Chapter Summaries

Su Hong, Li Yan, and the Return Army tracked down Guo Gongming and Wan Kongshan at a safe house and captured them alive. Su Hong prepared to interrogate the two quickly, hoping to uncover further clues before their enemies could react.

• Jin Thirty-One reported to Su Liuyun that the enemy had cleared out its traces, so Su Liuyun ordered the shops and pavilion monitored while sending Jin Thirty-One to other tasks.
• Guo Gongming and Wan Kongshan waited in a safe house after a shadowy agent questioned them and promised to arrange their escape within three to five days.
• Wan Kongshan sensed danger, but black-clad Return Army cultivators restrained and captured both men alive, removing the tracking marks on their clothes.
• Su Hong and Li Yan entered the room, where Su Hong identified the captives as Guo Gongming and Wan Kongshan.
• Li Yan declined to conduct the interrogation, so Su Hong called Jin Nineteen to question the captives using methods other than Soul Search.

Jin Shijiu interrogated two shop clerks and learned that their knowledge of Jin Zhiyuan’s hidden network was limited, though they revealed how they had been trained and assigned as agents. The chapter left Su Hong and the others with evidence that the clerks had also been tasked with secretly monitoring Jin Zhiyuan.

• Li Yan concealed his awareness of Jin Shijiu’s glance while Jin Shijiu restrained the two shop clerks and questioned them with the Bewitching Soul Technique.
• Jin Shijiu learned that the clerks had no implanted Gu and knew only that they assisted Jin Zhiyuan, followed a coded warning system, and fled after he failed to return at the agreed time.
• The clerks revealed that they had been raised and trained as hidden agents, sent through centuries of field assignments, and eventually placed in Jin Zhiyuan’s shop.
• Su Hong and the others learned that Guo Gongming and Wan Kongshan had also been ordered to monitor Jin Zhiyuan and report suspicions by leaving a jade slip in their residence’s formation.

Li Yan and Su Hong uncovered how Guo Gongming and Wan Kongshan passed intelligence and decided to watch their safe point for the agent expected to return. As they waited in a neighboring courtyard, Su Liuyun remained unable to contact them, and Li Yan suddenly sensed someone approaching.

• Li Yan explained that an agent had recently visited Guo Gongming and Wan Kongshan and might return, so he and Su Hong planned to lay a trap at the safe point.
• Su Liuyun chose not to contact Li Yan because using a transmission artifact could reveal their location, and he continued waiting for news.
• Li Yan and Su Hong took control of a neighboring courtyard and watched the clerks' residence while avoiding contact with the outside.
• Su Hong wondered about Li Yan's quiet nature as they meditated through their fourth day of waiting.
• Li Yan noticed Su Hong looking at him, smiled, and warned her that someone had arrived.

Su Hong, Li Yan, and Jin Nineteen used the two shop clerks as bait to draw out the hidden operative sent to extract them from the city. Zhao Yidong recognized the trap too late and was captured alive, leaving Su Hong and Li Yan with another major gain.

• Jin Nineteen warned Su Hong that someone was approaching the neighboring courtyard, and she realized Li Yan had sensed the intruder earlier.
• Zhao Yidong entered the courtyard through a concealed gate in its array and suspected the shop clerks had been captured and set up as bait.
• Zhao Yidong tried to flee, but an ambush in an illusory bamboo grove left him unconscious and stripped of his magical power.
• Jin Nineteen collected Zhao Yidong and his saber in a pale green cloth bag, then released them inside the room before Su Hong and Li Yan.
• Su Hong and Li Yan were pleased that their plan had captured the operative sent to retrieve the shop clerks.

Li Yan and Jin Nineteen’s group captured Zhao Yidong in a poisoned ambush and interrogated him about his role in the hidden operation. His answers connected him to Literary Heart Pavilion but revealed no clear link to the enemy’s leaders, leaving Su Hong’s group with an uncertain lead.

• Jin Nineteen’s group used poison, an antidote, and a concealed magic treasure to capture Zhao Yidong after he entered the courtyard.
• Su Hong ordered an immediate interrogation, and Jin Nineteen confirmed that Zhao Yidong carried a Brain-Wrapping White Corpse Gu.
• Zhao Yidong identified himself as a steward of Literary Heart Pavilion, prompting Su Hong to consider whether the shop’s broad influence connected it to the enemy.
• Jin Nineteen warned that Zhao Yidong’s answers might be unreliable and that his claims needed verification by other methods.
• Zhao Yidong said he did not know whose orders he followed and had come to take the two agents out of the city after receiving a message.

Zhao Yidong revealed his role as a dormant intermediary tasked with screening and helping Jin Zhiyuan’s two clerks escape Haina City, along with the force’s secret communication procedures. Li Yan and Su Hong examined the dangerous Face-Changing Immortal Water and considered the clues Zhao Yidong had provided.

• Zhao Yidong explained that he had been planted in Haina City to assist Jin Zhiyuan’s group if their line was exposed, and that he had only recently learned he must receive the two shop clerks.
• Zhao Yidong described the plan for the clerks to leave the city and travel within three days to a mountain peak northeast of Haina City, while he remained behind and returned to dormancy.
• Zhao Yidong revealed that he reported missions through coded jade slips sent in a fixed sequence to merchant houses in four market districts surrounding Haina City, giving Su Hong and Li Yan important leads.
• Li Yan and Su Hong inspected the Face-Changing Immortal Water Zhao Yidong had brought to alter the clerks’ appearances, and Li Yan warned Su Hong to handle it carefully.
• Li Yan compared the liquid’s effects with Bu Luo’s Truth-Confusing Pill and worried that its bone-restructuring process could cause serious side effects.

Su Hong and Li Yan captured Zhao Yidong and uncovered clues about the enemy’s preparations to help agents escape Sea Acceptance City, but the investigation revealed how carefully the faction restricted what each sleeper agent knew. Su Liuyun joined them in the secret prison as they compared findings, with the enemy’s broader plans still concealed.

• Su Hong kept the Face-Changing Immortal Water as evidence and suggested investigating how Jin Zhiyuan and his companions obtained their genuine identity tokens.
• Su Hong proposed leaving guards behind, taking the captives back, and comparing their clues with Su Liuyun’s findings, and Li Yan agreed.
• Su Liuyun arrived at the secret prison while a monk questioned Zhao Yidong again, and Su Hong asked what he had learned from Lin Fengshan and Xu Li.
• Su Liuyun reported that Lin Fengshan and Xu Li knew little about the mysterious faction and that the Chief Altar Master was delaying the factions’ request to see them.
• Li Yan and Su Hong concluded that the enemy’s compartmentalized operations left captured agents with very little useful information, even under questioning or Soul Search.

Li Yan, Su Hong, and Su Liuyun reviewed the interrogation evidence and were summoned by the Chief Altar Master to report their findings. They arrived at his palace, where Li Yan sensed the Chief Altar Master’s overwhelming presence and was surprised to find no other elders or hall masters present.

• Commander Chu gave Su Hong the jade slips from Zhao Yidong’s repeated interrogations, and she, Li Yan, and Su Liuyun compared the answers without finding cause for celebration.
• Su Liuyun received a message that the Chief Altar Master wanted him and Su Hong to report the investigation’s progress, and he told Li Yan that the Chief Altar Master had summoned him too.
• Li Yan accepted the summons, puzzled that the Chief Altar Master would want an outsider like him at the meeting.
• Li Yan followed Su Hong and Su Liuyun into the grand palace and bowed with them before the Chief Altar Master seated on the dragon throne.
• Li Yan felt unable to discern the Chief Altar Master’s strength and was surprised that no hall masters or elders were present.

Li Yan, Su Hong, and Su Liuyun reported their investigation into the covert agents to the Chief Altar Master, who reviewed their leads and asked how they would proceed. With the four markets being investigated and the trail behind Lin Fengshan and Xu Li stalled, the group turned to Li Yan for the next plan.

• The Chief Altar Master summoned Li Yan, Su Hong, and Su Liuyun, and Su Hong reported that they had found three more people by following the vine, including two escaped shop assistants.
• The Chief Altar Master asked about Zhao Yidong's four markets, and Su Hong explained that Jin Nineteen and the others had already gone to investigate them using secret teleportation arrays.
• Su Liuyun asked about Lin Fengshan and Xu Li, and the Chief Altar Master said their trail had been erased, though he intended to use them to research the Mind-Tangling White Corpse Gu.
• The Chief Altar Master asked how they would proceed, and Su Hong and Su Liuyun looked to Li Yan to provide the next plan.

Li Yan, Su Hong, and Su Liuyun planned their next moves against the hidden traitors in Haina City, while the Purple-Robed Youth and his wife assessed Li Yan’s abilities and concealed treasure. Li Yan and Su Hong then set out to search Zhao Yidong’s residence before dawn.

• Li Yan proposed using Zhao Yidong’s secret code to send a message, drawing out its recipients while disguised people posed as the two shop clerks and waited outside the city.
• The Purple-Robed Youth praised Li Yan’s plans, ordered Su Liuyun to support him, and privately discussed Li Yan’s pure water-element spiritual power and hidden cultivation with a woman in cyan palace robes.
• Su Hong and Su Liuyun agreed to assist Li Yan, then left the grand hall to carry out the investigation.
• Su Hong sent Su Liuyun to arrange the clerks’ departure and await Jin Nineteen’s report while she and Li Yan went to search Zhao Yidong’s residence.
• Li Yan and Su Hong headed out at night, planning to send the coded message after daybreak.

Li Yan, Su Hong, and Su Liuyun tried to follow Zhao Yidong’s coded messages to uncover the hidden force, while arranging decoys and surveillance across the city. Jin Shijiu returned with news that the market-town merchants knew nothing about the codes, leaving the investigation at another dead end.

• Li Yan and Su Hong returned to headquarters, where Su Liuyun reported that Zhao Yidong’s residence had yielded no new clues and explained his surveillance plans.
• Su Liuyun sent cultivators with matching auras to impersonate two shop clerks and arranged for someone to pose as Zhao Yidong at Wenxin Pavilion.
• The group spent the day monitoring suspected locations and a merchant house that received a coded jade slip, but found no suspicious activity.
• Jin Shijiu reported that his team had captured and questioned the people who handled the jade slips in all four market towns.
• The questioned merchants said they had treated the slips as ordinary inquiries about raw materials, so Su Hong concluded that the trail had gone cold again.

Su Liuyun, Su Hong, and Li Yan discovered that the people connected to Zhao Yidong’s secret-code jade slips knew nothing about the codes, raising fears that Zhao Yidong had misled them. Li Yan began explaining why the information might still be genuine, as they reconsidered how messages were sent out of Sea-Embracing City.

• Su Liuyun used a soul-bewitching technique to question four shopkeepers, but all said they had treated the jade slips as ordinary and knew nothing of any secret code.
• Li Yan urged Su Liuyun to perform a Soul Search on a steward, and the search revealed no knowledge of the secret-code jade slip.
• Su Liuyun performed Soul Searches on all the captured people and found no evidence that any of them knew about the secret code.
• Su Liuyun and Su Hong realized that the cultivators sent outside the city might be walking into a trap, and they called for people to be sent out.
• Li Yan asked Su Hong about message-delivery services and concluded that Zhao Yidong might have given genuine information without knowing that his superior’s transmission method was fake.
• Su Liuyun explained that Zhao Yidong had used a merchant firm and secret codes to send intelligence to corresponding shops.

Li Yan deduced that Zhao Yidong’s coded messages were intercepted by a hidden agent at Haina City’s centralized goods inspection site during security checks. Su Hong planned to narrow the search to the few inspectors on duty when the jade slip was sent.

• Su Liuyun concluded that Zhao Yidong’s captured contacts and coded messages had not exposed the enemy’s network, prompting Li Yan to explain his suspicions.
• Li Yan asked Su Hong how Haina City inspected messages sent by teleportation array or through merchants, and learned that outgoing goods were examined at the Hall of Clear Appraisal.
• Li Yan deduced that the enemy had planted an agent at the inspection site, where the agent could read jade slips addressed to four chosen marketplaces or infer their meaning from their destinations.
• Su Hong identified the twenty-one cultivators responsible for inspections as the likely suspects and said the time and area covered by the jade slip could narrow the search to a few people.
• Su Hong called for Zhao Yidong to be questioned again about the jade slip’s appearance and origin, while Su Liuyun marveled at how quickly Li Yan had found a lead.

Li Yan traced Zhao Yidong’s intelligence route to a likely handler in the Hall of Clear Discernment, while Su Liuyun reported the discovery to his parents. The investigation narrowed to eleven people who had recently been on duty, as Su Hong and Li Yan began checking their records.

• Li Yan questioned Zhao Yidong and learned that the jade slips had ordinary restrictions and were passed along using coded phrases.
• Su Hong and Li Yan left to investigate the Hall of Clear Discernment, while Su Liuyun arranged further inquiries and reported their findings to the headquarters chief.
• Su Liuyun explained Li Yan’s deductions, and the headquarters chief ordered him to continue discreetly while warning other factions not to interfere.
• The woman in the green palace gown privately decided that Li Yan should be dealt with after he had been used, without Su Hong discovering the plan.
• Su Hong and Li Yan reviewed duty records for the Hall of Clear Discernment and ruled out one cultivator whose absence did not fit the suspected timing.

Li Yan and Su Hong narrowed the suspected leak in Return Home to four people who had handled goods at the Hall of Clear Appraisal. Li Yan singled out Wen Rujun for immediate investigation, and Su Hong decided to accompany him while Jin Nineteen and the others pursued the remaining suspects.

• Li Yan and Su Hong ruled out six of ten people and reviewed records for the four remaining suspects.
• Li Yan ordered Su Hong to have Jin Nineteen and the others investigate three suspects while he personally questioned the fourth.
• Li Yan identified Wen Rujun as suspicious because her solitary training began near the time Jin Zhiyuan entered Haina City, and she later took a discreet position handling internal goods.
• Su Hong challenged Li Yan's quick deduction, then agreed to accompany him and arrange the investigation of the other three suspects.

Li Yan and Su Hong secretly reached a courtyard in Hai Na City to investigate its occupant, and Li Yan had Su Hong break the protective formation. They slipped through the breach without alerting anyone, leaving the investigation still ahead.

• Li Yan agreed to let Su Hong accompany him, relying on the hidden experts protecting her while they approached the target courtyard.
• Li Yan asked Su Hong to silently break the courtyard’s formation, explaining that his own formation skills might not suffice.
• Su Hong used a jade hairpin and a red thread to disrupt the formation and open a hole in the wall.
• Li Yan swept the area with his Divine Sense and entered through the breach first, while Su Hong followed, pleased that the formation had been broken unnoticed.

Li Yan and Su Hong infiltrated Wen Ruyun’s courtyard and subdued her while she was meditating. They contained the room and prepared to guard against anyone activating its formations and exposing the capture.

• Su Hong followed Li Yan through a black hole in the courtyard’s formation, and the two headed toward the room where Li Yan sensed an aura.
• Su Hong used her jade hairpin to breach the room’s defensive formation while Li Yan stood ready to capture its occupant.
• Wen Ruyun reviewed the troubles facing her network and worried that the captured headquarters member might be connected to the agents being sent out of the city.
• Li Yan entered the room and knocked Wen Ruyun unconscious before she could react, and Su Hong followed inside.
• Li Yan placed purple gleaming objects around the room to form a barrier and warned Su Hong to guard against anyone opening the formations and exposing Wen Ruyun’s capture.

Li Yan questioned Wen Ruyun under his Bewildering Soul Technique and learned how her group verified targets and routed coded messages. Before she could explain how she reported to her superior, Wen Ruyun’s soul abruptly melted away and she died, leaving Li Yan to investigate the cause.

• Li Yan questioned the unconscious Wen Ruyun inside his formation and learned that she had confirmed three targets had left the city.
• Wen Ruyun explained that four different shops represented distinct outcomes, including danger, successful verification, betrayal, and the deaths of hidden agents.
• Li Yan asked how Wen Ruyun sent information to her superior, and she struggled before naming Cloud Bamboo Market.
• Wen Ruyun screamed as her soul suddenly melted away, and Li Yan moved to protect Su Hong while the woman died.
• Li Yan confirmed Wen Ruyun was dead, expressed confusion about the effect of his Bewildering Soul Technique, and sent his Divine Sense and soul power into her body to investigate.

Li Yan discovered that Wen Rujun had been killed by the devilish restriction Magic Sound Locks the Tongue after she spoke “Cloud Bamboo Market.” He and Su Hong suspected the Purple Flame Devil Lord and his wife might be connected to Wen Rujun and the hostile faction, but they were not certain.

• Li Yan examined Wen Rujun and concluded that a hidden devilish restriction had erupted when she triggered its tongue-locking condition.
• Li Yan explained that Magic Sound Locks the Tongue could kill someone whose controlled consciousness spoke specific words, and Su Hong recognized the obscure devilish art.
• Su Hong found high-grade devilish qi between Wen Rujun’s brows and connected it to the Purple Flame Devil Lord and his wife.
• Li Yan said the couple might have placed the restriction and could be Wen Rujun’s superiors, but their involvement was only a possibility.
• Su Hong asked why the enemy had not used the restriction on other important captives, and Li Yan reasoned that its casting conditions or consequences were likely severe.

After Wen Ruyun died from the Demonic Sound Tongue Lock, Li Yan and Su Hong traced the enemy’s likely stronghold to Cloud Bamboo Market and mobilized Guiqulaixi forces to investigate it. As the group approached, Li Yan prepared to enter the market while Su Hong stayed behind to coordinate and await his reports.

• Su Hong agreed that the Purple Flame Devil Lord couple might be hiding in Cloud Bamboo Market and decided to seek powerful reinforcements immediately.
• Li Yan took Wen Ruyun’s body, and he and Su Hong returned to headquarters to join Su Liuyun, Jin Shijiu, and the others.
• Jin Shijiu confirmed that his group had secretly captured and released the cultivators without being detected, using Gui Xi Army concealment and formation-breaking treasures.
• Su Hong explained Wen Ruyun’s death and the Demonic Sound Tongue Lock to Su Liuyun, who went to request powerful cultivators from the chief commander.
• Aboard the flying vessel, Li Yan told Su Hong he would enter Cloud Bamboo Market to investigate, while she agreed to remain behind and coordinate as circumstances changed.