Finally unable to endure it any longer, he roughly shoved Daven Hale to the ground.
"Aiyo!" Daven cried out in pain.
"Little Knox, you... what are you doing?"
"Old thing, you still dare to act like a senior in front of me?" Knox's eyes practically spewed fire as he roared in uncontrollable rage.
"You old bastard, how did you brag on the way here?"
"You said that Alex was always extremely respectful to you, that he would kowtow the moment he saw you."
"I actually thought you had that much face, but you were just shamelessly boasting!"
"With your pathetic face, even if you knelt down to Alex, he might not even accept your kowtow!"
Knox grabbed Daven by the collar and viciously slapped him across the face.
"It's one thing for you to blow hot air, but you caused this young master to suffer humiliation and anger alongside you!"
"You caused Princess Orchid to sacrifice her Heavenly Heart Unregretful Orchid just to save your cheap life!"
"Tell me, what use is there for an old thing like you?!"
The more Knox spoke, the angrier he got.
He raised his hand to deliver another vicious slap.
Before his palm could touch Daven Hale's face, it was caught tightly by a jade-like hand with the powerful grip of an iron vice.
Knox shivered slightly and turned his head.
Selene was glaring at him, her gaze as coldly severe as thousand-year-old ice.
"Knox, what are you doing?"
"I... I'm venting your anger for you." Knox forced a smile, "Princess Orchid, am I wrong?"
"If this old guy hadn't been boasting, we never would have brought him to the Hale family."
"Now, because of him, my reputation swept the floor, and you lost your most important treasure."
"Doesn't this old guy deserve to be punished?"
"He deserves punishment." Selene narrowed her eyes, her voice cold.
"But even if he deserves punishment, it should be Her Majesty the Empress who punishes him."
"It is not the place of a junior like you to slap him so vulgarly and rudely."
Selene casually waved her hand, snatching Daven away from Knox's grip.
Knox's expression turned incredibly ugly, he gritted his teeth, "Princess Orchid, he has already been expelled from the Hale family. Why are you still protecting him?"
"He is the one who made you lose the Heavenly Heart Unregretful Orchid, causing your cultivation to drop by several times over!"
Selene fell silent for a moment before saying indifferently, "Knox, let me ask you a question."
"Compared to the life of the Old Duke of Hale, which is more important: the Heavenly Heart Unregretful Orchid, or his life?"
"Do you even need to ask? Of course, the Heavenly Heart Unregretful Orchid is..."
Driven by anger and desperation, Knox subconsciously blurted out his true thoughts.
The moment the words left his mouth, his expression changed drastically.
He snapped his mouth shut.
It was already too late.
"Good, very good."
A look of profound bitterness and sorrow filled Selene's beautiful eyes.
She let out a tragic, self-deprecating laugh and shook her head, as if lamenting her own blindness in ever thinking highly of him.
Without a second of hesitation, she supported Daven Hale and turned to leave.
"Princess Orchid, wait for me!"
Panic seized Knox's heart as he tried to chase after her and explain.
But with a casual wave of her hand, Selene summoned a cluster of orchid-shaped clouds.
Taking Daven with her, she rode the clouds and mist into the sky and departed instantly, leaving him entirely alone, abandoned exactly where he stood.
The situation was a carbon copy of when Lily had abandoned him just prior.
"Alex..."
Knox ground his teeth so hard they nearly cracked, his entire body shivering violently.
After thinking it over, he inevitably pinned this entire disaster right back onto Alex's head.
"If you wanted to purge your Hale family, that has nothing to do with me."
"But you didn't strike early, and you didn't strike late. You specifically chose to strike right when this young master arrived!"
"You clearly did it on purpose! You deliberately set a trap to sow discord between Selene and me!"
"Sooner or later, the day will come when I tear off your disguise."
"I will expose your hideous, wicked true face to the entire world and ensure you die without a burial place!"
…
After Selene left, the surrounding crowd erupted into fervent discussion.
Some said that as a Duke of the Heavenly Flame Dynasty, Daven Hale held immense power and status. Expelling him from the Hale family was, in a sense, a massive loss for the clan.
Others noted that the Heavenly Flame Dynasty had repeatedly sent people to the Hale family to back Knox up, only to bring humiliation upon themselves.
It was highly likely that the Heavenly Flame Empress would fly into a rage, directly mobilizing her experts to forcefully annihilate the Hale family.
Alex instructed the family disciples not to spread rumors, not to believe rumors, and to simply continue cultivating diligently.
Even if the Heavenly Flame Dynasty truly declared war on the Hale family, as the Saint Lord, he would absolutely stand on the front lines and lead the resistance to the bitter end.
After dismissing the crowd, Alex took the Heavenly Heart Unregretful Orchid and headed straight toward the Alchemist Pavilion in the northern sector of the estate.
As he walked, he silently calculated his plans.
Although he had figured out the investment function and now had a stable source of Providence Points, the accumulation speed was still too slow.
This was because there was a hard cap on the number of Providence Points he could invest in a single person, determined by that person's cultivation realm.
Body Tempering Realm: Maximum investment of 1,000 points.
Qi Gathering Realm: Maximum investment of 1,500 points.
Foundation Establishment Realm: Maximum investment of 2,000 points.
And so on.
This setting was clearly the system's way of preventing malicious farming, the system had smartly plugged that loophole.
Currently, Alex had already invested in the vast majority of the talented juniors in the clan.
Some of them, like Julian, had already provided feedback returns.
Others were still accumulating their strength and would definitely return his initial investment sooner or later.
But even if every single investment target broke through one or two major realms, at most he would only rake in about seventy to eighty thousand Providence Points.
Compared to the astronomical points required to exchange for the remaining chapters of the Six Paths Wheel of Destruction Art, it was still far too little.
After much deliberation, Alex set his sights on the Four Great Elders.