"N-no!" Bai Jin'er hurriedly shook her head and lowered it even further.
"All right, all right, quit dawdling. Follow me!"
"Okay!"
The others asked no more questions. They immediately rose and followed Chun Xiaobai deeper into the Mountain of Ten Thousand Spirits.
The four traveled nearly a thousand li toward the central region, "warmly persuading" quite a few more hostages to stay along the way.
From these new "guests," they actually managed to learn where the core disciples had gone.
However, the news they received was that the core disciples of the Righteous Alliance and the Heavenly Baleful Valley were in the central region up ahead, apparently preparing for a bloody showdown.
Chun Xiaobai immediately turned to Fang Yuan.
"Second Boss, didn't you say those guys came to look for herbs? Why are they about to start fighting up ahead?"
"Well... well..." Fang Yuan was just as baffled. Core disciples had never gotten involved in this sort of thing before.
Xiao Zhang suddenly spoke up. "Boss, do you think the Righteous Alliance lost so badly that their core disciples couldn't stand watching anymore, so they came out to settle the score?"
"Oh!" Chun Xiaobai's eyes lit up. "Right, Fourth Boss really does have the best head on his shoulders!"
"All right, whatever they're after, let's scout things out first!"
Soon, they found the place where the core disciples had gathered.
However, the scene before them was nothing like the gathering of "core disciples" they had imagined.
Chun Xiaobai was lying on a mountain ridge, looking down at an enormous basin ahead.
This basin lay at the very center of the Mountain of Ten Thousand Spirits. Called the Dry Spirit Abyss, it was both the safest and the poorest place in the region.
It was said that a hundred thousand years