I wasn't very familiar with the Yan family of Jiang Nan City, just that Mu Rong Shu's mother was born in the Yan family before marrying her father and moving to live with him in Cheng Shi City, along with the Mu Rong family.
As assassins, the Mu Rong family faced their fair share of dangers, and thus poor Mu Rong Shu lost her parents at an early age. Victims of retaliation from a powerful family who they had killed members of, they were ambushed when out on a mission and killed by masters.
"Funnily enough, it was the imperial family who killed them."
"You want revenge?" I asked. Mu Rong Shu smiled and shook her head.
"What's the point? My parents are allowed to kill others, but people can't kill them back? Even if I do take revenge, it's not like my parents will return to life anyway." Mu Rong Shu. "You know how I'm sick and tired of all the killing. I don't want to be an assassin. My parents knew what they were getting in. their hands weren't free of other people's blood. They knew the consequences and they still did it. I'm not self-centered enough to curse other people for doing the same thing that my parents did."
"…I understand." I nodded with a sigh. She had a point. The cycle of hatred and deaths would only be broken if someone was mature enough to understand that killing and revenge were meaningless. It was one thing if the imperial family was still threatening the Mu Rong family and continuing to send people to assassinate Mu Rong Shu – if she had to fight for her survival, she would have no choice but to kill whoever attacked her. That was the cold reality of it.
But this wasn't a kill or be killed situation. The Mu Rong family and the imperial family had settled their affairs and agreed to a truce. Or at least to make peace. Mu Rong Shu wasn't selfish enough to disrupt the current peace by carrying out her own vendetta. As for the imperial family, as long as she didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother her.
Unfortunately, that might change when they find out we were the ones who killed Wang Ni Tian and Wang Ling Er. But I guess we would deal with it when it came. Hopefully we could keep that under wraps, but I was under no illusion that the truth would stay hidden forever. With the resources of the imperial family, they would surely uncover the truth behind the deaths of their prodigies.
Then perhaps Mu Rong Shu could get revenge for her parents. It was ironic, really. I guess this fight was a long time coming…something that was destined to happen. Fate had a strange way of playing out events.
"Well…grandfather took care of me after that. So I wasn't lonely." Mu Rong Shu smiled and lowered her head. "I grew up in the Mu Rong family, but I did occasionally go back to my mother's family, to visit the relatives there. It seems that my maternal grandfather also liked me. He saw me as the pride of the Yan family."
"Oh, that's really cool!"
"So…yeah, I can't say no. He doted on me a little, during the few times I went back. I know this might not be a good time, but…I want to return to Jiang Nan for a bit."
"Sure! You should go!" I nodded. "I don't think the imperial family will make a move anytime soon. And we've eliminated the two biggest threats in the Spirit War. I can't find Liang Cai Gui and Yue Fei – seems like they have targets of their own – so I doubt we'll be doing anything in the Spirit War soon. The Huang siblings have suggested that we keep a low profile for a while. Nobody other than us knows what really happened to Wang Ni Tian and Wang Ling Er, so they probably won't dare to move. Not until they find out those two are dead."
As long as people were unaware of the deaths of the most powerful summoner in the Spirit War, they would move cautiously, refusing to take reckless actions and attack others. They were afraid that the counterattack would be too much for them to bear, that if they fought others and exhausted themselves, they would be vulnerable to ambushes from other people…such as Wang Ni Tian and the Qin Emperor.
Honestly, it wasn't as if the Qin Emperor was invincible. Sure, he was extremely strong and could practically take on a whole army of his own…but heroic spirits…ahem, I mean summoned spirits by their very nature defied common sense. Even if the Qin Emperor could summon an army of terracotta soldiers to fight against large numbers, there were spirits who could launch anti-army attacks. That didn't mean these spirits were invincible either, of course. By skillful maneuvering, even these spirits could be defeated by armies, for anti-army techniques obviously consumed a lot of qi. They weren't attacks that could be spammed. Sometimes it worked like a rock-paper-scissors type of system, where certain spirits' abilities countered others or specific spirits had type or strategic advantage over others.
There was no such thing as invincibility.
Mu Rong Shu knew that as well as I did, and she smiled, nodding in understanding.
"Yes…but…are you sure you don't want to come?"
"Huh? Do you really want me to come?"
I couldn't say that I had a very good impression of the Yan family. Over the last three years that I had been married to Mu Rong Shu, I had minimal contact with the Yan family, who treated me worse than the Mu Rong family. Why? I had no idea. Apparently because every son-in-law had to be treated by trash by every character in the story so that they would have an excuse to slap their faces and take revenge for the humiliation later.
Simply put, the Yan family looked down on me and thought I was trash too. Even though they had never met me before, they didn't know who I was, and they weren't familiar with me, they believed all the rumors spread about me in Cheng Shi City and regarded me as trash. Never mind I had a proper job. But hey, that was how son-in-law stories worked, right?
"Of course. You're my husband. Do you really expect me to go by myself?"
"I'll be more than happy to accompany you. You know that. But I'm just worried…you know how your mother's side of the family don't like me…"
"Fuck them," Mu Rong Shu said without any hesitation. "You're my husband. If they don't like it, they can fuck right off."
I really love my wife.
"All right then, I'll drive you there." No doubt they would make fun of my precious Toyota, thinking I was trash because I didn't own an Audi or BMW or some stupid branded car (I still don't understand why they were so prejudiced against Toyotas. Was it because they were Japanese cars and not European?).
Then Mu Rong Shu's smartphone rang. She frowned and answered it, checking the screen and raising an eyebrow.
"Yan Wan?"
"Your cousin?" I immediately recognized the name. Yan Wan was one of Mu Rong Shu's maternal cousins, a girl who was closest to her in age, perhaps younger by a couple of years. If I recalled correctly, she just graduated from university recently, but was still unemployed.
"Yeah. I wonder what she wants." Mu Rong Shu shrugged and swiped her screen before bringing it to her ear. "Xiao Wan? What's up?"
"Sister Shu!" I could hear Yan Wan's voice from the speaker. Whether it was because the volume was loud or because I had preternatural hearing abilities thanks to being a cultivator, I wasn't sure. "It's been a while!"
"Yes, it is. What's up?"
"Sister Shu, you're coming to Jiang Nan for the Dragon Boat Festival, right?"
"That's right. I can't wait to see all of you. I should be there next week."
"Great! I'll be happy to see you too!" Yan Wan gushed. "Will cousin-in-law be coming as well?"
"Hmm?" Mu Rong Shu glanced at me. I shrugged and nodded. We literally just had this conversation earlier. But for some reason Mu Rong Shu was playing coy. "Well…"
"Come on!" Yan Wan pleaded. "Please make sure you bring cousin-in-law with you! The family gathering won't be the same without him! He's already a part of the family, you can't leave him out!"
"Well, of course." Mu Rong Shu was taken aback. She glanced at me, frowning in suspicion. I was also narrowing my eyes skeptically. Yan Wan was among the members of the Yan family who looked down on me. During the few times I visited Jiang Nan, she would look for some sort of opportunity to make snide remarks. Though I got the feeling that she didn't do it because she actually hated me – my intuition told me that she was using me to embarrass her more illustrious cousin, who was the Yan old man's favorite grandchild. Nonetheless, she sighed and played along. "If my husband doesn't drive me to Jiang Nan, how else am I going there?"
"So he's coming? Great!"
"Why are you so…um, concerned about him?" Mu Rong Shu asked.
"I…I am?" Yan Wan coughed. "Of course I would be. I don't want cousin-in-law to be left out. He's part of the family, after all!"
Yeah, but it didn't seem that way after what happened last year, where the cousins all ganged up to humiliate me in front of everybody in Jiang Nan City. Maybe that was why she was worried I wouldn't show up again, not after what they all did last time. It involved them trying to drench me with water when I walked into the restaurant where they had their family dinner during last year's Dragon Boat Festival, and also made fun of me when they tried to get me to cook rice dumplings and I wasn't able to do very well. My cooking skills were basic – I could cook most stuff, including soups, porridge and other simple meals – but I wasn't some five-star chef like in those Mary Sue CEO or son-in-law stories where the protagonists could do everything.
That made them laugh at me even more. "You can't even cook or do housework properly, what kind of live-in son-in-law are you? You're so useless! Why did cousin Shu marry a freeloader like you?"
Say what? Live-in? Useless? Freeloader? I had a job. I paid the bills. Sure, I didn't have to pay rent or buy a house, but that didn't mean I was freeloading. How did they even come to that conclusion?
"All right, I'll see you next week then." Mu Rong Shu hung up. I realized I had been spacing out when recalling the events of the past, and that my wife had continued to listen to her cousin over the smartphone. She then turned to regard me quizzically. "That was strange. Why does Yan Wan want you to show up at the family gathering?"
"Who knows?" I shrugged. "What else did she say?"
"Nothing. Oh, she wants to introduce us to her new boyfriend. She got all excited talking about him. Apparently he runs his own business and makes quite a bit of money."
"Ah." Suddenly I understood. I recalled my intuition telling me about how Yan Wan appeared to be subtly targeting Mu Rong Shu rather than me, merely making use of me to insult my wife. No doubt she wanted to compare significant others. She was going to show off her new boyfriend and compare him to me, trying to show off how she had the better significant other while her cousin was stuck with trash like me.
What the hell…some people had nothing better to do with their time, it seemed.
Mu Rong Shu appeared to realize it too, an understanding passing between us husband and wife. She shook her head and sighed heavily.
"I'm sorry, dear."
"It's not your fault, honey." I reached out and comforted her. Then I grinned. "This time, I'm going to take my revenge for what they did last year and turn the tables on them."