Chapter 309 (1/2)

Huai Yu cast him a sidelong glance, “You don’t understand this. There are dozens or hundreds of large families as vassals under any Divine Clan’s name. Naturally, the Divine Clans will not go out themselves but will send subordinate officials to monitor the lower realms for them. In order to have checks and balances, a small realm will be monitored by at least two vassal families under different Divine Clans. When these vassals reach the lower realms, they have to abide by the rules agreed upon between Divine Clans, so they can’t walk outside freely. This continued for a long time, and these monitoring families became the so-called reclusive families.”

Yan Tianhen showed an expression of epiphany.

“It turns out that reclusive families are like this. I thought they originated from the Five Continents. But they just had longer family legacies and were stronger and more mysterious. Unexpectedly, they don’t belong here at all.” Yan Tianhen mused.

Huai Yu patted his head, “We can’t rule out that possibility either. But in my opinion, the Jian and Liu families should have been sent by the Upper Realm, for sure. However, I don’t know whether there are other reclusive families in the Five Continents.”

Because even if many reclusive families had already existed for a hundred years in certain small realms, people still wouldn’t necessarily become aware of their existence.

Reclusive families hidden from the world; the word “hidden” held the true essence of these families.

Instead, ones like Jian Yunxi and Liu Zhaoyue, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and walked around outside under the name of reclusive families, were the abnormal ones.

People who didn’t know the truth might simply find them mysterious and would be curious to know exactly how these families differed from the other large families. But only people in the know would be able to perceive the unusual atmosphere.

Yan Tianhen scratched his head and asked, “Master, what’re their goals for surveillance?

Huai Yu answered, “There are many objectives. There are two most important objectives. One is to see if these people in the lower realms are well-behaved and honest enough and whether there are any major events that can affect the Nine Lands. The second objective is that the reclusive families will secretly observe whether there are any geniuses in these smaller realms that can be used by the Divine Clans. If they detect such geniuses, the reclusive families will try every means to bring them to the Nine Lands.”

Yan Tianhen asked, “What if those geniuses don’t want to?”

Huai Yu smiled, “So what if they don’t want to? Do you think those people care about what the geniuses think? At the end of the day, no matter how amazing the geniuses are, in the Divine Clans’ eyes, they’re just lower class people with a little bit more talent than most people. You don’t know about Divine Clans, so you don’t know that Divine Clans attach the highest importance to social rankings and family backgrounds. For tens of thousands of years, the nine Divine Clans had always been those same nine families, because there are no other families that enter their eyes.”

Yan Tianhen frowned, “That’s too shameless. They’re forcing people to make dealings through coercion!”

Huai Yu nodded. “Well said. Precisely; they’re especially shameless and especially unreasonable. They really annoy me.”

Yan Tianhen blinked and looked suspiciously at Esteemed Huai Yu. “Master, you actually know them so well. Have you been to the Nine Lands before?”

Laozi came down from the Ninth Lands, to begin with, Esteemed Huai Yu thought that while he replied, “I don’t condescend to go to places like that, but my Senior Martial Brother, which is your Martial Uncle, has been there before. He told me all this.”

Telling blatant lies with his eyes wide open had always been Demon Venerable You Ming’s specialty. The reason why his credibility was so low, that any truth he says will not be believed while any lies he says will not be doubted was because he had always been mixing up truths and lies whenever he casually opened his mouth.

He didn’t mean to deceive Yan Tianhen, it’s just that he was fully aware that the more he said, the more mistakes he’d make. He didn’t want Yan Tianhen to have any doubt about his identity, so he held up this big flag called “Esteemed Lan Yue” instead.

Yan Tianhen did not doubt him and even asked excitedly, “Martial Uncle Lan Yue has been to the Nine Lands? Then has he met my dad in the Nine Lands before?”

Yan Tianhen’s words made Huai Yu pause. He nearly blurted out that of course he had seen them and he was even martial brothers with them, but he refrained.

But then he heard Yan Tianhen continue, “Back when my dad hadn’t given birth to my Dage yet, he and Uncle Su Mo had already traveled to Nine Lands together. My dad told me a lot about the customs of Nine Lands and he also said that he’d made many friends with the same aspirations.”

Esteemed Huai Yu, “….”

Esteemed Huai Yu asked, “The dad you’re referring to, is it Lin Zhan?

Yan Tianhen responded, “Of course, who else could it be?”

Esteemed Huai Yu, “…” Damn it my heart feels like it’s being stabbed.

Heart suddenly hurts so much. My son actually called other people “dad” in front of me, critical damage.

In fact, it’s no wonder Yan Tianhen did not recognize his dad. After all, he had no impression of You Ming at all, and he’d lived with Lin Zhan for seven to eight years. It went without saying that he was close to Lin Zhan.

Esteemed Huai Yu fought back his heart full of jealousy, “Didn’t he tell you anything about the Divine Clans?”

Yan Tianhen shook his head, “My dad never mentioned these families, and he didn’t even mention the Purple Emperor’s Heavenly Capital that much either.”

Esteemed Huai Yu snorted, “He doesn’t even know these things. It must be because he didn’t do very well in the Nine Lands and didn’t come into contact with these Divine Clans.”

Yan Tianhen did not mind, but nodded, “This is also possible. However, Uncle Su Mo must have come into contact with those powerful figures. Otherwise, he would not have made friends with Demon Venerable You Ming. Oh right, you should have heard of Demon Venerable You Ming?  The one who was married to Yan Zhonghua.”

You Ming himself, “….”

You Ming himself sat up straight, his fingers trembling slightly, his voice carrying a slightly imperceptible quiver; he pretended to be indifferent as he answered, “I’ve heard of him. Such a famous legend, how could I have not heard of him?”

Yan Tianhen blinked and asked somewhat excitedly, “Really? Do you really know him?”

Huai Yu nodded, “Yeah, I know him.”

“Then Master, can you tell me something about him?”

Huai Yu was instantly stunned.

“You…do you care about him?” Huai Yu stuttered slightly.