“Are you kidding me!?”
Ye Xiaotian slammed his fist against the table, as he knew what Elder Sang’s words actually meant. “You told him to go out and find the treasures stabilizing the realm?”
“Stop it, that’s ridiculous.” Elder Sang gestured for him to calm down and explained, “I was just telling him to train at the Black Waterfalls.”
“Are you sure you told him nothing else?” Ye Xiaotian frowned, doubting if he could trust the other elder.
“What else could I have told him? If he can get his hands on anything at all, whatever he gets is fated to be his. If he ends up getting nothing, it’ll do him good if he’s able to make a breakthrough,” Elder Sang casually replied.
After all, it’d be impossible for him to cheat and tell the kid how to undo the seals undoing the treasures.
However, he was very sure that the kid would definitely do something completely unexpected as soon as he got to the Black Cliffs.
“So, you up for it?”
Ye Xiaotian said nothing, but Qiao Qianzhi chuckled instead. “Well, if you’re not cheating, old man, I sure don’t see how Xu Xiaoshou could get something that not even Qianqian could get her hands on.”
Elder Sang shrugged. “We’ll see about that.”
Ye Xiaotian immediately wanted to say something in rebuttal, but what Qiao Qianzhi said reminded him of something. Instead of refusing outright, he asked instead, “What if you lose?”
“I’m not going to lose.”
“Hehe.” Ye Xiaotian chuckled coldly, wondering if the old man was about to weasel out of things again.
“Don’t believe me, do you? Very well, if I lose, I’ll owe you one.” Elder Sang then picked up another pork foot.
The other three were stunned hearing that. Ye Xiaotian’s interest was piqued and he asked, “What if Xu Xiaoshou ends up getting nothing?”
“The same thing happens.” Elder Sang bit on the pork feet, and juices exploded in his mouth.
“Alright, I’m in!” Ye Xiaotian slammed his fist against the table. “The two of us shall serve as witnesses. If this guy dares to weasel of the bet, don’t go easy on him.”
Qiao Qianzhi nodded with a grin while Xiao Qixiu wore a sour look on his face instead.
He was different from Ye Xiaotian in that he knew just how capable Xu Xiaoshou was in wrecking things. He wondered what would happen to the Tianxuan Gate if that kid actually ended up taking away the treasures.
Elder Sang took a look at him and said, “We do have other things to stabilize the realm. If worse comes to worst, we’ll just put something a little inferior in their places. Relax. Won’t be much of a problem.”
Xiao Qixiu hadn’t been all that flustered to begin with, but the line “relax, won’t be much of a problem” made him start to panic.
“You said that same thing the last time, and look what happened!” he thought. “The Spiritual Library Division ended up on fire!”
…
Dum, dum, dum!
Hurried knocks on the door interrupted the private chatter between the four of them.
Qiao Qianzhi went up to open the door and found Zhao Xidong anxiously waiting there.
The spirit wheel in Zhao Xidong’s hands immediately caught the attention of all four of them. One of the pearls had already darkened, and another one was in bad shape. It was flickering, struggling to stay lit.
Ye Xiaotian was utterly baffled. He hadn’t expected to lose the bet right after agreeing to it.
“What’s happening?”
Zhao Xidong was about to reply when Qiao Qianzhi pulled him inside the room and shut the door. “Come in first,” he said.
The cramped place got even more cramped with five men inside.
Zhao Xidong gulped and turned his gaze away from the table. “It happened mere moments ago,” he started to elaborate. “Yet another got busted when I was on my way over here, but the pearl has yet to be snuffed out.”
All four of them: “…..”
Seeing that all four of them were speechless, Zhao Xidong became even more anxious, knowing that he might’ve put it the wrong way.
“I didn’t bust anything. The other one just got busted on its own when I was flying here. It happened just over a dozen breaths before the one before.”
All four of them were silent yet again.
The treasures stabilizing the realm of Tianxuan Gate were very far away from each other. There was no way someone could have taken down two seals within the period of just a dozen breaths.
Qiao Qianzhi uttered in surprise, “Two spies, then?”
If only one pearl had been busted, that would’ve been well within the fours’ expectations.
The opening of the Tianxuan Gate had been a setup all along. They wanted to see if the spy would blow his or her cover.
But now it seemed like two people were involved.
Xiao Qixiu hesitated for a bit and then asked, “Could it be that one of them is the spy, and the other Xu Xiaoshou?”
Everyone was stunned, as they found this quite possible.
Zhao Xidong couldn’t help but ask, “What spy? Where are they from?”
He was indeed very, very curious. His boss, Elder Xiao, had told him before that there was possibly a spy among them, but he hadn’t elaborated.
“How is it possible that they know there’s a spy in the spirit palace?” he thought to himself. “And how can they be so calm knowing this?”
Qiao Qianzhi looked at the three of them, then, seeing that none of the others were about to stop him, elaborated, “You remember the masked man who attacked that night?
“If it wasn’t an inside job, and the masked man had instead chosen to bust through the spirit palace’s great array, we would’ve been alerted at once.
“Yet, despite that, he was still exposed. It didn’t take long for him to be discovered by my concealed array just after he got inside the spirit palace.”
Qiao Qianzhi sounded very pleased with himself, yet he still sighed in the end. “It’s too bad that the insider escaped too quickly and was very light on their feet, leaving no traces behind.”
Zhao Xidong immediately realized what was going on and asked, “How do we know for sure that the insider will definitely get inside the Tianxuan Gate?”
“We weren’t sure initially, but now we are.” Qiao Qianzhi looked at the spirit wheel in Zhao Xidong’s hands.
The other three grinned at each other, noting that Qiao Qianzhi hadn’t actually told the truth.
The “White Cave” was about to be opened, and the “Holy Vassal” was out to collect all 21 of the famed swords, which included the “Fourth Sword.”
While that sword wasn’t listed among the 21 famed swords, it was known as one of the “Five Great Divine Instruments of the Continent,” and it was far more renowned than the famed swords.
Furthermore, that sword had the title of the “Eighth Sword Deity’s former sword,” so others would definitely be tempted by its rarity.
It had gotten to the point that it’d even caught Xiao Qixiu’s attention.
The scabbard of such an unparalleled mystical weapon was in the Tianxuan Gate itself, which meant that any who got their hands on the scabbard would find that they’d won half the battle.
Zhao Xidong then pondered this and asked, “Couldn’t the spy be Xu Xiaoshou, then?”
Xiao Qixiu was irritated by the question and slapped the man’s head. It hurt so much that Zhao Xidong almost dropped the wheel.
“Use your brains, d*mn it!
“The spy has definitely been at it for a long time given how well-hidden they are. How long has it been since that kid came to the Outer Yard, eh? We don’t even know if he’s even seen the great array before!”
Zhao Xidong shirked back. Who could be more like a spy than Xu Xiaoshou?
He found it to be very possible given how that kid had been taking things apart and blowing up places, as well as killing people here and there time and again. In his eyes, those actions were tantamount to trying to wreck the spirit palace.
What else could he be if not a spy?
He recalled what had happened to Zhao Shu and how Xu Xiaoshou had made up the excuse that Elder Sang was looking for him and evaded capture.
Despite having told Elder Xiao of the case, his boss had hardly reacted to it at all.
“How about I ask further?” he thought.
But, when he looked at the four elders, he swallowed the words he’d been about to say and eventually shirked back instead of continuing to stand out.
“Forget it,” he thought. “My life is more important. Better not ask.”
Elder Sang found the young man before his eyes to be rather intriguing and asked, “Who do you think might be the spy other than Xu Xiaoshou?”
There was no way Xu Xiaoshou could be the spy. As his disciple, Elder Sang had already looked into the kid’s background countless times. He couldn’t have possibly overlooked anything.
Zhao Xidong mulled over the question, then blurted a name that none of the elders had expected to hear.
“Mo Mo!”
Xiao Qixiu immediately turned glum. He’d just told the young man that the spy had been plotting all this for a long time, which meant the newly-joined Inner Yard disciples could be ruled out. He wondered what was wrong with the young man.
Elder Sang clamped down on Xiao Qixiu’s sleeve with his chopsticks just as Xiao Qixiu was about to scold the young man. Elder Sang then asked, “Why do you think so?”
Xiao Qixiu had indeed jumped the gun due to the young man being one of his own men, yet the other three hadn’t forgotten for a second that the young man was anything but ordinary.
Zhao Xidong had graduated at the top among the 33. There was no way he could have forgotten what Elder Xiao had just told him.
All four elders looked expectantly at Zhao Xidong, hoping that he’d make himself clear, yet he simply puffed out his chest and said, “Man’s intuition!”
All four elders were speechless.
Xiao Qixiu took a deep breath and took the wheel from Zhao Xidong’s hands.
“Huh?” Zhao Xidong was baffled.
Whack!
As soon as the wheel was taken out of his hands, he was immediately smacked to the ground, causing the cramped room to shake quite a bit.