Li Ye’s hair was so messy that his head looked like a bird’s nest when he walked to the residence gate. He seemed somewhat displeased after seeing that it was Shi Qing at the gate. “My senior martial sister is in the middle of her secluded cultivation. I don’t think she’s coming out anytime soon. What do you want?”

Li Ye knew that Pei Qiqi had been chased and badly wounded by Li Langfeng in the Void Illusion Mountain Range.

He attributed it to the Blood Skull’s incompetence. She had only been in such great danger because the Blood Skull had failed to protect her.

He also assumed that the fact that Nie Tian hadn’t returned yet had something to do with the Blood Skull as well.

“We’ve received word regarding Hua Tian,” Shi Qing said.

Li Ye’s expression slightly flickered as he said, “Hua Tian! What is it? Didn’t he choose to walk back to Shatter City by himself instead of using your teleportation portal?”

Shi Qing knew that even though Li Ye was concerned about Nie Tian, he spent most of his time forging equipment in his own residence, and seldom paid attention to word on the street.

From the look of it, Li Ye hadn’t heard the news yet. Therefore, Shi Qing explained everything he had learned from the returning exploration teams to him at great length.

Flabbergasted, Li Ye exclaimed, “What?! All the Hunter teams that roam outside Shatter City are looking for Hua Tian? What the hell did he do to offend all the Hunter organizations?! Now that you’ve got the news, what’s your plan?”

Li Ye asked a series of questions without stopping.

Shi Qing looked at him with a examining gaze and saw through his anxiety. Then, he couldn’t help but ask, “What exactly is the relationship between you and Hua Tian?”

Both Pei Qiqi and Li Ye had been treating Nie Tian quite favorably, which was very confusing to Shi Qing.

Throughout the years he had lived in Shatter City, Shi Qing had never seen Pei Qiqi or Li Ye attach such great importance to anyone. Their special care for Nie Tian made him wonder.

Li Ye let out a snort and said, “Hua Tian was entrusted to us by an old friend of our master’s. Now that you know that those Hunters are trying to capture Hua Tian, what’s the Blood Skull’s stance? I heard that Hua Tian has acquired one of your guest elder’s identity medallions, so he can be considered as half a member now. Do you plan to sit and watch, or do you plan to send out rescue teams?”

Without any hesitation, Shi Qing said, “I’ve already reported to the head. We’ll organize a cleansing operation against the Hunters that roam outside the city. Although we’ll call it a cleansing operation against the Hunters, it’ll actually be an operation designed to rescue Hua Tian!”

The head of the Blood Skull had only granted their proposal to organize this operation because of Gu Yu and Shi Qing’s strong stance on it.

Shi Qing had fully acknowledged Nie Tian’s battle prowess after their fight against Li Langfeng. He was convinced that, given a few more years, Nie Tian would grow into a bright star in the entire Realm of Split Void.

The fact that Nie Tian was close to Pei Qiqi and Li Ye, and that Cai Yuan spoke highly of him, also played an important part in the approval of Shi Qing and Gu Yu’s proposal.

Li Ye’s originally-cold face turned warmer as he said, “I see, so what do you want us to do?”

“I’ve come to see if Miss Pei can join our rescue team so you can see how determined we are to get him back.” Shi Qing said.

“My senior martial sister is in the middle of her secluded cultivation. I’ll go with you.” Li Ye looked up into the sky and said, “I still can’t believe that those damn Hunters would go all-out to capture Hua Tian... They must be crazy!”

He was curious as to what Nie Tian had done in the Void Illusion Mountain Range that had angered all of the Hunters.

Shi Qing nodded. “Good."

Soon, under his lead, the two of them arrived at the city gate where Liu Kang and several dozen more Blood Skull members were gathered.

A moment later, Cai Yuan came as well. He had teleported back from the Void Illusion Mountain Range the moment he heard about the operation.

Many Blood Skull members were discussing it.

“I heard that this cleansing operation is actually for the purpose of rescuing Hua Tian.”

“Hua Tian?”

“The guy who angered the Fang and now has all of the Hunter organizations looking for him?”

“Yeah, that’s him!”

“It’s said that our young lord has already made him a guest elder. Now, he’s the one with the lowest cultivation base among all of our guest elders. I don’t understand. He’s only at the early Heaven stage. Why in the world would the Hunters make such a big fuss about him and go through so much trouble to capture him?”

“Yeah, it beats me.”

Recently, they had heard many stories about Nie Tian from the returning explorers.

They were all very confused about how a young man with such a low cultivation base could have made himself the primary enemy for so many Hunter organizations, making them give up all their other prey and focus solely on searching for him.

“Open the gate! Let’s move out!” Cai Yuan said loudly. Wearing unified garments, the several dozen Blood Skull members created light shields of different colors around them one after another before they charged out of the opened gate.

...

Song Li was stamping with fury in the hilly area.

She had mobilized every Hunter organization that answered to her to search for Nie Tian, who she believed had already sustained serious injuries.

However, he seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

During the past two days, all the Hunter organizations had spread out and conducted an unprecedented, large-scale search. However, they couldn’t find a single trace of Nie Tian.

“Xiao Lin! Are you sure that Hua Tian has sustained severe injuries?” Song Li asked with a long face.

She was standing atop a high hill where there was nothing that could block her sight, and she could see the wasteland that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Xiao Lin, who was originally very confident that they could locate and capture Nie Tian within a short time, also began to question his own judgment after their fruitless, two-day search.

Xiao Lin sighed and said with a frown, “Normally speaking, after using a powerful escape magic to get out of your sizable blockade, he should have suffered a backlash so strong that he wouldn’t even be able to walk. However, it’s been two days, and we still haven’t found any traces of him. That Hua Tian is indeed quite unique.”

“I’ve told you that he’s not an ordinary man!!” Song Li tried her best to suppress her anger. “If he were an ordinary early Heaven stage cultivator, how could he have made such fools out of us and so many Hunter organizations? And how could he have single-handedly killed those late Heaven stage experts who are two levels higher than him?”

Xiao Lin pondered in silence for a while and said, “I might have underestimated his capabilities. However, there’s no need to worry. It’s natural that he can find places to hide in such hilly terrain. Also, the ups and downs have limited my performance. Whether he wants to or not, he’ll need to cross that vast wasteland to return to Shatter City. When he does, I’ll be able to locate and capture him.

“I’ve set up many hidden spell formations that I use to capture living beings in the wasteland. Once Hua Tian sets foot into the wasteland, some of my spell formations will definitely sense his presence and give us his location.

“At that time, I’ll find him, and I won’t give him another chance to use his escape magic!”

“I hope things will work out this time!” Song Li didn’t seem pleased at all. She used her Sound Stone to inform her subordinates and the other Hunter organizations to abandon their search in the hilly area and march into the wasteland, where they would wait for Nie Tian to tumble into their trap.

“You can rest assured. Now that I’ve given you my word, there’s no way he’ll make it back to Shatter City alive.” Xiao Lin sounded extremely confident.