The towering peak pierced straight into the clouds. Halfway up, a thick belt of lush green forest wrapped around the mountain, while the vast Main Peak Plaza was completely hidden within the mist. Precisely because of this, disciples from every direction were now streaking through the sky on their swords.
Fu Yan slipped through the cloud layer. Before she had even descended, she saw a dense, black mass of people below. Besides a large number of inner sect disciples, even many outer sect disciples from the neighboring peak to the left had come.
On the plaza below, two corpses had been laid out in plain view, one male and one female. When Fu Yan saw their faces clearly, her body paused for a brief moment.
As she had guessed, these two were precisely the inner sect disciples of Zilan Sect she had met in the Scarlet-Black Mountain Range that day. They were also the ones who had died by her hand.
She swept a quick glance around but didn’t spot Bai Li anywhere. She probably hadn’t had time to arrive yet. So Fu Yan held back from making any rash moves and casually landed on a towering tree at the edge of the plaza, looking as if she were just another onlooker.
The crowd below had long since broken into a storm of discussion. The group of disciples closest to Fu Yan had been gossiping non-stop from the moment she arrived, but she couldn’t be bothered to listen. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the Zilan Sect elder standing on the plaza.
Fu Yan frowned slightly. She couldn’t see through his cultivation at all, which at least meant he definitely wasn’t at the Aperture Opening stage. With that, she could be sure his cultivation was no weaker than early Confluence stage.
During Foundation Establishment, a cultivator opened their Qi Sea. After reaching the Aperture Opening stage, the next realm above that was the Confluence stage.
“Is that guy really an elder of Zilan Sect? How come I’ve never seen him before? Anyone know who he is?”
“I, I, I… I know. He really is an inner sect elder of Zilan Sect. His name’s Xu Tanzhou. A year ago his cultivation was at early Confluence stage. As for whether he’s broken through to mid stage now, nobody knows.”
“What? Even if he’s at early Confluence, and even if he is an elder of Zilan Sect, he can’t just slander our Senior Sister Bai like this. And he even came alone to ‘seek an explanation’? Does he think our Shuiling Sect doesn’t exist?”
“Look, our inner sect’s Elder Lin and Elder Zhou are here!”
Someone shouted, and all the disciples below immediately looked up. They saw two elders descending steadily to land right in front of Xu Tanzhou.
“Elder Zhou?”
Perched on the tree branch, Fu Yan paused for a moment when she heard that title. If she remembered correctly, there was only one Elder Zhou in the Shuiling Sect’s inner sect elders: Zhou Zhenlie’s second uncle, Zhou Wunan.
Thinking of this, Fu Yan’s gaze unconsciously slid over to Zhou Wunan. He stood tall and straight, looking like a middle-aged man in his thirties or forties, dressed in the Shuiling Sect’s distinctive purple inner sect elder robes. His features did indeed resemble Zhou Zhenlie’s by a point or two.
Looking at it now, these two Confluence-stage elders both had quite the unspeakable karmic entanglement with Fu Yan.
She could only shake her head helplessly. Remembering her current situation, she gave a bitter little smile at herself. All she could do was hope nothing would happen today.
At that moment, on the plaza, Zhou Wunan glanced at the corpses on the ground and was the first to speak.
“Elder Xu, what is the meaning of this?”
Xu Tanzhou let out a cold snort. His tone was openly hostile.
“You’re asking me what I mean? I should be the one asking what your Shuiling Sect means by this. Why have you been inciting your disciples to kill our Zilan Sect’s inner sect disciples?”
“Elder Xu, you can eat whatever you like, but you can’t speak nonsense,” Elder Lin said from the side. “Since when have any of our Shuiling Sect disciples killed your inner sect disciples?”
His words were sharp, but he still left the other side a shred of face.
“I’m talking nonsense?”
The moment his words were questioned, Xu Tanzhou reacted as though someone had jabbed his reverse scale. His aura erupted all at once as he glared coldly at the two elders.
“Your sect’s Bai Li killed our disciples first. What, you dare to do it but don’t dare admit it now?”
As soon as he finished speaking, a white figure descended from the distance. A light breeze swept past, and Bai Li, dressed in a fluttering white robe, landed in the very center of Main Peak Plaza.
“Senior Sister Bai is finally here!”
“Uu, is this really Senior Sister Bai? I didn’t think I’d ever get to see her true appearance in this lifetime. I can die without regrets now!”
“That’s right, that’s right. I’ll probably never make it into the inner sect in this life. I’ve long heard that Senior Sister Bai is the number one beauty in the Northern Region. Looks like the rumors didn’t lie!”
“…”
With Bai Li’s arrival, the outer sect disciples who had just been watching the elders intently were instantly distracted. Their attention was completely drawn away as they whispered to each other in excitement.
Fu Yan, up in the tree, also paused slightly. This was the second time she’d seen Bai Li since entering the sect. She was just as cold and aloof as last time. Even facing Zilan Sect’s Xu Tanzhou, those clear, crystalline eyes of hers held not the slightest trace of panic.
Fu Yan suddenly felt a twinge of guilt. Bai Li had at least saved her life once, and now the murders she herself had committed were being dumped onto Bai Li’s head.
While Fu Yan was still struggling with how to step out of today’s mess—avoiding shifting the blame onto Bai Li, and at the same time not revealing herself—she saw Bai Li in the center of the plaza suddenly walk slowly toward the two corpses.
Bai Li looked down at the bodies. The man’s protective true essence had been pierced through by a single sword strike, killing him with a blow to the heart. The woman’s throat had been slit with one sword. The woman’s corpse didn’t have anything unusual about it, but the man’s was somewhat interesting.
Without thinking too much about it, Bai Li crouched down next to Liu Chuanhan’s body, intending to take a closer look at the wound over his heart.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Up in the air, Xu Tanzhou saw this and assumed Bai Li was trying to destroy the corpses. Without even thinking, he struck out with his palm toward the back of her head.
A blow from a Confluence-stage cultivator was something even a pure yin body like Bai Li absolutely couldn’t withstand. If that palm landed, even if she didn’t die, she would be crippled.
Fu Yan knew that with Zhou Wunan and Elder Lin present, Bai Li would definitely not be allowed to come to harm. But the instant Xu Tanzhou’s hand rose and fell, she almost couldn’t stop herself from rushing over.
It was an almost uncontrollable instinctive reaction. Fu Yan herself didn’t know what a mere early Aperture Opening cultivator like her could do by charging in. Maybe it was because Bai Li had saved her life. That had to be it.
“Cease your insolence!”
Zhou Wunan barked in anger.
But it was Elder Lin who reacted faster. His hand flashed out, meeting Xu Tanzhou’s palm head-on. The two Confluence-stage elders seemed to be evenly matched. After clashing once, they both withdrew.
“What kind of person is this? A Confluence-stage expert actually trying to launch a sneak attack from behind!”
“Seriously. I’m furious. So this is what Zilan Sect elders are like—shameless cowards who only know how to backstab. What a disgrace!”
In an instant, countless disciples turned disdainful gazes toward Xu Tanzhou. Being accused of attempting a sneak attack, Xu Tanzhou nearly blew his beard off in rage.
By now, Bai Li had finally stood back up from below. She rose slowly into the air and stopped between the three elders. First, she turned to Zhou Wunan and Elder Lin and bowed slightly.
“This disciple greets Elder Zhou, Elder Lin.”
“Mm.”
Elder Lin nodded. Bai Li was the strongest disciple of the younger generation in the entire Shuiling Sect. Naturally, they would stand on her side unconditionally. But thinking of the situation today, he could only ask,
“Do you know those disciples from Zilan Sect?”
At his question, Bai Li honestly shook her head.
“This disciple does not know them.”
“Did you hear that? Senior Sister Bai says she doesn’t know those two corpses. Obviously Zilan Sect is deliberately trying to slander her!”
“Exactly, exactly! People from Zilan Sect have never been any good to begin with!”
Hearing Bai Li’s answer, the disciples below immediately spoke up for her.
Xu Tanzhou was a Confluence-stage expert and an elder of Zilan Sect, respected wherever he went. When had he ever suffered this kind of humiliation? If not for the two Confluence-stage elders standing across from him, he might really have lost control and started a fight.
After speaking, Bai Li turned around to face Xu Tanzhou across from her. Her voice was calm and neither servile nor arrogant.
“Since Elder Xu claims I killed them, may I ask what evidence you have?”
“Let me ask you this,” Xu Tanzhou said, looking straight at her. “Did you go to the Scarlet-Black Mountain Range half a month ago?”
“Yes.”
Bai Li nodded.
“My disciple here was at mid Aperture Opening stage. The information I received says that half a month ago, only you went to the Scarlet-Black Mountain Range for training. Disciples from no other sects were present. With your strength, killing someone with a single sword strike would not have been difficult at all.”
Since they were asking him for evidence, Xu Tanzhou could only lay out everything he had.
“Elder Xu, are you here to make a joke?”
Zhou Wunan’s expression darkened as he glared at him.
“With no evidence whatsoever and only your personal speculation, you dare come storming into my Shuiling Sect demanding answers?”
In truth, Xu Tanzhou really had no proof. But since Bai Li just so happened to have been in the Scarlet-Black Mountain Range, he was deliberately making a fuss over it, using this as an excuse to come cause trouble for her at Shuiling Sect.
After all, Bai Li was the main pillar of Shuiling Sect’s younger generation. As long as he could destroy her, Shuiling Sect would no longer have any voice in the Northern Region in the years to come.
That said, given how much Shuiling Sect valued Bai Li, even if she *had* killed Liu Chuanhan and his companion, Shuiling Sect would certainly shield her. Xu Tanzhou hadn’t truly expected to get rid of Bai Li here.
But to stir up such a mess right before the grand sect tournament was nothing but advantageous to Zilan Sect.
“Hmph. And you say that’s not obvious enough?”
Xu Tanzhou gave a cold snort, still clinging to his claim that Bai Li was the killer.
“Since you refuse to admit it, then allow me to conduct a soul search on her. Once that’s done, the truth will naturally be revealed.”
As he spoke, he turned his gaze toward Bai Li.
A soul search was a method of probing a cultivator’s divine sense. The one who performed it could lay bare all of the target’s memories. In other words, no matter what secrets the one being searched held, the other party would know them all.
And that wasn’t even the most terrifying part. Divine sense was the very foundation of a cultivator’s life. Even the slightest injury could turn someone into an idiot. Because of that, no one would ever willingly submit to a soul search.
“Soul search?”
When Elder Lin heard this, a chill surged through his body. He was truly enraged.
Fu Yan, standing on the tree branch, also jolted. She hadn’t expected this Xu Tanzhou to be so vicious as to actually try to soul search Bai Li.
She instantly understood. Who had done the killing no longer mattered. Xu Tanzhou’s goal in coming up the mountain today was blatantly Bai Li herself. Of course—if he could cripple Bai Li, then in the younger generation, no one in Shuiling Sect could compete with Zilan Sect anymore.
Fu Yan knew that Shuiling Sect would never hand Bai Li over. Even so, as she watched that streak of white in the middle of the plaza, she couldn’t help feeling anxious.
Just as the situation on the plaza was deadlocked, Fu Yan suddenly felt a gaze land on her from far away.
She looked up and met Zhou Wunan’s eyes head-on.
Zhou Wunan stared at her quietly, the faint curve at the corner of his mouth neither a smile nor not a smile. The look made Fu Yan’s scalp prickle. In that instant, she suddenly sensed that something was wrong. She tried to turn and leave, only to realize that her body wouldn’t move at all.
Right after that, she heard Zhou Wunan’s voice ring out over the plaza.
“Actually, half a month ago, we had another disciple who was also near the Scarlet-Black Mountain Range at the time.”
It’s over, Fu Yan thought.
That damned old bastard!
