"A nameplate that tracked our whereabouts?" I asked in surprise.
"Exactly. To keep us from going there and never returning, the elders of our Third and Fourth branches prepared many protective treasures for us. Among them was this nameplate, which could track our movements... Looking at things now, this nameplate was truly unnecessary. If we had simply died, everything would have ended there. But instead, we dragged the Sword Deity's entire family into it... It was truly a case of gaining nothing and losing everything. Though saying this now sounds rather like making excuses. A mistake was a mistake. Perhaps this was simply the fate of Senior Sword Deity and me..." Li Huarong sighed bitterly.
"Wasn't Li the Sword Deity able to protect his family?" I asked hurriedly. In truth, it was possible that the Third Branch had engineered the whole thing, but so much time had passed that there was no evidence left. Besides, judging from Li Huarong's admiration for the Sword Deity, it probably hadn't been her doing.
"I don't know. By then, I had already returned by another route, and Li Tianjian followed after me. He must have entered the Veiled Cloud Sea. That nameplate could only display the residual traces of someone's aura; it couldn't tell us where the person actually was. So I only learned about these things later, after investigating them. By then, Li the Sword Deity had already become as ruthless as a demon god. I don't know what kind of suffering had driven him to that point, but he chased Li Tianjian from the Borderlands all the way to Sky Sword Mountain." Li Huarong raised her head and stared at the Sky Sword sculpture overhead, sinking into thought.
"Sky Sword Mountain was shattered into countless pieces during that battle, wasn't it? The