Sparks flew off in all directions as a blade was struck with a force great enough that, were blade and anvil made of normal steel, both of them would shatter in a thousand pieces. As they were though, they withstood the powerful strike, only the blade being slightly formed by it.

The following strike was much the same, as were the ones following after that. The entire process was accompanied by the ear shattering ringing of metal hitting metal. Scathing heat, originating from a formation driven oven completed the atmosphere of the room.

It wasn’t a nice place to be, at least not by the standards of the average person. For Jiang Peng though, it was perfect. In here, he could fully let loose and direct all of his anger into strikes at a piece of metal, while also doing something actually productive.

That was a great arrangement, because anger was something that he had quite a lot of. That had pretty much always been the case, but especially in the past few months.

Not only did the heads of the other families look down on him, but now he was also supposed to accept that some shitty elder without any background now matched the strongest of them in cultivation?

He, Jiang Peng, should have been the one to rise above all the other elders. But instead of him, luck favored some arrogant piece of shit who didn’t even have a proper legacy! Why in all heavens was he so unlucky?

His muscles bulged as he brought down his hammer on the blade before him once more.

It was his birthright to rule. His birthright to lead. His birthright to surpass. Before that pretender of a patriarch Long Zhao had ascended to the throne, the Peng family had ruled this sect. Jiang Peng had always known that it was his destiny to take back that place. So why did the world not comply? Why could he barely progress his cultivation? It was outrageous!

He could not let his ancestors down. He couldn’t. He needed to retake what was rightfully his. To hell with the other families, to hell with those pretenders without one and to hell with Liu Wei!

Jiang Peng was certain that the only reason that lucky bastard had given the Enforcement Hall to that accursed wench Lan Shi was to spite him specifically. Oh, how he hated that woman, that spawn of hell!

He brought down his hammer. Again, and again and again.

He would never live down that humiliation that had been brought upon him the day she beat him during the council of elders. He didn’t have his weapons with him back then, otherwise he never would have lost.

And now, now she had the audacity to get in his way once again, even more than ever before! To meddle in the affairs of his family!

He would have his revenge, even if it cost him everything. He would wash the humiliation he had felt that day of himself with her blood. He would…

The blade snapped. His last strike had been too much for it to endure. For a while, he just stood there, before picking up the pieces while muttering curses against everything and everyone he could think of.

Only after that did he notice the knocking on the door.

“In with you!” The anger still leaked out of his voice.

In came a visibly trembling youngling, dressed in the robes of his family.

“I am terribly sorry to disturb you, great patriarch, but I have been tasked to inform you that the meeting with the other family heads is starting shortly.”

“Get out of my sight, as if I needed a reminder of that!”

As the youngling practically ran off, Jiang Peng held himself back from punching the wall. He didn’t want to meet anyone right now, but he had little choice if he wanted his family’s voice to be heard. The last time he had remained absent from a meeting like this, the other family heads had had the audacity just to make their decisions without him. They truly lacked any respect for him and the Peng family.

Still grumbling, he started making his way to the patriarch’s palace where the meeting would take place.

…

Ning Bai patiently sat in his seat to the right of Sect Patriarch Long Zhao, waiting for the meeting to begin. As per usual, Jiang Peng was the late to arrive. Waiting for him was disgraceful, but they did so anyway. It was not so much out of respect and more to spare them all from the headache of dealing with one of the man’s tantrums.

At this point, one could only wonder if the entitled hothead even wanted to be taken seriously. He still basked himself in the glory of his ancestry and continued gobbling up the resources his family had accumulated over generations, only to compensate for his own meager talent. And even though everyone could tell that the man was nearing the end of his lifespan, he refused to start setting up a successor.

Not that it usually bothered Ning Bai particularly much. In the end, all the other pillar families were his competitors. Why should he care if one of them teared its own work to the ground. Right now though, when they truly needed the pillar families to work together in the face of a faction that dared to rise against them, it was annoying to say the least.

The door flung open and in came the subject of his thoughts.

“Here I am.”

“I am sure it didn’t escape your notice, Elder Peng, but you are late.”

“So what? You didn’t start without me, did you?”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Don’t worry, we did not.”

“Then everything’s alright, isn’t it? Let’s start already, I have other things to do.”

“…”

“Very well then. Now that we have all arrived, let us do what we have come here for. The purpose of today’s meeting is to decide on a course of action regarding the next council meeting.” Long Zhao spoke up.

“With the recent changes to the sect’s balance of power, it is important that we work together to ensure our families’ continued power and prosperity. I believe that the recent actions of the Enforcement Hall are especially worthy of our attention.”

The Enforcement Hall? That was what he wanted to focus on?

“Most certainly. Elder Shi dared to throw our people out of her hall. We can’t leave this provocation unanswered!” Meixiu Xia agreed.

“She even had some my family’s wares from the northern markets confiscated, it’s unacceptable.”

“We need to make an example out of that bitch, I tell ya.”

Before the elders could fall deeper into their mindless complaining, Ning Bai interrupted them:

“As much as I agree that Elder Shi has stepped out of line, I think we should start by discussing the much greater threat of Elder Wei’s current actions.”

“Elder Wei? Let’s just let that fool throw his resources away like he has been doing. Elder Zhong has him under supervision. Right now, Elder Shi is the much bigger problem.”

“I vehemently disagree. Elder Shi’s rebellious escapades are annoying at most, they have no chance at dealing serious damage to us.”

“Well, Elder Wei’s actions haven’t done any damage to us yet. So why would we want to change that? Man’s gone mad, nothing more.”

Jiang Peng was being the shortsighted fool he had always been, Ning Bai wasn’t surprised in the slightest by that.

“Listen Elder Bai, as much as I would love to show Liu Wei where his place is, I have to agree with Elder Peng here. Elder Shi’s actions have been much more problematic in recent times.”

What he hadn’t expected, was the other elders backing him up.

“Yes, but they were and still are also entirely predictable. Elder Shi has always been using and will continue to use all of the means at her disposal to try and enforce her feeble sense of justice. As long as we make sure those means don’t grow too much, she remains easy to handle.

Elder Wei on the other hand has already managed to surprise us once, on the last council. That is something we need to prevent from happening again.”

At this, patriarch Long Zhao indicated that he wanted to speak.

“Elder Bai – you know how much I value the brilliance of your mind. It would not be an overstatement to say that none of us here can match the depth of your strategic genius. But please allow me to point out that you, to my understanding, have failed to yet come up with even just a plausible theory on why Elder Wei is currently acting the way he is acting.

So, lacking even that, I fail to see how we could formulate a plan to deal with him. Unless that has now changed, I would like to ask you to let us focus on the thing that we know to be a tangible thread to wealth of our families instead of chasing ghosts. “

Ning Bai had to bite his tongue to avoid shooting back against this unthinkable insult. Who did that pretender think he was? Ning Bai had advised the sect for as long as he had been an elder and never before had he been talked down to like this. His strategic advice was being disregarded solely because he hadn’t been able to explain these unprecedented moves that Liu Wei had taken since his breakthrough.

These fools cared only for their wealth. They saw a tiny crease in the curve of their profit and all they could think about was how to stop it. They had lived in the comfortable security of his calculations for so long that they had forgotten their fear of the unknown, could no longer appreciate the danger it could pose.

The fact that he could not explain Elder Wei’s actions was the very reason that Ning Bai was so paranoid. As long as he could not understand it, the only reasonable way of handling them was to always assume the worst. Compared to this danger, what were some minor changes in profit?

“… I understand, patriarch. I only ask that we all remain vigilant regarding Elder Wei’s moves.”

He had no options but to give in for now, what else was he to do. If he was right, the others would soon learn of the danger that Liu Wei posed and when that time came, he would be the one they needed to look to.

“We will of course do that, Elder Bai. Now, let’s get back to the matter on hand. Elder Shi has recently been using the Enforcement Hall to attack our families’ businesses on the black market. Any proposal on how to handle that?”

“She isn’t one to give in to pressure. We will need to force her hand.”

As the other elders returned to their meaningless discussion, Ning Bai remained silent, pondering once again what Liu Wei might be up to.

…

As the debate went on, Meixiu Xia repeatedly glanced at the silent Ning Bai. Right now, he was probably thinking of all of them as mindless fools, not able to see the bigger picture.

Never in a thousand years would he suspect that it was in fact he himself who was the one currently lacking insight. The praise that Patriarch Zhao had spoken was true, the man’s mind truly was a miracle. To his own misfortune though, he was also keenly aware of that and would as such never suspect that someone was able to fool him.

In truth, Meixiu Xia had already discussed the matter of Liu Wei in quite a lot of depth with Long Zhao and Yue Zhong. The unofficial alliance of the three families was her own brainchild and had been pulling the strings of the sect for over half a century.

The basic premise was simple: With the Zhao family’s martial strength, the Zhong family’s dominant hold on information and her own political talent, the three were able to enforce almost anything that they could agree on, no matter what the other families wanted.

All three were in agreement that Liu Wei was far more of a threat than any of Lan Shi’s pathetic attempts at damaging them. It was just that the conclusion they had reached on how to handle it was very different from anything Ning Bai might imagine.

The proud and upright man liked to think of the pillar families as a unit, a unit that he, as the head strategist of the sect, directed. Any threat to this unit, he would try to stamp out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

When handling external politics, this way of thinking was perfect to handle relationships with other powers. That was why he was such a good pick as a head strategist and as the leader of the Outer Relations Hall.

When it came to internal sect politics though, it was simply flawed. The pillar families worked together not out of conviction but out of convenience. They weren’t the unit that he thought of them as, but separate parties with separate interests and the real power struggle in the sect was the one happening in between them.

As such, a threat like Elder Wei always represented an equal amount of opportunity to those who knew how to use it.

Since the immediate threat to the status quo of Liu Wei making an attempt for the throne of the patriarch had been averted, Meixiu and her partners had agreed to not only let the man cook up whatever he was planning, but perhaps to even foster those plans of his.

If the pillar families agreed to take the threat of Liu Wei head on, all of them would be taking damage in equal matter.

Instead, the three would then make sure that the eventual conflict that would ensue would exclusively hit the other families and not them, using Liu Wei to weaken their political rivals.

While doing so with Ning Bai would be difficult, the already weakened Peng and Rong families would be easy to push the right way and Sun Liang’s hatred for Liu Wei would undoubtedly make him vulnerable to the very same strategy.

Like this, they could tighten their grip on the sect even further without expanding any resources of their own. This pretty little piece of intrigue was the reason they were currently pushing the conversation away from Liu Wei.

If everything went how it was supposed to, they would not only remain undisturbed by Liu Wei, they would even come out on top.