Xu Taiping draped the gray cloth over himself like a cloak.
In an instant, his figure turned transparent and vanished at the bottom of the well.
This gray cloth was the same one used by a disciple of the Tai Xuan Sect to hide the Grass Returning Elixir in the cellar. Later, Fairy Lingyue helped to break its restrictions, and now it served as an invisibility cloak for Xu Taiping.
The advantage was that it lasted longer than the concealing herb, but the downside was that it consumed a lot of true essence.
“Junior Brother Qingyu, why… why are you attacking me?”
Before long, the sounds of fighting outside the well ceased, and a woman’s hysterical questioning voice suddenly rang out.
Xu Taiping pressed his hand on the hilt of his sword, leaning against the well wall, holding his breath and listening intently.
“Senior Sister, thank you for your care over the years, but Qingyu is not a person of Yellow Maple Valley.”
“You… you are a spy from another sect?”
“Sort of.”
“Which sect?”
“Nine Mansions.”
“You’re from the demonic sect?! No wonder, no wonder you insisted on teaming up with me to kill those disciples from the Carefree Sect. So you…”
The conversation abruptly ended, followed by the faint sounds of a sharp object piercing flesh and blood splattering.
Clearly, that woman had been killed by her Junior Brother.
The fact that Nine Mansions had a hand in the anomalies of the Immortal Gourd Cave was surprising.
Xu Taiping frowned slightly at the bottom of the well.
“Tap, tap…”
At this moment, footsteps suddenly approached the well.
Xu Taiping couldn’t help but tense up.
He looked up towards the well opening.
He saw a handsome young man holding a woman, blood still flowing from her body, standing at the well’s edge.
“Senior Sister, rest here for now. Once this is over, I’ll turn you into a puppet, and then we can be together forever.”
The young man murmured to himself, then threw the woman’s body into the well.
With a splash, the woman’s body landed right at Xu Taiping’s feet.
Xu Taiping glanced at the woman with her throat slit, still twitching, then looked up at the well opening again.
At this moment, the young man was also looking down into the well.
It was a handsome and delicate face, but the eyes looking at the corpse at the bottom of the well held a nearly pathological madness.
Especially under the blood moon above, that handsome face gradually twisted.
But what caught Xu Taiping’s attention the most was the powerful aura emanating from him.
“Not inferior to those Demon Lords in the Cloud Dream Marsh ruins.”
This was Xu Taiping’s immediate judgment.
“But, not unbeatable.”
He added in his mind.
Today’s Xu Taiping was no longer the Xu Taiping of three years ago.
“Bang!”
At this moment, the young man named Qingyu lifted a large stone and covered the well opening.
The view above Xu Taiping’s head darkened.
With a mission at hand, he naturally wouldn’t rush out to fight.
But he made a mental note of this young man named Qingyu, from Nine Mansions, who had been lurking in Yellow Maple Valley for years.
“Yellow Maple Valley is the third largest sect in the Nine Mansions. If they have Nine Mansions spies, other sects probably do too.”
Xu Taiping felt the situation was becoming increasingly dire.
Just as he was quietly waiting for Qingyu to leave, another set of footsteps appeared outside the well.
Xu Taiping’s heart tightened, and he immediately held his breath again.
“Is it done?”
A cold voice suddenly sounded.
“Reporting to Master, it’s done.”
It was Qingyu’s voice.
“I need to enter the door leading underground next. Help me find someone.”
The cold voice continued.
“Who?”
“Qingxuan Sect, Xu Taiping.”
“What should I do if I find him?”
“Kill him.”
“May I dare to ask one question?”
“Ask.”
“Why does someone so insignificant matter to Master?”
“Whether he’s insignificant or not, it’s too early to decide. Maybe you’ll be the one who dies.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Go, guard the Ice Crystal Cave. He will definitely appear there.”
“Yes.”
The conversation ended, and the two auras disappeared from Xu Taiping’s perception.
“Who was talking to Qingyu? How do they know my name and want to kill me? And how do they know I’ll go to the Ice Crystal Cave?”
One question after another popped up in Xu Taiping’s mind.
Immediately, he took out a communication talisman and sent a message to Oriole:
“Has my whereabouts been exposed?”
After a while, two lines of text appeared on the talisman:
“Taiping, your whereabouts haven’t been exposed. It’s just that Jade Green Scholar’s backdoor in the Immortal Gourd Cave was discovered by a Nine Mansions spy.”
“But don’t worry, they only know about the Ice Crystal Cave location, not the exact formation eye or how to open or close it.”
Reading these two lines, Xu Taiping frowned slightly, then sent another message with his divine sense:
“How did they find out?”
Soon, another line of text appeared on the talisman—
“Because of that spy, he knew we gave you a teleportation talisman and informed the Nine Mansions people to be wary of you.”
Xu Taiping frowned even more.
He thought to himself, what is the Nine Mansions doing, being infiltrated like a sieve?
But complaining was useless, so he simply replied with six words—
“More money, or I quit.”
…
One day later.
At the bottom of Dripping Emerald Cliff.
After opening the formation eye, Xu Taiping summoned Fairy Lingyue’s divine sense.
“That’s roughly what happened.”
He briefly recounted the events of the past two days to Fairy Lingyue.
“This shouldn’t be a real Blood Moon Tide.”
Fairy Lingyue immediately judged.
“If it were a real Blood Moon Tide, the scene in the Immortal Gourd Cave would be a hundred times more chaotic, and you wouldn’t have escaped from that wild beast.”
She continued.
“Then what’s going on?”
Xu Taiping asked, puzzled.
“Nine Mansions people probably found the entrance to the second layer of the Immortal Gourd Cave and released the accumulated demonic energy of tens of thousands of years inside.”
Fairy Lingyue said.
“If demonic cultivators enter the second layer and find fragments of the demon god’s corpse, wouldn’t that be very dangerous?”
Xu Taiping felt a bit nervous.