# Chapter 111: The Landscapes I Behold
The essence of the Flame Flower lay not in the flame, but in the flower.
The essence of the flower lay not in its shape, but in its spirit.
In truth, when Bai Lian had done battle with Ji Xuan on the banks of Qing River, she too had shown a Flame Flower born of white flame—her inspiration surely drawn from the same well as Zuo Guanglie's Flame-Flower City Burner.
Jiang Wang had walked into an error from the very start. He had tried to drive the fire-element primal power to carve a flower, and thanks to the exquisite subtlety of the Dao Essence Control Art, he had succeeded at the task. But the flower of flame he had maintained with the whole expenditure of his mind and spirit was, in the end, only a flame—not a flower.
And so it could not "bloom."
One must not try to shape a flower deliberately. It should come into being of its own accord, naturally.
Jiang Wang quietly worked a Dao gesture, and a point of fire-element primal power took shape at his fingertip.
Under careful, deliberate pours of Dao essence, it gradually swelled.
Jiang Wang pictured himself watering, tending and fattening the soil, while that initial mote of fire-element primal power was the seed of the flower.
Primal energy was its nourishment; the Dao cultivator's spirit was its vitality.
It grew, it strengthened, it sprouted...
At last, a tiny Flame Flower opened at his fingertip.
Between its petals, near-natural formation runes curled and linked.
Together they built up beauty, and also condensed a destructive force of overwhelming magnitude.
Every flower bears a unique beauty.
This Flame Flower was unlike Dong A's Flame Flower, and absolutely unlike Zuo Guanglie's own. It belonged solely to Jiang Wang himself.
Because he had invested it with "life."
This was life of another form.
Though it ranked among the Grade C upper-class Dao arts, it was by no means like other Dao arts of the same tier.
Only a Flame Flower such as this could ever grow into the Flame-Flower City Burner, the art that stuns all who witness it.
Jiang Wang had cultivated the Flame Flower, yet felt no pride.
He felt, instead, awe.
The Flame Flower was merely the foundation of the Flame-Flower City Burner—the base from which it grew. And still it sufficed to draw figures of strength like Dong A into studying it. It was said that when Zuo Guanglie created the Flame-Flower City Burner, he had been but nineteen years old. The same age as Ling He was now.
What a dazzling genius of heaven that man was!
If he, Jiang Wang, ruled the roost among his peers at Maple Forest City Dao Academy, what was that worth? Or as Zhen the Invincible put it, even if he reached the summit of the Wandering-Meridian Realm within the Taixu Illusory Realm, what would it amount to?
The eyes of a true master fell upon far more than the landscape before them.
Once he had mastered the Flame Flower, Jiang Wang grew confident that in his battles with Zhen the Invincible, he could now win three or more of every ten, with stability.
Because he now owned a means to threaten Zhen the Invincible without ever closing to melee—the space of choice in combat had widened immensely. This was no simple step across.
In their previous duels, if Zhen the Invincible did not throw open his full array of secret arts, he had already been unable to grasp any advantage.
The room for improvement in sparring with Zhen the Invincible was growing smaller by the day.
Thus, on re-entering the Taixu Illusory Realm, Jiang Wang decisively ignored the fat Zhen and began a fresh round of matchmaking on the Sword-Discussion Platform.
...
Fang Heling stepped into the ancestral hall. What awaited him was not the three-way tribunal he had expected, but his father Fang Zehou alone.
The man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, facing the spirit-tablets of the Fang clan's ancestors.
"Father." Fang Heling called out in a low voice.
Fang Zehou turned around, raised a hand, and struck him across the face.
Slap!
"Do you have any idea what you are doing?"
The side of Fang Heling's face swelled fast, but he made no cry of pain, and dared not dodge.
"I do." He said.
Slap!
"You do?" Fang Zehou demanded.
Slap!
The backhand came down again.
"You do?"
Fang Heling said nothing.
"Do you know what sort of situation the Yun Kingdom is facing right now? Do you know that the man your caravan helped to flee is very likely a demon-folk of the White Bone Path—perhaps even Ouyang Lie himself?"
"Do you know what the White Bone Path is? Do you know how Little Grove Town met its end? Those people are true demons. They slaughter the living, they defile the dead—is there anything they would not do? And you say you know?"
"Do you know what it means to entangle yourself with them? You can say goodbye to all business in the Yun Kingdom. Wei Quji alone would flay you alive, and drag the entire Fang clan into ruin with you! And you claim you know?"
Fang Zehou's fingers trembled with rage. He lifted his hand to strike Fang Heling once more.
"They forced something on me!" Fang Heling cried out, and his voice sank low. "If I disobeyed them, I would die."
"The time you went on that mission, when your whole company was wiped out?"
"Yes." Fang Heling recounted the day's events in full.
"This is a conspiracy!" Fang Zehou raged when he heard it. "You have been a fool, manipulated and played for a puppet!"
"But I had no choice. Father."
"I listened to you. I strove to catch up to Jiang Wang. I wanted to prove to you that I could. I cultivated with all my might, I sought trials with all my vigor. Whatever tasks Jiang Wang could take, I could take too! But those people were too strong—the fellow disciples who went with me were cut down at the very first encounter. Did I not also know this was a conspiracy?" Fang Heling said. "But I did not want to die. Father."
"No. No." Fang Zehou shook his head. "This thing you've swallowed—I will find some other way for it. This matter must be reported to the city lord. When the White Bone Path is involved, the Fang clan cannot shoulder it! Even if your clansman uncle would consent to help, it would do no good. No one in the Fang clan can bear this weight!"
Beneath Maple Forest City's Fang clan, in fact, there did stand a figure of significance. In his youth he had joined the army, and now he was the commanding general of Maple Forest City's city garrison. Yet the man had come of a cadet branch, and had received no clan resources while he grew; he held no special closeness to the Fang clan.
That man was utterly loyal to Wei Quji, the one who had shown him kindness and raised him up. For trivial matters he might grant a favor or two. A matter like this he would never indulge.
If he had any choice, Fang Zehou would shoulder it all for his son. But he knew, deep down, that he could not bear it. Even if he staked the entire Fang clan upon it, still it would be so.
"Father, you cannot do this." Fang Heling stepped to the right, planting himself before Fang Zehou.
"Out of my way!" Fang Zehou slapped him across the face.
Yet Fang Heling stood his ground, turning back the cheek that had been knocked aside, and met his father's eyes. "If Wei Quji learns that I am tangled up with the White Bone Path, your son is truly finished! Dong A would never shield me!"
"You are already finished!" Fang Zehou roared, weary. "Now it is the Fang clan I mean to save."
"Father." Fang Heling suddenly struck—and seized Fang Zehou, pressing him down onto the side chairs of the ancestral hall.
"I am not finished. I am already at the Zhou Heavenly Circulation Realm; the Tongtian Realm is within reach as well."
There was a hint of madness in his tone.
"Fang Heling! What are you trying to do?" Fang Zehou barked.
"Father, you cannot begin to imagine how much strength the White Bone Path can mobilize. Countless forces are helping Ouyang Lie flee the Yun Kingdom, and our caravan is only one among them. He might appear in any company at all—there is nothing that requires it to be ours. But we, we need the White Bone Path." Fang Heling pressed down on his father's shoulder and looked straight into his eyes. "Do you know what they gave me for doing their bidding? The Blood Returning Pill!"
"I ate but a single one, and broke through to the Zhou Heavenly Circulation Realm. Do you know what that means?"
"I only entered the Inner Sect this year. Had I followed the measured pace of cultivation, when would I ever catch up to Wang Changxiang, to Zhang Linchuan? The Fang clan would be forever ranked below others, forever reading expressions to survive!"
"Not anymore now—do you understand?"
"I know they all look down on me. Fang Pengju, Jiang Wang, Zhao Rucheng, and even Zhang Linchuan, Shen Nanqi! They take me for a joke! I know you look down on me too!"
"But it is different now. One day, sooner or later, everyone will have no choice but to look me in the face!"
"You ask me whether I know what I am doing? I know very well. I am only striving, striving with all my might, to prove it to you."
Fang Zehou himself was not blessed with great cultivation talent, and it was not through cultivation that he had won his present station.
So before his own son, he had little strength to resist.
He had watched every single step of Fang Heling's progress, and had felt naught but pride.
But he had never imagined the White Bone Path would thrust itself between them, using that crude ordeal of life and death to smash his son straight back down into the mud.
His heart aching, he cried: "You are matching wits with a tiger!"
"Father!"
Fang Heling knelt before Fang Zehou.
"Father, trust me just this once. All my life, I have walked the road you laid down. Now let me make a single decision for myself. I am fully clear-headed—I know what I am doing. I do not want to be anyone's shadow any longer!
Matching wits with a tiger... perhaps it can still be done!
One day, your son may flay the tiger and lay its skin at your feet."
"But that would require you to have the strength to fight the tiger. My foolish boy." Fang Zehou mourned this in the silence of his heart. But no further word crossed his lips.
The doors of the ancestral hall slowly swung shut.
On this day, Fang Zehou was confined within the ancestral hall by his own son, and the power of the Fang clan changed hands.