Compared with the people in Lu Xiaotian's third-rank alchemy saint territory, who had been torn between their feelings and gone their separate ways, far more people in Nine Central City were still talking about Lu Xiaotian's supposed defection from the Honghao Celestial Court.
"Ha! Have you heard? Back then, Eastern Alchemy Saint went traveling across the immortal realm, searching among all creation for that sliver of opportunity to break through to the Heavenly Immortal Realm. There'd been no word of him for all these years. Plenty of people thought he hadn't made the breakthrough and was too ashamed to return to Nine Central City. Who'd have guessed he'd advanced long ago?" In a tavern in the main city, a middle-aged man with a flushed face and bleary eyes chuckled drunkenly.
"Right, and not only did he advance—word is, he faced thirteen Heavenly Immortal executioners by himself, killed three, and gravely wounded several more. The rest only escaped because they ran fast enough; otherwise, probably not one of them would've survived. It hasn't even been that many years, and while everyone still thought Eastern Alchemy Saint hadn't advanced, a dozen or so Heavenly Immortal executioners together couldn't even take him on." An old man with a few sparse whiskers on his chin sighed.
"I heard those thirteen Heavenly Immortal executioners were formidable in their own right. Their combined power multiplied when they joined forces, and they held high positions in the Heavenly Punishment Palace. It's just a shame they ran into Eastern Alchemy Saint. They were bound to have bad luck. Even before he advanced, Eastern Alchemy Saint could sweep through the Profound Immortals of the Yu Xuan Celestial Court. Someone so brilliantly gifted would never be ordinary, no matter what realm he was in."
"Thirteen Heavenly Immortal executioners? They think