After returning from Jade Wave Island, Chen Ming kept quiet. Instead, under the pretext of "adjusting defenses," he began a discreet internal investigation on Divine Wind Island.
He did not make a great show of investigating everyone; that would only stir the grass and startle the snake. He took a subtler approach-having Liu Qingqing reexamine all records of people entering and leaving Divine Wind Island, movements of supplies, and communications from the past six months under the guise of "checking the accounts." Every trace of anything unusual was recorded and handed to Chen Ming for his personal assessment.
Meanwhile, Zhao Tie Zhu was sent to secretly observe the daily behavior of several core members on the island. This was not a matter of distrusting them, but a precaution-even an established power like Jade Wave Island, with over a century of history, could be infiltrated. It was even harder to guarantee that an emerging power like Divine Wind Island was an unbroken slab of iron.
The internal investigation lasted five full days.
Five days later, Liu Qingqing and Zhao Tie Zhu reported their findings to Chen Ming in turn.
On Liu Qingqing's end, the accounts and personnel records were largely in order. Divine Wind Island's personnel structure was relatively simple. Most of its disciples were recruited by Chen Ming from among independent cultivators, with no tangled conflicts of interest between them, making infiltration less likely. The only point of suspicion was an external affairs disciple named Zhou Yuan. He had joined Divine Wind Island six months earlier, shown initiative, and advanced rapidly. However, when Liu Qingqing checked his background, she discovered that he claimed to come from a small island destroyed by sea beasts, leaving his story impossible to verify.
On Zhao Tie Zhu's end, no obvious abnormalities were found in