Flower Adornment, Hidden Blade

To keep his mother alive, Tan Chengyu swore never to pick up a blade again. She is his birth mother and works as a servant in the Tan household, and Liu Ruoshuang, his father's wife, has spent years driving her and beating her. Chengyu is the illegitimate son of the family. He holds to the oath by performing opera, with flowers pinned in his hair and powder and rouge on his face, and the household calls him a disgrace who is good for nothing. He says nothing back to any of it. Ye Xiao returns to the martial world and starts killing his way through the sects. Tan Chengze, the legitimate son the family has put its hopes on, goes out to meet him and is carried home badly hurt. The head of the martial alliance then makes a promise in front of everyone: whoever kills Ye Xiao will have his own mother named Holy Mother of the martial world, with every sect bowing to her. Chengyu takes the peony out of his hair and picks up the Azure Dragon blade he put away twenty years ago. He takes Ye Xiao down in one stroke. When he comes home with rank and standing behind him, his father does not know what to make of him, and Liu Ruoshuang has a trap already laid.