Hearing Mo Fan's question, Zhao Ziwei didn't even look up from where he was squatting, answering vaguely:
"How should I know who it was? Just some sect disciple I didn't recognize."
He paused what he was doing and sized Mo Fan up with a half-smirk, teasing: "Didn't pay much attention at the time. Gave him a couple of brush-off answers and sent him on his way."
"What's with that reaction, Xiaoqi? Don't tell me you broke someone's heart out there and now they've come looking for you?"
Mo Fan laughed and shook his head. "Senior Brother, don't go ruining an innocent man's reputation. Probably just someone I used to know, stopping by to ask after me."
The two traded a couple more jokes, and then Mo Fan didn't linger. He waved, turned, stepped out through the courtyard gate, and headed down the rugged mountain path toward his own canyon stone house.
The sunset's last light stretched the shadows through the mountain forest long and thin.
Mo Fan walked with both hands tucked into his sleeves, outwardly leisurely—but he'd set aside a small corner of his mind to stay alert.
He'd certainly pulled off plenty of major things lately, but whether it was his experiences in Cangqing City or the secrets of the [ Necrotic Realm ], he'd handled everything as cleanly as he could. There shouldn't have been anything obvious for someone to use against him.
After roughly the time it takes an incense stick to burn, the mountain path gradually led into a somewhat remote patch of dense forest.
The ambient noise faded away until nothing remained but the rustle of wind through leaves.
Mo Fan's eyes shifted slightly, and he quietly activated [ Death Vision ] LV.3.
An instant later, his brow rose almost imperceptibly.
At the edge of his perception, a little over a hundred meters behind him, tucked behind a bend in the mountain path... A flicker of life-flame hovered in the darkness.
At first, Mo Fan assumed it was just some fellow disciple who happened to be heading the same way, and didn't think much of it.
But as he deliberately slowed his pace and took two more turns onto remote side paths... That aura behind him not only failed to peel off—it tracked his route, holding a fixed distance the entire time. Not too close, not too far.
Oh, so it's real. Mo Fan had his answer, but not a trace of it showed on his face.
He even stopped occasionally to casually stretch out his limbs, exactly as he always did.
Then, when the path ahead began twisting and steepening, forming a natural blind spot—
The instant a boulder blocked the line of sight, his footwork abruptly changed!
Drawing on his familiarity with Hundred Forging Peak's terrain, Mo Fan crossed a steep slope on one side in a few soundless bounds and vanished completely from the trail.
Several breaths later.
A young cultivator, his aura carefully restrained, came hurrying around the rocky bend. He'd been trailing from a distance the whole way, expression reasonably composed.
But the moment he rounded the corner and got a clear look at the empty forest path ahead, his feet slammed to a halt.
"Where'd he go?!" The cultivator's face changed slightly, his stomach dropping.
At first, he assumed Lu Xiaoqi had simply picked up the pace, so he quickly gathered a thread of spiritual energy and chased forward along the path for a stretch.
But after several hundred meters of pursuit, even climbing a tall rock to scan the horizon... There wasn't the faintest trace of Lu Xiaoqi anywhere—nothing but tree shadows swaying in the wind.
Gradually, a fine layer of cold sweat beaded on the cultivator's forehead, and his expression began to turn frantic.
The assignment handed down from above had actually been simple: shadow Lu Xiaoqi covertly, with strict orders never to alert the target, and absolutely never to make direct contact.
He'd assumed tailing a body cultivator would be easy money. And now look—the man had vanished right out from under his nose!
If he was held responsible for this failure, he was finished!
But the cultivator, frantically searching and craning his neck in every direction, had no idea—
At this very moment, in the dense canopy of a towering ancient tree diagonally above him— Mo Fan was leaning against the thick trunk with arms folded, perfectly at ease, looking down and quietly watching his every move.
Sure enough.
The cultivator below wandered the area like a headless fly for a good long while... And as the sky darkened completely with no sign of his target, he finally had no choice but to stop, face full of dejection.
He glanced around warily, retreated into a secluded corner among the rocks, fished a Voice Transmission Jade Slip from his robes, poured spiritual energy into it, and began nervously reporting the situation upward.
Mo Fan couldn't directly intercept the divine sense transmitted through the slip, but watching the man's stiff, deferential posture, he was now entirely certain:
This was no fellow disciple passing through by coincidence. Someone was directing him from behind.
Even after the cultivator put the slip away and turned to leave with his head hanging, Mo Fan didn't let his guard down.
Using the extended range of [ Death Vision ], he kept track of the man from a safe distance for a while.
Only when that figure gradually receded and finally disappeared at the end of the path leading toward the Main Peak did Mo Fan slowly withdraw his gaze.
The Main Peak?
In the canopy's shadow, Mo Fan rubbed his chin, brow arching slightly.
Of course, merely heading in the Main Peak's direction wasn't enough to conclude with total certainty that the mastermind was on the Main Peak. Disciples traveled between the sect's peaks by the thousands.
Forget it. Too few clues. No point jumping to conclusions. Mo Fan shook his head and quickly suppressed the stray thoughts.
This was, after all, inside the Azure Cloud Sect. Since the other side was only spying covertly without making a move, rashly seizing the man and interrogating him would more likely expose his own strength and drag him into a mess.
Still, it served as a useful reminder.Looks like I'll need to be more careful going in and out of the mine—and with everything else, too.
Mo Fan chuckled, leapt down from the canopy, landed steadily, brushed off his sleeves, and headed back to his stone house like a man without a care in the world.
Meanwhile. In a hidden, dimly lit study on the Azure Cloud Sect's Main Peak.
Li Zhongshan sat in a wide armchair, face dark as he leafed through several secret reports that had just been compiled on his desk.
As the covert investigation deepened over these past few days, the information on Lu Xiaoqi kept piling up... Yet the doubts in Li Zhongshan's heart hadn't unraveled at all.
If anything, they'd tangled into an ever-tighter knot, leaving him inexplicably irritated.
The sense of wrongness surrounding that kid was simply too heavy.
Just as Li Zhongshan was pinching his brow, trying to figure out what powerful backer might be standing behind all this—
Hummm——
At one corner of the desk, a Voice Transmission Jade Slip suddenly lit up with a faint glow.
Li Zhongshan straightened, immediately set down the report in his hands, picked up the slip, and sent his divine sense into it.
The first part of the report was normal enough—nothing but the day's changes in Lu Xiaoqi's movements.
But when he reached the final few lines, Li Zhongshan's brows knit together, tighter and tighter.
Lost him?Lu Xiaoqi had simply vanished in the middle of a mountain path on Hundred Forging Peak, without the slightest warning?!
Li Zhongshan's first reaction was, naturally, blazing fury—the people under him were a pack of useless wastes who couldn't manage a single thing!
A body cultivator without even spiritual energy, just walking down a mountain road... And a cultivator whose entire job was tailing him managed to lose him?!
But before that rage could erupt, Li Zhongshan suddenly realized something, and his expression slowly turned grave.
No.What were the odds of a coincidence that convenient?
Could it be... he noticed?!
The moment the thought surfaced, Li Zhongshan startled himself. He sat beneath the dim lamplight, eyes flickering with uncertainty and alarm.
If Lu Xiaoqi had actively shaken off the tail, that meant he'd been thinking of the kid far too simply all along!
And just as Li Zhongshan's thoughts churned into chaos, unable to decide what to do next—
HUMM——!
Another jade slip—a black one tucked deep inside his robes, close against his skin—began vibrating violently without warning!
Li Zhongshan, already agitated, was about to start cursing... But the instant he saw that it was the black slip glowing, it was as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over him. He froze solid in the chair.
He didn't dare delay for even a moment. He immediately composed himself and sent his divine sense in.
The message inside was extremely brief, just a few words:"Elder Sun orders you to come see him at once."
Clack. The slip's light dimmed completely.
Li Zhongshan stared hard at the cold black jade slip in his hand. The gloom and calculation that had filled his face moments ago were utterly gone.
In their place was anxiety he couldn't conceal—and dread that seeped deep into his bones.