At these words, the other stewards all turned their eyes toward him.
"Lin Fan's background?"
"Exactly." The steward of Azure Cloud Commandery slowly nodded. "We can't find any faction with a grudge against the Azure Elixir Sect. Why not start with Lin Fan himself? If we uncover the secrets behind the slaughter of the Lin Family back then, we might find someone whose power we can borrow."
After a moment's thought, their eyes lit up.
"That makes sense! Finding a faction with a grudge against Lin Fan would amount to much the same thing. Lin Fan's alchemy now stands unrivaled under heaven, and his cultivation is hardly weak either. He reached the Bright Force Realm at twenty. His enemies certainly won't want him alive."
"Good! We'll immediately send people out to make inquiries everywhere and mobilize our respective informants to dig deep in the Capital City for the whole truth behind the confiscation of the Lin Family's property and the slaughter of its members! Let's see if there's anything we can exploit!"
With their plans settled, the secret meeting in the chamber came to an end. The chief stewards quietly returned to their respective commandery cities, mobilized their people, and sent them to the Capital City. They searched far and wide for surviving records of the old Lin Family case and elderly people who knew what had happened, cross-checking multiple sources as they quietly gathered clues.
Another ten-odd days passed in the blink of an eye.
The meeting in the secret chamber reconvened with the same people. This time, however, anticipation lay hidden in every face as they entered the room. They took their seats one after another and brought out the evidence and clues they had collected.
Soon, the table was piled with copied secret letters, fragments of testimonies,