A thought came to him, and he flung it out, pocket-ideas to distract his opponent. “Do you have a Master?”

She was silent for a long few seconds. “In… a sense, I suppose, all the Elders of the sect are my masters. I serve them, and they raise me up in turn, and together we all serve the interests of the Bloody Saffron Sect. I am the true disciple of no master, but Daoist Revolving Chime probably comes the closest. His swordsmanship is impeccable— he’s the Elder in charge of teaching the disciples with promise in the art, and he’s been doing it for a long time. Did you know that he once personally taught the sect’s sword forms to the Sect Master himself?”

“I’m somewhat distanced from the sect politics here, but it’s an impressive feat, to be taught by someone with such acumen.”

“I suppose. Only the truly talentless don’t have one of the elder daoists teach them every once in a while on their chosen paths, and… well.” She smirked. “Let it never be said that the Bloody Saffron Sect is lacking in talent.”

“I never doubted it for a moment.” Well actually he’d doubted it quite a lot, but there was just… his experience in the higher realms had kind of colored things in a poor light. Objectively, he knew that a seventh-step power was impressive for this realm, towards the higher echelons of things as far as it went. There were only two higher powers on the entire planet, which only went to show just how important the Bloody Saffron Sect actually was. Their sect master was probably in the top… few hundred? At least

the top thousand, because a fair few of the more powerful cultivators in the two great powers would probably be kind of weak in actual skill compared to someone who’d reached the pinnacle of a smaller sect. He’d seen arrogant young masters defeated by their ostensible juniors enough times over his life to know how those sorts of things tended to work.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He turned his gaze back to Avyr, who was busy trying to push through the crowd around him without shoving any of them too hard… a crowd that had, apparently, decided that for the spring festival it was actually perfectly fine to crowd right up against the cat. It only made the whole situation even funnier.

Fun times, fun times… as the parade finally approached where they were, Avyr did manage to slink all the way to the front of the crowd. Lily’s solution to go alongside him was… novel, that’s for sure.

“It’s amusing.” He blinked, having honestly half-forgotten that Zhihu was even there. “They figured that out now, and seem utterly oblivious to it in every other respect. I suppose that’s just another effect of their… unique personalities.”