Dusk deepened.
Song Yan's faint breathing dissolved into the wind through the woods.
With the Hidden Sword Spirit-Concealing Art, he seemed to have become a dead leaf in the forest.
"..."
His lowered eyes narrowed.
Had he been discovered?
Where had things gone wrong...
That impulse to trace things back to their source lasted only an instant before Song Yan extinguished it.
What he needed to consider now was how to kill Shan Zifeng here.
Not review his own mistakes and oversights. That was meaningless.
"Fellow Daoist, why hide..."
Hum-
Before the words had finished, an ink-white flying sword hurtled toward him!
Though Shan Zifeng had been prepared, the flying sword's speed still startled him.
He hastily dodged.
But he still caught the fluctuations of Spiritual Qi and Sword Qi from the flying sword being controlled.
He slapped the Heaven and Earth Bag at his waist and brought out three fire talismans, suspending them beside him.
Fire flared at his fingertips, and three fire serpents swiftly lunged from the Spirit Talismans, heading straight for Song Yan's hiding place.
At last, Song Yan revealed himself.
"Who are you?"
Shan Zifeng looked at this stranger without much recollection of him-or rather, he was utterly unfamiliar.
He did not remember anyone like this on his list of people whose spiritual treasures he had seized.
"Did someone hire you to kill me?"
Shan Zifeng smiled coldly. "A bunch of vermin and ants. What utter fools."
"They actually hired a Qi Refining Sixth Layer cultivator to ambush and kill me?"
"What? Didn't they have enough spirit stones?"
Shan Zifeng grinned viciously. Having seen through the ambush gave him a heady sense of having everything under control.
"I have plenty of spirit stones here. How about I give you some more? After all..."
"I took them