As Shen Yu’s gaze lingered on the blossoming He Lan, Yilan’s sharp intuition caught the predatory shift in his golden eyes.

A flash of cold, possessive jealousy pierced her regal composure. Beneath the cover of the heavy blackwood table, she brought her silled heel down firmly onto his foot, her eyes remaining fixed on her wine as if she were merely contemplating the vintage.

Shen Yu felt the dull thud of her anger, but his expression remained a mask of saintly serenity.

He continued to eat with a calm that betrayed nothing of the silent assault. Internally, he smirked. He enjoyed the fire in her.

He reached beneath the table, his hand sliding with ease along the smooth, cool silk of her robes until his palm found the firm heat of her thigh. Yilan stiffened instantly, her breath hitching as her anger collided with a sudden, jolting spark of desire.

To the gathered elites, they were the picture of high-society decorum. Their near-perfect expressions acted as an impenetrable shield.

Moreover, it was a fundamental law of etiquette in cultivator circle that using one’s spiritual sense during a banquet was a grave insult, a breach of privacy that no noble would dare commit. Safe behind this wall of tradition and the thick shadows of the table, their carnal struggle remained a secret.

Shen Yu maintained an effortless conversation with the surrounding clan leaders, his voice steady and magnetic, while his fingers continued a slow, rhythmic caress against Yilan’s inner thigh.

He teased the very edge of her patience, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin just beneath the hem of her inner silks, never venturing quite as high as he knew she secretly craved. Yilan found herself trapped in a haze of mounting irritation and intoxicating pleasure, her body humming with a need he was deliberately withholding.

The tension was broken by City Lord Wu Shan, who leaned forward, his amber wine reflecting the lantern light.

"Matriarch Yilan, I must say, the pills your clan manufactured to counter the Peng’s trash were exquisite. Truly, they were a heavens-sent remedy compared to those impurity-filled dregs that bastard Peng Kai called alchemy."

The He Patriarch chimed in immediately, nodding so hard his multiple chins wobbled like jelly.

"Indeed! A masterclass in refinement! My own clan members couldn’t stop praising the purity!"

The City Lord’s eyes narrowed slightly, the sharp politician within him surfacing. "I may be presumptuous to ask, Matriarch Tang, but my experts noted that your pills shared nearly identical base ingredients with the Pengs’ recipe."

"To refine such a flawed formula into something so potent... does this mean the Tang Clan has a hidden tier-4 master of alchemy, or did you perhaps acquire a superior manual from elsewhere?"

Yilan met his gaze, her voice as smooth and hard as polished jade. "We modified it in-house."

"Oh?" Wu Shan raised a skeptical brow, his Nascent Soul aura flickering with a hint of doubt.

"I mean no offense, Matriarch, but to my knowledge, the Tang Clan does not currently employ an alchemist capable of such a sophisticated, high-level refinement."

Yilan’s eyes turned cold, her gaze flickering toward Shen Yu in a silent plea for a lead. At that moment, Shen Yu gave her thigh a firm, possessive grope, a hard, grounding squeeze that made her pulse skip, before he spoke.

"It is true that we lacked such an alchemist," Shen Yu intervened, his voice resonating through the hall like a silver bell. "Until, that is, my Master took me as his personal disciple."

"What!"

"What!"

The first to be struck by genuine shock were not the guests, but Yilan, Lixue, Meng Yan, and Xu Yi. Their eyes widened, their breath catching in their throats as their carefully crafted masks of composure nearly shattered on the spot.

They froze mid-movement, their minds reeling. None of them had ever heard a single whisper of a Master, let alone a mythical grandmaster capable of teaching alchemy to a man already so terrifyingly proficient in it.

They had absolutely no idea what game Shen Yu was playing, but they were forced to swallow their disbelief and play along with his grand illusion.

The City Lord, observing the raw, unscripted flicker of shock on the faces of the Tang women, felt his suspicion mount like a gathering storm. His Nascent Soul pressure simmered just beneath the surface, a heavy, invisible weight that demanded an answer.

He turned his full, piercing attention to Shen Yu, waiting for the "Golden Paragon" to explain the shadow power looming behind his sudden rise.

Shen Yu met that heavy gaze with a look of feigned hesitation, his expression softening into an artful display of earnest confidence.

"My Master strictly forbade me from revealing his existence to anyone, in truth, I have kept this secret entirely to myself, hiding it even from my Aunt and Lixue until this very moment," he began, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur that forced everyone at the table to lean in, hanging on his every word.

"However, I hold the City Lord in the highest of regards. For a man of your immense stature and wisdom, I believe the truth is a debt I must pay, even if it means risking my Master’s wrath."

Wu Shan’s stern features relaxed slightly, a thin, self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. As a descendant of the imperial royal bloodline, his ego was as vast as the empire itself.

Seeing the city’s most formidable young prodigy offer such profound deference, deliberately placing the City Lord’s honor above a powerful Master’s decree, was an intoxicating balm to his pride.

’As you should, boy.’ Wu Shan thought, his chest expanding slightly.

It was exactly how he wanted the Golden Paragon to behave: fiercely capable against external threats, yet entirely submissive and respectful toward his throne.

Standing silently a step behind Yilan, Xu Yi had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing out loud. Watching the powerful, cynical City Lord puff up his chest and completely swallow her man’s blatant nonsense was pure comedy.

Her eyes drifted to the clean, sharp slope of Shen Yu’s shoulder, a sudden wave of heat causing her cheeks to flush beneath her disciplined exterior.

’He is truly the master of tongues,’ she thought, a wicked, secret thrill running through her core as she recalled just how versatile that tongue could be. ’He can play the entire world like a stringed instrument, and they smile while he does it.’

-x-

A/N:

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