In the end, under Li Guanqi's insistence, Li Nanting went to take a bath.
The two of them shared a suite, separated only by a single door.
Inside, Li Nanting sat in the tub, gently wiping down his body.
Yet, facing away from the door, the old man wept silently, tears streaming down his face.
Tears traced the deep furrows and wrinkles of his weathered face, cascading downward.
His shoulders trembled slightly, but he made not a single sound.
Yet how could the old man fathom the reach of Li Guanqi's perception now...?
Everything happening on the old man's side was laid bare before Li Guanqi's eyes.
Li Guanqi drew a deep breath, his gaze turning razor-sharp.
Ye Lingyun might have appeared magnanimous on the surface, but in Li Guanqi's eyes, he was nothing more than an insidious hypocrite!
Li Guanqi slowly shed his robe. The flesh on his shoulder had already withered and shriveled.
Raising his hand and forming a sword finger, he gouged the dead flesh away, his brows knitting slightly from the pain.
Yet his fingers plunged even deeper into his flesh, not stopping until he had carved a fist-sized hollow into his shoulder!
Flames gathered in his palm, completely incinerating the excised flesh as a sheen of cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
Within him, immortal essence surged. With the roar of his vitality and blood, it took only moments for the shoulder wound to heal nearly completely.
Yet for Li Guanqi, this matter was far from over...
"What a vicious trick... fire poison!"
"Another king-grade unique physique! Connected to fire, though I have no idea what kind."
And moreover...
Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes, a momentary daze drifting across his gaze as memories of their encounter flashed through his mind.
The impression that youth gave him was extraordinary!
His aura alone—that immovable, mountain-like bearing—was enough to tell Li Guanqi that he was no ordinary cultivator.
That poise, those eyes, every single subtle movement.
It was far more intense than what he had felt when he crossed paths with Lin Wujiu's carriage on the street.
The youth's ease and indifference were ingrained to his very core.
With that thought, Li Guanqi brought out a jade slip and whispered an inquiry.
"Wujiu, do you know of a Ye family in the Zhongtian Lands?"
Before long, Lin Wujiu's grave voice came through from the other side.
"I do!"
"Old Li, don't tell me you ran into trouble with someone from their clan."
"If you really did, I'm afraid only sister-in-law can protect you. The Lin family... is nothing compared to the Ye family."
Li Guanqi frowned, his expression growing solemn.
"Is the Ye family really that powerful in the Zhongtian Lands?"
Lin Jinting's inquiring voice sounded from the jade slip before he took hold of it, speaking with immense gravity.
"Congxin, the Ye family's position in the Zhongtian Lands is just like our Lin family's in Qinzhou—perhaps even greater!"
"In Qinzhou, the Lin family's word is law."
"And the Ye family... is the very sky over the entire Zhongtian Lands!"
Li Guanqi nodded with a furrowed brow, muttering under his breath,
"It seems he truly has the right to be arrogant."
"Then why would someone like him come to Lanyang City?"
Then Lin Jinting's solemn voice echoed once more from the jade slip.
"What is more, the eldest son of the Ye family's direct lineage, Ye Lingyun, was rumored to have broken through to the second stage of the True Immortal Realm not long ago!"
"And most importantly... Ye Lingyun is only thirty-five years old!"
Hearing this, even Li Guanqi drew in a sharp breath of cold air.
"A second-stage True Immortal under the age of thirty-five?!"
"No wonder his eyes held only cool indifference when he looked at me."
"With my current cultivation, I truly wasn't worth a second glance to him."
Li Guanqi offered Lin Wujiu a few comforting words, then put away the jade slip, closing his eyes to ponder in silence for a long while.
"Ye Lingyun..."
"Heh, sanctimonious hypocrite."
"If he were truly magnanimous, he wouldn't have planted fire poison in that saber."
"Hmph. If the power of my immortal essence and thunder-flame hadn't been domineering enough, that blow would have ended my life."
"A fraud dressed in virtue..."
Indeed, had Li Guanqi not instantly enveloped the fire poison within him with immortal essence, he would likely have perished on the spot.
And it was for that very reason that he had insisted on asking for the other's name under those circumstances.
If it was truly his master's fault for crashing onto their table,
Li Guanqi would naturally apologize on his master's behalf, and offering compensation was only right.
However...
Li Guanqi suddenly rose to his feet, his eyes darting quickly. Without a moment's hesitation, he dashed toward the room where Li Nanting was.
Light flashed from his finger, and a subtle ripple of space instantly enveloped the old man.
Immediately after, the Sumeru Treasure Hall shrank into a speck of dust, dropping into the wooden tub.
Two strange auras swept through the room, followed by an exclamation of surprise outside the door.
"Huh? Not here?"
The door swung open, and two cultivators clad in dark navy robes entered without bothering to conceal their presence, rummaging through the room.
One of the men glanced at the rippling tub still steaming with warm water, narrowing his eyes.
"They must have left just ahead of us."
The other cultivator—the one whose arm Li Guanqi had severed earlier—walked over to the bed.
Scattered across the floor and the bedding were traces of black ashen powder.
The man crouched down, pinched a bit of the powder, and brought it to his nose. Sniffing it, he slowly opened his eyes and sneered.
"The fire poison inside him is likely out of control. Even if he ran, he can't have gotten far. Search around!"
Their divine senses swept back and forth across the room multiple times, ultimately yielding nothing.
Inside the hall, Li Nanting finished dressing, his face etched with anxiety and unease.
With water still dripping from his hair, the old man pressed his lips together, his expression complicated.
Li Nanting suddenly wondered whether his "return from the dead" had been a blessing or a curse.
The friction and danger among cultivators in the Immortal Realm were far more terrifying than he had ever imagined.
The unknown of an unfamiliar realm, combined with his own meager strength, was utterly insignificant here.
Li Nanting could not even fly through the air in the Immortal Realm now, and it felt as though any random cultivator pulled from the streets possessed a higher realm than him.
This massive disparity, combined with everything he had gone through recently, left him mentally and emotionally exhausted.
Disheveled and untidy, the old man looked toward Li Guanqi, whose eyes remained vigilant.
Once Li Guanqi's expression relaxed slightly, Li Nanting sat in silence, quietly adjusting his clothes.
He no longer showed much curiosity about this spatial treasure; his eyes were filled only with exhaustion.
Only two days ago, he had joked about nursing grand ambitions to carve out a place for himself.
And now, he had already been drenched in spilled food and wine, trampled underfoot, and subjected to the terrifying aura and pressure of a true immortal until his guts nearly burst with dread...
That pressure was countless times more oppressive than anything wielded by the strongest experts he had ever seen in the Human Spirit Realm.
His heart trembled in fear, as if facing the wrath of the Heavenly Dao itself, making him realize just how small and utterly powerless an individual was.
Li Guanqi exhaled a breath of relief, but when he turned around, he saw how the old man had lost all his spirit and vigor.
Li Guanqi opened his mouth, but for a moment, he did not know what to say.
Separated by about ten feet, the two of them simply sat on their cushions, staring blankly at the ceiling.
In a fleeting moment of daze, even Li Guanqi could not tell whether all this was for better or worse.
Perhaps... it was because neither of them had a place to truly settle down.
Besides, running into Ye Lingyun here in Lanyang City of Quping Prefecture was far from normal in the first place.
Chapter 1719