Chapter 249: His Voice Arrived Before He Did (Revised)
With interested parties deliberately fanning the flames, news of the disturbance at the Li Mountain Sword Lodge spread throughout several surrounding prefectures by the following morning.
A military official from the Southern Dynasty had slipped across the border and joined forces with a poison witch from the Southern Border to murder the elderly Sect Master Li Huaichuan during his routine patrol of Li Mountain, then severely injured Lü Yan, a senior figure of the righteous path who had gone to investigate.
This atrocious act sent towering waves through court and country. Countless righteous volunteers set out for Lizhou of their own accord to hunt down this Southern Border madman who held Northern Zhou in such contempt.
Liu Danggui, leader of the northern Martial Dao and Sect Master of the Mystic Yellow Sword Mound, had little personal connection with Li Huaichuan, but his elders had fought alongside the patriarch of the Li Mountain Sword Lodge. Upon hearing the news, he immediately issued a Jianghu manhunt order.
As the representative of Northern Zhou Daoist Sect, the Divination Sect naturally could not remain unmoved. Its ancestral seat, the Yellow Qilin Temple, likewise ordered the various sects to search for the man.
The only reason they did not issue a "Various Sects Execution Order" was that Xie Jinhuan's identity was unusual and his heroic reputation too great. They could hardly strike to kill before understanding the full story.
Northern Zhou's Cultivation Dao had four branches: Daoism, Buddhism, Martial Dao, and Witchcraft. But the Buddhist Sect followed the path of asceticism. By the nature of their tradition, they stayed far from disputes, tempering themselves through hardship in bitterly cold lands without interfering in worldly affairs. Only the Daoist, martial, and witchcraft branches took charge of matters