"": 200,
"": "",
"": "Jishui City, behind Ludi Village, the Supreme Tenuity Configuration.
The sun blazed overhead, and the shadows of the trees sliced its light into fragments.
Beneath an enormous fir tree, fallen leaves lay thick on the ground, and the undergrowth was especially dense.
Hidden beneath those leaves and bushes was a hole left by the uprooted roots of a fallen tree. It was exceptionally well concealed.
There were two people inside.
One was Shangguan Xingyue. The other was a man in his early forties, of medium build, with a slightly round face, single-lidded eyes, sparse eyebrows, and somewhat thick lips. His eyes watched the opening above with sharp vigilance, while his head tilted and his ears twitched slightly as he listened for movement nearby.
His name was Dai Xingjie.
He, too, was one of Dai Zhixiong's seven disciples.
After Dai Tong, Dai Sheng, and Dai Ji encountered Luo Bin, two had died and one had gone missing.
Dai Zhixiong had recruited replacements, and Dai Xingjie was one of them.
Aside from Dai Yan, who had gone out with Dai Zhixiong, and excluding Shangguan Xingyue, six disciples remained in the Underground Palace.
Dai Zhixiong had never truly allowed Shangguan Xingyue access to the Underground Palace's core secrets. He taught her the Six Arts, especially alchemy, but that was all routine instruction, merely a facade.
Corpses were medicinal ingredients, but the most important medicinal ingredients were not corpses. They were people.
One of the seven Underground Palace disciples' main duties was to refine Human Pills.
The Golden Cores sent to the Palace Lord Shrine at regular intervals were refined from living people. Only the Essence of Two and Five could keep a Yin Spirit sufficiently invigorated.
After the Palace Lord Shrine informed Dai Ci that Shangguan Xingyue was