"I told you! I told you this girl would stir up something huge sooner or later!"
Before the Jieqing Sect Master appeared, he had been in a secluded location, exchanging divine thoughts with eight other spectral figures.
At those words, everyone turned to look.
The figure clad in dark red robes fumed, "Why take on a task beyond her abilities? She has the Dao Painting but can't use it, and she refuses to hand it over to us. Now look what she's done-she's roused the entire Cloud-Dream Palace."
The Jieqing Sect Master frowned and was about to speak.
But the peach-red figure beside him spoke first.
What should have been a gentle woman's voice now dripped with merciless mockery. "Listen to yourself. Is that something a decent person would say? By your logic, everyone outside the Dao Sects should stop cultivating and leave everything to us. But can we live up to their hopes? After all this time, aren't we still being beaten down by the Cloud-Dream Palace? Have you no shame?"
The dark-robed figure's breath caught at the rebuke. He simply threw caution to the wind. "Then what do you suggest?! The Cloud-Dream Palace has gone mad, and all its Painting Realm cultivators have come out. Are we intervening or not?!"
At those words,
everyone fell silent.
It was indeed a knot they could not avoid.
If they intervened, who knew whether the girl would agree to hand over the Dao Painting afterward?
If they did not, what if the Cloud-Dream Palace's massive mobilization was not merely for the Dao Painting, but an attempt to ride the current and sever humanity's foundation in the Dao?
Caught between these choices, they had undoubtedly been thrust into the teeth of the storm.
"We must intervene... of course we must..."
The Jieqing