The temperature around Xia Jue rose rapidly as well, like spring arriving with flowers in bloom. Even the air grew fresher.
A faint smile touched his lips as he said amiably, "It's dark inside the cave. Watch your step."
Su Jiu blinked lightly. Had that moment of tension truly been nothing more than an illusion?
This silent clash finally ended completely when Su Jiu turned her head toward them.
The exchange between Xia Jue and Yun Huanling had not lasted very long. Thus, even the rogue cultivators nearby who sensed something amiss merely watched from a distance, their scrutiny barely perceptible.
Most had not seen what exactly had happened to Xia Jue, surrounded as he was by the Enforcement Hall disciples, but they could clearly feel that the atmosphere within the Enforcement Hall's ranks had changed.
How to put it? It was as though they had suddenly become solemn and iron-blooded in the blink of an eye.
One rogue cultivator who had witnessed the Enforcement Hall enforcing its rules could not help moving farther away from them. He had noticed that their expressions were now exactly the same as when they carried out their missions, as though they might draw their swords the next instant and teach their opponents a lesson in blood...
Little did anyone know that these devils, who supposedly killed without blinking, had grown tense solely because of the smile Xia Jue had inadvertently revealed just now.
After all, whenever their hall master smiled like that, it meant someone was about to suffer.
Their response to Xia Jue was nothing more than an instinctive stress reaction.
Yet the onlookers, ignorant of the truth, did not see it that way. They speculated from the sidelines even as they trembled in fear.
Although they had yet to witness the