Before long, the cultivators who had been dispatched to check on the other formations returned, and their reports were exactly the same as the first—the formations had all been destroyed, and the disciples who had been operating them had vanished without a trace.
This alarming revelation silenced everyone. The Ye family cultivators fell quiet.
"Within a hundred li of this place, there is no one besides us Ye family cultivators. If someone infiltrated afterward to sabotage the formations, the timing would be far too convenient. We've barely unsealed the barrier, and someone immediately tampered with the concealment formations. It seems the problem lies within our own ranks," the Confucian scholar said with a cold laugh.
"One of our own!"
"That can't be! Everyone here is from the Ye family—who would do such a thing?"
"All from the Ye family? That's not necessarily true. Isn't there one person here who doesn't carry the surname Ye?"
After a burst of discussion, someone spoke up with exactly that observation.
Hearing this, more than half of the cultivators turned their gaze toward one person.
That person had an unremarkable appearance and a placid expression—the human cultivator who was, in truth, the Ancient Demon's incarnation.
"Elder Han was personally invited by me, and he has been with Seventh Uncle the entire time. Stop indulging in baseless suspicions," the Ye family Grand Elder spoke up to reprimand them.
"That's right. Fellow Daoist Han has indeed been with me the whole time. We've been having a most pleasant conversation," the big-headed strange man added mildly.
When the other cultivators heard this Ye family elder say so, they naturally deferred to his judgment, and their suspicions vanished.
At this moment, the Confucian scholar turned to the square-faced cultivator and ordered:
"Second Brother, go down to the lake bottom and confirm whether anyone besides the missing disciples is also unaccounted for."
"Understood!" the square-faced cultivator agreed immediately, then transformed into a streak of escape light and plunged beneath the lake's surface, vanishing from sight.
"Esteemed Elders, let us prepare ourselves as well. Although the anomalous phenomena here are far too conspicuous to conceal, no faction will be able to pose a threat to us in the short term. The Southern Border has no major sects of its own, and it will take far more than ten days or half a month for cultivators from other regions to arrive here. Though we don't know what lies within
"Yes, Grand Elder!" the remaining Ye family elders replied in unison, their hearts tightening.
After waiting for a while, the square-faced cultivator and the white-haired elder flew back up from beneath the lake together.
As soon as the square-faced cultivator reached the white-robed Confucian scholar, he said with a dark expression:
"Third Brother, two of the formation masters below are indeed missing—they were nephews from the fifth and twelfth branches. Could those two have been in league with the enemy, betraying the clan?"
"Hmph! Betraying the clan isn't certain, but they may well have had their souls searched and been killed. When did they go missing?" the Confucian scholar asked with a cold snort.
"About two days ago. Those two were responsible for formations at the farthest reaches, so no one suspected anything at the time. It wasn't until today, when all disciples were supposed to gather here, that we discovered they were unaccounted for," the white-haired elder replied, cold sweat beading on his face.
"So it seems the problem does lie with those two. However, regardless of what truly happened, it no longer matters. The moment we enter Kunwu Mountain, all formation masters and clan disciples are to withdraw immediately. By the way—has the location of the seal crack been confirmed?" the Confucian scholar asked calmly.
"It has. The formations have pinpointed it—twenty li to the north, beneath the ground. At a depth of a thousand zhang below the surface, there should be a crack several dozen zhang long. The esteemed elders can simply descend straight down to reach it," the white-haired elder hastily replied.
"Lead the way. We move out," the Confucian scholar said without hesitation.
"Yes, Grand Elder!" The white-haired elder bowed and accepted the order.
Immediately, the nine cultivators rode their escape lights northward. Moments later, they arrived above a dense forest some twenty li away. Below, the trees grew lush and green, thick with foliage.
The white-haired elder halted his escape light, swept his gaze across the surroundings, then turned over his palm to produce a faintly silver spirit disk.
Muttering an incantation, the elder infused the disk with a seal. Spiritual light flickered across its surface, and faint glowing runes began to appear.
"Correct—this is the place!" the white-haired elder said with certainty after only a brief glance.
"Good! Ninth Sister, release the spirit beast. Let us descend," the Confucian scholar said, turning his head toward an old Taoist nun standing behind him.
The nun acknowledged with a sound and patted the spirit beast pouch at her waist. A beam of yellow light shot out, then expanded wildly in the wind, and in the blink of an eye transformed into a centipede more than ten zhang long with a thousand legs. It spewed green vapor from its maw, utterly ferocious in appearance.
No further instructions were needed. All the Ye family cultivators except the white-haired elder flew onto the centipede's back.
The old nun gave a low cry, and a faintly yellow light barrier enveloped the giant centipede, immediately enclosing all the cultivators within. Then the centipede swayed its body and plunged straight downward.
The moment its massive body touched the ground, it sank silently into the earth and vanished from sight in the blink of an eye.
It was a spirit beast that had mastered the Earth Escape Technique.
The white-haired elder hovered in the air for a while. Seeing no sign of the Ye family cultivators returning to the surface, he let out a long breath and turned back the way he had come.