At the moment, Xu Xiaoshou’s Innate Stage cultivation had given him the strongest disguise possible.
The top elders and leaders would not spare any attention toward individuals who were beneath the Master Stage.
For the ones in the higher hierarchies, it was hard to believe that an individual of the Innate Stage was capable of pulling off an explosion of that scale.
In fact, few people would have found something like that to be believable.
However, the Innate Stage for those who resided at the bottom levels of the food chain was a stage that represented a powerful being.
The ones in Zhang Mansion often were the leaders of the servants or given a small leadership role in the mansion.
The small rules and restrictions imposed on them often were not perceived as any form of shackles for them.
An example was the door guard who Xu Xiaoshou was pretending to be.
The door guard was slightly panicked. His face bore injuries from the explosion. Black stains covered most of his features.
Luckily, those stains served as a good coverup for his facial features.
Moreover, with the current state of emergency in the mansion to put out the fire and salvage the scene, there was little attention paid to an unremarkable door guard.
“Quick, to the east courtyard! They’re short on manpower! Help them with the fire.”
Xu Xiaoshou hurriedly gave that order to every servant he ran past. This was the 16th servant he had encountered.
He was unsure where the path would lead. The crowd had slowly reduced itself. Based on the power of the servants he ran into, they were almost past the fourth or fifth stages of Spiritual Cultivation and likely in the eighth or ninth stage.
‘I guess it won’t be smooth sailing ahead!’
Xu Xiaoshou thought to himself.
The number of Spiritual Cultivators within Zhang Mansion was not exceptional. Many of those in the first two levels of Spiritual Cultivation were in the bottom tier. Those who were at Acquired Stage were already considered to be upper-tier individuals in Zhang Mansion.
“East courtyard?”
A voice cautiously questioned him.
The latest man he had given his order to did not seem to be so easy to fool.
The man was a hunky individual who was clad from head to toe in a white ceremonial outfit. He was wearing boxing gloves. He looked like a coach. Eyeing his ability, he could tell the man was in the ninth stage of Spiritual Cultivation.
He was not in a rush. Instead, he stopped to ask, “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.”
Xu Xiaoshou did stop to answer his question. He had not intended to be bothered by him to begin with. Panting between his words, he pointed to the small path ahead and asked, “Great hall?”
The hunk in the white robe furrowed his brows. Xu Xiaoshou thought, ‘He has to know the direction of the great hall, right?’
‘This guy…’
The man hesitated. After looking at the panicked face of the other mand, he did not dare to delay him. “Yeah, why?”
“No!”
Xu Xiaoshou waved his hands and swallowed his saliva, which allowed him to take a breath.
“I mean, is the master in the great hall?”
He straightened up and added, “Are you stupid? These are orders from the elder, so react faster!”
‘The elder?’
The white-robed man was surprised. His expression became more alert. “He is. He is. The head of the house is in the great hall, but the other elders rushed out to search–”
“Wouldn’t I know where the other elders went?”
Xu Xiaoshou cut him off immediately and replied angrily, “I came from the eastern courtyard!”
The man in white robes was silent.
He looked at the soot on Xu Xiaoshou’s body. He wondered if he was one of the first people caught in the explosion. It was no wonder why he was in such a rush.
“Is there an emergency?” he asked carefully.
Xu Xiaoshou was amused by his question amidst his fury. “Orders from the elder to the head of the house… Do you dare not listen to them?”
“…”
The man in white robes was at a loss for words. His face was turning purple as he hurriedly replied, “Of course, I don’t dare.”
Xu Xiaoshou pointed in the direction behind him and called out angrily, “If you don’t dare, then go to the eastern courtyard and help!”
“Do you think those guys that in the early stages can last very long?”
“For someone in the ninth stage, do you think you’re too good? Can you just stay here and waste time?”
“How can you walk around so leisurely while Zhang Mansion is in a state of emergency?”
The series of scoldings left the white-robed man sweating.
He wanted to retaliate, but he sensed the presence of the Innate Stage on the individual and pulled back before rushing off.
“I’ll rush over right now!”
The man left at lightning speed after he finished his sentence.
Xu Xiaoshou watched the man take his leave and heaved a sigh of relief.
‘There are too many people.’
He had met a few who argued with him, but he had managed to pull all of them away from him with no exceptions.
He was Innate Stage, so these people did not dare to retaliate against him.
After the series of questions, he had a rough idea of Zhang Mansion’s layout.
He learned that the great hall was ahead of him, the weaponry was to the north, and the Hidden Scripture Pavilion was south.
‘Zhang Taiying is still in the great hall.’
The thought made Xu Xiaoshou hesitate to take another step forward.
His initial plan was to take everything that was in Zhang Mansion’s great hall and transport it into Yuan Mansion while no one was around.
If there were any precious and rare objects, he wanted to keep them for himself.
For the useless items, he could simply toss them into Chaos Space.
More importantly, if he shifted the great hall away, it would devastate the reputation of the Zhang family.
However, if Zhang Taiying was still around, this would pose great difficulty.
‘Is he still calm after all that happened? Is he not going to look at the ruins in his room?’
‘Never mind.’
With a sigh of resignation, Xu Xiaoshou decided to change his goal.
‘Hidden Scriptures Pavilion?’
‘There are always guards in areas like that!’
Xu Xiaoshou felt slightly afraid of his plan.
Yet, he did not know the other places where they might have kept treasure.
The Hidden Scriptures Pavilion was the most obvious treasure vault. It seemed to him that there was nowhere else to go.
‘No, it’s go big or go home!’
Xu Xiaoshou looked in the direction that was far ahead of him. He set his sights on it and took off.
…
In the Zhang family’s Hidden Scriptures Pavilion…
The Pavilion was a 12-story pagoda.
On the top floor, an elder sat cross-legged as he levitated in the void.
The essence fragments of the spiritual source from heaven and earth were pulled into the elder’s energy center like coils of snakes and dragons.
Zhang Zhongmou was exhaling the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. His spiritual sense had covered the entirety of Zhang Mansion.
“Strange.”
He spoke below his breath and opened his eyes. His eyes were full of suspicion.
The explosion had awoken him from his half-asleep state. He had immediately filled Zhang Mansion with his spiritual senses.
However, the invader’s presence had completely been erased. It was as if he had vanished from humanity.
Although he had immediately dispatched his spiritual senses to the land miles outside of the mansion, he still failed to locate the individual.
Zhang Zhongmou grimly watched the transparent flames that took significant effort for Zhang Duoyu to contain. He put it out with the power laws of the Great Path and fell into deep thought.
The type of flames was slightly familiar to him.
‘Elder Sang of Tiansang Spirit Palace?’
Zhang Zhongmou could recall witnessing flames with such strange and aggressive behavior from one of the deans in Tiansang Spirit Palace’s early years.
These flames were capable of burning retaliating elders from the dozens of counties and cities alive.
However, the Zhang family and Tiansang Spirit Palace were not enemies. Zhang Zhongmou had never fought with Elder Sang.
Therefore, flames of this type were only a rumor. He had never seen them, so he had no real basis to evaluate them on.
‘If it was Elder Sang, why would he attack us Zhang family?’
‘There is no conflict between us at all!’
‘Has someone tried to frame him?’
‘Hm… That’s not possible. How could any ordinary person have flames like this?’
As Zhang Zhongmou continued his deep thoughts, he spread his spiritual senses out more and more. He was at the 10-mile radius now, yet he could not detect anything suspicious or even traces of the invader.
He could not spot any changes in the space either.
This meant that the invader did not come with a form of transport and had completely disappeared beneath the eyes of Zhang Zhongmou, who was a Sovereign.
‘That’s impossible!’
‘There must be something I had missed!’
Zhang Zhongmou wondered if he was overthinking the situation.
He surveyed Zhang Mansion once again. This time, a realization struck him.
If his spiritual senses were unable to detect any presence on the outside, it meant that there was a high possibility that the invader was still insider the mansion.
‘This…’
The realization shocked Zhang Zhongmou.
He could not imagine that anyone would have the gall to think of doing that.
Not only had the individual caused an explosion of this scale, but he was also able to completely conceal his presence and rendered himself unfindable. He wondered who had the power to be capable of doing that.
