Chapter 284 - 153: Cherishing Words Like Gold

Jiang Ran didn’t let Tang Huayi get any proper rest that night.

He asked her many things.

Tang Huayi answered some of his questions directly.

For example, she explained her reasoning for using the Feiyun Stronghold incident to get close to him.

This was because Feiyun Stronghold, under pressure from the Celestial Palace, was certain to make a move against Cangzhou Prefecture.

At that time, Jiang Ran would be tied down in Cangzhou Prefecture due to the Tang family’s affairs. Once they became entangled, the Cangzhou Heroic Assembly presented the perfect opportunity for ’Li Tianxin’ and Jiang Ran to meet.

Before that, ’Li Tianxin’ needed to play his role perfectly.

He had to establish a clear persona.

A somewhat cold, proud, and blunt wanderer of the martial world.

His goal was not to capture people, but to investigate the Blood Cauldron Scripture, one of the Eighteen Celestial Demon Records.

Once she made contact with Jiang Ran, she was also responsible for subtly changing his impression of the Demon Sect.

The hope was that he wouldn’t immediately call for their heads on sight.

She entered Feiyun Stronghold and was ’tortured’ for a day.

Naturally, that wasn’t real.

The people of Feiyun Stronghold, and even Luo Qingyi and the others, simply believed she had been tortured for a day.

The truth was just as Jiang Ran had suspected: relying on the Demon Sect’s talent for bewitchment, she had simply spent the day in that cell watching a farce.

Only at the very end did she injure herself, bruising her own face before making her escape.

This was also why, when Jiang Ran saw her afterward, her clothes were intact without the slightest trace of blood, yet her face was bruised and swollen.

The original plan was for her to escape, infiltrate the Cangzhou Heroic Assembly, and expose Li Feiyun of Feiyun Stronghold for cultivating a Demon Skill, thereby making a name for ’himself’.

But as it turned out, she ran into Jiang Ran.

That was also the first time she used the Great Transformation Divine Saber.

At the time, she was truly just a beginner with that saber technique.

That was why, the next few times Jiang Ran saw her fight, he discovered her saber skills were improving by leaps and bounds.

It was because... she was just starting out.

Combined with her supreme talent, her progress was naturally meteoric.

Not only that, but they also gave the ’Li Tianxin’ persona a ’can’t talk about it’ backstory, making people feel he had a complex relationship with the Demon Sect. This way, his deep understanding of them wouldn’t seem baseless.

The point of this was to help Jiang Ran better understand the Demon Sect and, in turn, improve his impression of them.

They had certainly gone to great pains.

After the events in Cangzhou Prefecture concluded, Tang Huayi left ahead of him, but she didn’t actually go far.

She kept a constant watch on Jiang Ran.

As a member of the Demon Sect, she naturally possessed some extraordinary abilities, so it was quite difficult for the Jiang Ran of that time to detect her.

This led to the ’coincidence’ of seeing ’Li Tianxin’ again at the late-night gathering in Heterodox Manor.

From that point on, ’Li Tianxin’ never truly left Jiang Ran’s side.

This was because after Jiang Ran’s battle with the Sun and Moon Lords, Tang Huayi found him to be increasingly unfathomable.

She feared that continuing her past antics would only backfire.

Afterward, Jiang Ran asked her for details about the Heavenly Mechanism Star Shifting Great Transformation Skill.

She answered him truthfully.

This martial art was one of the divine skills the Grand Master had mentioned, one that could change a person’s appearance.

Moreover, it also originated from the Eighteen Celestial Demon Records.

It was one of the Demon Sect’s ultimate skills.

While it couldn’t create something from nothing, like completely transforming a woman into a man,

it could alter one’s body shape and appearance with ease.

If Jiang Ran hadn’t cultivated the Fortune’s Righteous Heart Scripture, then combined with Tang Huayi’s own methods, her disguise truly could have deceived gods and demons; no one would have been able to see through to her true identity.

She had hidden herself very well before all this.

Unfortunately, the trip to the Ghost King Palace finally pierced her emotional armor.

So much so that after the Ghost Chef startled her, she unleashed her own signature arts.

She made the Ghost Chef devour himself and then caused the people in Pinxin Restaurant to slaughter one another.

Later, as she sat in the restaurant regretting her loss of composure, Prince Yu appeared and started causing trouble. This led to the scene of Prince Yu running to the Soul Hook Gambling House and snapping his own neck.

In truth, she had already adopted a somewhat reckless, devil-may-care attitude by then.

After all, Jiang Ran had already grown suspicious of her, and her actions in the Ghost King Palace were a dead giveaway.

For this same reason, when Jiang Ran exposed her identity today, she didn’t bother to keep up the pretense.

As for minor things, like what she and Zhang Zhihua had actually said at Red Maple Manor, Jiang Ran didn’t press for details.

It did, however, explain why ’Li Tianxin’ had disliked Zhang Zhihua so much.

After all, how could a woman—and a perfectly normal one at that—accept another woman’s romantic advances?

’Of course... whether Tang Huayi could actually be considered normal is another question entirely.’

Besides these questions, Jiang Ran also asked many questions about Tang Shiqing.

But other than confirming that Tang Shiqing was very likely also in Jinyang Prefecture, Tang Huayi refused to say another word.

She would either change the subject or simply spread her hands, looking as if she would let Jiang Ran do whatever he wanted.

Faced with such roguish tactics, Jiang Ran truly didn’t know how to handle her.

Though he hadn’t had much contact with the Demon Sect during his time in the martial world, he could tell from every angle that the old drunkard’s relationship with them was anything but ordinary.

Tang Huayi had said that his betrothal to Tang Shiqing was meant to save his life.

And Jiang Ran found that he couldn’t refute it.

There was, in fact, a very real possibility that she was telling the truth.

’Otherwise, why would the old drunkard, knowing full well he didn’t have long to live, have gone to all this trouble?’