Mu Qinglan had no time to explain. She barked again in a low, stern voice.
"Spare no expense! Find out the root cause of the sharp drop in every hall's revenue immediately!"
"Every suspicious person! Every suspicious factor!"
"Investigate them all thoroughly for your Sect Master! If any of you dare leave even the slightest hole, you can plug it with your own old lives!"
The elders listened with their hearts pounding in terror. None dared waste another word, and they immediately answered in unison, "Yes!"
"Woooo-!"
The piercing alarm echoed throughout the Azure Cloud Sect as the Sect's level-three response was activated in an instant.
For a moment, every elder of the Azure Cloud Sect received an urgent summons, no matter where they were.
Their expressions changed drastically when they saw the emergency summons. Not daring to delay, they immediately dropped everything and rushed back to the Sect as fast as they could.
One day later.
All the elders who could be summoned back had arrived.
Yet when the hall masters counted their people, they discovered to their horror that more than half the elders of their respective halls were missing!
Their hearts lurched. What was going on?
Could it be... that all the elders who had failed to return had defected?!
The hall masters immediately reported this alarming news to the Sect Master.
After hearing the news, Mu Qinglan felt her heart go numb.
"Could it be... that these elders noticed something had gone wrong with the Azure Cloud Sect, found somewhere else to go, and fled ahead of time?"
"Go investigate, damn it!"
With a furious shout, she drove all the hall masters and elders out.
But those hall masters would never have known without investigating. Once they did, they nearly jumped out of their skins!