Si Dongkou stepped off the long-distance shuttlecraft, squinting involuntarily at the dazzling sunlight. The travelers around him instinctively kept their distance. Standing nearly two meters tall, he was like a small mountain. His thick beard gave him a thoroughly bandit-like air, and the sharp gleam in his eyes made hearts quail.
Yet a trace of worry flashed through his eyes as he surveyed prosperous East Rui City. The three of them had accepted a mission to enter Tiandongli District, never expecting to run into walls at every turn. They had felt firsthand just how tightly Frostmoon Cold Isle controlled this land.
Their work had gone fairly smoothly at first. Under the banner of the Federation Comprehensive Academy, and with the help of its undercover personnel in Tiandongli District, they had won over many small and medium-sized powers.
That had been their established strategy. Approaching the district's top-tier powers would easily put Frostmoon Cold Isle on its guard. Meanwhile, they had spared no effort in undermining Frostmoon Cold Isle's prestige, and the mission involving Heavenly Pattern had been a tremendous success. In that clash, Heavenly Pattern and Faya had not been the only participants; the shadows of the other five of the Six Great Academies had been faintly discernible too. To some extent, this had also revealed those five academies' stance.
What he had not expected was Jia Yingxia's astonishingly hard-line response to the opposition of the other five academies and Faya. She had brazenly dispatched Bai Yue, the most outstanding Card Adept of Frostmoon Cold Isle's younger generation, to lead a force to wipe out Heavenly Pattern, nearly annihilating it. Nor had they stopped there. They had begun sweeping through the whole of Tiandongli District, inflicting heavy losses on the covert forces other powers had stationed there.
Everyone had underestimated