"Not good!"

Wang Xiu's eyes narrowed. The power of this blurry figure was too immense, his Realm unimaginable. With a single palm strike, he turned heaven and earth into a cage. It was utterly terrifying, the most powerful adversary Wang Xiu had ever encountered.

With this puppet, I'll be no match! I have to escape first!

Without a single wasted thought, he immediately commanded the Gang Armor to flee, unleashing all its energy. It transformed into a streak of residual light and vanished in an instant, moving so fast it seemed to fly.

BOOM!

A palm slammed down, its power earth-shattering and astonishing.

It struck the Gang Armor.

The ground in all directions caved in, burying half a mountain.

However, the Gang Armor merely shuddered before continuing its escape. It seemed completely unharmed and was even faster than before.

The blurry figure was stunned, unable to react for a moment.

"Stop him!" Shi Ming's voice was ice-cold, his body flickering with Demonic Light and radiating a dangerous aura.

The blurry figure snapped back to his senses, raised his hand, and delivered another palm strike. This one spanned hundreds of miles, crashing down from afar.

CLANG!

This palm was even more powerful than the last, collapsing several nearby mountains. Yet, the Gang Armor only swayed slightly before transforming into a beam of light and speeding away, growing more distant by the second.

What the hell? The blurry figure was baffled. What on earth is that thing? Its aura is weak, seemingly not even at the Nascent Soul Realm, so how can it be so durable? It took two of my palm strikes without a scratch?

"He's getting away!" Shi Ming shouted.

The blurry figure's brow furrowed. He stepped into the void, instantly crossing a thousand miles. Reaching the upper atmosphere, he saw the Gang Armor emit a nearly invisible glow before diving underground and vanishing from sight.

Where did he go? The figure was puzzled. He spread his Divine Sense to search the surrounding world, but with the Green Lotus Sky-covering Array operating on the Gang Armor, he couldn't detect the slightest trace of its presence.

Shi Ming arrived at his side, his gaze gloomy. "He escaped?"

The blurry figure said, "That wasn't a person. It was a puppet forged from extraordinary materials. It took several of my palm strikes as if they were nothing!"

"A puppet?" Shi Ming's voice turned chilling. "Is that your excuse for incompetence? You couldn't even stop one little thing. The Demon God will not be pleased with such a display of ability!"

The blurry figure retorted, "You arrived before I did. Someone was lying in ambush here, yet you failed to discover them. Now you're blaming me?"

"Hmph!" Shi Ming grunted in dissatisfaction and changed the subject. "I don't care who's controlling that puppet. Find them. If you ruin the grand plan, you won't be able to bear the Demon God's wrath!"

The blurry figure was silent for a long moment before replying, "I don't need you to teach me how to do my job!"

"That's for the best! Remember, the only one who can grant you what you seek... is the Demon God," Shi Ming said, disappearing into the dark night with a wave of his sleeve.

The blurry figure watched him leave, stood for a moment longer, then dissolved into motes of light and vanished.

「Somewhere.」

In the darkness, the faint sound of footsteps echoed.

From the depths of the darkness, an aged voice spoke. "How did it go?"

A man's voice responded, "The fish took the bait, but we have a problem!"

"What happened?"

"We were seen!"

Silence filled the darkness. Countless mists churned like a stormy tide, pulsing with a terrifying and ominous aura.

"Who was it?" the aged voice asked after a long pause.

"I intended to take him alive," the man explained, "but it turned out to be a puppet. It was extraordinarily resilient and incredibly fast. I failed to capture it."

"A puppet? A disciple of the Xuanji Cave Heaven?"

"An ordinary person couldn't refine a puppet of that caliber. There's a ninety percent chance it was the Saint Heir of Xuanji!"

The darkness fell silent once more, the black mist swirling like a sigh.

"Investigate this. If it really is him, silence him."

"I know."

「In the Sanqing residence, within a separate courtyard.」

Wang Xiu frowned as he looked at the returned Gang Armor.

The Gang Armor just got tough, and it already nearly got cracked!

Those two terrifying palm strikes from the blurry figure had indeed inflicted damage. Two palm prints, about an inch deep, were now indented on its back, with remnants of a terrifying aura lingering upon them.

That was at least an Emergence Stage expert, third or fourth heaven! Wang Xiu concluded.

The power behind that palm strike was terrifying. Even sensing it through the void via the puppet's senses felt like surviving an apocalypse. It was a power far beyond what a Nascent Soul Realm expert could unleash.

Wang Xiu sank into contemplation. The Emergence Stage experts and above in this Secret Realm are the pillars of the Watchers, all with extraordinary reputations. So why would one of them secretly contact the Demon Race? Have their dao hearts been corrupted? Have they fallen to the demonic path? What's their motive? They can't leave this Secret Realm, and they lack for nothing. What could the Demon God possibly offer to sway them?

Freedom!

If there was anything that could tempt the powerful cultivators trapped in this Secret Realm, it could only be freedom. The Holy Realm was a cage. While some were content to imprison themselves here, many others had been left behind simply because they missed the window of opportunity to leave. Their hearts were filled with dissatisfaction. After all, they were once the favored children of heaven, capable of roaming freely and dominating entire regions in the outside world.

Furthermore, the older generation of Immortal Sect experts possessed stable dao hearts and a deep-seated hatred for the Demon Race; they wouldn't be easily swayed. But what about the experts born later? They had never left the Holy Realm, nor could they. They naturally yearned for the outside world. To such people, if someone dangled freedom as the price, it was entirely possible their defenses could be breached. The Demon Race's Demon God might actually possess a method to break the world restrictions of the Ancient Sanctuary.

My brow furrowed. I have no idea how deep the corruption runs among the upper echelons of the Holy Realm. Inside the Holy Academy, it's impossible to send a message to the Sanqing in the outside world. At best, I can only contact the many Sanqing ancestors within the Holy Academy itself. But I can't be certain if any of those corrupted and demonized individuals are from the Sanqing.

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