Ye Chang'an

Unlike the heavily criticized Nine Saints Hall, this group was surrounded like stars crowding around the moon almost as soon as they arrived.

Cheng Yue asked in a low voice, “Is that the young master of Taiqing Pavilion, Ye Chang'an?”

Chen He's expression shifted slightly. “Yes. Be careful, and let's not provoke him.”

Hearing them mention him, Song Yao glanced over as well.

One look was all it took to give her quite a shock.

This was Ye Chang'an?

Why was he acting even more arrogant than an overpowered protagonist?

If his face weren't exactly the same as before, she would have hardly recognized him.

After all, in her memory, Ye Chang'an was an extremely cowardly and useless person.

Despite being the young master of Taiqing Pavilion, he had always been subservient. His most common phrases were “I can't,” “I don't want to,” and “I have to go back and ask my father.”

His swordsmanship had also been mediocre at best, barely relying on his natural talent to scrape by in the upper-middle tier among his peers.

You couldn't call him useless, but you couldn't call him formidable either—he would be scared out of his wits during every spar.

The only thing he excelled at was his way with women.

Every time Fifth Junior Sister returned from meeting him, her face would be flushed, her eyes bright, and the corners of her mouth curled up to the sky.

Song Yao had looked down on him and hadn't wanted to use such cheap tricks to raise her corruption value.

But with the system chasing and shocking her from behind, she had no choice but to confess to Ye Chang'an.

It was a very simple sentence.

“I like you. Call off your engagement with my Fifth Junior Sister.”

In her view, Ye Chang'an and Fifth Junior Sister had known each other since childhood and shared deep feelings, so there was no way they would break up just because of a single confession from her.

It was sheer nonsense.

Back then, his pupils had trembled, clearly frightened.

He hadn't agreed, nor had he refused.

Song Yao had thought the matter would end there.

Who would have thought that in the following days, whenever Ye Chang'an sent gifts to Fifth Junior Sister, he would also bring one for her.

When he came to see Fifth Junior Sister, he would also drop by to see her.

Half a month later, Ye Chang'an, an incredibly cowardly man, actually knelt grandly outside Nine Saints Hall, declaring that he wanted to call off his engagement with Fifth Junior Sister and propose to her.

Fifth Junior Sister, who was already weak due to her constitution, fainted from anger on the spot, and her corruption value instantly maxed out.

Song Yao herself hadn't expected the mission to go so smoothly.

After all, in the plot provided by the system, the original host had to pester and charm him in every way possible to make Ye Chang'an change his mind.

For him to abandon his childhood sweetheart of a fiancée just because of a single confession was simply impossible.

She had been more puzzled than anyone, even going so far as to ask Ye Chang'an about it.

His affectionate eyes had looked at her with a smile, gentle to the extreme. “Tangtang is good, but I only treat her as a sister. Besides, she has a narrow outlook and only cares about romance. You are different. You understand the joy of mountains and rivers, your swordsmanship is outstanding, and you are the most unique woman I have ever met.”

Song Yao had fallen into confusion.

He treated Wen Tang as a sister, yet he always wrote love poems to her, bought her feminine trinkets, and took her to see the lantern festival during the Qixi Festival.

Not long before that, Wen Tang had shyly mentioned that they had gone to Fengxian Pavilion together to get measured for their wedding robes, and that Ye Chang'an had personally designed the style of the robes.

Yet now, he claimed he only treated her as a sister?

How could someone change their mind so quickly and make it sound so grand?

She got goosebumps from his cheesiness and sneered, “I am indeed different.”

Then she couldn't help but beat Ye Chang'an until he begged for mercy.

However, the matter never spread. Aside from the two of them, no one else knew she had beaten him.

In her mind, the image of a bruised, swollen pig face calling her “ancestor” emerged. She then looked back at the wildly arrogant Ye Chang'an in the hall, feeling a bit of a disconnect.

Could it be that she had hit him too hard back then...

And Ye Chang'an had turned dark from the beating?

She heard Fifth Junior Sister had also beaten him up later.

It was highly possible they had beaten him crazy.

Perhaps because she had stared a bit too long, Ye Chang'an seemed to sense something in the crowd and looked over.

He curled his lips and sneered. His voice was neither loud nor soft, but it carried perfectly across the hall. “Oh? Why did Nine Saints Hall send a bunch of unweaned brats this year?”

The surrounding disciples instantly fell silent, and even the ambient chatter died down.

Ever since Ye Chang'an was publicly beaten and rejected by Wen Tang, his targeting of Nine Saints Hall had been going on for a long time.

At this moment, he was actively picking a fight. The disciples in the hall tacitly shut their mouths and even stepped aside, unwilling to provoke this young master.

Ye Chang'an swung the cold, gleaming sword at his waist, strolling over lazily.

Smiling, he bent down and rested his elbow on the edge of the table. He leaned in close, squinting at the group before his gaze finally landed on Song Yao's face.

Song Yao paused mid-bite.

The corners of his eyes tilted up even higher, and his tone was as frivolous as if he were flirting with a street performer. “Your Nine Saints Hall is quite lucky to have recruited such a beautiful little junior sister.”

Spinning a mutton-fat white jade ring on his finger, he gestured toward Song Yao. His tone was as slow and casual, carrying an undisguised hint of temptation. “Why don't you join our Taiqing Pavilion? Follow me, and I guarantee it'll be better than staying in this run-down Nine Saints Hall. Your senior brother is much richer than these folks.”

Song Yao: “...”

Tsk.

He used to pretend to be so dignified.

Yet now, on his fiancée's turf, he dared to flirt with girls at will.

Could she beat him up again right now?

That probably wouldn't do.

With so many eyes watching, she would easily expose her identity.

It was better to wait until they entered the secret realm.

Abandoning the urge to strike, she made a mental note of the debt and continued eating her pastry.

Chen He didn't forget to protect his weak pill cultivator senior sister.

Standing up abruptly, he blocked Song Yao, his back ramrod straight as he glared at him with cold eyes. “Young Master Ye, please show some respect! This is our Nine Saints Hall's Seventh Senior Sister!”

Ye Chang'an straightened up, ignoring Chen He's gaze to fix his eyes back on Song Yao's face. His words were sharp and venomous. “What? Your Third is dead, so you're in a hurry to recruit a new one to fill the hole? I hope she isn't another crooked character who ends up dying in the Earth Realm without even a whole corpse to recover.”

Although Ming Ran and the others didn't have a good impression of that Third Senior Sister, she was still a member of their sect.

Hearing him speak like this, they all felt a wave of nameless anger rise within them.

Ming Ran slammed her hand on the table and stood up as well, snapping, “Keep your mouth clean!”

Ye Chang'an's face suddenly sank, his frivolous smile instantly vanishing.

His eyes turned dark, and the mutton-fat white jade ring on his finger clicked as he gripped it tightly. “Little sister, I haven't uttered a single dirty word. How is it not clean?”

He took another half-step forward, leaning in close. The air pressure around him plummeted, and a biting chill almost enveloped the group at the table.

Ming Ran instinctively shrank back half an inch, but she still gritted her teeth and gripped her sword hilt.

Amidst the tense, explosive atmosphere, Song Yao, who had been lazily leaning back in her chair and eating osmanthus cake, suddenly spoke up.

She looked up, her bamboo-green robe draped loosely over her shoulders. A casual, cool smile played in her clear eyes. “Young Master Ye, you are so fierce.”

Before Ye Chang'an could even process her words, she slowly added, “When you were pinned to the ground and beaten by Third Senior Sister and Fifth Senior Sister until you begged for mercy back then, were you also this fierce?”