Little Bad King posed a hypothesis to himself. If that Mysterious Hunting Party had already marked me as a target they couldn't afford to miss, could the remnant-soul spirit beasts around me be their informants?
When a Traveler died, remnant-soul spirit beasts could be nearby. In other words, those spirit beasts had acted as moles, secretly reporting his exact whereabouts to An Mountain Master and those other bastards, thereby allowing him to successfully trigger the death mechanism...
But when a Traveler revived, there would be no remnant-soul spirit beasts nearby. On the surface, this appeared to preserve their understanding of the world, because they could not witness their own kind reviving repeatedly. It was something they could neither understand nor accept.
But on closer consideration, could there be a subtle hint from the Heavenly Dao beneath that apparent protection of their understanding? Was it telling all Travelers that only when they revived were they free of surveillance?
But that doesn't make sense either! The Netherman Puppet clearly had the ability to pick up a target spirit beast's aura. Why would they go to the pointless trouble of recruiting a batch of spirit-beast moles?
Could it be... to keep better track of the target spirit beasts' growth, so they could better judge when to capture them, when to kill them... and when to let them grow a little longer?
This conjecture was reasonable. After all, the Netherman Puppet could not watch its targets every moment. Judging by the battle on Medicine Peak that night, An Mountain Master's gang did not have many core members either. At the very least, the ordinary disciples knew nothing about it. So... recruiting spirit-beast moles to make up for their lack of manpower made perfect sense.
After all, once spirit beasts were captured, they could be