The instant he heard the voice, Ye Fei did not hesitate. With a thought, he entered the Azure Dragon Sword.
At the same time, the Azure Dragon Sword instantly shrank into a speck of dust and sank into the soil.
Even after entering the Azure Dragon Sword, Ye Fei's heart kept pounding wildly.
He had a feeling that if he had been even a fraction slower, that man would have discovered him.
Was that Wang Changqing?
A guess immediately formed in Ye Fei's mind.
Now, even inside the Azure Dragon Sword, he did not dare extend the slightest trace of divine sense outside.
After all, a Core Formation expert's divine sense was no pushover.
At the slightest unusual movement, Wang Changqing would discover his presence.
I'll have to hole up here for a while.
Ye Fei sighed inwardly and burrowed a hundred zhang underground.
He wanted to test whether he had broken through his cultivation bottleneck.
When he killed Wang Hai, he had vaguely sensed something. Now he wanted to confirm it.
Sure enough, the bottleneck is gone.
After circulating the Free and Easy True Formula through his body for only a short while, Ye Fei opened his eyes.
He found that his cultivation was producing results again.
Delighted, Ye Fei closed his eyes once more and pushed the circulation speed of the Free and Easy True Formula within his body to its limit.
The spiritual energy around him began gathering rapidly toward him. He absorbed and converted it into streams of true qi, which circulated through his meridians and condensed the vortex in his dantian.
In fact, Ye Fei's intuition had been right. The moment he entered the Azure Dragon Sword, Wang Changqing unleashed his divine sense in a sweeping flood.
It even reached a hundred zhang underground.
Only because Ye Fei had been that tiny bit faster had he successfully evaded Wang Changqing's divine sense probe.
The instant Wang Changqing sensed the Giant Sword Talisman being activated, he had risen and rushed over.
Judging by the scene, he concluded that the other party was probably at Foundation Establishment.
Given how quickly he had arrived, the other party should not have been able to escape beyond a ten-li radius so soon.
Yet after searching, he found no cultivators anywhere within thirty li.
That puzzled him.
To guard against the other party using a Magic Treasure that concealed their aura to evade his divine sense, Wang Changqing stubbornly remained there for three days and nights.
He constantly watched every rustle of wind and stir of grass within ten li of Hidden Dragon Village.
Without a doubt, the results disappointed him deeply.
With no other choice, he returned to the Void-Surpassing Gate and reported the Spirit Stone mine beneath Hidden Dragon Village.
He had done this out of necessity, afraid that unnecessary trouble might arise later.
The next day, more than twenty disciples of the Void-Surpassing Gate arrived at Hidden Dragon Village.
Of course, Ye Fei, hiding inside the Azure Dragon Sword, knew nothing of this.
After cultivating inside the Azure Dragon Sword for ten days.
Ye Fei stopped cultivating and returned to the surface.
By then, he had successfully broken through the seventh level of Qi Refining and advanced to the eighth.
After weighing his options, he quietly released a strand of divine sense to observe the situation outside.
The moment he released it, he discovered that there were no villagers left in the part of Hidden Dragon Village within its range.
Clearly, they had all moved away.
Meanwhile, five or six zhang to his left, an underground cave abode had appeared at some point.
The cave abode was three zhang square, and twelve green-robed disciples of the Void-Surpassing Gate were cultivating inside with their eyes closed.
Their cultivation was low, with almost all of them below the fifth level of Qi Refining.
More than a dozen Storage Pouches were piled beside them.
Why did so many Void-Surpassing Gate disciples suddenly show up?
Could they be here to mine Spirit Stones?
Inside the Azure Dragon Sword, Ye Fei frowned slightly as a guess formed in his mind.
Heh heh, if it's just these shrimp soldiers and crab generals, couldn't I...
Ye Fei gave a wicked grin, and an excellent idea soon came to him.
He guided the speck of dust that the Azure Dragon Sword had become, quietly burrowing toward the cave abode.
A quarter of an hour later, a speck of dust clung to the cave abode's wall.
Directly in front of that speck of dust lay a pile of twelve Storage Pouches.
Indeed, Ye Fei had his sights set on those Storage Pouches.
There was no need to think twice about the Storage Pouches left here. They were surely packed with Spirit Stones.
Compared with going down and laboriously mining them himself, helping himself to the ready-made spoils was the wisest choice for Ye Fei.
Should I wait, or take them all right now?
Inside the Azure Dragon Sword, Ye Fei lightly pinched his chin with his right hand, weighing the advantages and disadvantages.
With his abilities, taking all these Storage Pouches would pose no problem at all.
By his estimate, these twelve Storage Pouches could hold around thirty thousand Spirit Stones.
But if he took them all now, that would be all he got. Making another move afterward would probably be difficult.
If the incident caused a stir and a Foundation Establishment or Core Formation expert arrived, he would have no chance whatsoever.
Thirty thousand Spirit Stones was no small sum, but compared with the entire mine, even this miniature vein, it amounted to less than a quarter.
And so he hesitated.
Damn it, you can't snare a wolf without sacrificing a child.
Finally, Ye Fei gritted his teeth and forced himself to calm down.
He did not act rashly. Hiding inside the Azure Dragon Sword, he prepared to wait for an opportunity and haul in a big score.
Perhaps fate had already decided things in the unseen world, for Ye Fei's greed happened to spare him a disaster.
At that moment, a hundred zhang away underground, Wang Changqing was closely watching everything that happened here.
He had not left during these ten days.
He firmly believed that the person who had wiped out his Wang Household was nearby, carrying a Magic Treasure capable of concealing their aura.
"Why do you think Elder Wang hasn't sent anyone to collect the Spirit Stones? This is a little strange!"
"Exactly. According to the usual rules, someone should come collect them every day. It's been eleven days, and we have over sixty thousand Spirit Stones, but nobody's come."
"Not only has nobody come to collect them, haven't you noticed? Not a single Foundation Establishment senior brother came with us."
Five days later, Ye Fei, sitting cross-legged inside the Azure Dragon Sword, heard a conversation between two Clear Void Gate disciples in the cave abode.
It stirred something in his heart.
Could something be wrong here?
That possibility immediately occurred to Ye Fei.
Looks like I really did make the right choice by not acting a few days ago.
He secretly counted himself lucky.
Afraid there might be a trap, Ye Fei became even more reluctant to act rashly, and did not even dare release much divine sense.
He could only cultivate while watching longingly as the Storage Pouches ahead piled higher and higher, waiting for an opportunity.
Another ten days passed in the blink of an eye.
The Storage Pouches before Ye Fei had formed a tall pile, more than thirty bags containing roughly a hundred and twenty thousand Lower-Grade Spirit Stones.
After observing them for so long, he discovered that there were twenty-four Clear Void Gate disciples here in total.
They were divided into two shifts of twelve.
After mining for six hours, each shift would come up and switch with the other.
Every shift change happened right on time.
Although there were plenty of Spirit Stones here, these disciples did not dare use them to cultivate.
They only sat in meditation and absorbed the spirit power from the surrounding air.
Two days later, before their six hours were even up, the disciples who had gone down to mine returned early.
From their conversation, Ye Fei learned that all the Spirit Stones here had been mined.
Damn, they've finished already?
Seeing that these people were preparing to leave, Ye Fei could not help growing anxious.
After waiting so long, he could not possibly go back empty-handed, could he?
As the pile of Storage Pouches before him was about to be carried away, Ye Fei gritted his teeth. He was preparing to seize them by force, regardless of the consequences.
Those hundred-odd thousand Spirit Stones were far too tempting.
Relying on the Azure Dragon Sword, he wanted to risk it all.
"Ha ha! Wang Changqing, oh, Wang Changqing! What's a Core Formation cultivator like you doing hiding underground? Playing hide-and-seek?"
But just then, a strange, mocking laugh rang out from the ground above the cave abode.
It's him!
The instant he heard that voice, Ye Fei's eyes flew wide, his face filled with disbelief.
Before you continue