A gentle breeze blew, stirring ripples across the calm sea. Suddenly, a figure appeared soundlessly overhead, looking down and sweeping his gaze across the surroundings.
"Quite perceptive. You even deliberately shifted yourself so far away. It seems you gained quite a lot."
Guan Hongxuan stood with his hands behind his back. A luminous pearl floated before him, its faint ripples spreading continuously outward with its rise and fall.
The Haiyue Grotto-heaven trial was a grand event, a grand event for Aperture Refining Realm martial artists. The treasures obtained within the grotto-heaven were things that most people would rarely encounter in their lifetimes.
Some of them were even of considerable use to those in the Joint Aperture Realm.
Where there was profit, there would be competition. Where there was competition, there would naturally be conflict. Thus, every powerful sect sent people to protect their own disciples.
Naturally, no one would dare set their sights on trial participants with powerful backers. But not every Haiyue Grotto-heaven trial participant had a deep background.
And those people became targets eyed by wolves and tigers.
Ordinary items held by Aperture Refining Realm martial artists were beneath the notice of those in the Joint Aperture Realm, who could not even be bothered to look at them. But the treasures within the Haiyue Grotto-heaven were different.
Compared to painstakingly fighting for resources elsewhere, taking them from Aperture Refining Realm martial artists was naturally far easier.
The Haiyue Grotto-heaven granted trial participants the right to shift locations, and over the years, many had learned of this. Thus, some Joint Aperture Realm experts lay in wait within a hundred li of the Haiyue Grotto-heaven.
One person guarded one area. Whoever they encountered belonged to them. This had nearly become an unspoken rule, the rule of the hunt.
Of course,