"No response? The sentries were killed?"
A sect cultivator clad in a crimson robe raised his brows slightly. He took the magic artifact from the man's hand and carefully sensed it.
He came from a Northwest sect with an artifact-refining lineage, known as Huoliao Temple.
This communication artifact had been forged by Huoliao Temple. It could connect to a cultivator's sea of consciousness and, within a certain range, transmit specific messages such as enemy attack, retreat, pursuit, and location.
After sensing it for several breaths, his eyes suddenly snapped open, and his brow furrowed even deeper.
"There's no response from the north or south either. The eastern sentry is still..."
He stopped halfway through his sentence. The last glimmer of light on the artifact in his palm also faded away.
"The east is gone too."
When a cultivator died, the connection to their sea of consciousness was severed, and the primary artifact would receive a response.
This had never happened before, because these sentry cultivators were all accompanying captains from the Eastern Wilderness, each with at least the Perfected Realm of cultivation.
Even if they encountered an enemy they could not defeat, escaping should not have been a problem.
Yet now, they had not even had time to send a warning before being instantly slain. That meant their enemy's strength vastly surpassed theirs.
Someone capable of this needed no introduction.
"Heh, Tiger Chasing finally sent out a few decent people. Killing ants all these days has been unbearably dull. Perfect—I can finally taste the saltiness of these Tiger Chasing geniuses!"
Another Huoliao Temple disciple spoke. He was the one whom Qiu Ran's tribulation lightning had grazed earlier.
Aside from the two of them, the Northwest sects participating in the siege of Guhui Town this time included Hanshan Sect, Tingxue Tower,