Closing the Net!

With that thought in mind, Li Guanqi actually sent a transmission to Zhao Ke! Upon receiving Li Guanqi's transmission, Zhao Ke bolted straight up from his bed of pleasure. "Oh, what's wrong now...? Right at the crucial moment! Couldn't it wait a bit?" Beneath him, the woman had bedroom eyes and flushed cheeks. Yet Zhao Ke was completely sobered. *Smack!* He slapped the woman across the face. "Get out!" The woman froze, her eyes turning red and her lips pressed together as she started to speak again. Zhao Ke grabbed her arm and hurled her straight out of bed. "Get the hell out right now!! Do you hear me?!" Trembling all over, the woman didn't even dare to put on her clothes. She wrapped herself in the blanket and pushed her way out the door. Draping a robe over his shoulders, Zhao Ke securely shut the doors and windows. Only then did he channel a wisp of immortal primal energy into his jade slip. "Send me the city entry logs from the time I left until now." Hearing this, Zhao Ke nodded repeatedly, only speaking when he realized the other party could not see him. "Just a moment, Commander, I'll find it for you right away!" After transmitting the records, Zhao Ke went to the doorway, glanced around, activated a sound-isolating barrier, and transmitted in a low voice, "Commander, the sixth elder of the Tianhua Sword Sect came to see the castellan today. I don't know what was said, but the castellan ended up throwing him out." Zhao Ke pressed his lips together, hesitated for a moment, and added, "Commander, whatever you do, don't come back anytime soon. The city is crawling with Tianhua Sword Sect scouts!" Li Guanqi was browsing through the log catalog, and upon hearing Zhao Ke's words, the corners of his mouth tilted up slightly. *Heh. Scaring him once really did make him quite loyal.* Then again, it wasn't truly out of loyalty; it was simply that Zhao Ke was terrified of Li Guanqi... Not to mention that recent rumors regarding the Tianhua Sword Sect had been spreading like wildfire. Zhao Ke's cautious glance around wasn't out of fear of running into an outsider... He was afraid that at any given moment, Li Guanqi might be standing outside his door waiting for him. Li Guanqi had no interest in whatever Zhao Ke was thinking. While flipping through the catalog, he suddenly noticed two unnamed cultivators registered. Behind where their names should have been, a line of small characters was noted: *Taciturn, seemingly deaf and mute.* Li Guanqi frowned slightly. That small line caught his attention. *Deaf... and mute?* Li Guanqi carefully checked the time they had entered the city, yet found no record of which path they took afterward. *A bit strange... Were they coming for me?* He noticed they hadn't taken the teleportation array to Donghua City. If they had gone toward Donghua City to enter the secret realm upon hearing the news back then, they definitely would have taken the teleportation array after entering Yuxu City. No matter what, some records and traces would have been left behind. That left only one possibility! When he departed Yuxu City, they had not known he was already gone, nor did they know where he was headed. These two were very likely assassins sent by Zhao Chengyong!! With a wave of his sleeve, Li Guanqi dispersed the chessboard before him, a faint smile creeping across his lips. *Interesting. Not just the Tianhua Sword Sect, but Zhao Chengyong as well!* Yet immediately afterward, Li Guanqi's brow furrowed. Then, with a slight upturn of his lips, he sliced open his fingertip and collected a small amount of his own blood. After leaving the cave, Li Guanqi was in no rush at all and simply took up residence within Xihua City. In the days that followed, Li Guanqi kept a low profile, occasionally visiting a tavern in the city to sit and relax. At times, he would even walk up to disciples of the Tianhua Sword Sect to ask what had been happening lately. They would brush him off with utter impatience. Li Guanqi didn't mind in the least. Tucking his hands into his sleeves with a chuckle, he drank his wine and watched them scurry about in their frantic searches. Leaning against the window, Li Guanqi murmured softly to himself, *Well, well... They actually deployed Heavenly Immortal realm cultivators to hide among them?!* *They really spared no expense to kill me...* *Still... with such massive manpower invested, how long can you keep this up?* Indeed, Li Guanqi had discovered the Tianhua Sword Sect's intentions days ago. Those cultivators who lowered their externally displayed pressure made no effort to disguise their inner bearing. With a single glance, Li Guanqi could detect the anomaly. Moreover, the accompanying disciples clearly treated a certain individual with vastly different attitudes and looks. Li Guanqi merely smiled at this. He would simply wait... *** Tianhua Sword Sect. Lately, Chen Tianhua's temper had grown worse by the day. Yet under pressure from various sides, he had no choice but to recall the Heavenly Immortal powerhouses stationed outside. Abandoning everything inside and outside the sect, he sent every single Heavenly Immortal realm expert out to search for Li Guanqi's whereabouts. Still, there was not a trace of news. The one-million immortal crystal bounty on the black market had long since spread far and wide. Yet after so much time, not a single soul had come forward with a lead, causing Chen Tianhua's heart to sink to rock bottom. He could not help but suspect that after slaughtering people at their mountain gate, the culprit had already fled the Northern Region. "Hmph! Consider yourself fast on your feet!" *** Meanwhile, within Xihua City, barely a hundred li from the Tianhua Sword Sect. By day, Li Guanqi strolled through the streets and drank wine; by night, he returned to the inn to cultivate furiously. During this time, Li Guanqi's cultivation and strength progressed by leaps and bounds. Over the course of an entire month, he consumed tens of thousands of immortal crystals and all of his Xuanyuan Pills, forcefully pushing his cultivation to the peak of the fourth tier of the Mystic Immortal realm! Combined with his own foundation and the power of the Rakshasa Ghost Mask, Li Guanqi was now confident he could slay any eighth-tier Mystic Immortal cultivator in head-on combat! The power of the Rakshasa Ghost Mask was far too formidable; the boost it provided was unimaginable. During this period, Li Guanqi's comprehension of the Immortal Realm had also deepened. His command of power had become increasingly fluid and adept. Yet in Li Guanqi's eyes, the combat methods of Immortal Realm cultivators were remarkably monotonous... Aside from comparing the depth of their immortal primal energy, their swordsmanship was rigid to the extreme. Even Lin Wujiu suffered from the same issue—it was as though failing to unleash an entire sequence of sword forms in rigid succession was more agonizing than being killed. Furthermore, the path of spirit incantations was completely unusable in the Immortal Realm!! In other words... it was a unique method that belonged exclusively to the Human Spirit Realm. Not only spirit incantations, but even spiritual ruins were things cultivators of the Immortal Realm had never seen before. The only one to reveal even a sliver of knowledge had been Xueming's sword spirit, who had recognized it. Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes slightly, countless thoughts flashing through his mind in an instant. With his current strength, helping someone open a spiritual ruins was not out of the question! Yet among the people he knew, the only ones he would take the initiative to help open a spiritual ruins were probably Lin Wujiu and Qisha. Neither of them was young anymore; they had long passed the optimal age for opening a spiritual ruins. The lower the strength and the younger the age, the easier it was to open one. Pushing the door open, he stepped out of the inn—this was already the third inn he had stayed at. After leaving the inn, Li Guanqi soared out of the city. He then retrieved an inscribed talisman, upon which more than twenty specks of light were slowly drifting. A cold smile curved at the corners of Li Guanqi's lips as he murmured softly, "My whole month of quietly planting talismans wasn't in vain... It's time to close the net!" At this moment, the Tianhua Sword Sect had no idea that they were about to endure their darkest day.