Half a month passed...
Every day, Li Dai and Little Milk Dog set traps everywhere and hunted. They had meat to eat every single day, and life was wonderfully comfortable.
The only annoyance was that Wangcai, her beloved pet, was eating more and more! The little guy who was initially satisfied with a tiny piece of rabbit leg now—well, let's not even talk about it! Alas!
She had better continue making traps. Hopefully, she could catch a few more wild pheasants today; Beggar's Chicken was Wangcai's absolute favorite! But whether it was due to hunting in the same area for half a month straight or something else, the wild pheasants and rabbits had become much smarter now, making them increasingly difficult to catch. Therefore, she needed to bury her traps deeper and make them more concealed to get a better harvest.
Aside from hunting, Li Dai had not been wasting her free time lately.
Every day from morning till night, she exercised diligently—running, practicing hand strength, and doing Tai Chi... never once slacking off. Hmph, this body was far too weak, and she urgently needed to improve it. As for the package left behind by Xue Lihua, aside from two sets of clothes, a dozen taels of silver, and a Black Iron Fragment, there was nothing else.
The Black Iron Fragment was not large and was strung on a piece of cord. It was likely something important, but the immensely complex patterns on it were completely beyond her comprehension.
Looking at it for too long made her head spin, yet she had a gut feeling that this Black Iron Fragment was no ordinary object! Li Dai hung it around her neck and tucked it inside her clothes. Regardless of its use, she didn't care. Since it was left behind by Xue Lihua, she would just keep it as a memento. After all, Xue Lihua was this body's mother, and since she had now become the master of this body, she ought to take over the original owner's parents and responsibilities.
There was no sense in standing aloof from it! Besides, she had already accepted Xue Lihua. Recalling the resolute way Xue Lihua had pushed her away at the end, exposing herself to danger, a stifled ache gripped her chest. Once she had the ability, she would definitely return to the Li Estate to settle every single debt owed to Xue Lihua and the original owner.
Yet Li Dai could never have imagined that before she even went to collect her debts, the Li Estate was already in complete chaos.
In the midair above the Li Estate, a young man clad in a ginger-yellow robe stared down like a cold blade at the kneeling figures below him.
He continuously radiated pressure! Those with weak cultivation could not withstand this immense pressure and directly vomited blood, passing out cold.
Li Ce looked up at that lofty, high-and-mighty figure, his heart filled with envy and resentment.
If only he possessed such cultivation, how could he have allowed the Li Family's foundation to be destroyed in a single day, and countless disciples of his clan to suffer casualties?
How could he be so subjugated by others?
When all was said and done, it came down to strength! His strength was simply too weak!
Now that the family had encountered a sudden catastrophe, the clan's highest-cultivation Golden Core ancestor was in closed-door seclusion, and the remaining elders were only at the Foundation Establishment stage, even inferior to him.
How could they possibly resist a man even stronger than their ancestor?
Although Li Ce had knelt, the unyielding spirit in his bones made him raise his head, his gaze stubborn:
"Senior indiscriminately destroys our Li Family residence and injures our Li Family disciples—what is your intent? Could it be that having high cultivation allows one to act arbitrarily, without bottom lines, doing whatever one pleases?"
"Ha-ha..." The man looked at Li Ce, listening to his righteous words, and burst into laughter.
That laughter was eerie and sinister, making one's hair stand on end.
"A bottom line? You consider yourself worthy of uttering those two words?"
The man's words were like sharp blades piercing straight to the heart! Li Ce's face turned pale. Suppressing the unease in his heart, he asked, "This junior doesn't understand what Senior means! I, Li Ce, dare not claim to be a good man, but I do things with principles and a clear conscience before heaven and earth! Why, in Senior's eyes, have I become someone unworthy of speaking of a 'bottom line'? Am I nothing more than trash without a bottom line in Senior's eyes?"
Hearing his impassioned speech, the man wore a half-smile: "Trash? Hmph! That suits you quite well!"
Li Ce's face flushed red, whether from anger or something else. "You!"
He took a deep breath, ignoring the astonished gazes of his clansmen, and clenched his fists: "Where is this junior trash? Please enlighten me, Senior!"
By this point, he had already guessed that this person had come specifically for him.
The Li Family had been implicated by him and suffered an undeserved catastrophe! Having vented for a bit, the man now found himself possessing a shred of patience. He felt a profound sense of injustice on behalf of his daughter.
His daughter, Lihua, was so peerlessly magnificent, yet she had perished at the hands of a man like this. A breath of fury was trapped in his chest, making him want to slaughter everyone here.
Yet he could not do it! Because right now, he was a hollow shell, at the end of his tether.
His daughter had been missing for over a decade, and he had never been able to find her.
It wasn't until a short while ago, during the crucial moment of his breakthrough to Deity Transformation, that he suddenly felt a piercing pain in his heart and sensed his daughter's demise. In an instant, his mind fell into complete chaos, and he suffered a cultivation deviation, causing his breakthrough to Deity Transformation to fail right then and there.
He had lived for over a thousand years and made countless enemies.
Knowing that he was injured from his breakthrough failure, they continuously dispatched people to hunt him down.
He had narrowly escaped death several times!
Finally, he arrived at the place where his daughter had perished! But what use was it even if he found it?
That ancestor of the Li Family was at the critical juncture of breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage. If that person succeeded in advancing, his own full body of internal injuries and cultivation that had regressed to the Early Nascent Soul stage might not be a match for the Li Family ancestor.
Right now!
All he needed to do was eliminate the man who had ruined his daughter's entire life.
"Do you still need me to spell out whom you failed?"
Li Ce's heart skipped a beat. Xue Lihua's face suddenly flashed through his mind, but then he shook his head.
Lihua was merely an ordinary person. When he first met her, how destitute and down-and-out he had been—how could she possibly have such a powerful backer?
If she had one, why didn't she tell him?
If she had, he wouldn't have had to love her yet treat her with indifference.
Yet, no matter how he tried to deny it, the very next words out of the man's mouth plunged him completely into the abyss, chilling him to the bone.
He heard the man say:
"In that case! Go down to hell and keep her company! My daughter—Xue Lihua!"