Chapter 468 - 320: Jingwu Family

Chapter 468: Chapter 320: Jingwu Family

「More than ten days ago. The Jingwu Family.」

The Jingwu Family was located in the Vantia Great Snow Mountain Range, but not on the Lanyue Empire’s side. Instead, it was situated in the northern part of the Zichuan Empire. The Vantia Mountain Range stretched for thousands of kilometers, with most of it running through the northern Zichuan Empire. The Vendia Great Snow Mountain, the range’s highest peak, was located on the border between the Zichuan and Lanyue Empires.

The Lie Family resided in a set of Ancient Ruins hidden among the mountains. The scale was immense. Viewed from high above, vast, gray-toned buildings were built into the mountainside, covering an area dozens of square kilometers in size!

As a super-family, the Jingwu Family had existed in this land for over ten thousand years and boasted a population of more than one hundred thousand people! It would be no exaggeration to call it a small city.

To this day, some of the Jingwu Family’s branch families had left the clan, entered the Mortal World, and become either wealthy or noble. Other, less-regarded branches had established their own houses, becoming minor clans that depended on the Lie Family for their survival.

As a direct descendant of such a colossal family, one could only imagine how noble Lie Yang’s status was.

Therefore, Xie Xiaoyan was extremely pleased to have established a relationship with Lie Yang. ’More importantly, Lie Yang really cares about me! He’s the Crown Prince of a super-family! Not just some random nobody from an ordinary, third-rate clan!’

Xie Xiaoyan herself had never dreamed that such a wonderful thing would happen to her. And yet, the better things got, the more she couldn’t forget the man who had brought her the greatest humiliation!

’Ling Xiao, I will make you wish you were dead! I want you to regret everything you did to me! Regret... ever being born into this world!’ Whenever Xie Xiaoyan thought about Ling Xiao, her heart felt as if it were being devoured by ten thousand ants. The sensation made her feel like she was going to go insane.

Looking back, everything that happened two years ago was still vivid in her mind, as if it were only yesterday.

Xie Xiaoyan was incredibly sharp. Deep down, she knew she herself was the root cause of all this. However, she would never admit it. She hated—hated her own Xie Family. To curry favor with the powerful Ling Family, they had desperately pushed her toward Ling Xiao, even though they knew he was a good-for-nothing. If not for them, she would never have gone to the Imperial Academy!

She hated her father. ’What right does your older generation have to decide my marriage, my freedom, my future? Just for the flimsy reason that you’re friends? Well, we aren’t!’

She hated Ling Xiao. ’He’s clearly a worthless piece of trash, yet he insists on acting so deeply in love with me. Don’t you get it? Trash like you has no right to even speak of love with me! Is a good-for-nothing from a Duke’s Family no longer a good-for-nothing? If you put a piece of garbage in the Imperial Palace... is it no longer garbage?’

And so, Xie Xiaoyan grew up living in this shadow, her heart constantly filled with negative emotions. The one thing she thought about most each day was how to get rid of Ling Xiao and escape the Ling Family.

However, as she grew older, her greatest fear came to pass. Her father told her that after Ling Xiao’s coming-of-age ceremony, an engagement ceremony would be held for them.

"This isn’t what I want!" Xie Xiaoyan still remembered screaming at her father through her tears.

Her father simply shook his head, patiently trying to persuade her. "Yan’Er, you can’t keep thinking of Ling Xiao as a good-for-nothing. That view is too extreme and narrow-minded! I have no cultivation to speak of—I’m just an ordinary merchant. Does that make me a good-for-nothing, too? Ling Xiao just can’t achieve greatness on the Martial Dao. But with his family background and his father’s status, his future accomplishments will be limitless! Isn’t the Imperial Chancellor, Lord Constant, a Celestial Vein Master as well? And yet, who doesn’t revere him?"

But how could Xie Xiaoyan possibly listen to her father’s reasoning? ’My father, my family members—not a single one of them is any good!’ she thought. ’They’ve all been blinded by greed!’

General Ling Tianxiao guarded the Empire’s borders, and the annual military procurement budget was an astronomical figure. Xie Xiaoyan’s father was already a close friend of Ling Tianxiao’s; if their children were to marry, it would make their bond even stronger. For the Xie Family, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

By the same token, the Xie Family would gain powerful connections, bringing immeasurable benefits to their future prospects.

But Xie Xiaoyan refused to accept any of it.

She had to resist. Resist all of it. Resist everything that others were forcing upon her!

If... she hadn’t made the moves that followed, one could argue that Xie Xiaoyan was still a sympathetic girl. There is nothing wrong with fighting for one’s own freedom and destiny.

Unfortunately, the Ling Xiao of the past had been far too good to her. This made it utterly impossible for Xie Xiaoyan to propose breaking off the engagement. She knew that if she suggested it, not only would the Xie Family refuse, but the Ling Family... would be even less likely to agree!

Xie Xiaoyan once had an impulse. ’Isn’t my beautiful face the only reason the Ling Family is interested in me? If this face were gone, would they still want me?’ In the end, however, she dismissed the thought. For a girl, being disfigured was a fate worse than death.

As the date of Ling Xiao’s coming-of-age ceremony drew nearer by the day, Xie Xiaoyan, suffering in torment, finally took a desperate gamble and resorted to a terrible plan.

She believed she had been forced into it.

But there was one thing she would admit to herself: if Ling Xiao had been a genius like her, destined for future greatness and the admiration of the masses... then marrying him wouldn’t have been so bad.