A dozen breaths later, Cao Dean, unable to shake off his pursuer, became a red cloud in the sky and bade this world farewell forever.
Hou Niao turned to the silent Sword Cultivator behind him. "Your name?" The Sword Cultivator hesitated briefly before answering, "Shi Le." "Which prefecture did you learn swordsmanship in?"
"You saved the wrong man. I'm not a Shanmen Sword Cultivator. In a land as vast as Jinxiu, a hundred flowers bloom. Surely you don't think the Quanzhen Sect has the only sword lineage?"
Hou Niao's head began to ache. He truly had not known.
By his reasoning, this Shi Le ought to have been one of those Shanmen Sword Cultivators who had never developed Sword Consciousness and could not wield flying swords. Whether he had become a bandit or drifted elsewhere, he could not escape suspicion of having deserted Shanmen.
Clearly, then, capturing this renegade cultivator was more important than the regular mission. To avoid complications, such matters were best handled without too much publicity. This man had killed at least three Baishen Sect cultivators. If he were treated as a prisoner, the Baishen Sect might refuse to release him.
A good subordinate ought to deal with trouble beforehand, rather than pass it on to his superior.
As for Cao Dean, their interactions had made his contempt for Shanmen Quanzhen plain. He belonged to the faction within the Baishen Sect that refused to abide by the Demonic Sect Alliance's rules, so killing him had posed no difficulty.
But now it seemed Hou Niao's very premise had been wrong. If this man was not a Quanzhen disciple at all, then what he had done amounted to privately releasing a rogue cultivator. Given his current position, that was truly ironic.
"You're not from Shanmen Quanzhen?"
Shi Le smiled