Chen Ping crouched on the ground, his face expressionless as he watched the last pool of black water seep into the soil.
So this is the Cultivation World.
It's either you kill me or I kill you. There's no point in arguing about right and wrong. Only those who survive have the right to talk about it.
Chen Ping murmured silently to himself, as if giving one final warning to the last remnant of warmth in his heart.
Only after confirming that all three corpses had been disposed of without a trace—not even a single bone fragment left—did Chen Ping stand up.
He didn't rush to leave. With extreme caution, he pulled out a handful of incense ash and scattered it downwind, masking the stench of blood and the acidic smell of Corpse Dissolving Powder.
Once he had finished, he hunched his back again, clutched the bundle of Spirit Ink tightly to his chest, and slipped into the vast night with a flash.
On the way back, Chen Ping was even more cautious than he had been on the way there.
He avoided the main roads, sticking instead to secluded paths choked with brambles.
Every so often, he would stop and use the extraordinary hearing granted by Longevity of Pine and Crane to carefully pick out anything unusual in the wind.
Only when he saw the faint glow of the array barrier around Taihang Market did his taut nerves relax a little.
But he didn't head straight back to the Shantytown.
He circled the outskirts of the Market three times, changing his clothes twice along the way. Using Bone Shrinking Technique to alter his build, he made sure no one was following him before slipping silently into the dilapidated wooden hut like a rat returning to its nest.
Inside,