Under the shelter of the Nanhong Seven, dependent powers that had been quiet a long while were plunged all at once into a slaughter that sprayed blood in every direction.

There was no reason for it, and no object in it.

That crowd of water-kin demons simply came up quietly out of the water.

The one thing all these stricken dependencies had in common was that every one of them fell under Elder Liu Shiqian's charge.

Not until the Clear-Moon Sect's many stewards and outer-gate elders arrived in support was the situation barely brought under control.

And just as the rest of Nanhong's powers were growing uneasy and guessing privately whether this vicious fighting would spread wider still.

The water demons, as though some order had reached them, withdrew in good order and sank back under the water.

Leaving nothing behind but a ground of broken corpses and shattered bone.

“……” A Clear-Moon outer-gate elder hung in the air, working a formation. His brows drew tight, and no gladness showed on his face at all.

Instead he looked back without meaning to, toward one slight figure among the cultivators — a figure of no account at all.

“Hoo.”

Liu Qianyun breathed hard, steadying herself.

But her fingertips still trembled faintly, and she could not stop them.

This pack of demons looked aimless, and had not come to plunder anything — but the targets they picked were far too plain.

And to withdraw now, for no reason anyone could see, plainly meant that whoever stood behind them had already got what it wanted.

“Father…”

Liu Qianyun closed her five fingers tight, slipped quietly out of the crowd, and set off in a certain direction.

A mere third layer of Return-to-Void.

Among this crowd of cultivators with the standing to leave the sect, she was the bottom of the heap. How was a move of hers to escape anybody's eye?

They were simply pretending not to see.

After all, no decree had come to them from the Elder — which said that Elder Liu had no wish to blow the business wide…