The cultivator wearing dove feathers on his head and a dark cloak tucked his plunder into his robes, chuckled in satisfaction, and leaped onto the treetops. A few bounds later, branches swayed in his wake, and he was already several miles away.
Just as he was about to leave the dense forest, a wind suddenly rose. The dead leaves piled on the ground rustled and surged like a tide, and a young man in a moon-white Daoist robe came walking over them, his wide sleeves unfurled, his feet seemingly never touching the earth.
The dark-cloaked cultivator's pupils contracted. The sudden, fierce killing intent made his hair stand on end. Without thinking, he lashed out with the snake whip hidden in his sleeve. It cracked in the air, stirring a howling wind as it struck toward the young man.
Yet the young man in the moon-white Daoist robe did not move an inch. He held his hands palm-up before his lower abdomen, his right hand resting on his left, his thumbs touching. The surrounding primordial energy fluctuated violently as he uttered a single word, his expression wooden: "Array!"
Pain stabbed through the dark-cloaked cultivator's forehead, and crimson flooded his vision. The sound of his skull shattering thundered in his ears as the vitality and cultivation within his body gradually drained away.
His eyes widened in despair. He spewed a mouthful of blood, his body twisting uncontrollably, then crashed to the ground amid the swirling dead leaves.
The mountain wind filled the wide sleeves, making the words "Three Purities" embroidered beneath them particularly conspicuous. Holding the wooden box he had looted, Tong Chen murmured expressionlessly, "When the snipe and clam struggle, the fisherman profits... But everyone in this secret realm is a snipe or a clam. Who will be the fisherman laughing