"What she says isn't wrong, either. Third-rate to second-rate, second-rate charging at first-rate—the Lin family has changed so much, and it really is all thanks to her efforts."

"For a woman to get this far, it truly hasn't been easy!"

"No foundation, no backing—she lifted the Lin family to this point entirely on her own hard work and wits. Across all of Heavenly Commandery, you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people who could do what she's done."

The same discussions sprang up all over Heavenly Commandery.

The way the crowd looked at Lin Hongchou was no longer the mocking glee of people watching a joke—it had turned into recognition.

Moved by her, some even came over to her side, and began to hope she could bring Wei Zhao down.

Wei Zhao heard every word of it.

From first to last, he said not a single thing, letting Lin Hongchou play her part to the fullest.

When she finished, Lin Hongchou looked at Wei Zhao, her eyes making no effort to hide her triumph.

When you got right down to it, a so-called debate was not about who could refute whom—it was about who could sway more of the audience.

Whoever won more support would have the last laugh!

Surely this, too, had to be the standard by which the Heavenly Dao judged!

Lin Hongchou sneered inwardly: 'Wei Zhao, oh Wei Zhao! This is the price of underestimating your enemy! Everyone has already been won over by me and stands naturally on my side. From here on, no matter what you say, don't imagine you can win them back!'

"Are you finished?"

Wei Zhao finally spoke. "What does any of that have to do with the orthodoxy of Heavenly Commandery?"

Lin Hongchou was ready for this. "Of course it does! The orthodoxy of Heavenly Commandery has never been something high and lofty—every one of us in Heavenly Commandery, so long as we do our own work honestly and steadily, we are the orthodoxy of Heavenly Commandery!"

No one below responded.

After all, Wei Zhao's prestige lay right there before them.

However stirred the crowd might be by Lin Hongchou, at a moment like this none would step forward in public to cheer her on—at most they would quietly pass judgment in private.

"That much is true enough."

Wei Zhao did not refute it; then he turned the blade of his words. "But these deeds you just described—they don't seem to have much to do with those eight words, 'do our own work honestly and steadily,' do they?"

Lin Hongchou's reply was scornful. "Oh, so if you say they have nothing to do with it, then they have nothing to do with it? Lord Wei Zhao, surely you haven't failed to grasp the situation even now, thinking you can still settle everything with a single word?"

"Right now, everyone in Heavenly Commandery is the judge, and you are the one on trial."

"Lord Wei Zhao, you'd best know your place."

That remark left everyone dumbstruck.

This woman truly had the nerve to say it!

However stirred by her emotions and instinctively drawn to her side, the crowd was not about to lose the most basic judgment.

Provoking the Lord of Heavenly Commandery like that—how many heads do you have to spare?

"Know my place?"

Wei Zhao laughed at the words. He did not argue back; instead he nodded, and snapped his fingers.

Lin Hongchou blinked, momentarily at a loss as to what he was playing at.

But when she saw the group of people already waiting off to the side, her expression changed at once, and her eyes flickered.

The first to speak was a portly, heavyset middle-aged man. "I am Yu Rong, head of the Yu family—that is, the partner behind the first great deal the Lin family closed, the one the Lin matriarch just mentioned."

"In that deal, the Lin family actually held no advantage at all. Do you know why I decided to work with them?"

"Because of Lord Wei Zhao."

"At the time, I assumed your Lin family was on close terms with Lord Wei Zhao. The surname Lin carries only one weight in Heavenly Commandery—the weight of Lord Wei Zhao!"

Lin Hongchou refused to believe it. "You did business with my Lin family for Wei Zhao's sake?"

"What else?"

The middle-aged man spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "On technique—your family does have some new methods, but nothing top-tier. On cost and scale—there are more than ten families in Heavenly Commandery better than yours. Why do you think I picked you?"

Lin Hongchou: "..."

Before she could argue, a young wandering cultivator stepped forward.

Lin Hongchou's eyelid twitched.

This was a wandering cultivator she had personally recruited and made a priority to cultivate. Back then, there had been no small controversy within the Lin family over him—after all, he was taking up resources that would otherwise go to the family's own children.

But the results proved that Lin Hongchou's recruitment had been an inspired stroke.

The mere presence of this one wandering cultivator was enough to outweigh the sum of all the Lin family's younger generation. Whether in immediate fighting strength or future potential, the Lin family had leapt forward in quality!

It was precisely on the strength of this recruitment that Lin Hongchou had won the wholehearted submission of the Lin family's younger generation.

And now, at such a delicate juncture, the crowning achievement she was so proud of had stepped forward in public.

A sense of foreboding washed over Lin Hongchou.

Sure enough, his first words threw the whole hall into an uproar.

"The Lin family put out a talent recruitment plan at the time, and a group of us wandering cultivators chose to join. What we were after was never the Lin family itself—it was Lord Wei Zhao!"

"At the time we all believed the Lin family was connected to Lord Wei Zhao. Join the Lin family, and we'd catch Lord Wei Zhao's eye, and have a chance to enter the Heavenly Martial Hall."

"I asked about this outright at the time, and you did not deny it."

"No denial means tacit consent. That's why we all agreed to serve under the Lin family banner. And now it looks like what you were really running wasn't talent recruitment at all—it was talent fraud!"

Not just him—a whole crowd around him joined in the denunciation.

"Fraud?"

Lin Hongchou laughed in fury on the spot. "Then let me ask you: when did I ever explicitly say I had any connection to Wei Zhao? All of Heavenly Commandery is watching right now—don't you go spouting lies!"

The wandering cultivators said in unison, "You never said it outright, but you kept giving us false hints!"

All sides in Heavenly Commandery were abuzz.

In both strength and potential, this batch of wandering cultivators was acknowledged elite—not a few top-tier and first-rate families had already extended them offers.

A second-rate family like the Lin had, under normal circumstances, not the slightest appeal to them, yet it had scooped them all up in one go. If that wasn't borrowing Wei Zhao's tiger-skin banner, who would believe it?

Lin Hongchou's expression shifted again and again, and she felt a sinking in her heart.

And this was only the beginning.

Then came the third, the fourth, the fifth...

Lin Hongchou's face grew darker and darker.

Every one of the shining achievements from her half year in power was being picked apart and overturned, one item at a time.

Every account was exactly the same.

The reason they had chosen her and the Lin family was entirely because of their connection to Wei Zhao.

The crux of it was that each time, Lin Hongchou had deliberately led them on, yet never said it plainly, letting people draw their own conclusions—and whenever anyone pressed her outright, she never refused and never denied.

All of Heavenly Commandery was in an uproar.