Less than half a quarter-hour after Ye Zhen and the Battle Soul Blood Banner vanished from the spot, a squad of martial artists radiating yin energy, shadowlike in appearance, swiftly swept along the surface of the underground river to the place where the fierce battle had just taken place.
"Demonic aura—I smell the scent of demonic aura..." A strange-looking man with an enormously large nose and a faint demonic aura about him kept twitching his nostrils.
"Demonic aura?"
Those two words made the scout leader shudder violently. Then he lashed the faintly demonic man with his whip. "Sniff properly, damn it! Demonic aura appearing on Dragon Roaming Plain—do you know what that means?"
The faintly demonic man sniffed wildly again before reporting solemnly, "Sir, at least four kinds of auras appeared here earlier. But aside from that dense demonic aura, all the other traces were destroyed by a wave of tyrannical flames.
"The only thing I can confirm is that the demonic aura was exceptionally pure. The one who appeared here was very likely a member of the Devil Race's royal clan."
"Royal clan?"
The leader's expression turned incomparably grave. "Direction. Tell us where it went!"
"Sir, the Devil Race aura is concentrated entirely within this area. There are no traces of it leaving. Perhaps it concealed its tracks, or perhaps it... vanished into thin air!"
About a quarter-hour later, news that a high-ranking Devil Race member—perhaps even one of the royal clan—had infiltrated Dragon Roaming Plain was delivered through various channels to Great Zhou's overt and covert intelligence agencies.
In an instant, scouting cavalry scattered in all directions.
Wave after wave of tracking experts swiftly arrived near the underground river where the demonic aura had been discovered, then swiftly departed again.
In less than an hour, over a