Chapter 4035: Call That Brat!
Chapter 4035: Call That Brat!
The former Head had explained to Daoist Bone Ruler that certain pieces of information concerning the Sect Ancestor were deliberately kept obscure, partially because the Ancestor himself had never cared to clarify them.
Deng Siqi was considered the strongest candidate for his birth name and Zhenyu had spoken it casually. Worse, he had described Deng Siqi as someone who had been "still new."
Daoist Bone Ruler stared at him. "You knew the Heavenly Stream Immortal Ancestor!?"
Zhenyu looked toward him as though the question itself were strange.
"Knew him?" he repeated.
Lin Mu deliberately allowed a pause to stretch between them and everyone waited.
Then Zhenyu scratched his beard. "I wouldn’t say I knew him particularly well."
Daoist Bone Ruler’s expression became increasingly tense.
"He was one of those ambitious youngsters running around the sect during that period," Zhenyu continued casually. "Quiet fellow compared to some of the others. Didn’t have particularly astonishing talent either, if I remember correctly."
Several elders felt their minds go blank.
The Heavenly Stream Immortal... Their supreme ancestor... The ancient existence whose cultivation had reached heights most of them could barely comprehend. Zhenyu had just described him as a quiet youngster without particularly astonishing talent.
High Elder Shatter Peak suddenly looked fascinated. "You met him personally?"
"Several times," Zhenyu replied.
This was technically supported by the real Zhenyu’s memories. Deng Siqi had been connected to the Hopeful Star Pavilion, and Zhenyu had interacted with several of its members.
The exact extent of their interactions was unclear, which gave Lin Mu considerable freedom.
Zhenyu’s brows furrowed as though struggling with an ancient memory. "I remember him asking questions frequently. Always listening, always watching. He wasn’t the loudest among that group, though he had persistence." Zhenyu snorted softly. "I suppose that explains why he’s the one still alive."
Daoist Bone Ruler felt his mouth becoming dry. The details were vague enough that he could find no obvious contradiction, yet specific enough to sound like genuine memories. More importantly, Zhenyu had produced the name Deng Siqi without being prompted.
High Elder Shatter Peak looked between the two men. "So you’re saying our Sect Ancestor was your junior?"
Zhenyu immediately waved his hand. "Don’t put words in my mouth. We weren’t of the same lineage, and I wasn’t his master." He paused before adding with complete confidence, "But yes, he was a junior."
Daoist Bone Ruler closed his eyes for a moment. Somewhere deep inside him, Millenia of carefully cultivated respect for hierarchy were screaming. But Zhenyu seemed completely oblivious to his suffering.
"Actually," the old man continued, "this makes things easier."
"How?" Daoist Bone Ruler asked cautiously.
Zhenyu smiled. "If all of you still insist I’m some prisoner pretending to be Mengli Zhenyu, bring Deng Siqi here."
The surrounding guards became deathly silent.
Zhenyu folded his hands behind his back. "He should remember me."
High Elder Shatter Peak’s eyes widened and Daoist Bone Ruler stared at Zhenyu as though the old man had just suggested calling over a servant from the next courtyard.
"Senior," Daoist Bone Ruler finally said, choosing his words very carefully, "the Ancestor is generally not summoned."
Zhenyu raised an eyebrow. "Summoned?"
His expression became offended. "Who said anything about summoning him?"
Daoist Bone Ruler relaxed slightly.
Then Zhenyu continued. "Tell that little brat Zhenyu is back and wants to see how much he’s grown."
Daoist Bone Ruler’s face went completely blank and High Elder Shatter Peak stared at Zhenyu for two breaths.
Then, despite his current circumstances, he burst into roaring laughter. "Hahahaha!"
The nearby quickly turned away while several guards who managed to hear the conversation covered their mouths for the fear that they might be punished even more than now.
Lin Mu maintained Zhenyu’s arrogant expression while internally feeling quite satisfied. He had obtained what he wanted.
Deng Siqi was almost certainly the Heavenly Stream Immortal.
And while Lin Mu had rather positive thoughts at that moment, Daoist Bone Ruler was regretting waking up that morning. It was a ridiculous thought for someone of his cultivation and position, yet it had firmly lodged itself within his mind.
If he had simply remained in meditation for another day, perhaps another Law Division elder would have been sent to investigate the disturbance at the Mad Demon Depths and someone else would have encountered Mengli Zhenyu.
Someone else would have fought him, been nearly crushed by the Dual Disaster, watched him casually tear open space, and then been forced to listen while he referred to the Heavenly Stream Immortal Ancestor as a "little guy."
Unfortunately, Daoist Bone Ruler was a disciplined man.
He woke at the same time every day unless there was a genuine emergency preventing him from doing so. He performed his cultivation routine at the prescribed hours, reviewed the Law Division’s reports, handled important cases personally, and maintained a schedule that had barely changed in thousands of years.
He had always believed discipline rewarded those who followed it. And today... discipline had betrayed him.
Daoist Bone Ruler suppressed the almost inaudible sigh that threatened to escape his lips as Zhenyu stood nearby with the completely relaxed expression of someone who had just said nothing unusual whatsoever.
’Tell that little brat Zhenyu is back and wants to see how much he’s grown.’ The words continued echoing inside Daoist Bone Ruler’s mind.
He wished they would stop.
The Heavenly Stream Immortal was the supreme ancestor of their sect. His name alone commanded respect throughout the Eastern Immortal Court. Generations of Patriarchs had risen and fallen while the Ancestor remained.
The greatest experts of the Heavenly Stream Guardian Sect would carefully choose their words whenever discussing him, and even Daoist Bone Ruler had only met the man a handful of times in his entire life.
Yet this supposed Junior Elder had casually called him a brat. Daoist Bone Ruler did not even know what category of offense that belonged under.
Disrespect toward an elder?
Insulting a sect authority?
Disrespect toward an ancestor?
He briefly wondered whether the Law Division even possessed a punishment severe enough for what he had just heard. Then he remembered the gigantic tsunami and mountains closing around him.
’No.’ He immediately abandoned that line of thought.
There were some laws that were better left on the paper.
More troubling was the possibility that Zhenyu was actually telling the truth. The name Deng Siqi had been among the most closely guarded fragments concerning the Ancestor’s early identity.
If Zhenyu truly remembered him as a younger disciple, then calling him a little guy might actually be accurate from his perspective. But that somehow made everything worse.