Rise of Nightflower (夜華上昇)

1. Declaring War and Preparing to Struggle

The Su clan residence truthfully could not just simply be considered a mansion. That mansion was just a large portion of a compound reserved for the direct line of the Su family, which Qingcheng is a part of. She has a brother and a sister also in this lineage. Fortunately for Qingcheng, a large part of why she was able to endure this long was due to the support of her direct family, who knew how hard Qingcheng was working to try and reverse her misfortune. It seemed that most of the clan members who ridiculed Qingcheng belonged to the extended family, who were jealous of Qingcheng's former talent.

Yao Meiyue was clearly able to realize Qingcheng's former talent, otherwise she would not have bothered to appear and extend an olive branch to her. It should be said that when it comes to manipulating Tianqi, every person had at least one elemental affinity out of the five that populated the continent – Fire, Water, Wood, Earth and Metal. The more of these elements you had an affinity to, the stronger you would naturally be able to become. Qingcheng was one of those rare existences who had affinity with all five of them, making her a Penta-Essence Tianqi User. Even her siblings could only use four out of five of them. However, she indeed lost everything due to that accident. Meiyue could only lament about this misfortune.

On the way back, Qingcheng attempted to question how Yao Meiyue knew so much about her and her family. Though the spirit was not willing to share a lot, Qingcheng could gather that Meiyue was definitely closely connected to her mother. As for the nature of the relationship, she couldn't figure this out at the moment. Unable to extract more out of Yao Meiyue, Qingcheng inwardly sighed and made her way to the mansion. At the great hall of the mansion which also served as the main family's dining room, sat a handsome, well-kept young man who would be about two years older than Qingcheng. He had short, nicely groomed black hair and his face looked quite pleasant to look at. Actually, this man was in fact Xiao Tie. Though Qingcheng abhorred the idea of getting married to this good-looking fellow, she had to admit that even she would have felt a bit moved if Xiao Tie didn't already have a horrible reputation of being a chauvinistic pig. Every young girl he flirted or had a fling with ended up having horrid relations with him. This didn't improve Qingcheng's image of him at all.

Seated next to Xiao Tie were two old wizened men. Meiyue could immediately identify that they were powerful men in the Tianqi Sage stratum, which could be said to be a whole four stratum higher than Qingcheng herself, and only slightly weaker than a Tianqi Emperor. Truly, the Xiao clan could not be looked down upon either. Most likely, the two old men, who were both stroking their beards pensively upon seeing Qingcheng enter the room, were high-ranking grand elders of the Xiao clan. Nearby, Qingcheng saw her parents and brother and sister seated also.

Yao Meiyue immediately concealed her spiritual signature, which caused a very quick glint to flash from her necklace. This did not escape Qingcheng's sight who had abnormal spiritual perception to begin with, but Su Ran saw this and flashed a look at surprise towards the young cripple. However this look of surprise disappeared as fast as it arose. Qingcheng quickly noted her mother's reaction to heart and would ask about this later. Now, however, she had more important things to worry about.

Xiao Tie chuckled as he saw Su Qingcheng enter the room. "Darling. I know that our marriage is a year from now. You are no longer the bright jade that you once were; why do you insist on resisting? You can't keep hiding behind your parents forever." He flashed a venomous, lustful look at Qingcheng which caused the girl to involuntarily shudder and freeze in place. Her brother, Su Mujian, clenched his fists and stared angrily at Xiao Tie, unable to stand his behavior. Her sister, Su Yanran, remained emotionless before looking at Qingcheng with a genuinely worried expression.

Qingcheng soon regained her composure and cleared her throat. "Shut up," Qingcheng scowled, causing the two elders near Xiao Tie to angrily release their Tianqi aura in response to the girl's impudence. Whether it was due to Meiyue or not, Qingcheng somehow barely managed to resist this imposing pressure, she immediately started to sweat. Su Ran looked worryingly also towards her daughter, but said nothing. "I'm here to issue a challenge!" Qingcheng growled. Her father Su Zhan tilted his head.