Chapter 168: The Background of Lan Mo (Part Two)

"Lantutang, are you surprised to see me?"

After dealing with the sixteen master archers, Lan Mo gracefully dropped down and came to a halt about three meters away from Lantutang, looking at him with a faint smile.

"Lan Mo, is it really you?" Lantutang said in a condensed voice.

"That's right, Lan Mo is me, and I am Lan Mo," Lan Mo replied.

"You, you..." Lantutang's face turned slightly pale. He raised a hand to point at her, uttering several "you"s in succession, yet he could not manage to form a complete sentence.

"What about me? Are you wondering how someone who was once deemed completely useless—born with a five-element deficiency, lacking willpower, unmotivated, and dependent on her mother's protection well into her thirties—could somehow become a female cultivator at the eighth stage of Condensing Truth? Is that it?" Lan Mo chuckled self-deprecatingly, taking over his words.

Lantutang opened his mouth, but not a single word came out. Clearly having no intention of waiting for him to speak, Lan Mo glanced at him and continued on her own: "For all of this, I must thank you. If you hadn't cast aside all ties of blood in your single-minded pursuit to drive us to our deaths, leaving me utterly helpless and completely cutting off all my paths of retreat, there would be no Lan Mo of today."

"Your mother's death had nothing to do with the Lan family," Lantutang couldn't help but argue.

"Nothing to do with you? Haha, in a sense, your words aren't entirely wrong. Back then, watching me—her own daughter—born with a defective constitution, unable to cultivate, vain, and cowardly, yet desperately wanting my mother to be proud of me while refusing to endure even the slightest hardship, giving up on everything I started like a pile of mud that could never be plastered onto a wall..."

"Faced with such a daughter in those circumstances, how heartbroken and despairing my mother must have been. Coupled with your relentless pressure day after day, she was left with no other choice. My mother used her own life as the price to awaken me. In a way, rather than saying she was driven to her death by you, it is more accurate to say she was worried and angered to death by me." Lan Mo laughed, a bitter mirth filled with indescribable sorrow and remorse.

"Since you know this, you shouldn't blame the Lan family..." Lantutang instinctively retorted.

"I have no intention of blaming the Lan family. I simply wish to fulfill my mother's dying wish. She and my father shared a profound and loyal love, yet you, driven by some unspeakable selfish desires, ruthlessly snuffed out my father's life for no reason. Throughout her lifetime, my mother thought only of avenging him. As an unfilial and incompetent daughter, not only could I offer her no help or hope while she was alive, but I was nothing more than a constant burden holding her back."

"Now that my mother is long gone, no matter how unfilial I might be, I cannot let her sacrifice her life to awaken me only to leave her final wish unfulfilled. Don't you agree?" Lan Mo's smile vanished, her eyes suddenly turning sharp and piercing. Under that gaze, Lantutang felt a chill run through his entire body.

"Lan Mo, the matter of your parents has nothing to do with the Young Master. Back then, he was merely a child who had just stepped into the Condensing Dan realm and had no authority whatsoever to interfere in family affairs." Uncle Jiang stepped forward, shielding Lantutang behind him.

"Heh, Uncle Jiang, you're right. Back then he was indeed just a Condensing Dan cultivator, yet to me at the time, he was a lofty, towering existence entirely out of reach. And yet, this lofty cousin and Young Master didn't hesitate to use a good-for-nothing like me more than once to pressure my mother. If it weren't for him fanning the flames from the sidelines, and the Lan family's endless persecution, how could my mother have been pushed into such helpless despair unto death?" Lan Mo chuckled softly, but there was not a trace of warmth in her eyes; the depths of her gaze were frozen over.

Uncle Jiang's lips quivered, but he could not say a single word. He could not claim to know all the details of what had happened back then, but he knew the truth of most of it. He was in no position to judge the rights and wrongs of the past. Things in the world often worked this way—karma was inescapable, and the seeds sown in the past would inevitably bear fruit in time, just like Lan Mo, who had suddenly appeared before them today.

No one back then could have anticipated that the utterly broken Lan Mo of the past would ever reach this point, yet it had happened. To be honest, aside from her appearance remaining unchanged, today's Lan Mo was already a completely different person from the one of the past. This was why neither Lantutang nor he had noticed her presence at first.

Uncle Jiang closed his eyes for a brief moment, steadied his emotions, and spoke again: "No matter what, the Lan family is your ancestral home. The blood of the Lan clan flows in your veins. Do you really intend to destroy the Lan family?"

"The blood of the Lan family is so filthy; what use is it other than to continue poisoning the world? Precisely because the blood of the Lan clan flows through my veins, I have all the more reason to cleanse this tumor. Uncle Jiang, you cannot stop me. Today, I am determined to kill Lantutang. If I'm not mistaken, apart from you, a Return to Void expert, there is no one else holding down the fort at the Stargazing and Moon-Bathing Tower, right? You alone cannot stop my Martial Uncle! Once we level the Stargazing and Moon-Bathing Tower, we will go find Lantianfang to settle the accounts." Lan Mo said with an indifferent expression.

"You, you... Lan Mo, my Lan clan has a heritage spanning tens of thousands of years. Do you really think just the two of you can destroy the Lan family?" Lantutang, terrified and furious, couldn't help but shout indignantly.

"Whether we can or not, we'll know once we try." As Lantutang's voice fell, Ji Mo's voice rang out. She had already guessed that Lan Mo might have a connection to the Lan family, but she hadn't expected her guess to be entirely correct—only, this relationship... Recalling her own background, a trace of bitterness swept through Ji Mo's heart. The so-called prestigious families often harbored the most unspeakable filth within.

Hearing Ji Mo's words, Lantutang sneered, clearly not taking her seriously. Although Ji Mo possessed heaven-defying combat power, the Lan family was a third-rank aristocratic family in the imperial capital. Aside from six Return to Void masters, they also had a Dao-Integration realm ancestor holding the fort, not to mention the family's ultimate divine weapon. He firmly believed that Ji Mo and Lan Mo alone could never destroy the Lan family.

While Lantutang remained skeptical, Uncle Jiang's expression shifted dramatically. He hadn't given much thought to Ji Mo's origins before, but now, upon hearing her words, his heart skipped a beat involuntarily. Judging solely by the battle prowess Ji Mo had displayed, she alone might not possess the sheer power to annihilate the Lan clan, but such a monstrous talent could not possibly have emerged without a formidable sect behind her.

If one factored in her sect—at this thought, Uncle Jiang couldn't help but shiver. What sect could possibly cultivate a monster like Ji Mo other than the lofty Jade Emperor Palace? The mere possibility that Ji Mo came from the Jade Emperor Palace left Uncle Jiang's heart ice-cold! No wonder she dared to openly curse the Crown Prince's Mansion; no wonder she killed Princess Chixia without a second thought!

With her background, let alone Princess Chixia, even if the current Crown Prince showed her disrespect, she could kill him just as easily, and what could Emperor Ji possibly do about it? Someone like Ji Mo would undoubtedly be a top-tier genius even within the Jade Emperor Palace. Although Emperor Ji was the ruler of the Lanfeng Empire and a supreme master at the peak of the Dao-Integration realm, he would never dare to provoke the top-tier geniuses of the Jade Emperor Palace without just cause.