Once again, many thanks to Alliance Leader Old Ma's Sky for the hundred-thousand red-packet reward. Little Mo's mood instantly became wonderful beyond belief, hehehehe~~~~
………………
Gu Hong had given chase without pause, running himself ragged until he was gasping for breath.
His cultivation was only at the third stage of the Dao Source Realm — considerably weaker than Le Dongzheng's — so his speed naturally couldn't compare. Had he not already known the direction the secret passage Yang Kai had taken led to, he wouldn't have had the faintest idea where to track them.
Upon arriving at the area, Gu Hong immediately found a thicket to conceal himself in, simultaneously suppressing his own aura, and raised his eyes to scan the surroundings.
No sounds of fighting or fluctuations of energy reached him. Could it be that Le Dongzheng had finished off that kid so quickly?
That shouldn't be right. He had left only moments after the two of them. Even if Le Dongzheng was quite strong, the other boy was an Emperor Realm cultivator too — he should have been able to hold out for a while at least.
Perhaps they had moved the battlefield…
Gu Hong felt this was the more likely scenario. Perhaps their strengths were evenly matched and they were locked in a fierce battle, having gone who-knows-where by now. With any luck, both would be gravely wounded and he could reap the profits as the fisherman. If the opportunity arose, he wouldn't hesitate to pull a double robbery and take out both Yang Kai and Le Dongzheng in one fell swoop.
Lost in his fantasies, Gu Hong suddenly caught a faint whiff of blood carried on the breeze.
He sniffed lightly, and his expression shifted.
Looking up again, he saw that under the moonlight, roughly a hundred zhang away on the ground, a figure lay sprawled on its side.
"What's this…" Gu Hong's face tightened as he focused his vision.
The person lying on the ground had their head tilted slightly, facing directly toward him, allowing him to make out the features with perfect clarity.
"Le Dongzheng!" Gu Hong nearly jumped out of his skin, a chill crawling up his spine that made him shudder.
The sect master of Broken Peak Gate, Le Dongzheng, who had left the Purple Source Commerce auction around the same time as him, was now lying there drenched in blood, motionless, his fate unknown. Dead was the more likely conclusion, because Gu Hong couldn't sense any aura whatsoever from him.
His blood nearly froze in his veins. He stood frozen for a long while, not daring to move.
Le Dongzheng was a veteran first-stage Emperor Realm powerhouse — rumors had it he could break through to the second stage at any moment. How could such a formidable expert have ended up like this? Who had done it?
Just moments ago he had been brimming with vitality, looking every bit the man bent on seeking revenge against that kid from Sky Suite Number Three. How had he ended up looking like a dead fish?
Gu Hong didn't dare move for a long time, afraid that a powerful enemy might still be hiding nearby and that his movement would invite his own death.
But after waiting a full hour, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Only then did Gu Hong muster his courage, rise to his feet, and approach Le Dongzheng step by step with caution.
Before long, he stood before Le Dongzheng. Looking at his wretched, lifeless form, Gu Hong's expression turned grim.
One move!
Le Dongzheng had been killed in a single strike. There was a clear five-finger imprint on his chest, his entire ribcage caved in, dried traces of blood still visible at his nose and mouth. His wide-open eyes were filled with utter disbelief, as though in his final moments he had witnessed something utterly inconceivable.
Gulp…
Gu Hong swallowed hard. In his eyes, a powerhouse like Le Dongzheng was someone standing at the very pinnacle. To be able to kill him in one move — just how powerful was the killer?
Regardless of whether it was that kid from Sky Suite Number Three who had done the deed, it was all connected to him somehow. Maple Forest City was no longer safe to stay in. If that kid discovered he was the one who had leaked his whereabouts, his own end would likely be no better than Le Dongzheng's.
A full-body shudder ran through him. Gu Hong glanced at Le Dongzheng's hands and spotted no space ring — it had presumably been taken by whoever killed him.
He dared not linger any longer. Activating his Source Power, his body transformed into a streak of light, and he departed the scene at top speed.
……
The group of one to two hundred people was moving even slower than Yang Kai had anticipated, stopping frequently along the way. Ten days had passed and they had covered roughly half the distance.
Fortunately, they hadn't encountered any danger. Under normal circumstances, such a large group traveling through the Star Boundary would easily attract the attention of unscrupulous cultivators, but with Yang Kai standing guard among them, any opportunists who tried their luck ended up dying in particularly gruesome fashion.
Having abruptly left the land where their families had lived and thrived for generations, both the Zhang and Qin families felt a sense of melancholy — the older ones especially so.
The younger generation, on the other hand, was filled with curiosity and anticipation about the outside world. Zhang Ruoyu in particular, whenever she had a free moment, would pepper Yang Kai with questions, and even the most trivial tale of strange people or odd happenings could keep her entertained for ages.
Her personality was completely unlike Ruoxi's — lively and energetic, as if she had an inexhaustible well of vitality and an endless supply of questions.
Yang Kai showed no impatience. He needed to introduce the Northern Territory and his own Sect to the Zhang and Qin families anyway, so whenever Zhang Ruoyu asked, he answered, gradually filling the hundred-plus people with a sense of longing for the Northern Territory and the Lingxiao Palace.
Thus, after more than twenty days of travel, the group finally arrived at the ruins of the Thousand Leaf Sect.
He led both families directly into the Ditian Valley's small world, bringing them to the valley where the spatial formation was located. He activated the teleportation array and had the hundred-plus people split into several groups, sending them one batch at a time to the Lingxiao Palace.