As the three gathered, Lin Wujiu felt a lingering dread.
"Damn it! I never expected they had a Heavenly Immortal hiding nearby as well!!"
Qisha shrugged and said bluntly, "Brother Li's senses are much sharper than mine. He noticed him first."
At that moment, the Lin family cultivators sent a man over to report to Lin Wujiu.
"Eldest Young Master, tonight makes the second time this group has launched a harassment attack."
"Fortunately, you and your friends were here. Otherwise, the consequences would have been unthinkable..."
Lin Wujiu recognized the man. He patted his shoulder, produced a jade bottle, and said in a heavy voice, "Tiesheng, distribute these medicinal pills to the wounded first."
"Take proper care of the fallen disciples; have someone send them back to the clan shortly."
The man nodded and hurried off to attend to these matters.
Lin Wujiu then glanced at Li Guanqi, whose expression seemed somewhat strange. Frowning slightly, Lin Wujiu spoke softly.
"Come on, follow me down to have a look."
Neither of the other two said a word. Li Guanqi raised his hand, stringing up the corpses of all the black-robed men outside the shattered city gate.
Then, inside the corpses' internal organs, he planted inscribed talismans.
Lin Wujiu raised a hand to stop him, but Li Guanqi was already done.
"Hey, I still wanted to see what these people looked like," Lin Wujiu muttered.
Qisha spoke up then.
"No need to look. These people wouldn't leave behind a single trace for you to find."
"Even if you have suspicions, you won't have any evidence."
Lin Wujiu realized this made sense, yet watching Li Guanqi's practiced, fluid technique still gave him an eerie chill.
As for Qisha, he couldn't help wondering whether Li Guanqi had done this kind of thing all the time back in the Spirit Realm...
The technique was unnervingly well-practiced.
Growing curious, Qisha leaned close to Li Guanqi and asked with a furrowed brow, "Brother Li, tell me the truth. How many people did you kill back in the Spirit Realm?"
Li Guanqi was taken aback.
"Why ask that?"
"Just curious."
"Uh... I never counted... At least ten thousand, probably."
At this point, Li Guanqi rubbed his nose somewhat sheepishly.
"After all, back then in the Spirit Realm, quite a few people called me... the Blood Slaughterer."
Qisha's mouth twitched. He finally understood where the murderous aura lingering around Li Guanqi had come from.
"Back in the Spirit Realm... did you just go around exterminating clans and wiping out sects?"
Li Guanqi thought about it.
"Pretty much..."
Qisha fell silent, and Lin Wujiu was rendered speechless as well.
Neither noticed the sharp gleam flashing deep within Li Guanqi's eyes, an inscrutable look in his gaze.
The three descended into the mine shaft, which extended hundreds of zhang underground.
It was damp, stifling, and the air was thick and foul.
All three could not help but frown.
Seeing these surroundings, Li Guanqi furrowed his brows.
If he had been captured by those men from the Tianshu Ascension Hall back then, he probably would have been sent to a place like this to dig for ore.
Yet as they ventured deeper, Li Guanqi grew somewhat surprised.
"The Lin family's mine... didn't buy any mining slaves?"
Lin Wujiu glanced at Li Guanqi and said in a low voice, "Years ago, the Lin family bought them too. But later on, we realized the hidden risks were too great and they were hard to manage, so we simply switched entirely to our own clan members."
"Though conditions are a bit harsh, the pay is generous, so plenty of clan disciples are willing to come."
"Grim as this looks, it's already far better than the mines of other sects."
"In those places, people eat, sleep, and relieve themselves where they dig. Their Origin Spirits are suppressed, and they don't get a single moment's rest. That is what truly miserable looks like."
Li Guanqi shuddered, thinking to himself, *Don't tell me one of my brothers actually ended up mining somewhere...*
In an unnamed mine shaft.
Gu Li was clad in rags, gaunt to the bone, his eyes bloodshot.
Clutching a black iron pickaxe, he was sketching something upon the ore...
Mumbling under his breath, he repeated over and over, "Blow you to pieces!! I'll blow you all to pieces!!!"
The nearby guards did not pay Gu Li any mind at all.
Plenty of people went mad in these mine shafts each year.
Even the cultivator who had previously warned Gu Li merely rested against the wall nearby, sticking out his tongue to lick the damp soil beside him, holding it in his mouth for a moment before spitting it out.
Yet just as Gu Li was about to finish engraving the rune, a supervising cultivator lashed a whip across Gu Li's back.
*Snap!*
Flesh split open across his back, welling with a welt of blood.
"Go haul up the ore he just carved out of his hands."
Another person hurried over and snatched away the immortal ore cradled against Gu Li's chest.
Gu Li reached out, muttering with a resentful gaze, "I hadn't finished drawing it... not finished!! Damn it..."
"*Sob, sob, sob*... That was the hundred and thirty-seventh piece... Couldn't you wait until I finished drawing before taking it away?"
Hearing this, many shook their heads, completely unable to understand why he was so obsessed.
None of them could decipher what he was drawing—it was neither a formation nor a talisman.
Lying flat on the ground, half of Gu Li's face was submerged in the mud.
His eyes remained fixed on the ore before him, as if countless flashes of inspiration were recombining before his vision.
In his heart, he murmured quietly, *Just a little more...*
Little did anyone know that recently, Gu Li had already scattered over ten thousand speck-like inscribed talisman runes throughout the entire ore vein!!
Naturally, the ore being hauled out was also part of his plan.
Nor did he hide his actions from anyone.
For in this place, no one could understand what he was engraving in the first place.
Deep within the mine shafts of the Yuqing Mountain Range.
Li Guanqi looked around at the raw immortal crystal ore shimmering with brilliant light, inwardly shaken.
Irregular, milky-white ore lined the passage, which brimmed with immortal energy.
This stray celestial spiritual energy was also being collected by specialized dharma artifacts.
The ore vein stretched hundreds of zhang in length. Only when they reached the very deepest recess did Li Guanqi and the others slowly come to a stop.
There, embedded deep within the ore, was a twisted spatial rift about three feet wide.
Li Guanqi's earring pulsed urgently with spiritual light, and a strange sensation suddenly welled up within him.
He seemed... to know who he was about to run into...
His mouth twitched, and he held his forehead, shaking his head.
"Um... Wujiu."
"Hm? What's wrong?"
Li Guanqi spoke with some embarrassment.
"If... I mean if..."
"If there's nothing left inside this spirit herb garden now, will you be punished?"
Lin Wujiu frowned slightly, not understanding what Li Guanqi meant.
Even so, he entertained Li Guanqi's hypothetical for a moment.
"Probably... maybe... it wouldn't be a big deal."
"After all, it's only a rank-two herb garden; whether there are rank-three immortal herbs inside is still up in the air."
"Besides, ancient herb gardens rarely preserve much anyway. For the Lin family, it would only ever be icing on the cake."
Hearing this, Li Guanqi's expression eased a bit. He shifted in front of the other two, preparing to enter first.
Turning his head back, he told them, "No matter what happens in a moment, neither of you make a move."
The two nodded, and the three of them stepped into the rift's domain.
The instant they stepped inside, Li Guanqi saw a large, pale backside sticking high up in the air. The figure was huffing and puffing as it dug away at spirit herbs.
Li Guanqi's facial muscles twitched. *It really is...*
*Boom!*
Donning his ghost mask and clutching the demon sword Xue Ming, Li Guanqi charged forward in a flash!
He even bellowed, "Halt! What kind of thieving sprite dares show itself here?!"
Chapter 1652