In the blink of an eye, six months passed.
During those six months, the stone door of the mountain-belly cave dwelling where Qin Fengming resided had never once been opened. Qin Fengming had not shown himself at the Phantom Star Island Exchange Gathering, which was held once every hundred years.
The many cultivators who had come especially for Qin Fengming after hearing the news, intending to admire the appearance of the man who had defeated a cultivator on the Earth Ranking, all arrived full of excitement and left crestfallen.
Qin Fengming's disappearance also attracted quite a bit of attention.
Even more unfavorable rumors about him quickly spread throughout the Marketplace. In the end, those rumors converged into a single conclusion: the person surnamed Qin who had defeated that Earth Ranking cultivator might have suffered severe injuries in the battle. It was even entirely possible that he had perished inside his cave dwelling.
These rumors circulated widely only among low-level cultivators. None of the cultivators above the Nascent Soul stage believed them.
Anyone who possessed a Nascent Soul knew that as long as the Nascent Soul within their body remained unharmed, no matter how severely the physical body was injured, its own vital essence could repair the wounds and restore it to its original state. Even if the physical body were completely destroyed, they could still seize another person's body and survive.
Within the enormous Marketplace, several groups of cultivators were also closely watching Qin Fengming, some openly and some covertly.
The most anxious among them was Xie Hua, the steward responsible for the Marketplace on behalf of the Soul Sea Sect. For nearly the entire past six months, he had remained in the inn where Qin Fengming was staying.
He hoped to be the first person to meet Qin Fengming