Struggling to control his breathing, the young man in the blue daoist robe grimly said, “Xu Qing, this place is a mobile headquarters of the Lunisolar Dao Palace. And that means you’re on our home turf! What business do you have here?”
The truth was that ever since the destruction wreaked upon Night Dove the previous night, plus Xu Qing’s slaying of the black-robed man with a heavenly saber, and the way he crushed the disciple from the Soaring Cloud Sword Sect, this young man had started feeling very nervous. He knew full well that he was the only person left who had done business with Night Dove. In his anxiety, he had asked some fellow daoists from Spiritgloam Valley and the Heavenmirror Treasure Sect to accompany him. Just in case.
Seeing Xu Qing show up, and also call him out by name, left Zhou Qifan feeling very downcast.
Xu Qing had read Zhou Qifan’s file before leaving Violent Crimes and knew that he liked to keep a low profile. In fact, other than issuing a single challenge to the Fourth Peak, he hadn’t done much. After hearing his identity confirmed, Xu Qing nodded.
“On the authority of the sect, I’m here to arrest Zhou Qifan for consorting with Night Dove.” As the words left his mouth, Xu Qing took a step forward with blinding speed and reached out to grab Zhou Qifan.
Zhou Qifan’s eyes glittered coldly as a rumbling sound echoed out, and the red clouds on his robe erupted, turning into numerous red threads. Flying out, they made a spell formation that viciously crushed down toward Xu Qing. At the same time, Zhou Qifan backed up.
“Dharma Protector Zhang. Fellow Daoists! Please help!”
As Zhou Qifan yelled those things, Xu Qing’s right hand made contact with the spell formation of red clouds. A boom rang out as the golden crow appeared behind him and smashed into the spell formation. It collapsed, and the golden crow gobbled up the red clouds.
The dharma protector behind him hesitated briefly, then sighed and started walking forward. But then Xu Qing waved his hand, and the sect’s spell formation swept toward the man. He didn’t resist at all, and thus, the formation shoved him a good distance away. He didn’t want to end up like the dharma protector from the House of Grue Hunters. What was happening was no surprise to him. He knew that Seven Blood Eyes was out arresting people, and obviously, fighting back wouldn’t do any good.
Although being driven away would involve a loss of face on his part, he knew that Zhou Qifan would only be arrested, not hurt. There just wasn’t any need to risk his life to prevent that from happening. In reality, he was actually happy to let the spell formation push him away.
Meanwhile, the two chosen from Spiritgloam Valley and the Heavenmirror Treasure Sect took one look at Xu Qing and backed away. None of them offered Zhou Qifan a bit of help. The reality was that they hadn’t come here with the intention of backing him up. The Seven Sect Coalition was an alliance, not a unified sect. They knew why Xu Qing was here, and also knew that interfering wouldn’t change the end result. So why do something to get on Xu Qing’s bad side?
They had responded to Zhou Qifan’s invitation simply to give him face. They had never had any intention of putting their lives on the line. Xu Qing was a rising star right now. Besides, conflicts between sects didn’t necessarily affect personal relationships. If they had a chance to sow some good will with Xu Qing, it made sense to take it. As they backed up, they clasped hands politely to Xu Qing, making it obvious that they weren’t taking Zhou Qifan’s side.
Seeing all this, Zhou Qifan’s face fell, but he didn’t say anything. None of this was much of a surprise to him. Truth be told, if the two people he’d invited did jump in to help him, he would have been happy. But even if they didn’t, it still aligned with his overall goal. After all, there would now be witnesses to spread word of his arrest.
That way, once he was imprisoned, he wouldn’t have to worry that his life was in danger. His sect would obviously lose face, and that would anger the leadership and hopefully prompt them to interfere sooner.
Everyone present had their own goals and strategies at work.
Xu Qing took a second step forward, his golden crow coalescing behind him. As Zhou Qifan glared at him, Xu Qing lifted his right hand and prepared to deliver a crushing blow.
“I’ll go with you!” Zhou Qifan said loudly. He figured things had gone far enough. He didn’t want to get beaten into the ground and then dragged away like a dead dog. That would have been far, far too embarrassing. At the same time, he couldn’t simply give up instantly.
Xu Qing’s eyebrows shot up.
Seeing that, Zhou Qifan’s spirits lifted a bit. Keeping the stubborn angry look on his face, he took a deep breath and quickly said, “I did buy some living treasures, Xu Qing. But not for myself. I don’t do that type of thing. I purchased them for someone else in my sect. In fact, I already made arrangements for the living treasures to be integrated back into society. Furthermore, I created a name list to make things easy for you. Considering the hour, I think the delivery should be happening right now.”
An odd expression could be seen on Xu Qing’s face as his identity medallion vibrated. Scanning it, he saw a new message from the Violent Crimes Division.
“Director, someone representing Zhou Qifan from the Lunisolar Dao Palace arrived with a name list of living treasure purchasers, as well as a commendation medal to be awarded to the Violent Crimes Division for taking care of Night Dove. In the commendation medal are 2,000,000 spirit stones, as well as a medicinal pill that we were told is an aperture-opening pill.”
Zhou Qifan sighed in relief as he watched Xu Qing checking his message. However, he made sure to look as angry as possible.
Xu Qing looked up at Zhou Qifan for a long moment, then lowered the hand he had raised moments before.
“Let’s go,” he said, then turned and walked away.
Snorting coldly, Zhou Qifan lifted his chin, looked around at the other disciples present, then hurried after Xu Qing.
Eventually, they reached the cell block in the Violent Crimes Division. When Zhou Qifan saw Sima Ling in one of the jail cells, gasping for breath, he breathed a sigh of relief inside.
It’s a good thing I reacted quickly. Otherwise, things would have turned ugly for me.
Then he noticed Huang Yikun in another cell, as well as Master Shengyun’s Junior Brother. That caused his heart to pound. After all, though he had assumed Huang Yikun’s disappearance had something to do with Xu Qing, the miserable state he was in made Zhou Qifan even more convinced that he had done the right thing. Finally, he noticed that he himself was being restrained with eighteen dharma shackles, whereas Sima Ling and Huang Yikun both had twenty.
It seems this Xu Qing is actually pretty reasonable.
Zhou Qifan was feeling very pleased at how he had managed to deescalate the situation. He had done everything he could, both above board and otherwise, and in the end, he did manage to save some face as a result. Unlike Sima Ling, he had come of his own accord. He had cooperated. As a result, he didn’t lose much personal face. His sect certainly lost face, but that was different.
What was more, his accommodations actually weren’t very bad. It wasn’t lost on him that Sima Ling and Huang Yikun were staring begrudgingly at the table, chair, and rug he had in his cell. He actually felt a bit smug.
Meanwhile, Zhou Qifan’s arrest ensured that absolutely no challenges were being issued anywhere in the sect. At the same time, Seven Blood Eyes’ celebration at having won the war continued.
As for Xu Qing, now that he had thoroughly taken care of Night Dove, he was preparing to take a trip outside the sect.
His destination? Forbidden by the Phoenix.
He had purchased just about every type of poisonous plant and poisonous medicine available in the sect, yet had still reached a bottleneck in the evolution of his beetles. After the sixteenth generation, they weren’t changing. And that affected his plan with the taboo poison pill. His progress was at a standstill.
Based on his analysis, it was because the poisonous plants he had access to were just too weak. He needed more dangerous poisons for his beetles to absorb. That was the key to breaking through that bottleneck.
And the most suitable place in the area to look for poisonous plants and medicines was Forbidden by the Phoenix.
Besides, he remembered the Captain mentioning there being a Supreme Vastness daoist temple somewhere in there, so he planned to go check it out. Having settled on a plan, he spent a few days doing research into Forbidden by the Phoenix. Considering how close it was to the sect, and how the First Peak used it as a training ground, it was obvious that the First Peak knew more about it than anyone else. As a result, there was a lot of information to be had.
That said, Xu Qing didn’t trust the people from the First Peak, and felt it was better to buy multiple sets of information, then compare them to each other. What was more, he could tap into sect files and also reports from the Intelligence Division.
After getting about a hundred different sets of information, he felt that he had a good overview.
He had already identified several locations where poisons were common, as well as some places where poisonous items could be purchased from grues.
Xu Qing went over the information a few times to make sure he understood everything. Then he started getting together all of the items he would need for his trip. In some cases, he purchased things secretly. Also, he went to the Night Dove prisoners he had locked up and extracted some heart-blood from all of them. Considering that there were several thousand prisoners, that blood ended up filling eleven bottles, which he then put into his bag of holding.
Based on what he had read, there were gruish areas in Forbidden by the Phoenix where heart-blood was used like currency.
As Xu Qing made his various preparations, visitors continued to show up in Seven Blood Eyes.
People from different sects came and went, ensuring that the sect was a very bustling place. In fact, a particularly powerful group of people arrived that instantly became a subject of discussion among the disciples. It was one of the big groups from the Emperor-Receiving Prefecture in the Revered Ancient mainland. It was… the Daoist Rite of Departure!
South Phoenix had the Church of Departure, but in reality they were actually just a branch of the Daoist Rite of Departure from the Emperor-Receiving Prefecture. Of course, the arrival of people from the daoist rite was a very important thing for the Church of Departure.
The group from the Daoist Rite of Departure consisted of five people.
Xu Qing didn’t personally go see them, but after looking through the file he saw that these five were all deacons in the Daoist Rite of Departure, which meant that they were roughly like the echelon highnesses.
What was more, when examining the images of the five deacons, his hands suddenly trembled. Then, a strange look of reminiscence appeared on his face.
.
Her older brother?
One of the five deacons from the Daoist Rite of Departure was a person Xu Qing had seen in the scavenger basecamp. It was none other than the older brother of that little girl with the scarred face. [1]
I wonder how she’s doing nowadays.
He remembered the little girl, her face smudged and dirty, but always smiling in the wind and snow. In fact, he remembered the snowflakes drifting about when she handed him a piece of candy.
“Big Bro Kid, whenever I’m sad, my momma would always give me some candy. I just had to eat it, and I’d feel better. This is the last piece of candy and… I want you to have it. Feel better, Big Bro Kid!”
Xu Qing sat there silently thinking about the last thing Grandmaster Bai ever said to him.
“As long as we don’t die, we’ll meet again.”
A few more days passed during which he made a few more preparations for Forbidden by the Phoenix. Then, late at night, Xu Qing left Harbor 176, taking the path past the First Peak toward Forbidden by the Phoenix! 𝘦𝘯.𝘰𝘳𝘨
***
As Xu Qing made his way out of the sect, the moon shone down on a pavilion atop the Seventh Peak. There, a wrinkled old man wearing a black robe, with strange light flowing in his eyes, sat across from Master Seventh. The two of them were playing Go.
The old man was actually the patriarch of Seven Blood Eyes, Sir Bloodsmelter. That glittering light in his eyes was actually evidence of his immensely high cultivation level. He was in the first step of the Void Returning level, which was called Space-Shattering 1,000 Daos.
Each stream of light flowing in his eyes was a great dao.
There was someone else in the pavilion other than the two men playing Go. The third was a middle-aged woman dressed in palace attire. She seemed unusually elegant, but her face was expressionless as she served tea to the men. If Xu Qing was here, he would recognize that woman. She was Ding Xue’s aunt. [2]
Sir Bloodsmelter lifted his cup and took a sip of tea, all while looking at Master Seventh, who was staring thoughtfully at the board, trying to decide what to do next. Sir Bloodsmelter smiled.
“Little Seventh, if we think of the situation with the Seven Sect Coalition like a game of Go, then what’s their next move? They made a big fuss that everyone could see. Their aggression toward us couldn’t be more obvious. But what’s their real goal?”
Plastering a confused look onto his face, Master Seventh replied, “I can tell you’re testing me, Patriarch. Unfortunately, your humble son-in-law is a bit of a dunce. So I’m not sure how to answer.”
Sir Bloodsmelter smiled and shook his head. “Always the deceptive one, aren’t you?”
Master Seventh also smiled. Apparently, he’d figured out the best move, as he picked up a game piece and put it on the board.
“On the bottom half of the board,” Master Seventh said softly, “I could take these seven pieces, but it wouldn’t do much overall. But on the top half of the board, taking this one single piece would win me control of this entire area. It’s similar to how the Seven Sect Coalition is making such a fuss in the south. The truth is that their real goal is in the north. For a long time now, the Seven Sect Coalition has been coveting the Everlasting Immortal Profundity River. If it weren’t for the Supreme Arbiter Immortal Society keeping the seven sects in check and thwarting their every move, things wouldn’t have reached this point. Everything is about to come to fruition. Pissing off Supreme Arbiter is going to make things much easier.”
1. The scar-faced girl and her brother were previously “on-screen” in👈
2. Ding Xue’s aunt last appeared in👈