Chapter 1959 — Kinship and Interests

The final conclusion was this: the technique worked only on members of the Sun family. No one else could ** it. And so the technique ceased to matter — there was nothing secret about it anymore. What everyone coveted now was the Sun family's own sons and daughters!

"It's nothing, I just want to study it a little," Wei Zhao said.

"All right, then wait a moment. I'll send it to you by text message." With that, Sun Jingyan took out her phone, found a file, and sent it straight to Wei Zhao.

Wei Zhao's phone immediately chimed with an email notification. He was speechless — to his mind, these inner-energy techniques were supposed to be written on bamboo slips or parchment scrolls, or at the very least bound in thread-stitched volumes. Trust Sun Jingyan to have hers as an e-book!

Still, it was a product of the times, and on reflection Wei Zhao decided that he was the one who had fallen behind.

At first, Wei Zhao had wanted to help Sun Jingyan raise her strength a notch or two. But then he wondered: if his true qi entered Sun Jingyan's body, might it alter hers? If her true qi were somehow transformed into the same kind as his own, Wei Zhao would be in real trouble.

"Much obliged!" Wei Zhao saved the technique's mnemonic verses on his phone and said sincerely, "By the way, Jingyi, what are your plans from here on?"

Wei Zhao knew that Sun Jingyan had already sold her company and was presently at loose ends.

"I'm not really sure. I don't want to go back to the Sun family, and I don't want to strike out alone and start another business from scratch..." Here Sun Jingyan gave a self-mocking smile. "You've seen it yourself — a girl with no backing, with no powerful man to look out for her, always gets bullied in business. Like that last time..."

"Ha, isn't Wu Chengtian helping you now? Who'd dare bully you? That kid would flatten them with one palm strike," Wei Zhao said with a laugh.

"The main thing is, running a company all by myself is exhausting, and besides, I don't have anything left to prove now," Sun Jingyan said. "In the past, I started a business to show the Sun family — to make Grandfather and the others feel that I wasn't just a sacrificial pawn in the family, that I could stand on my own. But now I've realized that line of thinking was a mistake. No matter what, working alone, I can never build anything truly big. All these years, and it's still just a small company, a little operation playing at the big leagues."

Wei Zhao knew of Sun Jingyan's pitiable origins, so he nodded rather silently. "But you can't just... stay like this forever, can you?"

"I don't know either. But at this Grand Gathering of the Great Families, I did come to understand one thing," Sun Jingyan said. "That the strong are revered. In the eyes of the heads of the great families and the hidden families, only the strength of the ** is what counts for everything... To think that I once foolishly wanted to prove my worth through business..."

"That much is true. The very foundation that a great family or a hidden family passes down is the strength of its ** and how many of them there are," Wei Zhao said. "What, are you thinking of ** too?"

"Haven't I been ** all along?" Sun Jingyan said with a bitter smile. "Think back to Grandfather's attitude at the Grand Gathering. Before, he wanted me to marry Wu Chengtian; but when he saw how formidable you were, how ruthlessly you wiped out the Yu family, he had me turn around and curry favor with you instead... Then, when word came that you'd offended the hidden families and they'd sent three Earth-rank experts after you, Grandfather froze my bank card and told me to keep my distance from you... When all is said and done, in their eyes, I'm still just a piece of merchandise... I once thought Grandfather was different toward me. But although he treats me well enough, when it comes to the family's interests, blood ties simply don't weigh as much as profit..."

How could Wei Zhao fail to understand what Sun Jingyan was saying? Families and those sects were much the same. He thought back to that time when the Ice-Sugar Girl discovered Feng Xiaoxiao's constitution and was so excited — to secure Feng Xiaoxiao and make her the heir of the Ice Palace, she had not hesitated to humble herself and bargain with someone as insignificant as him, a mere Mystic-rank expert...

"Sometimes there's no help for it. Your grandfather may be an old fox, but his starting point is the good of the whole family," Wei Zhao said. "In the minds of old men like that, the family's interests come before everything. So you can't really say he's wrong. Some things simply can't be divided into right and wrong."

"Exactly. So to escape that fate, I have to become strong!" Sun Jingyan said. "I want to work hard at **. Once my Sun family technique reaches the second level, I'll be a core figure in the Sun family — even Grandfather won't be able to make me do things I don't want to do. And if I reach the fifth level, I'll be able to transfer true qi to any ** at all, with no restrictions whatsoever. Then my standing would be something else entirely... Of course, for the Sun family, the fifth level is nothing but a dream. No one has reached it yet."

"Your ** technique is far too peculiar, and what you're raising isn't the Heaven-Earth-Mystic-Yellow rank of strength, so I'd like to help you but I'm powerless to do so," Wei Zhao said. "I can't just swiftly raise your strength the way I did for Wu Chengtian and the others."

"I know." Sun Jingyan nodded. "The Sun family technique can only be raised slowly by absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. There's no other way."

Wei Zhao nodded. The energy within his body was of the purest, most refined kind, but it was not plain spiritual energy of heaven and earth — it was true qi converted from that spiritual energy through the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. Though this true qi had the same effect as spiritual energy and could be converted into other true qi for others to use, the prerequisite was the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art as the converting technique!

Therefore, only the universal true qi, aided by the technique, was equivalent to the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and could be given to others — unlike ordinary spiritual energy, which ** could absorb and refine directly.

The two were wondrously alike in function, yet fundamentally different. If Sun Jingyan absorbed his true qi, she would likely end up changed into the same kind as himself; but she did not know the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art, so she naturally could not convert true qi. As a result, from then on Sun Jingyan's true qi could only be used by herself.

Put plainly, Sun Jingyan herself now seemed to be something like an energy-storage device: her body could absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, and that spiritual energy could then be absorbed and refined by other **. Of course, this was only Wei Zhao's conjecture — he would have to study the specifics before he knew for certain.

For the fastest updates, read with no pop-ups at.