"They must be hiding! Maybe they were badly wounded fighting the Guest Elder and are on the verge of death."
"Tch! Are you trying to talk them to death?"
"Oh, right! They say we're forming a Combined Army with the Thousand Mountains School and the Green Mountain Sect! Have you heard about that, Senior Brother?"
"There's probably something to it, but I doubt it'll come together."
"Why do you say that?"
"That's not something for us to discuss. The Fifth Elder, Sound Demon, and the Sixth Elder, Baleful Heavenly Venerable, have already gone to negotiate with the Thousand Mountains School and the Green Mountain Sect."
"Oh! Yes, yes!"
"All right! Stay sharp! Don't let anything go wrong! One more patrol round, and we can go back to cultivating."
"Right!"
The group of five cultivators sped through the mountain forest...
Unbeknownst to them, a pair of eyes appeared on a large tree, gazing into the distance with a trace of an odd expression...
Then the person silently formed hand seals and chanted an incantation. With a point of a finger, a strand of runic spell power turned into a thread of Wood Element light and flew out...
The thread of light wound through the woods for seventy or eighty feet, then circled a tree. The tree trembled, and a Warning Talisman flashed into view, wrapped in strands of runes before sinking back into the tree.
Then a figure slipped soundlessly out of the tree, taking human form, and raced toward the forested gorge like a phantom of flowing light...
After traveling several hundred feet, the person stopped again, formed hand seals, and chanted an incantation. The figure blurred and vanished...
Just as the person disappeared, five patrolling disciples of the Black Water Sect came racing from ahead...
Only a short while