil, instantly igniting fear in the crowd. The ordinary people whispered amongst themselves, their suspicions growing stronger.
At noon, hundreds of people spontaneously gathered in front of the princess's mansion. Some shouted "Severely punish the murderer," while others yelled "A life for a life." A few ruffians even began throwing rotten vegetable leaves and rotten eggs at the vermilion gate.
"Get out of the royal city!"
"The imperial court must provide an explanation!"
"Does this kind of vixen deserve to be a princess?"
Among the crowd, Xia Mingde, wearing a bamboo hat, curled his lips into a ferocious smile. "Trying to fight me?"
"A brilliant plan, sir," the confidant sneered. "Once the court is enraged and revokes her title of princess, let's see how arrogant she'll be then!"
Xia Mingde rubbed the bandaged wound on his wrist, his eyes flashing with venomous resentment: "You wretch, you think you can do whatever you want just because you have high cultivation? Today I'll show you that in this royal city, public opinion is the real power!"
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