The Gold-Munching Mouse King's expression changed drastically, wailing endlessly.
While it was still crying out, Jiang Chen had already made his move. The Flying Feather Mirror swished gently, enveloping the entire Gold-Munching Mouse within its light. Jiang Chen activated the Green Scorpion once more.
Countless green tendrils immediately wrapped around the Gold-Munching Mouse King, binding it tight.
The Gold-Munching Mouse King howled without cease, struggling with all its might, yet it could never break free of the Green Scorpion's green tentacles. The harder it struggled, tighter the bindings became.
Jiang Chen plucked the two Heavenly-grade Spiritual Medicines from the Gold-Munching Mouse King's mouth in one swift motion. He then slapped a talisman seal onto its body.
The Gold-Munching Mouse King convulsed as though struck by lightning, its whole body shuddering once before all resistance drained away. It lay limply at Jiang Chen's feet, too weak to stir even a fraction.
Having finished all this, Jiang Chen gazed thoughtfully toward the formation ahead. With his Heavenly Eye Divine Pupil, he could naturally see that someone was hiding at the formation's edge.
In truth, everything Jiang Chen had done was meant for that person's eyes. The problem was that this individual had nerves of steel — faced with Heavenly-grade Spiritual Medicines and the Green Scorpion, they had managed to suppress their greed entirely, refusing to budge even a step from the formation's edge. It left Jiang Chen's entire scheme completely toothless.
The act he and the Gold-Munching Mouse King had put on was built entirely upon the other party's greed. If the other party could rein in that greed, his stratagem of luring the snake from its hole would be utterly useless.
Seeing that the person inside the formation showed no reaction whatsoever, Jiang Chen felt a pang of frustration.
Still, he kept his composure. He stared at the formation's edge for a long moment before finally abandoning the notion of forcing his way in.
Elder Gao of the Scarlet Fire Sect watched this scene unfold, a thousand thoughts flashing through his mind, but in the end he suppressed every one of them by force.
Clearly, Elder Gao too found the scene before him deeply suspicious.
Though neither person — one inside the formation and one outside — had spoken a word, each understood the other perfectly well.
Jiang Chen's battle of wits had failed, and anxiety gnawed at him, though he let none of it show.
A hundred li out, Jiang Chen released the Gold-Munching Mouse King once more and smiled bitterly in dejection. "Old Jin, was our little performance really that much of a flop?"
The Gold-Munching Mouse King hurriedly replied, "We put on quite the show. But I sensed that the other party was tempted. It's just that whatever they're after on this trip must be something even more important than Heavenly-grade Spiritual Medicines."
Jiang Chen largely agreed with the Gold-Munching Mouse King's assessment.
In fact, even from outside the formation, he had sensed that the person inside had definitely been tempted. Such extreme restraint could only mean there was a far more significant reason.
Just as Jiang Chen was at his wits' end, a message arrived from the Gold-Mice scattered along the route.
"Chen Shao, my descendants have spotted something unusual along the way!"
"What?" Jiang Chen's eyes sharpened at the news.
"A large number of powerful cultivators are converging on this area from multiple different routes."
"How can that be?" Jiang Chen was genuinely startled. By all logic, the Cuihua Pavilion Master had been exercising the utmost caution precisely to avoid drawing attention. How could a large group of cultivators suddenly be heading this way?
Could it be that the Cuihua Pavilion Master's painstaking secrecy had been riddled with holes all along — exposed within a single night?
If that was truly the Cuihua Pavilion Master's level of competence, then it was pathetic beyond belief.
"Could there be a traitor inside the Cuihua Pavilion?" Jiang Chen mused, but on second thought, that seemed unlikely.
"The Cuihua Pavilion Master's breakthrough — what an extraordinarily closely guarded secret! Not even Wei Xing'er, the young madam, knew a thing about it. How would an ordinary member of the Cuihua Pavilion possibly learn such classified information? And of those who did know, who would leak it?"
"Could it be the protectors the Cuihua Pavilion Master hired? But if the Pavilion Master trusted those protectors enough to bring them along, how could they betray him? Would a man of the Cuihua Pavilion Master's caliber not have anticipated that possibility?"
Jiang Chen turned the matter over and over, yet still could not arrive at an answer.
Everything about this affair reeked of the strange. No matter how one thought about it, it defied all reason.
But Jiang Chen did not hesitate. He immediately summoned the Gold-Munching Mouse King and contacted its descendants to chart the approach routes of these newcomers.
Breaking through the formation by force was absolutely out of the question. The only card left to play was the group now heading their way.
Jiang Chen decided to grab someone for questioning first.
With the intelligence provided by the Gold-Mice clan, Jiang Chen quickly identified an ideal ambush point. Before long, a cultivator at the second level of the Imperial realm came speeding in his direction.
Jiang Chen had already set up his formation and lay in wait. The moment the man stepped into the formation's range, he sensed something was wrong. But within Jiang Chen's formation, even a second-level Imperial realm cultivator had virtually no chance of escape.
Jiang Chen was already at the half-step Imperial realm. His cultivation alone gave him better than even odds against a mid-stage Imperial realm powerhouse. Against an early-stage Imperial realm cultivator, forget the formation — even without it, with his seemingly bottomless array of trump cards, he could cut down a second-level Imperial realm opponent with ease.
But right now, Jiang Chen needed a live prisoner. That was the only reason he had deployed the formation — to work in tandem with the Ice Fire Demon Lotus and take the opponent alive.