At the beginning of Mao Hour, daylight glimmered faintly, and the mountains lay hidden in the morning mist, their scenery dreamlike and unreal.
Myriad Spirits Main Peak, Punishment Hall Dungeon.
Tap, tap...!
Extremely light footsteps sounded in the corridor, slowly approaching Cell A-1. Inside, An Mountain Master hung from a Prisoner-Dragon Pillar. Eighteen dragon-spike whips bound his physical body tight and imprisoned his divine soul.
The footsteps abruptly stopped. A figure in a voluminous black robe and hood stood sideways to the cell's entrance. An Mountain Master was some distance away, with the cell door and cold-iron bars between them, so from his angle, he could not make out the figure's appearance at all.
This figure was actually the true mastermind behind the Bizarre Disappearance Case, as well as An Mountain Master's older cousin. After the first battle on Medicine Peak, the two had met privately once, and the figure had warned An Mountain Master during their conversation.
Less than four hours had passed since Old An's capture downstream of Medicine Peak, and he had spent half that time being escorted back to the dungeon.
In other words, he had barely been hung on the Prisoner-Dragon Pillar before his cousin came to "visit," as though he owned the dungeon and could come and go as he pleased.
Tonight's incident had caused an enormous uproar. Not only had the Myriad Spirits Illustrated Record nearly been lost, but over seven hundred unregistered spirit beasts had actually taken matters into their own hands and "settled" inside it.
There was no way the Myriad Spirits Dao Palace could suppress something so absurd. The Divine Court had sent over a dozen fifth-grade officials an hour earlier to "assist" with the investigation, and word had it that an even more important figure would personally arrive early