At last, after repeated rounds of back-and-forth negotiation and weighing the advantages against the drawbacks, the Black Baleful Adept finally made up his mind.
He slammed his hand onto the armrest of his black stone chair, and the dull thud echoed through the great hall.
"Very well! Blackstone Valley agrees to ally with you!"
A smile finally appeared on the Ten Thousand Treasures Ancestor's face, and the weight hanging over his heart settled at last.
"Excellent! Then let us seal our alliance!"
Immediately, an elder of Blackstone Valley brought over a beast-hide covenant. They bit their fingertips and dripped their blood onto it, swearing a blood oath. As the blood slowly spread across the hide, a conspiracy against the Azure Elixir Sect was formally set in motion.
Outside the hall, winds from the Blackrock Mountains whistled through the cracks in the rocks, as though heralding the coming storm of blood and slaughter.
Yet no one in the Azure Elixir Sect, six thousand li away, knew any of this. Everyone was still basking in the joy of their recent leaps in alchemical skill and the sect's growing prosperity.
In Lin Fan's little mountaintop courtyard.
All was peaceful and serene. Lin Fan slowly finished four continuous hours of cultivation, gradually drawing in the aura surrounding him. He planned to rest for a while before returning to cultivate again.
More than three months had passed since Lin Fan broke through to the steel force realm. During those three months, he had spent six hours every day refining two hundred top-grade high-grade pills.
Although his silver balance had risen rather slowly, it now stood at roughly 180 million taels. It had only increased by twenty million taels in more than three months. His cultivation, however, had advanced considerably.
Lin Fan estimated that in another