The faint smell of blood had not entirely cleared away yet.

Elder Liu's roar still seemed to hang in everyone's ears, until a cold wind passed and the cultivators on the square shivered as one, feeling a chill run from the soles of their feet up the spine to the crown of the head.

They lifted their heads on instinct and looked up at the sky.

Shen Yi sat high at the top of the long stair. His voice had not been loud, but in that dead silence it had been enough for every cultivator to hear with perfect clarity.

That thin letter stood straight up out of the long table.

Even after Liu Xingshan had fallen, the letter had still not been opened.

But nobody would raise a question about any of it.

It was not only that Liu Xingshan's agitated reaction had all but proved he had something on his conscience. There was also Shen Yi's position now: the man was a Sect Master, and his word was beyond recall… Put it less kindly — even if Liu Xingshan had truly been wronged, so long as the other six Sect Masters did not speak today, there was absolutely nobody who would dare stand out to save him.

Of course, the matter was settled now.

Elder Liu had been among the very strongest in the Nanhong Seven, second only to a handful of Dao-sons and the six great Sect Masters. The loftiness of his standing was beyond question, and his death should have been an event to shake the whole of Nanhong. Instead it had passed like this, without a sound, without raising the least ripple.

More than the reason for his fall, what shook the cultivators was the manner of it.

Liu Xingshan might have been in a bad way, and he might have opened only two cities; but he was still, after all… that elder of towering renown from the Heaven-Sword Sect.

A stamp of his foot could raise great waves across Nanhong.

Faced with a life-or-death strike from an expert of that order, even the likes…