"……"

Li Qingfeng instinctively edged a little further away from Tong Xinchuan. With a talent for needling like that, if he kept standing next to the man he would get beaten to death sooner or later.

Sure enough: Feng Yan, who had been about to slink back into the crowd, heard it, and the flush already on his face darkened until it looked ready to bleed.

Two or three strides took him back to the table, fists clenched.

Eyes wide, breathing hard, he finally turned a pleading look on Senior Brother Yan.

"Hoo."

Yan Wencheng paid him no attention. He was looking quietly at the little girl in front of him.

Xu Qing'er was fiddling with her fingers, eyes full of anticipation, without a trace of fear in her.

Showing off, was it…

He glanced back at the silent Elder Yang, drew his gaze in again, lowered his head, smiled and shook it, then swept a hand through the half-laid formation and scattered it.

It had been an ordinary Spirit-Transformation trapping formation.

His hand moved again.

Formation-glyphs dozens of times more complex than before settled quietly onto the disc.

A Return-to-Void grand formation likewise, and likewise only part of one.

And unlike Iron Strokes and Silver Hooks — a test problem the Soul-Forging Heavenly Thread had deliberately left behind — Yan Wencheng was working from his own experience, altering the glyphs by hand, following Tong Xinchuan's example to double the formation's difficulty over again.

"……"

Tong Xinchuan stared at the disc, his pupils contracting, and then began to regret it.

Had he gone a little too far just now?

But faced with a colossus like the Clear-Moon Sect, the killing formation of Iron Strokes and Silver Hooks was the only thing he had to show. With any other formation he might well not have matched these allied-sect cultivators' solid, hard-won strength.

Calling it a narrow win had not really been needling at all.

He glanced awkwardly at Aqing. Fortunately the girl's mind was entirely on the disc.

"What is this nonsense?"

Outside the hall, Liu Qianyun heard the commotion and…