"She refused to come with you at all costs?"
The enchanting voice was laced with a sliver of interest and surprise, and the rustling of silk could be faintly heard from within the curtained bed.
Shen Haoren gulped at the enticing experience, his mind lapsing into a heavily passionate and emotional experience he had recently enjoyed with his adorable and absolutely beautiful wife, his eyes glazing over with a giddy smile.
"Haoren?" the voice reminded with a gentle but cold chill.
"Ah? Oh, oh yes, where was I," the middle-aged man shivered with fear at the incoming sign of danger.
"That young girl – she refused to come along even after I mentioned the Shen Family's name, or when I applied social pressure. From her tone, she seemed extremely adamant against the idea of interacting with others, regardless of their status beyond what was necessary."
Shen Haoren's lascivious smile had disappeared, replaced by a cold and calculating gleam discernable only in the finest of businessmen.
The middle-aged man patted his round belly for a few moments, his eyebrows furrowed in deep thought.
"Second Elder Sister," he abruptly parted his lips to blurt.
"Could that… lass you spoke of not be from Bone Spirit Town? Her mannerisms were unlike that of the ordinary residents I observed or even that of the domestic clans. Though her aura was dubious at best, I can only assume that she is from a higher developed city or district not unlike our own –"
"Have you been besotted with fear?"
The voice of the elusive Second Senior Sister caused Shen Haoren's throat to anxiously contract and force down his desire to eagerly nod his head and wash himself clean of the matter.
The middle-aged man directed a furtive peak towards the maidservants guarding the door, only to be disappointed by a pair of stone-clad countenances.
They probably – no, they definitely won't let him escape, ah.
"I don't think I fear her," Shen Haoren tread on the thin ice with his tiptoes.
"However, I do think that it would be prudent for our Shen Family to act in securing the seven-tailed fox through negotiation and not pressure. Furthermore, we should lay low for a while, for the young lass to detach herself from the incitement of the Fang Clan."
"…En."
There was a brief pause before a throaty sound of approval rang from within the bedchamber.
Hearing the implicit praise, Shen Haoren's fat – suffused cheeks wobbled with delight, prompting him to perform his exaggerated bow of extending his left hand, the palm facing the sky in obeisance.
The middle-aged man's heart soared towards the ninth heaven in joy, but he dared not reveal his excitement towards his strict elder sister.
Hence, he remained still in his kneeling position, clearly aware that the Shen Manor's Elder was intending on speaking further.
"…Haoren, do you know the importance of a seven-tailed fox?"
The middle-aged man blinked in confusion, his lips parting and flapping shut in his hesitation.
The Second Elder Sister of the Shen Manor spared him from prolonged suffering, the enchanting voice emerging from within the dense curtains once again.
"Many people would exclaim that a seven-tailed fox would mature into a Nascent Soul Realm spirit beast, which is a force many, many times stronger than an individual practitioner of the same realm of cultivation," the woman giggled in laughter.
"However, not many know of a specific secret, even after the passing of many hundreds of years."
"Secret?" Shen Haoren mouthed in surprise, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"Second Elder Sister, you mean to say… since our Shen Family is aware…"
"Yes, the secret does involve our Shen Family; then again, it involves many other powerful clans and entities we cannot provoke. That secret, lays within the seven-tailed fox's blood."
Blood?
Shen Haoren frowned in contemplation, his fingers drumming against his thigh as his mind spun to its limits.
The middle-aged man lapsed into an unprecedented solemn mood, all frivolous thoughts regarding his wife banished to the depths of his mind.
Unlike human practitioners who could only absorb the atmospheric spiritual qi into their bodies one thin layer at a time, spirit beasts were born with a physique fully forged from spiritual essence as the fundamental compound.
Thus, when comparing the combat potential between a spirit beast and a human practitioner of the same realm, it was an almost certainty that the spirit beast was the victor.
Their bodies had received a complete baptism since birth, and was incomparable to a house of cards stacked atop another numerous times.
Additionally…
"The greater potential of the spirit beast, the greater the medicinal efficacy and the chance for a unique manifestation…"
Shen Haoren whispered in shock, his arms falling limp to his sides.
"Exactly," the enchanting voice affirmed his conjectures, widening the rift within the middle-aged man's mind.
"The blood of a seven-tailed fox can trigger a heavenly bombardment unlike any other – but a tribulation that does not pose any lethal threat regardless of the weakness of a practitioner. Similarly, the seven-tailed foxes are the direct recipient of the Nine Yellow Reincarnations, the most powerful cultivator known in history."
"…and by obtaining the blood of a seven-tailed fox, our Shen Family can attain a significant portion of the Nine Yellow Reincarnations' legacy," Shen Haoren gasped at the magnitude of a single creature's importance, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets.
The cultivation of mortal practitioners only extended towards the Nascent Soul Realm; that was as recorded in the historical archives within each of the three empires, as well as the Three Great Sects. Numerous cultivators at the peak of the Nascent Soul Realm had attempted to traverse the bridge into unlimited heights, but ultimately perished at their first attempt.
They couldn't even ascertain that a bridge existed, for the Shattered Star Continent's knowledge regarding the mysteries of cultivation were limited to the minimum.
Even after the decay of numerous millennia of research, nobody had managed to extend beyond the boundaries of the Nascent Soul Realm.
Not one single practitioner except for a sole outcast that was the Nine Yellow Reincarnations.
The rogue cultivator had struck the accumulated legends of cultivation askew by transcending beyond the Nascent Soul Realm with a single strike, breaching into an unprecedented and unknown realm, granting him divine strength that could shatter even the sun that glared at the earth each day.
History described him as the emperor of cultivation – a being that had not only glimpsed, but seized the secrets of the heavens and the earth.
It was a pity that the only clue regarding his legacy was the blood of a seven-tailed fox.
Such a creature was practically extinct and impossibly rare to encounter within five centuries of indignant searching and scouring of the earth, thus any sighting of such a creature was sufficient to cause even the Three Great Sects to burst into an uproar.
Each new generation of cultivators were instructed to search for a seven-tailed fox – triggering numerous bloody conquests that rocked across the continent.
They were bound to be completely insane to massacre innocents in the millions for a single drop of animal blood, but to the cultivators of the Shattered Star Continent, the single drop of blood represented the opening of a new era of cultivation.
The Nascent Soul Realm only provided a thousand years of life at the most; many powerful entities were desperately seeking for alternate means of obtaining longevity.
"Do you understand?" the Second Elder Sister gently admonished.
"Our Shen Family relies on this matter to succeed – but we cannot make any new enemies or alert our former foes of our intentions. Thus, you must secure the seven-tailed fox from that little lass without shedding a single drop of blood, do you understand?"
"Even abuse our authority to remove that Fang Clan from the Du Zhou Province, if you must!"
Shen Haoren staggered out of the luxuriously decorated room with a heavy heart, his countenance gloomy to the eighteenth level of hell.
Ignoring the two maids' belated gestures of farewell, the middle-aged man revealed a heavy frown as he glanced towards the outer wall of the Shen Manor, his mind soaring with solemn thoughts.
The young lass, albeit her mannerisms did not reflect any indication of her possessing the spirit beast desperately needed by the Shen Family, his Second Elder Sister's predictions were never wrong, even after so many decades. Thus…
Thus…
"Remove the Fang Clan from this town. Regardless of what it is, I need to lure that lass into the Shen Manor – more specifically, Second Elder Sister's room."
The middle-aged man glared at the stone bricks of the outer wall of the mansion for a little longer, before gesturing for a nearby servant to carry out his next instructions.