Hua Lu saw his gaze fixed on Hua Jie, just like everyone else who was infatuated with Hua Jie. He couldn't help but puff out his cheeks and angrily say, "Is that face really that good-looking?"
The man snapped back to reality.
He lowered his gaze. His eyes had deep double eyelids, but a scar ran across his brow and eyelid, causing some atrophy in the eyeball. When he looked at people, he had a somewhat fierce expression.
"Are you calling me superficial? But it's human nature to like things that are good-looking. Even an ugly villain like me likes to look at beautiful things to cultivate the ugly, twisted, and unbalanced heart beneath my chest."
He looked fierce and ugly, but his words were refined.
The child seemed to understand, and yet not quite.
So he picked out what he understood and said earnestly, "Save me. I'll grow up to be more handsome than him. I'll be your son, and I'll show you my face every day."
The child thought he was quite clever, having seized upon the man's weakness and planning to cater to his desires.
Why did this child want to be someone's adopted son so badly?
The man wasn't one to show his emotions easily, but in the short time he had spent with this child, he had felt like laughing several times.
"Where are your parents?"
Hua Lu turned his face away, wrinkled his nose, and said in a muffled voice, "I don't have parents..."
If this continued, the child might start to pout and cry.
"So, I need to find a father for myself, and then a mother. That way, I'll have parents like other children." His eyes suddenly lit up at this.
The man: "...Quite ambitious."
"Hua Lu, hurry up and come here. What exactly do you want?" Hua Jie stood among the mansion guards, suppressing his anger as he persuaded, "If you feel I'm too strict with you normally, I'll change. But why do you always want to run away from home? Don't you know there are many bad people outside?"
Hua Lu thought to himself, given the ridiculous name you gave me, I can't get along with you.
He extended his small hand and curled it into the scarred man's slender palm. His eyebrows shot up, and he proudly lifted his chin, announcing, "I've found my dad, so I won't be with you anymore."
Suddenly, something warm and soft was placed in his hand, and the man couldn't help but look at the child from the corner of his eye, feeling a little uncomfortable.
The child, only reaching his thigh and appearing to be around five years old, could still speak clearly and state his intentions in such a tense situation with so many adults around, even knowing to find a backer for support.
He wondered which family's child this was, to be so intelligent.
Looking at the child, the man couldn't help but recall some past events. He didn't want to meddle, but his body instinctively reacted, and he clasped the child's soft, warm hand.
The child froze, looking up at him in surprise.
"I can't just let you call me 'dad' for free," he said lightly. "Are you really planning to go with me?"
Hua Lu immediately understood his meaning.
Hua Lu's cheeks flushed, his eyes sparkling. He nodded vigorously, "Yes."
Seeing that Hua Lu preferred to go with a stranger he had just met rather than stay and depend on him, Hua Jie pursed his lips tightly and said angrily, "Hua Lu, are you really leaving with someone else? Don't you want your things anymore?"
Hua Lu stiffened at the mention of his things. He lowered his head, "I don't want them anymore... and I won't look for them."
Hua Jie couldn't believe it. "Why do you have to leave? We've always been fine."
They had endured so much hardship together. Although Hua Lu was young, he was truly clever and sharp, not a burden to Hua Jie. In fact, Hua Jie's progress so far relied on Hua Lu's contributions. Yet, just as things were improving, he insisted on leaving with such effort, which Hua Jie found utterly incomprehensible.
"Hua Jie, I hate that face of yours!" Hua Lu gritted his teeth and shouted.
Hua Jie was taken aback.
At that moment, his face, as bright and perfect as the moon, seemed to be torn by a knife. For a moment, it contorted, but he quickly realized the situation. Shaking his stiffened skin, he forced himself to smile as if nothing were wrong, "Hua Lu, you can't leave. You are my brother, and you must always stay with me."
After saying the last sentence, the emotions on his face gradually subsided. He turned to the mansion guards expressionlessly and said, "Please help me bring my brother over."
"I don't want to—"
Hua Lu spread his arms and clung to the man's leg, like a pendant, refusing to get down.
It was then that the man spoke, "Is he really your brother?"
Hua Jie looked at him coldly. That ugly face always reminded him of unpleasant things. He took a deep breath, "What business is my brother's affairs with you, an outsider? If you don't leave quickly, don't blame me for bullying you with my influence."
Whose influence he was relying on was clear to everyone present.
"Have you lost your memory?" the man suddenly asked, looking at him.
Hua Jie paused at this and frowned slightly, about to speak.
"Who lost their memory?"
Just then, Mu Nanxue and the eldest young lady of the Mu family also walked over.
Hua Jie immediately retracted his sharp defenses and moved to the eldest young lady of the Mu family's side, his head lowered obediently and docilely.
Seeing him like this, the man's eyes darkened for a moment. He then glanced at the eldest young lady of the Mu family, who was wearing a black cloak.
After staring for a moment, he scanned her form. His pupils seemed to ripple with a magical aura, as if he saw something novel and interesting about her.
The eldest young lady of the Mu family didn't even spare the ugly man in front of her a second glance. Instead, she said to Hua Jie, "Were you wronged?"
Hua Jie's eyes immediately turned red. "Eldest Young Lady, Hua Lu is my brother. He's still young and has merely been deceived by others into wanting to escape from me."
Mu Nanxue understood her sister's attitude perfectly; she was already harboring murderous intent towards this ugly man.
Impatiently, she shot him a sideways glance. "Return the child. Offend the Mu family, and you won't even be able to leave Shuofang City."
The man suddenly said meaningfully, "Eldest Young Lady of the Mu family, I've heard of your reputation."
The eldest young lady of the Mu family then slowly raised her head and looked at him.
At this moment, Mu Nanxue stood between them, arrogantly saying, "You ugly freak, release him quickly. Mind your own business with the Mu family's affairs, you can't afford to get involved!"
"Who told you to call him ugly? You're the ugly one, ugly freak!" Hua Lu retorted angrily.
The man, however, bent down and picked up the little Hua Lu, weighing him slightly. "You're quite heavy."
He wasn't actually heavy; he was just teasing.
Hua Lu's face turned red. "You... you're talking nonsense. I'm not heavy."
Although he didn't know if the man's comment was a jest or the truth, Hua Lu felt somehow disliked.
"Child, is he really not your brother?" the man asked him seriously now.
Hua Lu tried his best to make his small face look stern and credible, not like childish babble. "No, he's not."
The man then turned his head to face the two Mu sisters, Hua Jie, and even the Shuofang ghost cultivators around them. He let out a slight chuckle, his voice deep and resonant, and said word by word, "Little A Lu, you belong to me now. I might be a bit possessive; what's mine is mine, and I consider anyone who even glances at it to be trying to steal it."
If it weren't for the fact that an ugly, scarred man was saying this, they might have mistaken him for some domineering divine being capable of destroying mountains and cities with a single sword.
"Understood?"
A deathly silence fell over the surroundings.
The eldest young lady of the Mu family found it absurd and amusing. She let out a scoff, "So what if you stole him?"
The Mu mansion guards immediately snapped out of their daze, drawing the swords at their waists. Logically speaking, the ugly, scarred man in front of them hadn't even reached the Foundation Establishment stage, so they shouldn't need such a large force. A few people would be enough to deal with him.
But in reality, they were now facing him sternly, a primal sense of dread arising from his calm demeanor and flat expression, yet his words carried an inexplicably exaggerated and convincing power.
A guard reached out with a grasping eagle claw towards Hua Lu's shoulder. The ugly man, holding the child, easily evaded, taking a step that seemed both casual and effortless, yet utterly impossible for anyone to touch even a corner of his clothes.
He pondered for a moment and then asked, "You said you saw me saving you. Did you see how I saved you?"
Seeing that a real fight was about to break out, the child, nervously trying to curl into a ball and hold on tight, instinctively replied, "A black long whip appeared in your hand, looking very powerful, with chains that crackled with cold lightning."
As Hua Lu described it, the man had already grasped a black, oily scaled long whip. It was as long as an adult black python, and electric light crackled around it. The moment it appeared, it exuded a chilling aura that felt like the biting cold of deep winter.
It was exactly as the child had said.
No, it should be that he "saw" it.
Did he truly possess the ability to see future events?
The ugly man, with a dual purpose, explored the child's peculiarity while wielding his long whip to lash out at the Mu mansion guards who were encircling them.
He aimed specifically at their hands and feet. The whip seemed to have eyes, following them wherever they ran. Wherever they went, the whip struck, falling like raindrops on their limbs, as if faithfully warning them.
If they reached out to grab, he would destroy their hands. If their feet tried to approach, he would make them stop in their tracks.
After one round, not a single Mu mansion guard stood intact. All of them writhed in pain, their flesh torn and hands bleeding, groaning and rolling on the ground.
Hiss—
Their hands ached.
Their teeth ground.
Their bodies shivered.
This was witnessing a scene that began with a heavy, pervasive storm, foreshadowing an intense battle, but which ended so abruptly.
Was this ugly man truly only in the Qi Condensation stage?!
Flicking the long whip, he pulled up the child's hat and met his bright, star-like eyes filled with surprise. After a long moment, he slowly said, "Child, your eyes... are like mine."
Hua Lu let out an "Ah," his eyes conflicted as he looked at the man's fierce, scar-deformed eyes. He swallowed and said, "Well, everyone has two eyes, how can they not be alike?"
How could the man not tell that the child was just comforting him? Although the child was young, he understood beauty and ugliness. He knew his face was currently ugly and fierce, and he didn't believe his words at all.
The man gently stroked his little head, a hint of amusement rolling in his throat, "Child, I will take you with me."
Therefore, there was no need to deliberately curry favor with him anymore.