~~
Early the next morning, after breakfast, Shen Ruolan led Hao Shuai out of Guiwu and headed straight for the mountaintop.
Fu Xian Tan was shaped like a bowl and sat high atop the mountain. It was barely a mile across, and its entire circumference was shrouded in purple mist and clouds. When Hao Shuai was still dozens of yards from the pool, everything ahead had already dissolved into a hazy blur, shifting through five colors until the path was impossible to make out.
Shen Ruolan stopped there too. "Master, Fu Xian Tan is just ahead. The pool is a hundred yards deep. A dark miasma rises from the poisonous rocks, so no matter how powerful a sword immortal is, they can't see what lies beneath the water. And with the clouds and mist my master set in place, it's even harder to get close."
Hao Shuai paid little attention to Shen Ruolan's warning. He didn't believe those so-called poisonous rocks or the monsters at the bottom of the pool could affect him.
Then he pointed in a certain direction with his right hand and asked Shen Ruolan, "Disciple, do you know those people sneaking over there?"
At his words, Shen Ruolan turned to look where Hao Shuai was pointing and saw four figures approaching them.
She peered at them and recognized the leader as a middle-aged Daoist nun with a leopard's head and round eyes, yellow hair hanging over her shoulders, and a Blazing Fire Daoist Robe. She held a Nine-section, eighteen-ring dragon-head staff in her hand.
Behind the Daoist nun followed two women in red and a strange-looking person with a sunken nose, red eyes, and long, unkempt hair.
"It's Martial Aunt Feilong!" Shen Ruolan recognized her at once.
"Good disciple, you know them?" Hao Shuai asked curiously.