Spirit Ruin, Sword Coffin, Blind Swordsman

Li Guanqi breathed a sigh of relief after confirming that Ye Feng and the others were unharmed and had not been captured, but the demonic qi lingering within the Gu clan’s domain soon sent a chill through him. The Sha organization must have been behind the attack.

Li Guanqi’s expression darkened. “How could Tang Ru have been captured? Given his personality, if he wanted to hide… They couldn’t even find Ye Feng. How could they have found him?”

With that, Li Guanqi shot into the air. Following the pull he sensed through his jade pendant, he soon located the Gu clan’s underground chambers.

Everyone else was busy handling the Gu clan’s affairs. Only Meng Wanshu followed him to a mountain at the rear of the domain.

The concealed spatial barrier was quite far from where they had fought. Li Guanqi studied the unremarkable mountain before him. Once he rounded its side, his jade pendant flared with light.

Li Guanqi gritted his teeth. “Open the barrier! It’s Li Guanqi!”

Hum!

The rock face warped slightly. As the space before him opened, a man shot out, followed closely by several black-robed cultivators.

Gu Chuan took one look at Li Guanqi’s grim expression, and his heart sank. “Gu Chuan, captain of the Cloud Blossom Guard, greets the Pavilion Master! Tang Ru… is he…?”

The man looked at Li Guanqi with hopeful eyes. Li Guanqi looked at the broken fragments of a magical treasure scattered across the ground and understood why Tang Ru had been captured.He crouched and picked up the fragments. Someone had clearly used the sealing artifact to close the barrier from outside. “Tang Ru… came out of his own accord, didn’t he?”

Gu Chuan’s eyes dimmed as realization struck him. His voice caught in his throat. Even he, a Combined Body Realm cultivator, had not dared to go outside. Yet, Tang Ru had.

“Tang Ru… went out to buy us time.”

Li Guanqi squeezed the fragments in his palm and closed his eyes, his face twisted with pain. He understood Tang Ru’s reasoning perfectly. He could picture Tang Ru standing in this very spot with his back to the barrier, his decision already made.

Tang Ru had offered himself up as a hostage, staking his life and everything he possessed to make the enemy stop searching for Ye Feng and the others.

As Li Guanqi rose, his emotions churned. He clenched his jaw so hard that the muscles in his cheeks bulged. Veins throbbed at his temples.

Li Guanqi squeezed his fist, killing intent rolling off him. “Don’t worry. I will bring him back.”

Hum!

Tang Wei’s frantic voice came through the jade slip. He clearly knew nothing yet.

—Li Guanqi, my son… What happened to my son? Why has his life soul lamp cracked?!

Li Guanqi drew a deep breath. His hand trembled around the jade slip. If any harm truly came to Tang Ru because of him, he did not know how he could ever face Tang Wei.

“Uncle Tang… He’s been captured, but I promise I’ll bring him back.”

Tang Wei didn’t say much after receiving the message.

He rose to his feet and commanded, “Go to the Guanyun Pavilion! Use every resource we have to find Tang Ru! The Sha organization… I’ll take them down even if it costs me everything!”

Tang Wei’s decisiveness caught everyone off guard. The moment he learned the news, every intelligence network across the Daxia Territory mobilized, and the bounty for information about Tang Ru soared from ten million spirit stones to fifty million.

Fifty million. More wealth than many Combined Body Realm cultivators could accumulate in a lifetime.

Everyone thought Tang Wei had gone mad, but quite a few understood the deeper message. The Daxia Sword Sect and the Guanyun Pavilion stood at the height of their power. Who would dare abduct Tang Ru at such a time?

Li Guanqi sent Gu Chuan and the others to help set the Gu clan’s affairs in order. Then he stood there for a long while, lost in thought. His guilt only deepened. If not for Ye Feng and the others, Tang Ru would have stayed out of the whole affair.

Li Guanqi glanced at Gu Lie, who was recovering from his wounds in the distance. Lightning flashed beneath his feet, and he appeared beside the old man. He bowed. “My name is Li Guanqi. May I know your name, senior?”

Gu Lie waved a hand. “Gu Lie. Tier-eight martial artist and tier-seven alchemist.”

“I’d like to know exactly what happened,” Li Guanqi said.

The old man looked him over for a moment. He could tell Li Guanqi’s status was far from ordinary, but he did not stand on ceremony as he recounted everything from beginning to end.

After hearing what Tang Ru had said to the enemy, Li Guanqi clenched his jaw and said nothing. Tang Ru had deliberately played up his own value with every word, all so the enemy would leave quickly and stop searching for Ye Feng and the others.

Li Guanqi bowed again. “Thank you for stepping in. Should you ever need assistance from the Guanyun Pavilion, or from me personally, you need only ask.”

Li Guanqi was in no state to make small talk. His thoughts were in turmoil.

Meng Wanshu followed silently beside him. She knew that speaking now would only add to his worries.

Before long, the Gu clan’s wounded cultivators had been tended to, and everyone gathered in the great hall.

An oppressive atmosphere hung over the room.

You Ming seemed to be the only one unaffected. He sat in a chair, idly rolling something between his fingers as though none of this concerned him. His intervention had at least prevented the enemy’s scheme from succeeding completely. In the end, the Gu clan had lost only three beast flames and twenty-odd alchemists.

Bang!

The table beside Gu Changsheng disintegrated into dust. “The Lu clan and the Zhu clan really do have a death wish! Hmmph! They dared to take twenty-eight of my Gu clan’s alchemists!”

You Ming rolled the small bead between his fingers and smiled. “Hey, I still have the Yu clan ancestor’s remnant soul right here. Want to use it to vent your anger?”

Gu Changsheng glared at the bead. Everyone in the room had only just learned that You Ming had killed Yu Chang’an, and none of them had expected it. A Mahayana Realm cultivator should have had more than one means of escape. The longer people lived, the more afraid they became of dying, so they always prepared contingencies.

Yet, You Ming had been ruthless and lightning-fast. He had overwhelmed Yu Chang’an from the outset and killed him before he could reach a single contingency. Yu Chang’an never even activated his pupil technique.

Nobody gave the Yu clan’s fate much thought.

You Ming tossed the soul bead to Li Guanqi with a smile. “Take it. Do whatever you want with it. It’s a Mahayana Realm soul, after all.”

Li Guanqi put it away without a word, then looked up at You Ming. “Senior, who was it you fought at the end?”

You Ming curled his lip and muttered, “Probably the Sha organization leader who fought Second Sister. I don’t know his name, so I just call him Sha. Sha… is strong. Very strong. At the very least, there’s no way I could defeat him on my own.”

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