Hidden

"Just as I thought!"

Shen Changchun went over to the Scar-Faced Man's corpse,

and searched out a Storage Bag from inside his sleeve.

The Storage Bag was palm-sized and a dusty yellow all over.

Shen Changchuan channeled his magic power into the runes near its opening. A storage space roughly two meters long, wide, and high appeared in his perception.

Inside the storage space,

there were some Spirit Stones, Demon Beast materials, jade boxes sealed with spirit herbs, spirit pills, and all kinds of other odds and ends.

Shen Changchuan's somewhat pale face now showed a hint of delight.

It seemed

most of these people's wealth was in this Storage Bag.

Looking back, this battle had been fraught with danger, and he had nearly died several times,

but after weathering the ordeal,

he had still made off with a fortune.

For the moment, Shen Changchuan had no time to tally up everything in the Storage Bag.

But even so,

the Storage Bag alone was already worth a great deal.

As far as Shen Changchuan knew,

a Storage Bag cost at least three hundred Spirit Stones.

And that was the price of contraband from the Black Market.

It might be recognized one day, and someone could come looking for revenge.

A genuine Storage Bag cost even more!

It had always been beyond the reach of Shen Changchuan, a pauper through and through.

Even if the Storage Bag had been completely empty,

Shen Changchuan would still have considered the trip worthwhile!

He tucked the Storage Bag close to his body,

then took the Soul-Absorbing Bell from the Scar-Faced Man's corpse.

He gave it a quick try, testing how to control it.

He found that the Soul-Absorbing Bell made no sound normally. It only rang when activated with magic power.

And its ringing had a special effect on cultivators' spiritual senses and souls!

As for its power,

Shen Changchuan had felt it firsthand.

At that moment, it had felt as if a huge club had slammed into the back of his head.

He had nearly blacked out.

"Good stuff!"

"That's some serious power!"

"If I hadn't taken the Green Origin Water Grass and tempered my spiritual sense, raising it to a level comparable to the seventh layer of Qi Induction, I'd have fallen for that move earlier!"

Remembering what had happened, Shen Changchuan couldn't help feeling a lingering fear.

At the time, the Scar-Faced Man had kept up a relentless close-range assault, draining Shen Changchuan's magic power. He had been forced to expose a weakness when the opportunity arose, luring his opponent into attacking so he could create an opening for a counterkill.

But who could have known

that the man would pull out a treasure like the Soul-Absorbing Bell?

Even though Shen Changchuan had been on high alert,

watching every moment for the deadly trick his opponent might unleash, he had still been caught by it in an instant.

If the Scar-Faced Man hadn't misjudged his strength,

and failed to realize that even at the fourth layer of Qi Induction, he already possessed spiritual sense as powerful as a late-stage Qi Induction cultivator's, Shen Changchuan wouldn't have had the chance to counterattack and kill him.

If so, Shen Changchuan would have been the one to die in that battle!

"It was only because I fused with this body's memories and damaged soul, and had the Green Origin Water Grass to thank for it, that my spiritual sense reached the late stage of Qi Induction. That was what let me withstand the blow and recover in such a short time."

"Otherwise, in front of this magical artifact, I wouldn't have had any power to fight back!"

"With this thing, there probably aren't many cultivators below the late stage of Qi Induction who can stand against it!"

Shen Changchuan thought to himself with a quiet sigh.

He was all the more delighted, too,

because this deadly weapon had now fallen into his hands and become his.

The more powerful the magical artifact,

the better for Shen Changchuan.

From what he had just experienced,

the Soul-Absorbing Bell could definitely shake even a cultivator at the seventh layer of Qi Induction!

It didn't need to pin them down completely.

If it could make them falter for even an instant in battle, that was enough to decide the winner!

"It's a shame the Soul-Absorbing Bell seems to consume so much magic power."

"At my current level, I probably won't be able to use it many times in a single fight."

After just a few brief attempts at controlling it,

Shen Changchuan had already realized that this thing was a real magic-power hog.

Unable to help himself, he thought a little greedily,

with the mere tenth of his magic power that remained,

he probably couldn't even ring it.

As thoughts raced through his mind,

Shen Changchuan kept his hands busy.

First, he hung the Soul-Absorbing Bell from his wrist and covered it with his sleeve, so he could use it more easily in battle.

Once that was done,

and he had confirmed there was nothing else to be found on the Scar-Faced Man,

Shen Changchuan gathered the formation plate buried nearby with Spirit Stones still inside, along with the formation flags scattered all around, and put them into the Storage Bag one by one.

He didn't recognize the formation or know how to use it.

But one never left a thief empty-handed;

if it was valuable, he was taking it.

By then, Shen Changchuan had gathered everything worth taking from the battlefield.

He turned around,

walked over to Zhao Hangao, who lay unconscious nearby, and grabbed him by the collar,

then headed out, ready to leave.

But just then,

something suddenly occurred to Shen Changchuan.

He stopped in his tracks.

His eyes flickered a few times.

He thought it over for a few breaths, then hesitated,

before setting the unconscious Zhao Hangao down and turning back to gather the three corpses into the Storage Bag.

Only then did he leave with Zhao Hangao.

Behind him,

only the wreckage of the trees remained,

along with bloodstains in the soil and other traces of battle, proof that what had happened earlier was no mere illusion.

But these traces,

in the dense forest, would probably disappear before long.

Zhao Family Village.

The village had once nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains, a place as easy to defend as it was hard to attack, like a paradise secluded from the world.

Now, most of it was engulfed in raging flames.

Smoke billowed into the sky,

and even from more than ten miles away, the towering columns of black smoke could be seen rising one after another.

In the village, which had all but become a ruin,

bodies lay scattered in pools of blood along the lanes and inside collapsed houses.

Corpses littered the ground.

Those lucky enough to survive had fled into the mountains. They scattered like headless flies, panicked and trembling, afraid to show themselves.

Meanwhile,

inside the grand mansion at the highest point of the village,

Zhao Hangao's son,

the notorious wastrel Zhao Jingming, was on his knees, weeping uncontrollably.

"Why? Why?"

"My father told you every last detail about that secret, and did everything you asked. Why did you still kill people? Why destroy the village?!"

Zhao Jingming knelt on the ground, covering his face with both hands. His back hunched as he buried his face between his knees, his body wracked with sobs.

The roar of the flames outside and the crash of collapsing houses blended together, ringing clearly in his ears.

The ghosts struggling and wailing in the fire seemed to be hurling the most vicious curses and hatred at him!

It was him!

It was all because he had invited the wolves into the house that this once-peaceful village had met with such disaster!

Zhao Jingming trembled all over.

He didn't dare lift his head to look at the bodies lying in pools of blood around him,

and he didn't dare look outside at Zhao Family Village, already engulfed in flames.

He wanted only to be an ostrich, burying his head in the ground,

unwilling to face this blood-soaked reality.

"Heh. Obviously, it's to destroy the evidence. What else would it be for?"

At that moment,

in the seat of honor,

the third of the Four Evils of He Mountain, his clothes spattered with blood and murder in his eyes, wiped the blood from his sword after killing everyone and glanced disdainfully at the craven Zhao Jingming below.

He rose,

holding his sharp sword, and slowly walked toward Zhao Jingming.

"According to the intelligence, that man was only an insignificant illegitimate son of the Shen Clan. But he was still the Shen Clan head's son. If he were murdered..."

"Heh. The Four Brothers of Heshan are planning to flee to the Southern Yue Cultivation World after this and never return to these parts, but we'd still be wise not to provoke a great clan like that."

The third brother came to stand beside the trembling Zhao Jingming,

and whispered softly in his ear:

"As long as everyone who knows the truth is dead, and your father and you both disappear, then when they investigate afterward, all their attention will fall on the two of you at most. It'll have nothing to do with us four brothers."

"Even if they do suspect us, by then the four of us will have taken the legacy and flown far away. The Shen Clan doesn't have the reach to extend its hand tens of thousands of miles away into the Southern Yue Cultivation World."

"I'll thank you and your father on behalf of my big brother!"

The third brother spoke in a low, eerie voice.

There was a trace of mockery in his tone,

but also a measure of sincere gratitude.

He truly was grateful to Zhao Jingming.

Who could have guessed

that the murder of a Shen Clan branch family's disciple by the head of the Hu Clan in Dawan Village, a man with some renown even in the Border Wilderness,

was actually connected to the legacy of an Out of Body Realm True Cultivator?

And who could have known

that the person who had secretly reported the Hu Clan to the Shen Clan, exposing the murder and ultimately bringing about the Hu Clan's annihilation, was Zhao Hangao, the village chief of Zhao Family Village, not far from Dawan Village?

No one could have imagined

that Zhao Hangao, a mere cultivator at the fourth layer of Qi Induction,

a farmer who lived quietly and meekly, toiling in his fields, had stumbled upon a huge secret involving the ruins of an Out of Body Realm True Cultivator!

And Zhao Jingming, that fool who had never wanted for food or clothing since childhood,

had actually talked about how he was tired of an ordinary life and wanted to seek thrills, then run off to join a gang of bandits like them.

When it came to fools with eyes as clear and empty as his,

they normally just took everything from them and left them for dead.

But they hadn't expected that a few casual words of flattery would make him spill such a huge secret!

You had to remember,

that was the ruins of an Out of Body Realm True Cultivator's cave abode!

The Out of Body Realm—

an invincible figure in all the Border Wilderness!

And according to their deductions, the legacy had been left behind by a member of the Elephant Mountain Sect, which had fallen three hundred years ago!

If they could inherit his legacy,

Not only would this give the Four Brothers of Heshan hope of catching a glimpse of the might of the Out-of-Body Realm,

it would at least give all of them a chance to reach the ninth level of the Qi Induction Realm!

Such incredible fortune had fallen right into their laps.

Even if they might face plenty of danger along the way, it was absolutely worth it!

"N-no, that's not right. The Shen Clan is a great clan. They won't be fooled so easily by you. You..."

Zhao Jingming trembled, worked up to say something,

but the sharp sword—

with a sharp shhk—

had already pierced him from behind, passing through his body and piercing his heart.

The rest of Zhao Jingming's words caught in his throat, never to be spoken.

"Don't worry. You needn't trouble yourself over that, Brother Zhao. The four of us have it all figured out."

"Brother Zhao has bestowed incredible fortune upon us. We could never repay such kindness, so all we can do is send your entire family to the underworld to join you."

"Rest easy, Brother Zhao. Your father will soon follow you down the road to the underworld. You needn't worry about being lonely down there."

Zhao Jingming's body crumpled limply to the ground.

At the moment of his death,

his eyes brimmed with endless resentment and regret.

Father...

I'm sorry. I was wrong.

Looking at the corpse on the ground, the third brother's face twisted into a mocking sneer.

He wiped the blood from his sword with a rag,

then turned to leave.

However,

at that very moment,

Ding!

A clear, bell-like chime rang through the empty house,

its sound carrying some invisible magic that pierced straight into the depths of the mind.

In an instant,

the third brother felt as if an iron rod had smashed down on his head,

leaving him dazed,

his whole body frozen in place.

My computer broke the day before yesterday. I took it to a repair shop, and they didn't fix it until yesterday afternoon, so the second chapter was late.

I'm screwed.

I'm broke.

If I had the money, I'd definitely buy myself a backup laptop.