The village in the file was not particularly far from Yuzhou City.
At the very least, it fell within the jurisdiction of Yuzhou City's Demon-Suppression Bureau.
Two Foundation Establishment cultivators traveling at full speed would not take long to get there.
Li Xingtian followed behind Zhao Wanqing for a while and found something odd about the way she moved.
Her right leg seemed injured, and every landing looked somewhat unnatural.
As a result, Zhao Wanqing's pace did not seem particularly fast to Li Xingtian.
"Is your right leg injured?" Li Xingtian asked.
Zhao Wanqing glanced sideways at him in surprise. "How did you know?"
"You instinctively take the weight off it whenever your foot lands." After explaining, Li Xingtian continued, "Are you sure you'll be all right dragging that leg along?"
"Time is pressing..."
Li Xingtian's tone remained calm. "So pressing that you didn't even take a healing pill?"
"I did. It's just that the blood energy can't be cleared out that quickly, which is slowing my recovery."
"Then could you please stop for a moment?"
Zhao Wanqing stopped at his request and looked at Li Xingtian in confusion.
"I have a way to deal with it. Please cooperate. If we're attacked, I can't guarantee your safety."
After offering that explanation, Li Xingtian swiftly scanned her. He could indeed faintly sense blood energy clinging to Zhao Wanqing's body.
These wounds... aren't there a few too many?
"This is a little intrusive. Please bear with me."
Li Xingtian stopped as well, manipulating spiritual energy with his hands to swiftly envelop several wounds containing blood energy.
When his spiritual energy touched the blood energy, the latter swiftly submitted to it, as though recognizing its master.
With a slight tug, the blood energy surged out of Zhao Wanqing's wounds along with Li Xingtian's spiritual energy.
Zhao Wanqing stood dumbfounded as she felt that savage, tenacious blood energy, which had seemed determined to cling to her for a lifetime, swept away effortlessly by his spiritual energy without the slightest resistance.
It was like a daughter raised at home for eighteen years being whisked away by a bleached-haired punk on a flashy motorcycle with a mere crook of his finger.
Zhao Wanqing opened her mouth, then hesitated. She was deeply curious about why Li Xingtian's spiritual energy could suppress the blood energy so easily.
"It's because of my cultivation method." Li Xingtian naturally understood her expression. "There's a reason Master sent me instead of my senior sister."
"Thank you..." Zhao Wanqing thanked him. Whatever the explanation, with that clinging blood energy gone, the pain had indeed diminished considerably.
Li Xingtian acknowledged her with a slight nod. After all, bringing someone who would hold him back on a job was always a foolish thing in his eyes.
His experience from his previous life had taught him never to team up with idiots.
By now, Zhao Wanqing already counted as half an idiot in his eyes.
If she could not demonstrate anything exceptional during the investigation ahead, Li Xingtian would consider taking command from her and handling the case his own way.
"This is where I found traces of the ritual." Zhao Wanqing pointed at a patch of empty ground that bore no traces whatsoever. "They move fast. We need to hurry."
Li Xingtian swiftly swept his gaze over the clearing. If Zhao Wanqing was telling the truth, the ground had indeed been cleaned up thoroughly, leaving not a single useful trace.
Zhao Wanqing nudged the formation's former focal point with her foot and found no fluctuations of energy.
"For them to carry out sacrificial rituals so brazenly, they must have reached some critical stage, or some unexpected development has driven them to disregard the consequences."
"So we need to anticipate where they'll strike next."
Li Xingtian nodded slightly, agreeing with Zhao Wanqing's plan. It seemed she was not simply charging around investigating at random in a fit of impulse.
Having a plan and some ideas was enough, and it seemed Zhao Wanqing already had their next destination in mind.
Zhao Wanqing's destination lay north of their current location.
Yuzhou City bordered water to the south and mountains to the north. Zhao Wanqing believed that, since the city's Demon-Suppression Bureau had discovered those Evil Cultivators carrying out large-scale sacrificial rituals, they could no longer act so openly.
They were merely Evil Cultivators, not people with a death wish.
They would most likely set their sights on secluded villages near the mountains.
For one thing, such secluded villages were difficult to search. For another, the mountains offered trees for cover. Even if the Demon-Suppression Bureau found them, they could break into smaller groups and swiftly scatter, making them difficult to catch.
And so, beneath the cover of night, Zhao Wanqing led Li Xingtian at a sprint toward the nearest village to the north.
Zhao Wanqing had already studied a map of the surrounding terrain before setting out.
After roughly an hour, the two were nearly at the village Zhao Wanqing had mentioned.
"Wait!" Li Xingtian abruptly stopped, surveying his surroundings with a slight frown.
Zhao Wanqing hastily stopped as well. "What's wrong?"
"We've entered a disorientation formation." Li Xingtian scanned the dense woods around them. "We've circled this place at least three times."
Zhao Wanqing froze at his words. Three times? She had noticed nothing at all.
"Getting out of this formation isn't difficult, but I'm afraid we've been exposed."
Li Xingtian swept his gaze over their surroundings and soon sensed a point where spiritual power fluctuated.
Although his cultivation had started over after his rebirth, Li Xingtian still retained his knowledge and experience.
From the outset of the mission, Li Xingtian had kept a close watch on his surroundings.
Li Xingtian's vigilance toward Evil Cultivators was always at its highest, for one simple reason: every Evil Cultivator he had encountered shared the same trait-they had no bottom line whatsoever.
Li Xingtian cautiously approached the source of the spiritual energy fluctuations.
Zhao Wanqing quickly followed him, then watched as Li Xingtian parted the grass and picked up a small stone from the ground.
After examining it repeatedly, Li Xingtian carefully returned the stone to its original position.
"It's a stone-bead disorientation formation. Follow me."
Zhao Wanqing followed close behind him. Li Xingtian turned left and right as though going in circles, yet after circling several times, they actually made it out.
Then Zhao Wanqing froze.
Before them lay a village whose inhabitants had already been slaughtered to the last.
Every house had long since been burned to ashes, and the smell of blood struck them on the cold night wind.
Headless corpses crowded the branches of a tree at the village entrance.
Li Xingtian lowered his gaze to the traces of the formation ritual at his feet. They were still there, without even an attempt to conceal them.
"They... how dare they?"
Zhao Wanqing's voice trembled slightly. Evil Cultivators abducting villagers for sacrifice and sacrificing an entire village were two entirely different things.
The sacrificial rituals of Evil Cultivators were nothing more than a means of extracting blood energy and human souls to bolster their own cultivation through external means.
But adult men were the best source of both blood energy and souls.
Women, children, and the elderly could provide very little blood energy.
They could even taint it.
Thus, even the most vicious Evil Cultivators would not do something that harmed others without benefiting themselves.
Besides, this was an entire village. They had spared neither the elderly and infirm nor the women and children!
This was nothing short of a massacre!
Li Xingtian said, "They left in a hurry and didn't even clean up the formation ritual. I'll memorize its details so we can look into it when we return. Go inside and see whether they've left behind any useful information."
One glance at Zhao Wanqing's expression told him she had somewhat lost her composure, so he made the arrangements himself.
Before you continue