Family Cultivation: My entire family are Villains

In early May, the Hexi Alliance quietly released a message:

Master Hou Yuxiao of the Hexi Hou Clan will marry Zhao Qingxue, a esteemed elder of the Taishang Path "Forget Love" line of the Ziqing Holy Sect and disciple of Moxuzi, on the eighth day of June.

The influence of this message was not considered too significant.

As Hou Yuxiao had said, for those major forces and even the Holy Lands, the connection between Hexi and the Ziqing Holy Sect was hardly a secret; as for the smaller forces, whether they knew or not didn't really matter.

Following the battle at Longxiang Ferry, the Hexi Alliance could not claim to have shaken the world, but it had certainly caught the attention of the major forces. So, as soon as this message was released, those who were interested took immediate notice, and upon learning that the wedding was set for the eighth day of June, many forces sent representatives to Hexi.

Unlike other states, the forces surrounding Hexi showed not the slightest reaction: the Wuwei King, who was plotting to attack Junkang Prefecture from Hedong, acted as if nothing had happened; there was also no movement from the River Lord of Tongtian River, nor any news from the Nanjiang Temple.

As for Leiyin Temple to the west, it was scarily calm.

The timeless truth of "befriending the distant and attacking the near" applied; compared to those forces that were far from Hexi, these four were much too close. Even if, in Hou Yuxiao's plans, Tongtian Prefecture and Wuwei King should be on his side, until everything became reality, each of the three powers still had their own reservations about each other, which was normal.

However, for the Hexi Alliance, there was no concern about the outside world's reaction, for after all, it was the family head's wedding. By the end of May, the Prefectural City of the Hexi Hou Clan began mobilizing everyone to prepare for the event.

Hou Yuxiao was incomparable in the eyes of everyone in the Hou Clan, in the entire Prefectural City of Hexi, and even throughout the Hexi Alliance.

The reason was simple: the rise of the Hou Clan had been too rapid.

From an insignificant small family in a county town to now ruling over a prefecture and three counties, and many actually understood that the entire Hexi Alliance was essentially under the Hou Clan's control, which meant that the Hexi and Xingnan prefectures were practically under the Hou Clan's jurisdiction.

All these changes had taken the Hou Clan only six years.

Six years, for many martial artists with profound cultivation, might have passed with just two or three closed-door sessions, but for the common people living in Hexi, the changes in the Hou Clan had been earth-shattering.

From unifying Zhaoyang, marching into Tongling, waging war on Xuzhou, to establishing the Hexi Prefecture, implementing Hexi's new policies, issuing the Martial Registry Command, defeating Leiyin Temple, and founding the Hexi Alliance... each and every significant event that the Hou Clan had accomplished had become fancy talk passed from mouth to mouth among the populace of both prefectures, topics that surely emerged in every storytelling booth, tea house, and restaurant as soon as it got crowded.

If the stories revolved around the Hou Clan, then the Five Tigers of Hou Clan were the protagonists of the Hou Clan, and Hou Yuxiao, the family head, was the protagonist among protagonists; he was a topic Hexi could not avoid.

From rising to fame by ranking on the Righteous Path's Demon Extermination List to shaking the world by ranking on the Demon Path's New Star Ranking, Hou Yuxiao already had tremendous prestige in Hexi by that stage, and to some extent, his and Fifth Brother Hou Yuduan's aura of genius even overshadowed the Hou Clan as a whole.

Right, as of February this year, the Double Dragons of the Hou Family had been removed from the Demon Path's New Star Ranking. In their place, all five Hou siblings had made it onto the Demon Head List, with Hou Yuxiao and Hou Yuduan ranked fifth and ninth, respectively, while Hou Yucheng, Hou Yuling, and Hou Yujie were ranked twenty-first, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth respectively.

The nickname "Five Tigers of Hou Clan" was no longer limited to just Hexi; it had truly shaken the world. Nowadays, any martial artist from a reputable force around the world, upon hearing the name "Five Tigers of Hou Clan," could say they were known far and wide.

Under such an aura, the status of Hou Yuxiao as the family head of the Hou Clan and the eldest of the Five Tigers in everyone's mind was self-evident.

Hou Yuxiao's wedding was not just an affair of the Hou Clan; it was an event of Hexi Prefecture and an even bigger event for the entire Hexi Alliance.

From the end of May to early June, the Hou Clan took less than ten days to transform the entire Prefectural City of Hexi:

The entire Hou Mansion was festooned with decorations, red lanterns decorated all the eaves of the palaces inside and outside, and almost every place that could lay a red carpet was covered, leaving no stone unturned. The Hou Clan's Main Hall was even adorned with gold and silver ornaments, with some precious items that even martial artists would covet, let alone ordinary people, were displayed openly outside.

Starting from the first of June, the Hou Mansion was no longer under curfew, all the lanterns were lit at night, and even without considering the people inside the mansion, anyone standing on any high building within the city and looking towards the Hou Mansion would be greeted by a sight of glittering treasures, and even the air seemed to be laden with the scent of gold and silver riches.

Regal chariots filled the streets, the sound of phoenix flutes resonated, jade cups glittered in the light, and a night of fish and dragon dances ensued—such poetry hardly sufficed to depict the grandeur of the Hou Mansion. The residents of the Prefectural City had free access to specified areas of the Hou Mansion to visit, and from the first night, the mansion was so crowded it was almost bursting at the seams, everyone just wanting to catch a glimpse of treasures they might never see in their lifetimes.

As extravagant as it was inside the mansion, the scene outside was even more exaggerated!

From the Hou Mansion to the Official Road outside the city, an entire red carpet spanned the hundred-mile area, with the roads adorned with silver on both sides, and trees were adorned with ornaments and red ribbons. Considering this covered a full hundred miles of area and involve tens of thousands of trees, even just the red ribbons alone presented significant expense, not to mention the ornaments.