Chapter 41 I Know Nothing at All About the Ji Family

Yet Ji Ling still remained silent.

Nangong Lingyue’s expression changed abruptly. She looked at Ji Yun, who stood with his hands behind his back high up in the sky, and felt a sudden wave of bewilderment.

Ji Ling was the actual contractor of Yinglong. Although others could summon Yinglong once their affinity with the divine beast reached a certain threshold, as Ji Ling had stated, he was able to see everyone else's exact affinity level with Yinglong.

Could it be that Ji Yun’s affinity with Yinglong had not yet reached fifty percent?

If that were the case, why would her grandfather dare to let Ji Yun go into battle?

This was a divine war concerning the national fortune and the very dignity of the entire Dragon Country.

If Ji Yun's actual affinity with Yinglong was insufficient, he was nothing more than an ordinary Spirit-grade divine contractor.

In terms of divine contract rank alone, Omiki Takayoshi had already reached the Sovereign grade—a full three major tiers higher than Ji Yun.

Did the entire Dragon Country truly have only one divine contractor left in Ji Yun?

When driven to a corner with no retreat in sight, they could easily have sought out a divine contractor with a genuinely high divine contract rank to fight this divine war.

If Ji Yun had not met the required affinity standard with Yinglong, wasn't he marching to certain defeat by stepping up there?

Nangong Lingyue cast an anxious gaze toward Ji Ling.

Taking a deep breath, Ji Ling looked at Nangong Lingyue and said, "What I see here is that Ji Yun has not even the slightest affinity with Yinglong—not a single shred."

"Even if he works himself to death, he won't be able to summon Yinglong. Without Yinglong, I simply cannot comprehend who gave him the courage to step onto the arena of divine war."

"Isn't he purely going up there to make a fool of himself?"

"Have the leaders of the Divine Bureau grown senile?"

Hearing Ji Ling curse her grandfather as senile, Nangong Lingyue instinctively wanted to retort, but the words rose to the tip of her tongue and were forcefully swallowed back.

After all, even she, his own granddaughter, thought the exact same thing.

"So... Major General Ji is bound to lose?" General Xu's voice suddenly came from behind them.

The two of them were startled and hastily stood up.

"General Xu!"

General Xu waved a hand, looked at Ji Ling, and said, "It seems this Ji Yun is indeed all show and no substance..."

"Not necessarily," Ji Ling chuckled.

General Xu now had a rough idea of Ji Ling's situation. Although the two had not talked in great depth last time and Ji Ling had not explicitly admitted anything substantive, General Xu roughly understood Ji Ling's background, even if the details regarding the two brothers remained unclear to him.

However, the camaraderie forged from fighting together across two combat zones made General Xu instinctively choose to trust Ji Ling rather than Ji Yun.

All of Ji Yun's military exploits, to put it bluntly, had merely been reported by the Ji family; no one had actually witnessed the events firsthand. Furthermore, most of the elders were well aware that Ji Yun's smooth promotion to major general was, to a greater or lesser extent, due to the higher-ups giving face to the veteran General Ji Tianxing.

This made General Xu's impression of Ji Yun even worse.

Coupled with the fact that he had spent quite a while eavesdropping behind Ji Ling and Nangong Lingyue, he had naturally arrived at this conclusion.

Ji Ling immediately clarified, "I only saw that Ji Yun has no affinity with Yinglong whatsoever and cannot summon him, which is why I am perplexed. Without the help of an ancestral deity, how does Ji Yun, a mere Spirit-grade divine contractor, intend to defeat Omiki Takayoshi, who is at the Sovereign grade?"

"Perhaps he possesses some special secret technique, though, who can say."

"A special secret technique?" General Xu frowned slightly and muttered in a low voice, "Your Ji family belongs to the ancient imperial lineage, one of the eight great ancient surnames. Families like yours do possess certain special secret techniques, though outsiders shouldn't know about them except for those within the clan."

"So, your Ji family actually has a secret technique capable of cross-tier combat?"

"This..." Ji Ling gave a faint, awkward chuckle and said, "I have no idea. I grew up in an orphanage, went to the southwest on the third day after returning to the Ji family, and came straight here on the fourth day after returning from the southwest."

"The total time I've spent in the Ji family is less than a week. I don't understand the Ji family... at all."

Upon hearing Ji Ling's words, General Xu let out a cold snort and said, "What on earth is Ji Tianxing playing at? He didn't bother to look for his own eldest son who went missing for so many years, and now that he's found him, he doesn't cherish him, constantly throwing him into military camps instead. Could it be that he's deliberately tempering you, wanting you to earn your military exploits on your own?"

"That must be it. After all, wasn't Ji Yun also sent to the military camp before he earned those military merits and was promoted to the rank of major general?"

Ji Ling sneered inwardly.

Others might not know, but he knew all too well.

Ji Tianxing had brought him back for one sole purpose: to make him serve in the military in Ji Yun's stead.

Initially, Ji Tianxing had no intention of stripping Ji Ling of his divine space and military exploits to give to Ji Yun.

After all, at that time, Ji Ling had not yet awakened a divine space or any deities, let alone earned any military merits.

Moreover, he refused to believe that a child who grew up in an orphanage and had never set foot in a military compound would possess the capability to win military honors on the battlefield.

Ji Tianxing's objective at the very beginning had been very pure.

He purely wanted Ji Ling to die.

Because during nationwide conscription, new recruits with no battlefield experience underwent only a few months of intensive training—far from enough to guarantee a hundred percent survival on the battlefield.

Ji Tianxing did not want Ji Yun to die, which was why he remembered he still had a missing eldest son, Ji Ling.

He had searched far and wide to find Ji Ling simply to use him as a substitute for Ji Yun on the battlefield, sending him to die in Ji Yun's place.

Yet, Ji Tianxing never anticipated that Ji Ling would directly awaken a divine space and even contract two deities in succession, each one higher in grade than the last. Relying on these, Ji Ling firmly established himself on the battlefield, not only returning alive but also coming home in glory, laden with military exploits.

The former Ji Ling had naive hopes that these achievements would make his "father" cherish him.

Little did he expect that what awaited him was a nightmare.

On the very day he returned home, Ji Tianxing drugged his food and knocked him unconscious.

When Ji Ling woke up, he was already lying on an operating table; his Heavenly-grade divine space had been surgically transplanted into Ji Yun's body.

Following that, all the military exploits he had won with his life on the battlefield were also plundered and given to Ji Yun. Relying on these honors, Ji Yun—who had never set foot in a military camp for a single day—vaulted to become the youngest major general in the history of the Dragon Country.

As for Ji Ling, whose divine space had been brutally excised alive, on the fourth day after the extraction, before his wounds had even healed, he was tossed onto a plane bound for the Eastern Theater.

On his chest, that long incision left by the forcible excavation of his divine space had mostly healed, leaving only a thick, unsightly scar. Yet to this day, in the dead of the lonely night, that scar would still ache faintly.