Inside the room at the inn, Li Guanqi felt a twinge of frustration. He had not expected those two to possess such high cultivation.
The moment his divine sense barely brushed against them, their immortal essence barrier had reacted violently, exposing him at once.
Li Guanqi paced the room.
"Hiss... Where could it be? They didn't specify either..."
"Dixiu Bay spans nearly a thousand li, connecting six whole cities. How am I supposed to find it?"
Just as his thoughts wandered, the jade slip in his possession glowed faintly, and Lin Jinting's voice came through.
"Brat Li! Word has it that the Cold Soul Jade Glaze is a third-rank immortal treasure, resembling a precious jade. It requires an environment of extreme, bitter cold to condense the celestial spiritual energy of heaven and earth into form."
"When worn by a cultivator, it calms the spirit and focuses the mind, shielding them from evil intrusions and distracting thoughts."
"If a cultivator naturally possesses an ice-attribute spiritual root, wearing the jade glaze while cultivating will boost their cultivation speed and purify their immortal essence."
"It can be considered an exceptionally precious spiritual treasure of heaven and earth."
"However, as for the specific appearance of the Cold Soul Jade Glaze, nothing is known."
Li Guanqi nodded slightly. It seemed this item was indeed extraordinarily rare!
"Understood. Thank you, Uncle Lin."
"By the way, how has Wujiu been lately?"
A hearty laugh boomed from the jade slip.
"After you two left, that boy moped around for ages. Now he's finally broken through to the eighth-level Mystic Immortal realm."
"All day long, he clamors about wanting to roam the world and track you two down."
"Still, I plan to make him reach the Heavenly Immortal realm before allowing him to step out the door."
Hearing this, Li Guanqi chuckled. That kid...
In the blink of an eye, more than half a year had already slipped by.
"Time really flies."
Lin Jinting's voice came through the jade slip again.
"How are you holding up, kid? Need any money or anything?"
"Where have you gotten to? Not a single word for so long! Wujiu scolds you and Qisha every day, saying the two of you are cut from the same cloth—neither of you ever bothers to contact him."
Li Guanqi chatted with Lin Jinting for a short while before abruptly stowing the jade slip, his eyes turning warily toward the window.
This inn was hardly a lavish establishment in Xialin City. It sat in a somewhat secluded location, making the night exceptionally serene.
Yet Li Guanqi pinched two inscribed talismans between his fingers—talismans that were currently burning.
This meant the inscribed talismans he had placed within a radius of a thousand zhang had detected the presence of a Heavenly Immortal cultivator!
Li Guanqi glanced at Li Nanting, who was cultivating with closed eyes, and promptly brought him into the Xumi Treasure Hall.
Changing into a black robe, Li Guanqi crept toward the door and murmured under his breath,
"Could what happened during the day have been discovered?"
"That shouldn't be..."
With that thought, Li Guanqi flickered out of the room. Before leaving, he placed an inscribed talisman inside.
The talisman flared with spiritual light, coalescing into an ethereal figure identical to Li Guanqi.
Even the faint aura it emitted was indistinguishable from his own.
Yet if someone were to enter the room, they would find only a mass of gathered spiritual light.
Having slipped out, Li Guanqi moved like a shadow, melting into the darkness of the streets and alleys.
He had not gone far—stopping abruptly in an alley barely two hundred zhang from the inn.
A faint scent of blood hung in the air. Though subtle, it was unmistakably clear to Li Guanqi.
He extended his divine sense slightly, then leapt over a high wall.
The courtyard within was pitch-black, save for a cold corpse lying on the grass.
Every item on the man that could prove his identity had been stripped away, though indentations from rings remained on his fingers.
Li Guanqi examined the wounds: a single stab through the chest that pierced the heart, and a neck nearly severed whole.
For such brutal strikes, unless the gap in cultivation between the two was insurmountable, there was only one possibility—
The killer and the victim knew each other!
Li Guanqi swept the house with his divine sense and found nothing amiss.
The residence bore virtually no signs of habitation. The front gate was locked shut, its lock rusted over.
Only the stone table and benches in the courtyard were relatively free of dust.
"Could this courtyard be a front specifically used for shady dealings?"
Li Guanqi hovered in midair, not letting his feet touch the grass.
Right then, he sensed an elusive aura rapidly approaching.
Without time to deliberate, he instantly slipped into the Xumi Treasure Hall, tossing a pebble the size of a fingernail into a corner at the base of the wall just before vanishing!
Once inside the hall, Li Guanqi retrieved an ice-blue mirror.
This artifact was called the Far-Gazing Water Mirror. As long as it was paired with a Far-Gazing Stone, one could view whatever the stone observed, even from a million li away.
Ripples spread across the mirror's surface, and the scene outside appeared immediately.
*Whoosh!*
A sinister dark silhouette appeared in the courtyard. The figure glanced down at the corpse on the ground, then began thoroughly searching every corner of the surroundings.
Fortunately, Li Guanqi had concealed the Far-Gazing Stone so discreetly that the visitor failed to notice it.
The man reflected in the water mirror was tall and somewhat burly.
With practiced ease, he stowed the corpse, erased all bloodstains and traces from the surroundings, and vanished from the courtyard in a flash.
From beginning to end, the black-robed man never uttered a sound.
It was as if he had doubled back solely to clean up the body.
Li Guanqi stared at the water mirror, narrowing his eyes.
Those large hands were covered in thick calluses. If the man drew a blade, his sheer physical strength alone would likely suffice to overpower the victim!
This man was the killer!
To think he would return to take the corpse away...
Could it be that he suddenly didn't want the death exposed?
Questions swirled in Li Guanqi's mind.
He had initially assumed that the two cultivators who mentioned the Cold Soul Jade Glaze earlier had tracked him down.
Instead, he had stumbled upon a bizarre murder.
Who was the victim?
Who was the killer?
What had triggered it, and why return to haul the body away?
Li Nanting was already accustomed to being abruptly whisked into the Xumi Treasure Hall.
The old man looked at the images in the mirror, then at Li Guanqi.
"Puzzled as to why he doubled back to take the body?"
Li Guanqi looked at Li Nanting and nodded slightly.
Stroking his beard, the old man pondered aloud,
"We need only look at the outcome."
"When he struck, his moves were decisive and ruthless, and he left the corpse lying brazenly in the courtyard, clearly unconcerned."
"Yet when he returned, he not only took the corpse, but also wiped away every trace of blood in the dirt..."
"This can only mean that at first, the killer didn't care whether the death was discovered."
"However, something must have happened during that interval that forced him to conceal the fact that this person died!"
Li Guanqi smiled and nodded at his master's words, though his thoughts ventured even deeper.
For instance...
Could this assassination have anything to do with himself?
Li Guanqi remained hidden in the courtyard for nearly six hours, slipping away silently only when the sky began to show the first light of dawn.
Chapter 1729