Chapter 727 — The Chen Family's Crisis
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"All right, I'm on my way." Wei Zhao got out of the van and headed for the Third Inpatient Building.
Meanwhile, Chen Yuxuan, standing beside Qiu Lingshan, grew tense at the news that the man she was pursuing would soon arrive. "Qiu Lingshan, he's coming?"
"He'll be here any moment." Qiu Lingshan nodded. Chen Yuxuan's unease irked her. Why couldn't he act a little more like a man? Even if the other man was stronger than him, there was no need to be this nervous.
Chen Yuxuan nodded. He felt like such a failure — he had pursued Qiu Lingshan for all these years, and in the end it had still come to nothing.
It was simply that he had chosen the wrong direction from the very start. His earlier path had been that of a wastrel young master, and Qiu Lingshan had never thought much of such idle rich boys. By the time he resolved to surpass her through real strength, he discovered that he had started far too late. Had he not met a renowned master to guide him, he would likely never have broken through to the Yellow Rank in his entire life.
Yet though Chen Yuxuan was disappointed, he did not regret it. At least, if not for that one remark from Qiu Lingshan, he would never have roused himself, never have chosen the road he walked now. Among all the sons of the great clans, his strength was not the greatest, but the early Yellow Rank was hardly weak. At the very least, his grandfather had not been disappointed in him.
He was the only male heir of the Chen family's third generation; Shen Yushu could never take up martial arts. If he himself lacked strength, then in a few decades the Chen family would likely be struck from the Four Great Clans and replaced by the Yu family.
So Chen Yuxuan's sense of crisis ran deep. When he was younger and playing the wastrel, he had never given such things a thought, but now he had no choice but to consider them. In three generations of the Chen family, apart from the old master, who had once been a figure of great renown, there was not a single person who could stand firm.
In his youth the old master had trained in external martial arts. Unlike internal methods, which grew purer with age, external arts faded as a man grew old; if the body failed, the power waned all the more swiftly.
These days Old Master Chen's health was poor. His peak had been the mid Mystic Rank, but how much of that remained now, who could say? In recent years Wu Gonggao of the Wu family had been leaping about quite brazenly, acting very much as though he meant to challenge Old Master Chen. In truth, he simply wanted to probe the Chen family's depths, to see how much strength they truly had left.
After this stretch of quiet, some of the great clans were due for a change. The Wu family naturally wished to bring down the Chen family and raise in their place a clan friendly to them. Hadn't the Kang family recently attached itself to the Wu family? The Wu likely had exactly this in mind.
So on the surface the Chen family still looked splendid, one of the Four Great Clans and Five Minor Clans, but in truth their position was perilous.
Chen Yuxuan understood this clearly, and so did Old Master Chen.
This was also why Old Master Chen supported Chen Yuxuan's pursuit of Qiu Lingshan. Once the Chen and Song families were joined by marriage, those petty schemers who coveted the Chen family would no longer run wild as they did now.
But Chen Yuxuan had failed to live up to it; Qiu Lingshan simply did not look his way. Last night Chen Yuxuan had telephoned the old master at home, and what could the old master do but sigh that his grandson had come to his senses too late?