Yi Yang pressed himself against the wall and waited for three breaths.
There was no breathing inside, no footsteps, and no ripple of circulating true qi.
Before entering, the abbot had been a living man at third inner qi. Once the door closed, he vanished.
The window was latched from within, and no one had disturbed the roof.
Yi Yang's mental power enveloped both courtyards, front and rear, yet detected no one climbing over the walls to leave.
"He couldn't have crawled into a rat hole."
Still pressed against the wall, he first went over everything he knew about the Benevolent Temple.
A secluded temple hidden deep in Clearwind Ridge, with fourteen monks who were all martial artists. Even the weakest was at the qi-blood fourth level.
There were no worshippers, no accounts of incense offerings, and no sign of monks descending the mountain to beg for alms.
Moreover, the abbot was a powerful third inner qi martial artist who had returned with his men in the dead of night, carrying something unknown into the storehouse.
The most crucial point-the abbot had entered his room, closed the door, and vanished.
The window had made no sound, and the door had not opened again.
Setting aside the possibility that he had dug three feet into the ground and burrowed down-no, that was precisely the most likely possibility.
A secret chamber.
An underground passage.
Yi Yang had seen similar tricks in Cloud Pattern Town when he was young.
A household dealing in hides had appeared perfectly respectable, but they had dug a secret passage beneath their property leading to the neighboring alley, specifically to smuggle stolen goods out.
This monk's methods were hardly any more sophisticated.
Enter the room, close the door, and descend underground through some mechanism inside.
Anyone outside would