Liao Jia perked up at that.
He scooted the cushion beneath him closer to Gu Chi and grinned, ready to listen. "An unexpected development? Just how unexpected is this fat fish?"
"Someone from the Southwest Branch infiltrated Wu Xian's inner court."
Gu Chi opened with a bombshell.
"Whoa, they're really willing to pay that price?" Liao Jia said, then wondered if he'd taken it the wrong way and asked for details. "What identity is this person using now? The Assembly of Gods has a high bar for entry. Anyone who makes it in has to be talented, at the very least."
Talented people were mostly proud and aloof.
Wu Xian might be a sovereign of one region, and he might have been renowned as a chivalrous hero in his youth, but time was a butcher's knife. In middle age, Wu Xian looked a little greasy, and he was soft-eared to boot. That had led him to make several major blunders. Would someone from the Southwest Branch really humiliate herself so much for him? Liao Jia carefully recalled the intelligence on Wu Xian, but couldn't remember hearing that he had a taste for men.
Liao Jia ventured a guess. "Could they have disguised themselves as a eunuch?"
It was normal enough to get into the inner court as a eunuch.
"It's a woman," Gu Chi said.
Liao Jia furrowed his brow. "Did Wu Zhaode snatch her away by force?"
Or had she entered the inner court as a palace maid?
Either way, it sounded humiliating.
Although many years had passed since the first female civil or martial cultivator appeared, female cultivators were still few and far between. It wasn't because the sovereigns hadn't tried hard enough. Practicing martial arts required a great deal of nutritious food, and abundant qi and blood