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Tang Jun made it clear that he would grant Lei Jie one wish out of respect for the fact that they had the same mother, and for that person who had given him warmth when he was a little kid.

However, he had also made it very clear that this wish didn’t include showing mercy to Lei Jie in their battle later.

For Lei Jie, his arrogance prevented him to lowering his head before Tang Jun to apologize or even beg for mercy. If not, there wouldn’t even need to be a contest between the two of them and he would have been ruined right away. He wouldn’t have the chance to reach the nascent soul advanced stage, let alone the immortal soul stage.

The giant hole in his mindset and mentality could even cause his battle prowess and the power of his mantras to gradually decline.

Therefore, his battle with Tang Jun was necessary and bound to happen.

Lei Lie was crystal about this as well. Whether it was Tang Jun and the Celestial Sect of Wonders’ intentions or Lei Jie’s personal opinion, there was nothing he could do to stop this contest.

Still, he couldn’t bear to see watch the heir that he had nurtured since childhood step on a path of destruction just like that.

The battle had yet to begun, but he couldn’t favor Lei Jie just by looking at the calm and composed Tang Jun before his eyes.

Both of them would be in the nascent soul stage for the battle, just as Lei Jie had requested. However, even if Tang Jun repressed his mastery to the aurous core advanced stage, Lei Lie still believed Lei Jie’s chances of victory were smaller than his opponent.

This hurdle was one that Lei Jie had to cross at all costs. Lei Lie’s only hope was to increase Lei Jie’s chances as much as he could. If he could discover Tang Wenhua’s identity and his intentions, Lei Jie’s mind and emotions would probably become more stable and cool.

Under such circumstances, and even if he was defeated by Tang Jun, he would have a chance to rise again as long as he didn’t die.

However, Lei Jie could only win and he could no longer afford to lose. The moment he lost the battle, even if he was still alive after the duel, he would develop a conflicted mentality and he would suffer from a lack of confidence that could cause his entire personality to crumble and collapse.

There was no way Lei Jie could reject Tang Jun’s request for a duel. If he admitted his relative weakness and backed away or if he felt as if there was no way he could win, the result would be the same as losing the duel.

Lei Lie could only step forward himself and find a way for Lei Jie to get off the stage while seeking an opportunity at the same time.

Defeating Tang Jun and discovering Tang Wenhua’s secret were both equally important in Lei Jie’s mind. If the battle with Tang Jun was pushed back because of the latter, then at least Lei Jie’s mentality would remain intact.

Tang Jun remained silent as he watched Lei Jie’s contorting face before his eyes shifted to Lei Lie.

Xiao Yan sat quietly by the side and never once interrupted the conversation and let Tang Jun settle everything by himself. He suddenly smiled faintly as he heard Lei Lie’s words.

Both Xiao Yan and Tang Jun understood what Lei Lie was thinking, but the two of them said nothing much in response. Xiao Yan kept his mouth shut as he had done from the beginning, while Tang Jun opened his mouth and said plainly, “I’m not in a hurry to find out about Tang Wenhua’s past and his intentions. However, if you insist on clearing the air before anything, I will not object, but this cannot drag on indefinitely.”

His tone had the usual serenity and was flowing with self-confidence. “The clues that we have now are from the two of us. The Lei Family’s ancestral ground and our father’s old residence have been shifted away through space and are now inside the Imperial Palace. I should have some results when I return to study them, and I don’t think I will need much time.”

Lei Jie remained silent as Lei Lie nodded his head. “That’s correct. Do follow me.”

Xiao Yan smiled as he got up and said, “Thank you for directing us.”

Everybody returned to the arrested Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace’s interiors were opened up into layers of space as if each one of them were individual worlds by themselves, and the Lei Family ancestral ground was located inside one of these layers of space. This patch of land was like a tiny levitating island as it hovered in midair.

Most of the younger disciples had been hidden away as they entered the Lei Family’s ancestral ground. They were assigned under the protection of the relatively more powerful cultivators from the family, and not even a single aurous core stage cultivator could be seen – all that was left were nascent soul stage cultivators from the Lei Family.

Everybody bowed their heads in respectful greeting as they saw Lei Lie walk in with Lei JIe, Xiao Yan and Tang Jun.

Xiao Yan was a powerful being that not even Lei Lie could handle. The reputation of the Inferno Emperor had already spread throughout the entire Grand Celestial World and intimidated the entire Divine Lands.

Even though Tang Jun was only in the nascent soul intermediate stage and his mastery was lower than some nascent soul advanced stage grandmasters inside the Lei Family, nobody dared to underestimate him. This was an individual that had replicated his master’s amazing track record and a prodigal talent that defeated a nascent soul advanced stage grandmaster when he was only in the aurous core advanced stage. He dominated the others of his generation and made even the other otherworldly talents bow at his feet.

The Celestial Sect of Wonders was full of extraordinary talents and wunderkinds, but in terms of actual battle, only Zhou Yuncong and Han Yang could match him amongst the others of his generation at the same level of mastery.

The youth that they had despised, the youth whose name was tied to the treasure-stealing Tang Wenhua and the youth whom they had cast out was now a powerful individual that everybody had no choice but to look up to.

Not that many years had passed.

Every cultivator from the Lei Family lowered their heads to avoid letting others see the expression in their eyes. However, they themselves could feel that everybody’s emotions were extremely mixed and complicated.

If Tang Jun was just an independent cultivator all by himself, then the Lei Family would probably look at him in a different light, but at least they wouldn’t perceive him with such bitterness and exasperation as they did now.

They would probably try to pander to Tang Jun or to restore any semblance of a friendly relationship, but if Tang Jun rejected their niceties, then it wouldn’t be too late for them to take him down.

The Lei Family had Lei Lie with them in the end, who was in the second-level immortal soul stage, and they had their family treasure with them as well.

However, it was a person from the Celestial Sect of Wonders who was standing behind Tang Jun at this moment, and he was a colossal individual that nobody inside the Lei Family could afford to incur the wrath of, and a person that nobody could handle.

The Inferno Precipice itself was already an entity that the Lei Family couldn’t even compare to.

Lei Jie was at a bottleneck and his forward path was riddled with troubles and difficulties. On the other hand, Tang Jun was still developing quickly and his progress forward seemed unstoppable.

The chance of Tang Jun losing his life from some accident or whatsoever was great diminished under the Celestial Sect of Wonders’ protection. With his current standard and the potential that he had displayed, it wouldn’t take long for him to disregard the entire Lei Family based on his own ability alone.

This reality was right before their eyes, and this made everybody inside the Lei Family feel a little lost and helpless.

Tang Jun strolled behind Xiao Yan and there wasn’t a single trace of nostalgia on his face when he returned to his old home. There was no overflowing pride or satisfaction from achieving his dreams, but even that gave the people from the Lei Family a bitter taste in their mouths.

“I want to pay my respects to my mother,” Tang Jun said to Lei Lie. There were only a few things he wanted to do inside the Lei Family – he wanted to pay his respects to his mother, repay the few who had taken care of him when he was a child, and settle the debts with the others who had humiliated him.

The last would be to figure out what exactly Tang Wenhua was doing and what he was up to. He wasn’t particularly interested in this and this wouldn’t affect his mentality at all. However, there was a need to figure in order to prevent unforeseen troubles that could occur in the future, and also to prevent any problems that it could possibly cause for his own sect.

Lei Lie nodded his head as he heard Tang Jun’s words and said, “That’s only right. After you have paid your respects, we will start from the seventeenth daughter’s items. Everything that Tang Wenhua had left behind were given to her for caretaking when she was still alive.”

“Seventeenth daughter” referred to Tang Jun and Lei Jie’s mother, who was also Lei Lie’s daughter, and she was ranked seventeen by age in her generation.

Tang Jun burned some incense for his mother while Lei Jie did the same without saying a single ward. Lei Jie watched his mother’s stele with a faint frightened look on his face.

Tang Jun followed Lei Lie into a quiet room after paying respects to his mother.

Lei Lie pointed with his finger and a ray of light landed on the surface of a table inside the room. The ray of light enveloped a great many items that had been specially arranged by category and everything was neatly in place.

It was obvious that the Great Zhou Empire and the Lei Family had gone through everything many times.

Perhaps there were really nothing out of the ordinary about the items in the room, or perhaps they had been processed by a mystical spell or some sinister mantra. If these barriers weren’t dispelled by specific methods, the truths to these items couldn’t be unlocked. Even if the person attempting to break the seals was more powerful, unlocking these items by force could possibly destroy the item entirely and it was likely that it would just shatter into pieces under all that pressure.

Xiao Yan surveyed the items in the room and turned towards Tang Jun, “You try.”

Tang Jun took a step forward and arrived before the items laid out. He grabbed at the various items with his mana before he referenced to the esoteric magic formation that he had experienced inside Tang Wenhua’s old residence all those years ago and did his own experimentations.

There were some items that amongst the pile that he had interacted with before when he was a kid, and it was probably because his body hadn’t been changed yet during that time that he didn’t get a reaction when he touched them now.

Tang Jun was pursued and chased down after the whole episode at Tang Wenhua’s old residence and he was forced to run to the ends of the earth. He travelled due West and eventually joined the Celestial Sect of Wonders to cultivate. He hadn’t returned to the Lei Family residence afterwards and that meant he had never interacted with these items ever since he left.

However, when Tang Jun came into contact with a jade talisman, the jade talisman suddenly changed.

Both Lei Lie’s and Lei Jie’s eyes sparkled. That jade talisman wasn’t something left behind by Tang Wenhua for Tang Jun or his mother. This was something that belonged to Tang Jun’s mother to begin with, and it had no connection whatsoever to Tang Wenhua to the best of their memory. However, it was apparent that there wasn’t something wrong with the things that Tang Wenhua had left behind – it was this jade talisman.

Strange lights were projected into void space from the jade talisman and formed a doorway that flickered with white lights.

Xiao Yan and Lei Lie took Tang Jun and Lei Jie into this doorway made of light. They knew instantly after seeing it that opening this door of light required special methods, but the door itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It was just a miniature path that led to another space and didn’t threaten them in any way.

They stepped through the door of light and entered a different space. The entire land around them was barren and there was nothing there.

However, Xiao Yan could faintly feel that there were remnant strands of mystical and profound energies shifting around.

His hands moved continuously, and streaks of purple energy surged out that swept across this entire foreign space and tainted the sky purple.

Lei Lie didn’t have objections and neither did he intend to interfere and was just concentrating on the void space before his eyes.

Multiple tiny light dots appeared in void space. They were small like grains of rice, but they quickly congregated and came together to form a unique image projection.

There was a peculiar spiritual altar erected inside this image projection, and there was a shadow of a man standing on top of the altar.

Everybody that witnessed what was happening inside this image projection contracted their pupils and muttered, “Tang Wenhua…”