"An Tingfeng's only daughter carried off, the glazed azure phoenix clan's youngest son missing… I had supposed this was the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Sect's doing."

"After all, in these waters and lands of Xihong, not even the Dragon Palace would have any need to offend both of those great demon powers at once."

"Until Pan Boyang fell too."

Lu Mingchuan seemed to be leading the way ahead with a smile on his face; but in his head his master's voice was sounding.

The Ten Thousand Forms Pavilion had scouts laid over every part of the waters and lands of Xihong, striving to command as much news as possible. That was the ground they stood on, which had let them pick up a Dao-merging treasured site in the chaos of Xihong and step into the ranks of the immortal sects.

Pan Boyang's death was strange enough in itself, and stranger still was the frankly preposterous speed at which word of it had spread.

Plainly somebody was pushing the wave along.

Perhaps some unknown power of real strength truly did mean to move into Xihong; the Heaven-Origin Phantom-Thunder Ruler had certainly been shattered with ease. But by the fact that they still needed to play petty tricks of this kind, they had certainly not reached the point of standing against the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Sect face to face.

The Ten Thousand Forms Pavilion had not been an immortal sect long, and its standing was not yet firm; it was in urgent need of a powerful ally… or of a patron.

The original thought had been to use their gift for news to attach themselves early to this powerful new arrival; a party newly come to a place lacked nothing so much as a competent scout.

But the deeper the Ten Thousand Forms Pavilion looked, the more they found that was odd about the business.

Of late, if any great power had truly set foot in Xihong, it was beyond doubt that crowd of savages out of Nanhong.

And as luck would have it, before An Tingfeng's only daughter was carried off, if anybody in…