"Young master?"
Aboard a white jade flying vessel, Qin Ruxue looked at Fang Qing with some curiosity.
Although Fang Qing had come to provide support, he had not been traveling quickly.
"We're here."
Suddenly, he stopped the flying vessel and formed hand seals with both hands. His aura instantly became barely perceptible. "Use talismans to conceal your auras. Proceed carefully—"
Sure enough, before long, Qin Ruxue spotted a mutilated corpse floating on the sea.
"This person seems to be Hu Fan, Senior Brother Hu?"
Qin Ruxue formed a hand seal, and a stream of mana lifted the corpse into the air, allowing Fang Qing to clearly see Hu Fan's unwilling expression and vacant eyes.
The man had clearly been cut in half at the waist. There was only a faint white mark at the wound, yet touching it gave one a strangely warm sensation.
"Hiss—what terrifying cold qi. When cold reached the extreme, it instead became incomparably restrained—this... this seemed to have surpassed Foundation Establishment methods. This was Third-Order—Ice Soul Mystic Light?!"
Qin Ruxue was startled. "Could it be that Zhong Xuanli, the Zhong Family Patriarch, came personally?"
"Probably not. Otherwise, he would not have left in such a hurry—not even having time to loot Senior Brother Hu's storage pouch."
Fang Qing shook his head. A blue phosphorescent glow wrapped around a storage pouch and carried it before him.
After opening it, he found several dozen mid-grade spirit stones, a stack of talismans, medicinal pills—and a white bone banner!
"Hm? It's actually a Ten-Soul Banner? This should already be a mid-grade Spirit Artifact, right?"
He shook open the Ten-Soul Banner and looked at the imprints of thirteen Second-Order demonic beast essences on its surface. A faint smile appeared on his face. "Thank you for the gift, Senior Brother—"
This belonged