But the moment he laid eyes on Wei Zhao, the faintly detached expression on the white-bearded elder's face vanished at once, replaced by a profound gravity. He was, after all, a man of wide experience; though Wei Zhao's aura was now restrained and utterly unreadable, the man still gave off an air of unfathomable depth, and instinct told the white-bearded elder that this person was no ordinary figure in the least.

"I am Xin Yijie, an elder of the Cangwu Sect of North Island in the Primordial Alliance, and the one in charge of this mortal-world trial. Might you be Wei Zhao?" Xin Yijie asked gravely.

"The very same. Please, sit." Wei Zhao smiled politely, though in truth he felt rather strange inside. Here he was, a genuine disciple of North Island, and the man before him claimed to be an elder of the Cangwu Sect of North Island—that same jarring sense of displacement he had felt with Cloud Terrace Island left him quite speechless.

Suppressing the oddness in his heart, Wei Zhao made proper small talk with the man, all seriousness. After all, the fellow was a peak early Golden Core expert; in terms of strength the other party actually had the advantage, and behind him stood the Primordial Alliance. Even Wei Zhao, so long as faces were not yet torn, had to treat him courteously—otherwise there would be nothing to discuss at all.

Xin Yijie, for his part, suspected Wei Zhao of being some great primal-spirit cultivator from the Primordial era, and now, seeing Wei Zhao's extraordinary bearing with his own eyes, he naturally had no wish to be overly haughty. Strength decided who held the floor—it was only natural for him to pay no heed to lowly mortal-world cultivators, but if he were to ignore even Wei Zhao, that would simply prove his head was unsound.

Anyone capable of becoming the leader in charge of the mortal-world trial plainly could not have an unsound head—quite the contrary, the man was a past master at working every angle. Otherwise, if he relied on brute strength alone to keep them down, so many Primordial sects might not have been willing to heed his word at all.

"President Lin, the purpose of my visit today is to straighten out these unpleasantries between the Primordial Alliance and the mortal world, and to get to the bottom of who was right and who was wrong. Otherwise the grudge between the two sides will only deepen, and that bodes ill neither for us of the Primordial Alliance nor for you of the mortal world. I trust President Lin shares this position?" Xin Yijie said, coming to the point.

"Naturally. The mortal world is our home, and no one wishes to see his own home catch fire. This time I specifically invited Elder Xin here precisely to lay the matter out face to face, and to ask that the Primordial Alliance keep its disciples in hand in the days to come, so that fresh friction does not arise again." Wei Zhao nodded.

"Good. Then let us speak of the Qiankun Sect affair. The one who wounded Yu Zhengliang and the other three was President Lin, was it not? And I am told that Xue Jianfeng of the Snowsword Sect had his Golden Core destroyed by you as well?" Xin Yijie pressed for confirmation.

"Correct. Both matters are true enough. I did not wish to strike at them in the first place, but they went too far and overstepped their bounds—so naturally they deserved a taste of hardship." Wei Zhao nodded, then said coolly: "The mortal world has the mortal world's rules. If you of the Primordial Alliance wish to select disciples from the mortal world, by all means do so. So long as the cultivators themselves consent, we have no objection and will certainly not stand in the way. But if you take people by force—then there is nothing more to be said."

"I know a little of the Snow Valley affair. The Qiankun Sect did indeed act rashly, turning a good deed into a bad one; they have no grounds to complain over the beating they took. As for Xue Jianfeng, he carried his trouble straight to President Lin's door; that President Lin, in a fit of fury, destroyed his Golden Core is only to be expected, and I have nothing to say on that score." Xin Yijie readily conceded both matters.

For one, the fault lay with their side to begin with; for another, it was no skin off his nose—the ones hurt were not men of his own Cangwu Sect of North Island. The lead senior brothers of those sects had handled their affairs poorly, and having come to grief, they had no one to blame but themselves—certainly not Xin Yijie.

"Elder Xin is indeed a man who understands reason." Lin Yi nodded, rather surprised. Xin Yijie's reasonableness came as a relief; what he detested most were those who fancied themselves high and mighty, knowing full well they were in the wrong yet refusing to admit it to the bitter end. When reason failed, only fists remained—and that was the situation he least wished to see.

"However, in the matter of Yin Zhiping and Sun Baimei of the Evil-Warding Sect, President Lin struck to kill without a word. Is that not a bit hard to justify?" Xin Yijie's face darkened. The wounding or crippling of men from the other sects mattered nothing to him, but two deaths in a row was another matter entirely. As the one in charge, if he could not produce a defensible reason, he would be punished by the Primordial Alliance.

"I am a primal spirit. Those two came at me the moment they arrived—Elder Xin surely knows what they intended, does he not? Since they meant to devour me, I naturally had to finish them off in self-defense. Is there anything wrong with that?" Wei Zhao countered.

"That..." Xin Yijie was instantly at a loss for words. Self-defense was a matter of natural right the world over; even in the Primordial little martial world there could be no other verdict. Since those two had meant to kill Wei Zhao, they must have been prepared for Wei Zhao to kill them instead—their deaths were deaths in vain.

"If Elder Xin thinks I deserved to be devoured by them, then I fear there is no need to talk further. Let me put it plainly here and now: whoever wishes to harm me or those around me, I will finish him without hesitation. Mark me—whoever it is." Wei Zhao's tone was hard.

Xin Yijie looked at him deeply, and in that instant he abruptly sensed an indefinable aura—not the sort of aura from which cultivation realms can be concretely gauged, but a fleeting sense that the man before him was a top-tier expert of unfathomable depth.

By rights, a peak early Golden Core expert like himself was already an invincible presence in the mortal world—yet in that instant he felt an instinctive shudder in his heart, as though before this man he were a lowly ant, his life and death hanging on the other's whim, utterly without power to resist.

"How is that possible..." Xin Yijie was struck dumb on the spot, shaking his head hard in disbelief. His instincts had always been accurate, but this sudden notion was simply too absurd.

Never mind this trifling mortal world—even in the Primordial Alliance, a peak early Golden Core expert like himself was by no means a lowly existence. In strength he was of course far inferior to those Nascent Soul old monsters, but that he could be crushed as easily as an ant—such a possibility simply did not exist.

"What did you say?" Wei Zhao's expression changed; he thought the other's words were a retort against him. At this rate the two sides could never come to terms—and though it was the worst of last resorts, if there was no other way, he would have to choose to fight.

But that was the worst possible outcome. (To be continued.)