His mind made up, Li Ling said to Mu Qingsi, "Watch over my body for me. I'll be right back."
Mu Qingsi asked, "You're going to do it now?"
Li Ling said, "Yes. There's no need to wait those few days."
Soon afterward, he performed soul projection in the quiet chamber and headed into the wilderness hundreds of miles away.
At this point, Li Ling had only learned the broad outlines of the situation from Hu Lao.
The usual approach would have been to cast a wide net of informants, plant numerous eyes and ears, and expend considerable manpower and resources locating the targets before ambushing them.
But he wandered through the void as leisurely as if strolling through his own courtyard, following an intuition-like sensation wherever affinity led him.
Hu Lao's words were a cause, and his request another. Li Ling's knowledge of the Fox Clan was an affinity, as were his own spirituality and perception.
Cause and affinity met, and fate flowed like water, quietly coursing through the River of Time.
This was precisely the ability of a great cultivator to draw upon heavenly secrets and know things without divination.
His innate gifts granted him flashes of inspired understanding. In less than an hour, he happened to arrive before that band of slavers, saving himself untold effort.
What appeared before Li Ling was a band of demon cultivators with powerful auras. Great Demons and lesser demons alike rode war beasts, wearing armor-shaped magical artifacts, and looked exceptionally well trained.
In the middle of the procession, several enormous beasts, neither quite ox nor quite horse, carried building-sized cages on their backs. Numerous demon captives were imprisoned inside, and sure enough, they were transformed fox demons with beast ears and fox faces.
A dozen or so seemed to have purer