"Heaven is smiling on our Yu family! This is truly wonderful! At such a young age you are already a mid-stage Mystic rank expert — among the hidden families that would make you a genius, the sort they single out for grooming!" Yu Shuixing exclaimed.

"Heh, I'm nothing special," Xie Yufeng said proudly.

"Then let me put it this way: I'll get in touch with the hidden Yu family at once. A promising young expert like you, and they ought to grant us some benefit in return. If they give you a spirit elixir, or even half of one, advancing to Earth rank and entering the hidden families would be no difficulty at all! And then this branch of ours, the Yu family, would know true glory!" Yu Shuixing said excitedly. "An Earth rank expert as young as you would surely be a prime prospect for Heaven rank — wahaha! Perhaps even we, the secular Yu family, might really produce a Heaven rank expert and step into the very core of the martial world..."

"Father, rest assured. I have more or less worked out the knack of my advancement. I mean to test it again before long, and if it succeeds, my future breakthroughs should come smoothly!" Xie Yufeng felt that his breakthrough this time had not been mere chance — there was a pattern to it.

These past days he had done nothing but suppress and suppress again, and then, after beating Old Man Zhu black and blue, he had felt an indescribable rush, as though something long pent up had burst out at last. It was just like the suppression that came before a breakthrough — accumulate to a certain point, and the rank-up releases itself.

So Xie Yufeng wondered: could this be the secret of his advancement? The whole process was abuse, suppression — fury, eruption — abuse and suppression again — and then a breakthrough in one stroke!

He felt it was a law, and that so long as he mastered it, he could advance at tremendous speed.

"Oh? Truly? Then that is simply splendid — son, you really are a genius!" Hearing Yufeng's words, Yu Shuixing was so excited he hardly knew what to do with himself. His own son, such a genius, actually grasping the law of advancement in a flash of insight — a genius through and through!

"Haha, but of course!" Xie Yufeng said smugly. "All right, enough talk for now. I'm off to work out how to chase down Qiu Lingshan — if I can bed her soon, my strength will climb another notch!"

"Mm, then you had better put your back into it!" Yu Shuixing chimed in. Now that he knew his son had advanced, he was too delighted to care; naturally he no longer found his son's ideas sordid or improper.

In the great families, everything bows to strength. If one is strong, then no matter what sort of person one may be, everyone will respectfully call one an expert. That is the reality.

...

These past few days Gou Huli had turned arrogant again, still driving her Yanjing-plated Ferrari and lording it through the neighborhood. Even the property management's security guards were helpless against her. The whole compound grumbled, yet there was nothing to be done.

The Xiao family was at its zenith now, and the great families were not bound by the rules of the secular world. So long as things did not go too far, the local police were hardly inclined to interfere — and besides, Gou Huli had not stirred up any real trouble.

Nothing more than parking at random and blocking the road, bumping someone's car and tossing down a wad of cash with a swagger. The complaints were loud, but nothing ever crossed the line.

Today, Gou Huli had outdone herself: she had bought a lion and brought it home, calling it, in all seriousness, a lion dog. She led it up and down the road as though parading her power — she, Gou Huli, was the most exalted and most formidable person in this villa district!

As a result, incidents began one after another in the compound. Today one family's dog was eaten; tomorrow another family's cat; the day after that, even the birds people kept were eaten.

Any pet made of meat did not escape. And the culprit behind it all was Gou Huli's lion. The little beast was kept on an iron chain — without Gou Huli's nod and consent, how could it have run out to eat this and that?

So a good many residents were none too pleased. Though everyone here was wealthy and not short of money, when a pet was eaten one had to have an explanation — and many of those cats and dogs had been kept for years, beloved companions all.

And so these people went as a group to the property management office to report the situation, wanting the guards to go and confront Gou Huli and demand that she hand over the lion.

The guards were in a bind. The Xiao family was at its zenith, and many a big shot came straight to the Xiao household; when they registered at the guard booth, the guards naturally knew of it. So to send them to confront the Xiao family — that they did not quite dare to do.

But the residents made such a fuss that the property management had no choice but to have the security captain accompany the wronged residents to negotiate with Gou Huli.

At that moment Gou Huli was sitting with her legs crossed, teasing her little lion at home. She was, of course, afraid of the lion too; she was no cultivator and could not be fearless of lions the way cultivators were. It was only that she had sprayed a certain compound on herself, so that the lion would not bite her.

And Gou Huli simply loved to put on airs of being formidable, which was why she had gotten a lion — to display how eminent she was.

Hearing the doorbell, Gou Huli went to open the door with a great show of importance. At the sight of the security captain and the crowd of residents at the gate, she knew at once why they had come, and her brow furrowed.

"What are you doing here? Is something the matter?" As Gou Huli finished speaking, she flicked her wrist, and the lion came running, opening its bloody maw at the security captain: "Roar —"

"Gah?" The security captain jumped, instinctively stepping back and wiping the sweat from his brow. He was terrified of that big lion, and his face turned ugly at once. "Er, Ms. Gou... do you think you could have it back off a bit..."

"Damn! Aren't you the security captain? Scared of a dog? With a useless wretch like you, who exactly are you protecting? Do you still want next year's management fee?" Gou Huli was overbearing from her very first word.

"Well... but Ms. Gou, that is a lion, not a dog..." the security captain said cautiously, his face full of distress.

"Who says it is not a dog? This is obviously a dog — a lion dog. Are you blind?" Gou Huli rolled her eyes.

"This..." The security captain gave a bitter smile. "Ms. Gou, this lion... dog of yours has caused quite a stir in the compound. Many families' pets have been eaten... Someone saw that it was your lion... dog that ate them. See, we have all come, wanting to get to the bottom of it..."

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