Li Xiao personally joined the search parties.
Over the next several days, he traveled all across Mu Province and captured many remnants of the Cai Family himself, including a fair number of capable fifth-turn fighters.
Yet no matter how he interrogated them, their answers were much the same.
No one had seen the Token, and no one knew whom the Cai Family Old Ancestor had entrusted it to.
To keep word from leaking out, Li Xiao never mentioned the Token to anyone. He conducted every interrogation himself, even sending the Golden Blade Sect's people away.
He sat in a temporarily requisitioned interrogation room. A fifth-turn elder of the Cai Family knelt before him, covered in wounds and so terrified that his speech had become incoherent. He only repeated over and over that he knew nothing.
Li Xiao left the cell and gazed at the silhouettes of the mountain ranges in the distance, remaining silent for a long time.
The net across Mu Province had been cast as wide as possible. Every Cai Family member who could be caught had been caught, and everyone who could be questioned had been questioned. Yet the Token remained like a pebble sunk into deep water, without a trace.
Meanwhile, in a small city not far from Mu Province's border, a filthy, disheveled beggar mingled with the refugees gathered at the gate, slowly shuffling toward it.
He wore ragged clothes covered in patches, his tangled hair hanging loose and his face smeared with dust. With his back hunched, he walked almost exactly like the sallow, emaciated refugees around him.
He was Cai Yang.
He had suppressed his true qi to the utmost, even deliberately adjusting the rhythm of his breathing to match that of an ordinary mortal. Blending into this crowd of fleeing refugees, he