Traitor!

Amidst the desolate mountains, beneath the pitch-black night, the sound of blood dripping onto the earth was exceptionally clear. Li Guanqi panted heavily, the skin of his face twitching slightly. With knitted brows, he stood sword in hand, his entire body covered in newly added wounds. All around him, corpses littered the ground, severed limbs and shattered arms scattered everywhere. Within a thousand zhang, the earth was scored with deep ravines, burned pitch-black. Everywhere were blast-cratered pits. With a wave of his hand, Li Guanqi unleashed the Purple Dragon Thunder Flame, incinerating every corpse on the ground to ash. Looking at the handful of storage rings in his grip, his divine sense surged with a hum, wiping clean all remaining soul marks. A glint of golden light flashed across the purple dragon bracelet around his wrist. Li Guanqi smiled faintly and murmured softly, "No need for you to step in." Then he snapped his head around, his eyes narrowing slightly as he muttered under his breath, "Again?" Lightning flashed beneath his feet, and his figure vanished from the spot. At the same time, reining in his aura, he plunged headfirst into the void. Erasing the spatial ripples behind him, he altered his appearance with the face-changing bug, changed into a white robe, and melted away within the void. This was already the twelfth wave of pursuers he had slain in the past three days. He had no idea where these people were learning of his whereabouts! In just three days, he had killed nearly a hundred people, and none of them were weak in cultivation. Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes. It seemed he had still underestimated the temptation of the Mo Family's kill order to rogue cultivators. While searching through the storage rings, he had even discovered quite a few people from various sects pursuing him! A cold glint flashed in Li Guanqi's eyes, and he muttered, "Even sects dare make a move? Then don't blame me for what comes next!" Eyes narrowed, Li Guanqi retrieved an azure sect jade slip. After comparing it with the locations on his map, his figure shot forward like a flash! Swallowing a healing pill, he pulled out two high-grade spirit stones and gripped them in his palms. His late Nascent Soul cultivation was steadily stabilizing through these intense battles, and his mastery over the Sword Prison grew increasingly proficient. Though using high-grade spirit stones to restore primal energy was extravagant, he faced omnipresent danger at every turn and could no longer afford to care. Hum! A mysterious ripple quietly transmitted over. Li Guanqi retrieved a jade slip, and the fat Tang Ru's voice drifted out. "Guanqi, right now you'd best stick to desolate, uninhabited places. Information on hunting you down has spread through almost all the major assassination organizations. What's more, the Mo Family is buying intel on your whereabouts at any cost and broadcasting it to everyone!" Hearing this, Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes. "Heh, quite the grand gesture... By the way, Fatty, isn't this intelligence coming from the Tianji Pavilion?" Tang Ru's solemn voice soon replied, "No! And for reasons unknown, the Tianji Pavilion has refused to provide intelligence on your whereabouts to anyone. Word has it that the Mo Family patriarch—Mo Congyun's father, Mo Zhiyuan—even made a personal trip to the Tianji Pavilion over this matter. Only to be completely rebuffed. I hear an elder of the Tianji Pavilion didn't even grant him an audience before turning him away." Lowering the jade slip, Li Guanqi wore an inscrutable expression. He had not expected the Tianji Pavilion to pass up the opportunity to extort the Mo Family at a time like this. Given Mo Zhiyuan's current state of mind, no matter what price the Tianji Pavilion demanded, as long as it wasn't utterly absurd, he probably would have bought the intel on his whereabouts without hesitation. "Tianji Pavilion... just what are you planning?" With this thought, Li Guanqi sent a voice transmission into the jade slip. "Help me get in touch with Ning Xiu of Blazing Flame Valley. She is from the Tianji Pavilion. Tell her I accept the Tianji Pavilion's favor this time. Also, help me look into the details of these six sects!" Li Guanqi then relayed the names of the six sects to Tang Ru. Sitting in his study, Tang Ru was momentarily stunned upon hearing the names of those sects. Soon realizing what Li Guanqi intended, he hurriedly spoke in a heavy voice: "Old Li, looking into these sects is no problem, but you need to think this through. Your head is still worth an enormous bounty right now. If you want to retaliate against these sects, you're bound to expose your whereabouts. When that happens, you'll have to face countless enemies. Is it really worth it?" Li Guanqi sneered and said chillingly, "These people just haven't been beaten until they hurt—beaten until they're terrified. Only by stripping a layer of their hide will they learn some manners." Hearing this, Tang Ru urged him no further, saying in a low voice, "I'll send you the location of a courier station. You can head there whenever you're ready. I've prepared some special medicinal pills and a magic treasure for you!" With that, Tang Ru set down the jade slip and ordered in a deep voice, "Within the time it takes an incense stick to burn, investigate the details of these sects for me! The Hundred Refinements Sect, Demon Slaying Sect, Floating Light Mountain, Green Lotus Island, North Sea Monastery, and Crane Alliance." Li Guanqi lowered his jade slip and checked the courier station's location. It was only half an hour away. After pondering for a moment, he decided to head there. Facing the pursuit of the entire domain's powerhouses, fighting entirely on his own wouldn't do. Yet what he needed to do now was to make some of them feel pain first—make them afraid! Kill until every last one of them feared him! Soon, a wondrous ripple drifted through the void, and Li Guanqi quickly received the information on the six factions. The closest to him was the Crane Alliance; its sect master was an elderly man in the early Soul Formation Realm, and the one who had made a move against Li Guanqi was actually the Crane Alliance's Third Elder. Li Guanqi's eyes narrowed. Lightning burst beneath his feet, and silently tearing through the void, he emerged in a deserted alleyway within a massive city. Changing into black robes and retracting his aura, his figure flashed, vanishing from the alley. Yet at the very instant he disappeared, the jade slips of quite a few people throughout the city flickered faintly. Li Guanqi did not yet know that his whereabouts had already been exposed. Soon, he caught sight of the courier station Tang Ru had mentioned. However, he was in no hurry to enter. Instead, he strolled through the streets, and upon passing an empty corner, he altered his appearance and build once more. He changed into plain hemp robes with a sweatband wrapped around his head, quietly blending into the crowd like an ordinary civilian. Even his eyes were disguised to look bright and spirited. Yet inwardly, he muttered to himself, 'I just arrived. Why are there so many people watching me?! Could my tracks have been leaked?' Li Guanqi began tracing back every detail of his journey, yet found nothing amiss; he had even erased the spatial disturbances along the way. 'It makes no sense... Could it be...' Meanwhile. Inside his study, a cold gleam suddenly flashed in Tang Ru's eyes! He discovered that his encrypted jade slip had actually been opened in advance! Tang Ru spoke in a frigid voice. "Elder Qian." Buzz! A figure silently appeared behind the fat man and said in a low voice, "I am here." Tang Ru's eyes brimmed with murderous intent as he muttered in a low voice, "Kill all the current shadows! Someone... has turned traitor." A cold glint flickered in the elder's eyes. Without a word, he merely nodded silently. Ten breaths later, in a secret chamber on the third subterranean level of the Treasure Pavilion, over a dozen people lay in pools of blood—not a single one left alive!