In a teahouse in the Immortal City.
Several cultivators at the late Qi Refining stage were discussing the rumors that had recently swept through the Immortal City.
"So the Wang Family Ancestor was framed! That was why he failed to break through to the Foundation Establishment late stage and ended up gravely injured, at death's door."
"And that wasn't all. The two Foundation Establishment Pills he commissioned were tampered with too."
"Foundation Establishment Pills! Two of them!"
"I heard a cultivator in the Immortal City even stole the city's third-tier alchemist inheritance to bargain with outsiders!"
"Tsk, tsk-a third-tier alchemist inheritance!"
"Who knows whether any of it is true?"
As the various rumors concerning the Wang Family kept reaching their ears, the other people in the teahouse soon joined the discussion.
Who didn't love gossip? Rumors involving important figures among the Immortal City's upper ranks were especially beloved conversation fodder for low-level cultivators.
Judging by their animated expressions, they wished they could have taken part themselves.
In a corner of the teahouse, two figures wearing bamboo hats listened closely, different expressions on their faces.
One suddenly laughed and transmitted his voice. "Master's wife, you schemed so hard to betray Master and join the righteous path, but now it seems these righteous cultivators aren't quite as 'righteous' as you imagined!"
As he spoke, his gaze shifted toward the figure beside him whom he called his master's wife. He reached out and frivolously brushed aside her hat's gauze veil, revealing the face beneath.
Had Li Ping been there, he would easily have recognized this cultivator: she was Miao Rou, Fairy Miao, the former manager of the Spirit Treasure Pavilion.
When he had just succeeded in reaching Foundation Establishment, Miao Rou had offered him a piece of second-tier mid-grade spiritwood to escort a