However, upon hearing Lin Ming's words, Xia Xuan's pupils contracted slightly.
A faint ripple passed through his narrow eyes, and he vaguely sensed a trace of unease.
The feeling had come suddenly and subtly, like walking through a dense forest and suddenly sensing a pair of eyes watching from the shadows, instinctively sending a chill down his spine.
Xia Xuan stared at Lin Ming's face for several breaths, trying to find some flaw in that young, composed expression, but he found nothing.
Lin Ming's abyss-dark eyes were as calm as a stagnant pool. There was neither the evasiveness of empty bravado nor the embarrassment of anger, only an unfathomable serenity.
But Xia Xuan quickly forced down that faint unease, secretly sneering to himself and finding his momentary vigilance ridiculous.
After all, what could some fellow from a remote corner of the Northern Domain do, even if he had obtained this incomplete formation?
A formation diagram was not something that could immediately be turned into combat power. By the time someone comprehended it and cultivated it into a formation, who knew how many years would have passed?
By then, when the Great Xia Imperial Dynasty's army arrived in the Far Western Lands, they could crush someone like him with a flick of the hand, as easily as stepping on an ant.
Thus, he merely chuckled, his lips curling into a disdainful arc. His smile carried undisguised mockery and the playful amusement of a cat toying with a mouse. "In that case, I'll wait and see. I hope you won't disappoint me then."
After speaking, Xia Xuan lowered his head again and turned his attention back to the Mountain-Covering Seal in his hand. His long fingers resumed stroking its mottled stone surface, as though the bidding contest just now had merely been