The Grand Formation

"What if they don't have many possessions on them?" Lu Mingyue could not help asking another question.

The young man on the left rolled his eyes at her and said with a faint smile, "Then it depends on whether the person who wants to kill them is willing to pay the corresponding duel fee. If they aren't willing, but still insist that the other person must die, our City Patrol Office will expel them both, and they'll never be allowed into Taiping City again!"

So, no matter what, Taiping City's city lord would never lose out!

"Thank you both for clearing that up!"

Lu Mingyue cupped her hands and bowed, then entered the City Patrol Office and went straight to the main hall.

Having spent so many years in Yangguan City, Lu Mingyue was familiar with how government offices handled their affairs. Sure enough, when the man seated in the hall saw her enter, he looked up, sized her up, and asked:

"Are you here to apply to be a corpse collector for the City Patrol Office?"

This was one advantage of being cultivators. Although the main hall was dozens of meters from the entrance, they were all cultivators with astonishing senses. How could they not have heard Lu Mingyue explain why she had come?

It saved a great deal of trouble compared with dealing with mortals.

"That's right!"

Lu Mingyue nodded, and the man stood up and said:

"The corpse collectors our City Patrol Office recruits are different from those in the mortal realm. I expect the broker who brought you here has already told you that our assessment is considerably stricter. Come with me first."

Lu Mingyue followed the man in blue around to the rear courtyard, then through turn after turn until they reached a separately partitioned courtyard.

As expected of the City Patrol Office established by Taiping City's city lord!

Although Lu Mingyue had not released her Divine Sense to probe about indiscriminately, the time she had spent following the man through those turns alone was enough to show just how much land this place occupied.

"This is where our City Patrol Office's corpse collectors work. Since we haven't found a suitable corpse collector, there's only one old corpse collector working here for the time being..."

As the man in blue spoke, Lu Mingyue spotted the old corpse collector too. He was just an ordinary elderly mortal.

It seemed that, just as the two City Patrol Office cultivators outside had said, those who had become cultivators were reluctant to have anything more to do with work like corpse collecting.

Hearing their voices, the old man, who had been tending to a corpse, looked up at Lu Mingyue and her companion. Excitement immediately appeared on his face. He put down his needle and thread, hurried over, and knelt before the man in blue, saying:

"May I ask, exalted immortal, have you found a suitable corpse collector?"

Such eagerness...

Lu Mingyue gave the old man a somewhat surprised look. Why did he seem as though he had been forced into this?

"What are you doing? If our City Patrol Office hadn't taken you in, the Fortune Casino's thugs would probably have beaten you to death long ago!"

The man in blue had evidently sensed what Lu Mingyue was thinking as well. His gaze turned cold as he looked at the old man, and he raised a hand, releasing a wisp of Origin Power to help him to his feet.

Lu Mingyue was inwardly startled. The man in blue looked perfectly ordinary, yet the pressure of the cultivation he now released actually made it difficult for her to breathe!

Although Lu Mingyue could not determine his exact cultivation, the pressure alone made her so uncomfortable that he must surely have been above the sixth layer of the Qi Refining Stage!

After all, not even the married couple Bai Zishan and Guo Yang had made Lu Mingyue feel this way.

"Forgive me, exalted immortal! Forgive me! It isn't that this old man has a wolf's heart and a dog's lungs. It's just that these... immortals' remains are far too frightening. I truly cannot handle them properly!"

The elderly mortal explained with fear on his face and a measure of helplessness, then stole a glance at Lu Mingyue.

"Enough. Go deal with those mortal corpses first. I'll take this fellow cultivator for an assessment. If her skills meet the standard, you'll be able to leave!"

The man in blue had no desire to say more to the elderly mortal. After waving a hand, he led Lu Mingyue to the entrance of a nearby room sealed with a stone door.

Lu Mingyue took a moment to glance at the mortal corpse the old man had been handling. Although the person had been hacked to death by a flurry of blades, it was nothing much in her eyes.

What the old man had said earlier, however, caught Lu Mingyue's attention. What was so frightening about cultivators' corpses?

Rumble...

Just as that question arose in her mind, Lu Mingyue received her answer.

The man in blue waved a hand, sending a stream of Origin Power into the stone door before him. The heavy door slowly opened, revealing a room of a dozen or so square meters and a corpse lying on a stone bed.

Strangely, though there was no telling how long the corpse on the stone bed had been dead, a layer of black flames still wreathed it, as though it were burning!

"Huh?"

Lu Mingyue could not help exclaiming softly. Under the perception of her Divine Sense, those black flames actually gave off an aura of yin and Baleful Intent!

"This is a demonic spell!"

Moreover, the impression this demonic spell gave Lu Mingyue was actually somewhat more powerful than the demonic cultivation arts Guo Yang and her husband practiced!

Hearing Lu Mingyue's words, the man in blue turned to look at her and shook his head.

"It isn't simply because of the demonic spell. Haven't you noticed that the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi in our Taiping City is much denser than elsewhere?"

Before the man in blue said this, Lu Mingyue had not carefully sensed it.

She had been busy shaking off Bai Zishan today, then looking for somewhere to stay in the city, and had not had time to stop and cultivate.

But now, prompted by the man in blue's words, Lu Mingyue silently circulated her cultivation art, and a look of shock involuntarily appeared on her face.

"This... such dense Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi!"

If the density of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi in mortal cities like Cangzhou Prefectural City was 1, then the density in Taiping City had actually reached 5!

It was a full five times as dense!

"You can sense it now, can't you?" Only now did a smile appear on the blue-robed man's face. Sharing in the honor, he said, "The Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi in this city is so dense because our city lord set up a Spirit Gathering Grand Formation, drawing the spiritual qi between heaven and earth here!"

"That's why so many rogue cultivators want to enter Taiping City, and why they don't dare violate the rules our city lord laid down!"

With that explanation, Lu Mingyue understood.

A fivefold difference in spiritual qi! That meant cultivators cultivating here could save roughly five times the time compared with cultivating in mortal cities!

"However, precisely because the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi is so dense, after these cultivators fight to the death, the spells afflicting the fallen won't dissipate for some time. Instead, they persist, sustained by the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi!"

"Since our City Patrol Office has collected their duel fees, naturally we can't sit by and let the fallen be left without even bones. So..."

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