Emerald-Cry Valley had never been as famous as it was today, nor had it ever been so bustling.
On either side of the shallow stream, in the valley woods, figures were everywhere, footsteps and voices rising and falling without cease.
The Imperial Court's Divine Guard Army had sealed off both ends of the stream valley for dozens of miles. Fierce sword light and the soaring radiance of the Law Treasures' Luminous Rays shone against one another in the sky.
This place had already become forbidden ground.
At least tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian laborers were searching the mountain wilderness within a two-hundred-mile radius for even the faintest trace.
Officials of the Pure Heaven Bureau were investigating the few most crucial locations.
Official robes could be seen everywhere, in the ruins of the Daoist temple beside the stream and beneath a certain wild tree deep in the valley.
Wei Chengzi's corpse still lay beneath that wild tree, his eyes tightly shut, cold as stone.
His standing had been high in both the cultivation world and Chaoge City, yet now his corpse had lain exposed in the wilderness for half a day without anyone attending to it.
The matter was simply too grave. No one dared move the body and destroy the clues.
Even leaving aside the scent of conspiracy behind the sudden appearance of a Netherworld fiend, the incident itself was enough to shake the entire continent.
A Nascent Soul elder of the Zhongzhou Sect had laid a trap to assassinate the Green Mountain Sect's Divine End Peak Master.
Given Zhao Layue's present status, no amount of importance attached to an attempt on her life would be excessive.
More crucially, the Imperial Court had to show that it took the matter with the utmost seriousness, because everyone was deeply