The answer: how could one discern the colors of the human heart?

Two more days passed, and the last Array Formation also dissipated for lack of Spiritual Power.

Over those two days, Mo Chen also discovered that completing the ownership ritual had established a subtle connection between him and the spirit beasts.

That connection grew stronger as time went on.

Mo Chen could even sense the thoughts of the four spirit beasts and issue commands directly.

But this was no time to study such things.

Getting out came first.

As soon as the Array Formation dissipated, Mo Chen went to Yuan Ming to check his injuries.

Although Yuan Ming still sat in a meditation posture, he had no pulse. Clearly, the poison had killed him long ago.

Mo Chen silently removed the Storage Bag from Yuan Ming's waist. Just as he was about to form a hand seal and burn the corpse, a clear thought suddenly entered his mind.

"Want... to swallow..."

Mo Chen looked up.

A Snake Demon at the Ninth Layer of Qi Refining slithered up to him.

Mo Chen sighed softly and stepped back twice.

After all, the dead deserved respect. Watching someone's body being swallowed whole was a little... macabre.

Then Mo Chen ordered the other pythons to spit out the Storage Bags they had swallowed earlier.

Though somewhat reluctant, the beasts obediently opened their mouths under the compulsion of the Master-Bonding Mark and spat out several slime-covered Storage Bags.

Mo Chen wiped all the Storage Bags clean.

Once everything was in order, something suddenly occurred to him.

Shen Lekang's Storage Bag!

Mo Chen dug it out, erased the residual Divine Sense mark on it, and sent his awareness inside to rummage through its contents.

Before long, Mo Chen turned his hand over, and a palm-sized Formation Disc appeared in his palm.

He infused it with Dharma Power, and the Formation Disc lit up with a hum.

Mo Chen immediately sensed six Formation Flags embedded in the surrounding stone walls. Drawn by the Formation Disc, they flew out from their various positions and returned to his hand.

As for the other Array Formation, he searched all the remaining Storage Bags but found no corresponding Formation Disc.

Presumably, the teahouse proprietor had set it up himself, so its Formation Disc was naturally still in his possession.

Just as Mo Chen finished settling the spirit beasts and was about to step out of the cave, a dazzling curtain of light suddenly flared up and hurled him back.

There's another one?

Mo Chen steadied himself, suddenly recalling a method recorded in the miscellaneous accounts from the Scripture Pavilion.

Break a formation with a formation.

There was no time to lose. Mo Chen immediately took out the Formation Disc he had just acquired, infused it with Dharma Power, and precisely controlled the Array Formation's boundaries to press forward.

Seeing little effect, he reached back and pulled out a stack of crude talismans he had accumulated while practicing talisman crafting.

After nearly half an hour of relentless bombardment, the Array Formation at the cave entrance finally shattered into scattered fragments of light.

Mountain wind struck his face. Outside, it was still the dead of night.

Mo Chen glanced back at the Cave Abode's entrance, then immediately took flight on his sword and plunged into the night sky without looking back.

After adjusting his direction against the Travel Map, Mo Chen sat on his Flying Sword, took out the Storage Bags, and began inventorying them one by one.

Yet what he found left him stunned for a long while.

In the Storage Bags belonging to Shen Lekang, Xiao Liuwan, and Yang Yiliu, he found one talisman each from a matching set of Paired Sound Transmission Talismans.

And Yuan Ming and the two female cultivators had another matching set of Paired Sound Transmission Talismans hidden among their belongings.

Holding the two sets of Voice Transmission Talismans, Mo Chen sat alone on his Flying Sword as all the tangled threads in his mind suddenly connected.

A scheme within a scheme.

Once he sorted out their interests and relationships, the answer became plain.

The proprietor of the Four Directions Teahouse, as the master of the Snake Demons, urgently needed cultivators' flesh and blood as a medicinal catalyst for his spirit beasts to advance.

So, under the pretext of a treasure hunt, he had posted information about the ruins of a Cave Abode and lured Mo Chen's party of five into the Snake Cave.

Two Array Formations had been arranged inside and outside the cave. One penned them in, while the other was set at the Cave Abode's entrance to ensure no one escaped, allowing the spirit beasts to feed and advance undisturbed.

Meanwhile, within the treasure-hunting party, Shen Lekang had already secretly conspired with Xiao Liuwan and Yang Yiliu.

The three had pretended to be strangers and acted separately.

The two women had drawn Yuan Ming into a false alliance to make him lower his guard. In truth, they had intended to eliminate Yuan Ming, the "outsider," in the cave first, then take their time dealing with Mo Chen.

But the three had overlooked one thing.

Three Snake Demons lay hidden in the section of the cave Shen Lekang was responsible for exploring.

With two at the ninth level and one at the eighth, they could naturally catch Shen Lekang off guard.

While Shen Lekang was secretly setting up a formation in the ruins of a Cave Abode, the Snake Demons ambushed him. Yuan Ming, the first to arrive, was also entangled by the Demon Beasts and could not escape, leaving him no choice but to help Shen Lekang for his own survival.

Yet a careless moment exposed him to snake venom, which ultimately killed him.

The two women arrived afterward. Seeing that Shen Lekang was dead, they had no choice but to abandon their plan and help Yuan Ming.

Unexpectedly, the Demon Beasts, which had concealed themselves again, accidentally triggered the two Binding Formations already in place.

The two women were then trapped alongside the Three Snake Demons where the Array Formations overlapped.

One link locked into the next...

In the end, they had all become bait for the snakes.

Mo Chen remained silent for a long while before putting the pile of Voice Transmission Talismans into his own bag.

Apart from a few useful Spirit Artifacts, he could simply sell the odds and ends in those Storage Bags once he returned.

The Flying Sword sailed steadily through the night sky. A cool breeze brushed his face as Mo Chen lay back and gazed at the stars filling the heavens.

These past few days, he truly had walked through the gates of hell.

First he had fallen prey to the teahouse proprietor's schemes, then the treasure-hunting party had treated him as a lamb awaiting slaughter. He was utterly exhausted, body and mind.

It seemed he would have to be exceedingly careful from now on. If his vigilance slipped one day, he really might be caught in someone's scheme.

Never mind repairing his spiritual root—he might even be refined into a treasure for someone else to repair their fire spiritual root.

Mo Chen took out the Travel Map Jade Slip and checked it, discovering that Shangdeng Road lay below.

Whether escort agencies delivering goods or cultivators flying through the air, everyone traveled along this route. The Immortal Alliance's City Guard also maintained order along the way.

Good. At least his safety was assured.

After two days of continuous flight, a Flight-Sealing Restriction pressed Mo Chen down from the sky.

Mo Chen descended slowly on a light breeze. Taking out his map Jade Slip of Emerging Cloud Peak, he discovered he had flown twenty-five hundred li along Shangdeng Road and had now reached the territory of Shangbing City.

After entering Shangbing City, Mo Chen first found a shop, intending to sell his miscellaneous belongings to help offset the thousand spirit stones he had spent on teleportation.

Mo Chen brought out the cultivation manuals and miscellaneous accounts he had stolen from the Twin Crane Sect's Outer Sect Scripture Pavilion to ask their price. Unexpectedly, the shopkeeper had no interest whatsoever.

"Take them away, take them away! What is all this rubbish? Not even one can take you to Foundation Establishment. Stop wasting our time!"

Indeed, it was all rubbish.

Even the Twin Crane Sect's sect master was only at the Pseudo-Golden Core Realm of Foundation Establishment. What treasures could its Outer Sect Scripture Pavilion possibly hold?

Things never truly lost their value; it all depended on their surroundings and whose eyes appraised them.

Mo Chen naturally understood this principle, so he silently put the cultivation manuals away.

Back then, believing a thief should never leave empty-handed, he had stolen a few valuable cultivation manuals before departing. Only after leaving did he discover they were rubbish.

Faced with such disparities between levels, anyone would be helpless.

Any cultivation manual from the Twin Crane Sect was a path to Longevity that even Wenyuan Pavilion's thousand-year heritage could not have collected, while any martial arts manual from Wenyuan Pavilion could stir up decades of bloody storms in the martial world.

Only when Mo Chen finally brought out the snake fangs, sharp claws, and other materials from earlier, along with the supplies belonging to Shen Lekang, Xiao Liuwan, Yang Yiliu, and Yuan Ming, did the shopkeeper greet him with a smile.

Sure enough, wherever one went, the service always depended on the money.

After exchanging them for a sum of spirit stones, Mo Chen spent another considerable amount on four Spirit Beast Pouches specially made for raising spirit beasts.

He had no choice but to buy them.

Mo Chen kept hearing the four spirit beasts' complaints in his sea of consciousness.

At first, they complained that it was cramped, so Mo Chen emptied the four deceased cultivators' Storage Bags and gave each snake its own.

Later, they sent word that there was no air and they were going to suffocate.

Mo Chen could only let them poke their heads out from time to time along the journey to catch their breath.

After sorting out the spirit beasts' needs, Mo Chen found an inn and checked in.

Once inside his room, Mo Chen activated the Array Formation. After confirming that Divine Sense could not penetrate it, he tossed in the corpse of the Snake Demon killed earlier, hoping to fill their bellies.

Who knew that all four pythons would shake their heads in unison, showing no interest in the corpse of their own kind?

Even when Mo Chen patiently coaxed them, explaining that digesting it would help them advance, they stubbornly refused.

Only after Mo Chen used the Master-Bonding Mark to issue a compulsory command did they reluctantly begin swallowing it.

Watching their halfhearted behavior, Mo Chen could not help shaking his head.

The city had a Teleportation Array that could take him directly to the vicinity of the Emerging Cloud Peak sect to participate in the grand competition.

Mo Chen simply resolved to hole up at the inn. Apart from eating, sleeping, and tending to the spirit beasts, he did not take a single step outside his room.

One encounter with an old fox who appeared virtuous and respected but was actually full of schemes was enough to give anyone a bellyful of trouble.

After all, the sect's grand competition was approaching. He could not afford any more unexpected complications.

To a cultivator, a month passed in the blink of an eye.

Every day, Mo Chen read the Classics to strengthen his grounding in composition, while relying on spring water's passive effect to replenish his Dharma Power automatically.

At the same time, he took the pills Jiang Jiuyao had given him earlier to gently nourish his damaged meridians and consolidate his cultivation along the way.

When he emerged from seclusion, the Spiritual Power within him was considerably more condensed than when he had entered the city.

That day, a sea of people crowded before the city's Teleportation Array.

Whenever Emerging Cloud Peak opened its gates to recruit new disciples, cultivators from every city under its jurisdiction gathered here.

Although fewer than one in ten would pass the selection, no one wanted to miss the opportunity.

What if they possessed some extraordinary gift and caught an elder's eye? That would be a single step straight into the heavens.

Mo Chen mingled among the cultivators harboring the lofty ambitions of swans and waited quietly for teleportation.

Suddenly, Mo Chen halted.

Deep within his soul, three of the four ownership seals had vanished.

Mo Chen's expression shifted slightly, and he immediately sent a strand of divine sense into a Spirit Beast Pouch.

At what he saw, even Mo Chen could not help freezing.

Only one Snake Demon remained in the pouch.

It was currently curled into a ball, deep in slumber. No matter how Mo Chen activated the Master-Bonding Mark, it gave no response.

Its belly bulged high, and he could vaguely make out the outlines of the other Three Snake Demons.

The entire snake... had grown two sizes larger!

It had devoured its own kind.

Then fallen into a deep sleep...

Mo Chen withdrew his divine sense, his expression caught somewhere between surprise and delight.

It seemed his spirit beast was about to advance!

Mo Chen smiled faintly and followed the crowd into the array once more.

It seemed he had gained another trump card for this sect competition.