"Don't put on such a grave-as-if-facing-a-mighty-enemy expression."
Seeing Jiang Bei's solemn look, Pei Chenyuan sneered. "If I truly wanted your life, you would have died eight hundred times over already. I wouldn't even have needed to do it myself."
Jiang Bei's gaze sharpened. "What... do you mean?"
Pei Chenyuan's smile widened. "Outside the ruins, when those three Saint Immortals besieged you and you were about to fall to that old Daoist's poisonous hand, did you really think that streak of primordial light that saved you had fallen from the heavens?"
Jiang Bei's pupils contracted sharply. "That primordial light... was you?!"
His heart shook violently. He had never expected that the one who had saved him would be Pei Chenyuan!
"That's right!"
Pei Chenyuan admitted it frankly. "It was This Seat. I did not show myself then because I was searching the depths of the ruins for an old item. Unfortunately... it seemed someone had gotten there first."
A trace of regret surfaced in his tone, but then he changed the subject. "Back to the matter at hand. If I truly wanted to kill you, why would I have saved you? So relax. This Seat came to make a deal with you."
"A deal? What deal?"
Jiang Bei did not lower his guard as he asked in a deep voice.
"Beneath Dragon Elephant Mountain lies a Dragon Elephant Grotto-Heaven."
Pei Chenyuan said, "Inside is a body I left behind before my fall, along with some useful heavenly treasures. This Seat must retrieve that body to truly regain my former strength! But the entrance to that grotto-heaven is exceptionally sturdy. It was built by an old friend of mine back then and contains special mechanisms; several specific 'keys' must be gathered before it can be opened. Searching alone would be like fishing