More than thirteen hundred people set out beneath the stars, leaving the excavated caves to fall forever silent.
Someone landed on a nearby hilltop. Wrapped in a crudely stitched cloak, Xiang Lan'er watched from afar. She knew what this relocation meant. After two or three months of maneuvering, the real showdown was about to begin.
Whatever the outcome, she understood one thing perfectly: she would never have dared do what Shi Chun had done, nor could she have done it. She lacked both the ability to pull it off and the sheer nerve. Under the same conditions, even the power behind her would never have dared let her act this way. Winning first place like this was probably beyond anything they would even dare imagine.
Lately, she had often had the strange impression that Shi Chun's way of doing things was even more demonic than their so-called Demonic Path.
In other words, judging by what she had observed over these past days, she could essentially conclude that Shi Chun was not a member of the Demonic Path at all.
Even the Demonic Path would never do anything this outrageous. If Shi Chun really belonged to it and enjoyed such enormous autonomy, his standing within it would have to be staggeringly high-certainly higher than hers. Was that possible? Almost certainly not.
Her conclusion was this: Shi Chun was not a member of the Demonic Path, but what he had practiced in the Land of Exile was a Demonic Art, so he could still be counted as one.
This was no baseless speculation. From ancient times to the present, all sorts of people had been banished to the Land of Exile. There was nothing strange about someone obtaining a Demonic Art inheritance there.
With that conclusion, her journey had not been wasted.