Several hundred li west of Heavenly Wave Lake, atop a certain hill, a white-haired old man in blue clothes sighed inwardly. "Ah, it seems they failed as well!"
The moment his words fell, a soft, sinister voice suddenly came from the shadows below the hill. "That one keeps a pure heart and few desires, and dislikes contact with outsiders. Isn't failure only normal? If success came that easily, wouldn't all the painstaking schemes you and I have laid for decades become a joke?"
"You make it sound simple. If we cannot lure that one out of the mountain, how are you and I supposed to explain ourselves to Lord Daozi?" The white-haired old man's brows knitted tightly, and he could not help but sneer.
"My lord is wise, brilliant, and mighty. How could he blame you and me? Back then, sending us to monitor that one was nothing more than placing an idle, cold chess piece. You've lived to such a great age, yet you still can't see through even this much. Tsk, tsk. A brain is a good thing—you should use it!"
"Si She, you dare mock your daddy? You're courting death!" The white-haired old man was consumed with rage. Vast sheets of red light instantly erupted from his body, and a Red-Eyed White Tiger appeared out of thin air, pouncing into that patch of shadow like lightning.
Roar, roar!
In the next instant, an enormous pitch-black flood dragon rose from the shadows and began slaughtering it out with the white tiger's dharma idol. In the blink of an eye, everything within several dozen li was left in ruins, and the hill soon collapsed by more than half.
All at once, a gaunt middle-aged man with a gloomy face and disheveled hair leapt out from the pile of rubble