Half a month later, Wan Yao'er returned.
She returned late at night, when no moonlight shone over the sea and only a sky full of stars reflected on the pitch-black waves. An inconspicuous little Spirit Boat slipped silently up to Divine Wind Island's dock, carrying only three people-Wan Yao'er and the two elite team members she had taken with her. All three wore the weary look of travelers battered by wind and dust, but an irrepressible excitement shone in their eyes.
Upon receiving the report, Chen Ming summoned her to the stone hall that very night.
"Well? Did you find anything?" Chen Ming asked without preamble, pouring her a cup of hot tea.
Wan Yao'er accepted the cup but did not rush to drink. Instead, she took a folded beast-hide map from inside her robe and spread it across the table. Several red dots marked in cinnabar clustered in an area where the Eastern Suburb Sea met the Southwestern Sea.
"Quite a haul." Wan Yao'er pointed to one of the red dots. "We lay low in the border region for ten days. For the first seven, we found nothing-just a few small fry we couldn't be bothered with. But starting on the eighth day, remnants of the Corpse Refining Sect began fleeing through from the southwest. We picked out a few big fish and struck."
Her finger moved to another red dot. "Here, we captured an inner sect disciple of the Corpse Refining Sect at late foundation establishment. He was carrying pills and Spirit Stones worth about five thousand Spirit Stones altogether. We've already interrogated him. He didn't know much, being only an ordinary disciple, but he was familiar with the layout of the Corpse Refining Sect's headquarters and revealed the locations of several treasure caches. Most of those places