Numb.
Utterly numb.
Outside Vulture Peak, the cultivators watching from afar froze where they stood, as though struck by the Immobility Technique.
Every figure stood slack-jawed, dazed and lost.
Only one thought remained in everyone's mind.
Heaven-defying!
Absolutely heaven-defying!
What a brazen Wine Sword Immortal!
He had never been converted.
He had been acting from the very beginning.
He had pretended to be converted, slipped into Vulture Peak, and won Jieyin's trust. Then, at the most critical moment, right before the entire Buddhist School, he had forcibly uprooted its Spirit Veins!
And he had not taken some tiny portion, but a full thirty to forty percent!
He had been even more ruthless than when he dug them out of Kunlun Mountain!
"Heavens..."
An old cultivator finally came to his senses, his voice hoarse with profound shock and awe.
"The Wine Sword Immortal... he's making fools of everyone!"
"Making fools of everyone? That hardly covers it!" a Mighty Expert beside him interjected, his expression conflicted beyond measure.
"He completely deceived a Hunyuan Limitless Daluo Golden Immortal, then severed the Buddhist School's Spirit Veins right before a Sage!
"If... if that were me, I'd probably go utterly mad with rage."
"When the Chan Sect lost its Spirit Veins, at least they were taken openly. Sage Yuanshi at least knew what Gu Changqing had come to do."
"But the Buddhist School? They were tricked! Gu Changqing played them like monkeys!"
"That's a hundred times crueler than simply snatching them by force!"
Everyone clamored with discussion, their hearts pounding harder the more they spoke.
Indeed!
By comparison, the Buddhist School had clearly suffered even worse than the Chan Sect before it.
And what shocked them even more was the Buddhist School's loss.
The Chan Sect had lost its Spirit Veins, but that was that.