The mine.
Despite rushing as fast as they could, the people of the Clearwind Sect were still a step too late.
By the time the Golden Core elders led by Shangguan Hong arrived, the mine was already all but deserted.
The five Golden Core elders hovered over the mine, rapidly spreading their divine senses to scan the area.
As it turned out, when Li Xingtian said the teleportation formation was unstable, it really was extremely unstable. A sweep of their divine senses revealed several miners still within range.
One of the elders immediately spoke:
"There are still miners nearby who haven't escaped."
"You go after them. I'll search this place myself." Shangguan Hong's eyes were lowered, his voice calm.
"All right..."
The other elders understood that this was Shangguan Hong's only chance to break through to the Nascent Soul realm. He might look calm now, but inside, his fury was probably already surging to the heavens.
He was the last person who wanted anything to happen here. Leaving the place to Shangguan Hong might be the best choice now.
Shangguan Hong flew down. The first thing he saw upon setting foot in the mine was Elder Mo Chen, drained into a desiccated corpse.
He slowly reached out and carefully examined Elder Mo Chen's condition.
Before long, Shangguan Hong reached a swift conclusion: someone had sucked Elder Mo Chen dry.
Moreover, all the blood essence in his body had been drained while he was still alive, without him even being able to fight back.
Only an evil cultivator at least around the late Golden Core stage could have done this.
"Useless fool!"
Shangguan Hong forcibly suppressed his rage, resisting the urge to blast the dried corpse straight into ashes.
After all, he still depended on the sect, so he could not make things too ugly.
Shangguan Hong took a deep breath and could only walk deeper into the mine with his last remaining hope.
All he could do now was hope that everything inside was intact-that the formation built over many years remained stable, and that the blood essence contained in the blood pool was still there.
Those were his greatest assets for breaking through to the Nascent Soul realm.
He no longer had much time left. Shangguan Hong's aptitude was not particularly good, and no one knew how much painstaking effort he had spent climbing all the way to the position of elder in the Clearwind Sect.
How many contemptuous looks he had endured, how much humiliation he had suffered.
And now... he was supposed to stop here? How could Shangguan Hong accept that?
In truth, he did not need to enter the mine tunnel. The moment Shangguan Hong swept it with his divine sense, he knew everything was gone.
Yet he still walked inside, unwilling to give up.
The pool once filled to the brim with blood sustenance had long since dried up, and even the painstakingly constructed formation had one corner blasted apart.
Shangguan Hong gazed at the scene with lowered eyes. At that moment, it was as though he had stepped into a dream, an illusion, a bubble waiting to burst.
So close... so close...
I would have accepted even the poorest low-grade nascent soul.
Shangguan Hong did not know how long he stood there.
Only when the other four elders returned with six captured miners did the sound of their footsteps rouse him.
One elder swept his gaze over the sacrificial ritual platform before him and sighed inwardly, then tossed the six bound miners forward:
"These are all we could catch for now."
Shangguan Hong abruptly raised his scarlet eyes toward them, like a soul-devouring beast.
The miners could withstand neither the pressure of a Golden Core cultivator nor that terrifying, piercing gaze:
"I'll talk... I'll talk..."
Shangguan Hong ignored them completely. He pulled one miner straight into his grasp and immediately began the Soul-Searching Method.
One of the elders was about to speak at the sight, but another stopped him with a shake of his head.
This Soul-Seizing Art not only inflicted tremendous damage on the subject's soul, but also placed an extremely heavy burden on the caster.
Disregarding his own condition, Shangguan Hong searched the souls of all six miners.
After finishing the soul search on the last miner, Shangguan Hong suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.
"...An evil cultivator... a top-tier evil cultivator who could control the water in the blood sustenance pool."
Shangguan Hong gently wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "There was also a masked man and woman. The man was at least at the late Golden Core stage, and he possessed a divine ability."
"The methods of the man with the divine ability didn't look like those of an evil cultivator... but that could have been a smokescreen."
Shangguan Hong took out a brush and quickly drew the only man whose face had been visible in the miners' memories.
The picture showed a middle-aged, bearded man with a wooden expression.
When Li Xingtian infiltrated the mine, he had already prepared a facial disguise to conceal his identity.
"They moved quickly and had a clear objective," Shangguan Hong added. "This face might not be his real one either."
"Late Golden Core? And a divine ability?" One elder frowned slightly. "Our Nascent Soul ancestor is currently in seclusion, and no one in the Clearwind Sect possesses a divine ability. Even if we find them, we may not be able to do anything to them."
"What's more, there are three of them. If the other two are also Golden Core cultivators with divine abilities, even the five of us would probably be no match for them."
"According to your soul search, they may simply be evil cultivators whose aim was to seize some benefits. They aren't necessarily intent on fighting us to the death."
"Making a great show of this could cost us more than we gain. After all, our own deeds can't bear the light of day either."
Shangguan Hong's scarlet eyes abruptly turned toward the elder who had spoken.
But after a long silence.
Shangguan Hong slowly said, "You're right, but what we're doing absolutely cannot stop here! The damage to the formation foundations isn't severe, and repairing them won't be difficult. As for that blood sustenance... capture more! Capture as many as you can!"
"From now on, all five of us elders will guard this place. Summon the sect disciples to build a grand formation. Even if they possess divine abilities, we'll make sure they come here and never return!"
Faced with Shangguan Hong's proposal, the other four elders all fell silent.
In the past, they had carried out their little schemes with painstaking care to keep them hidden, yet other evil cultivators had still found their opening and beaten them to the prize.
Now, if they started capturing people on such a grand scale, exposure would be hard to avoid.
They only wanted to use Shangguan Hong's plan to aid their own cultivation, giving them a chance to ascend to the Nascent Soul realm as well.
They had no desire to stake both their lives and reputations on this place.
Unlike Shangguan Hong, who was on the brink of old age, they at least had more years left to live than he did.
But faced with the visibly enraged Shangguan Hong, their silence was the strongest unspoken rebuttal.
"Brother Pei... have you forgotten that I saved your life?"
"Brother Zhao, your spiritual root aptitude is even worse than mine. Is reaching the early Golden Core stage and scraping together an elder's position the limit of your ambitions? On the Great Dao, don't you want to take another step forward?"
"Brother Li... my youngest daughter..."
"Brother Wang..."
Shangguan Hong swept his gaze across the four elders, his expression hovering between a smile and something else:
"Do you truly believe that stopping now will let you escape unscathed?"
"Don't you know that the path of cultivation is filled with struggles where either you die or I do?"
"Only by taking another step forward can we wake from dreams at midnight without fear!"
Elder Li finally could not hold back and was the first to speak:
"From now on, all of this must be carefully planned. We need to think for the long term!"
Before you continue