The Lustful Young Master starting with Holy Maiden.-Chapter 36: The Talk with patriarChapter

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Chapter 36: The Talk with patriarch.

Above, suspended in the air, were scrolls of golden scripture rotating slowly, endlessly reciting the edicts of the founding forefather.

The Patriarch, Zhao Tianyuan sat alone.

His beard was streaked with silver, yet his skin bore no wrinkle. His presence did not shout like his son’s, nor did it conceal itself in silence like his wife’s, it simply was, steady and irrefutable, like the weight of mountains.

He did not sit on a throne, the Zhao patriarchs did not need thrones, they sat on stone.

The same cold immortal slab passed down through twelve hundred thousand years of bloodline. It was said that if an unworthy heir sat upon it, their spiritual core would crack and bleed.

Patriarch Tianyuan sat upon it as easily as breathing.

While he was cultivating, sitting in lotus position, gathering the spiritual aura, he sensed her approach long before she passed the ceremonial archway.

Her footsteps were soft, her Qi was restrained, her heartbeat calm.

Yet she brought with her a tempest.

As Lady Zhao Mingyue, known publicly as Concubine Zhu, stepped into the hall, she did not bow as a wife.

She knelt as a cultivator of the Zhao Clan, back straight, arms folded, head unbowed.

Zhao Tianyuan opened his eyes.

"Mingyue!" he said, voice neither cold nor warm.

"What matter bends you to your knees today?"

She took a breath.

"A matter of blood, of sons... of disgrace, and of fate," she said.

"It’s related to Zhao Yung and Zhao Fan,"

A flicker crossed the Patriarch’s brow, it wasn’t an emotion, but acknowledgment.

He knows very well about what happened between Zhao Fan and Zhao Yung’s fiancee.

Zhao Tianyuan’s gaze rested on her unmoving figure.

The weight of his cultivation pressed faintly over the hall like distant thunder, true absolute.

"You may speak," he said.

Mingyue lifted her eyes, calm yet carrying the wear of sleepless nights.

"Zhao Yung came to me in the hour before dawn. His Dao was trembling, his spiritual veins unstable. His pride... gone. What remained was only fear..."

Tianyuan did not respond. That was his way to let truth flow, unshaped, and unhurried as he had all the time in the world.

She continued.

"He told me of a scheme to hurt Zhao Fan. One he attempted in rage, in blindness. Foolishness, yes... but not wickedness...."

She slowly unclasped the jade pendant tied to her belt, the Zhao Yung’s childhood token, and laid it on the cold floor before the Patriarch.

"It was his desire to reclaim his place, his fiancée, his face before the clan. In doing so, he tried to use underhanded means against Zhao Fan... It may be rebellious but necessary, after all, till this date, Zhao Fan has yet to apologize for his action of stealing his own brother’s dao companion,"

The hall dimmed slightly as if the sky outside grew cloudy.

"But now... Zhao Fan holds evidence. Recordings or words, perhaps even illusions. He dangles them like guillotine blades over Yung’er’s neck. My son crawled to me, and not to ask forgiveness. But... but..."

She paused. Her hands clenched beneath her sleeves.

"But to request that I surrender myself to Zhao Fan. That I... offer my body, as a price for his survival,"

Even the floating scripture above stopped for a breath.

Tianyuan’s brows did not move, but the silence now grew sharper, colder. It felt like frost settling on the ancestral stone.

"I see," he said at last.

"You claim Zhao Fan demanded your... Yin offering?"

"No," she replied carefully.

"He never said it with his lips. But he made Yung say it. And in doing so, forced my son to carry the shame of such words, and me the burden of hearing them. That is the cruelty of a deeper sort..."

Tianyuan’s gaze lowered to the jade token.

"He has always been sharp. But never reckless,"

"He has grown beyond sharpness," Mingyue replied.

"He cuts without moving. Commands without speaking. He never lays hands, yet people fall like wheat..." She took another breath, and this one trembled slightly.

"I do not say he is wrong in punishing Yung’er’s ambition. But to corrupt family bonds, to bend a mother into concubinage under threat of exposure... Is this the path the next Patriarch should walk?"

Tianyuan’s silence deepened.

Mingyue pressed further, not as a wife, but as one who once taught Zhao clan laws to its inner disciples.

"As a husband, you may see this as a matter of family shame. But as a Patriarch, you must see it as a precedent. If elders can be humiliated through their children’s weakness... if boys like Zhao Fan can trade blackmail for women, what shall stop others from doing the same? The family law must be enforced to Zhao Fan,"

Still, he did not speak.

So she struck once more.

"The Zhao family is a long historical orthodoxy family, how can the elder not teach the junior, the correct path of life and hierarchical structure of the world, not every star can be plucked by hands," She began to kowtow, until her forehead bled.

"I shall not get up until I get justice..." She added.

Patriarch: "..."

The blood from her brow fell not like the red of mortal wounds, but like cinnabar ink upon ancestral scroll, a mark that could not be washed away with no amount of holy water.

Zhao Tianyuan sat unmoved, yet the air around him grew still, as if the entire ancestral hall was holding its breath.

Above him, the golden scripture scrolls slowed their eternal rotation.

One fragment whispered, "The root of disorder begins with hidden shame within the clan."

Another responded, "A cultivator who forgets propriety is no longer heir, but beast..."

Tianyuan’s fingers curled faintly, brushing against the edge of the slab beneath him, not for support, but for reminder.

The cold stone had judged every patriarch for twelve hundred thousand years. It had not cracked beneath his weight, but now... it felt heavier.

He looked down at her, this woman once called the Snow Orchid Fairy, now kneeling as a mother whose dignity had been carved into a bargaining chip.

"What you ask..." he said slowly, "is not justice, Mingyue. It is judgment."

His voice did not echo, yet it sank deep into the bones of the hall.

"Justice weighs both scales. Judgment breaks one."

Mingyue raised her eyes, unflinching despite the blood on her face.

"Then let me be broken, if that is what it takes," she said.

Tianyuan closed his eyes.

Behind those lids, he saw not just Zhao Fan, but a monster who doesn’t care for family matters or moral compassion.

Enforce family law? That’s seeking death, Zhao Fan is already a second-stage Holy Emperor-level powerhouse and can already defeat the sixth-stage Holy Realm powerhouse, the great grand ancestor of the family.

The only ones who can truly enforce the family law on Zhao Fan might be the true ancestors who have been alive for hundreds of thousands of years, living in seclusion at the Zhao Family restricted area, only to be woken up during the bloodline catastrophe.

But, there is no sufficient proof.

"Sigh* Concubine Zhu, you already know even the great grand ancestors are unable to keep Zhao Fan under their palm, the only ones that can enforce the law on Zhao Fan are true ancestors of the divine emperor realm currently on seclusion, who can only be woken up for bloodline catastrophe..."

"You tell me what to do... You have no solid evidence, you claim Zhao Fan managed to get the recording of Zhao Yung, does Zhao Yung also have a recording of Zhao Fan,"

Of course no, she hated that her child remained faster than the wisdom itself.

"I don’t mean to question you, but, what if Zhao Yung said those words to frame Zhao Fan on his own," Patriarch made a logical point.

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