[ Li Lian’s house ]

  Upstairs in a large empty room, Xiao Fang sat in the lotus position as he tried to fully integrate the [ True Immortal Lightning Tribulation ] spirit attribute into his body. The time it took him to cultivate the spirit attribute was already much longer than Li Lian’s and Xun Wei’s combined, but he didn’t break his concentration, even when he was beginning to feel weak.

  As the days passed, the outer court gradually descended into madness. Li Lian, Xun Wei, and Xiao Hei didn’t know about it because they had been at home for the last few days.

  Since they killed people, they thought it would be wise to stay at home and keep a low profile.

  However, one day there was a knock on the door. Li Lian got up to answer it, but not without getting Xun Wei’s attention first.

  Xun Wei and Xiao Hei suddenly stopped what they were doing as Li Lian went to answer the door. When she opened it she saw two women standing at her doorsteps, but she froze when she saw the colours of the two women’s robes.

  One was white, meaning that she was from the core court, and the other was black, meaning that she was from the inner court.

  "Hello, we’re both a member of the disciplinary department. Respectively from the inner and core court," the black robed woman said as she pointed at herself then at the white robed disciple standing behind her.

  Li Lian didn’t know what to say. She still couldn’t believe a core court disciple would come knocking at her door. The admiration in her eyes slowly turned into worry when she started to suspect that the came to investigate Song Du’s murder.

  The outer court disciplinary department always did their own investigation, and they were usually really good at it. However, their punishment would only go as far as making them pay a large fee of merit points.

  The day Li Lian returned from the Divine Sword sect with Xiao Fang, she was apprehended and forced to pay 25,000 merit points. If she didn’t have the money they would have forced her into doing manual labour for the sect till she could pay it off. Luckily for her, Xiao Fang had boat loads of merit points that he didn’t know what to do with, so paying the fee was no big deal. Xiao Fang was upset that they were accusing her instead of him, but they just accused him of simping.

  Although there was a general rule against killing other disciples, no one really cared enough to do anything about it, especially if the victim was a man. Perhaps because Song Du came from a more noble family they were taking the case a little more seriously, but it didn’t make sense that they would go so far as to bring people from the inner and core court to do the investigating.

  Li Lian dismissed any thoughts that they were in any trouble, so instead of worry she became curious. However, before she could ask why they came, the inner court disciple suddenly spoke.

  "May we come in?"

  "Em, sure. Please come in," Li Lian replied.

  Li Lian idolized the Core Court disciples of the Black Paradise sect since she was young, so inviting one into her home was like a dream come true.

  Seeing that people were being invited into their house, Xiao Hei went into [ Stealth ], then quickly ran upstairs into Xiao Fang’s room. Seeing that Xiao Fang was still meditating, she tried to be quiet even though she knew that he couldn’t hear, see, or feel anything in that state.

  Back downstairs Xun Wei had confronted the visitors after wiping the sweat off her skin with a piece of cloth.

  "What is this about?" Xun Wei asked.

  "We are doing a quick inspection of the outer court," the Inner Court disciple said.

  She then took something out from her spatial pouch and handed them to Li Lian and Xun Wei.

  "Pour your spirit qi into them."

  Li Lian did as she said. Xun Wei hesitated for a moment then eventually did the same.

  Shortly after their qi entered the crystals, they slowly began to glow.

  "The crystals are glowing. What does that mean?" Li Lian asked.

  The inner court disciple seemed extremely shocked by this, but the expression on the core court disciple’s face didn’t change in the slightest.

  The inner court disciple took the crystals back with a special glow in her eye, before looking back up at Li Lian and Xun Wei.

  "Truthfully, I don’t know the answer to that, but if you come with me I can take you to someone that does."

  Li Lian and Xun Wei looked at each other with confused looks. Whatever was happening it likely didn’t have anything to do with Song Du’s death.

  While the girls were occupied downstairs, the Core Court disciple had actually planted an illusion of herself downstairs as she went off to search the house……

  All the disciples from the inner and core courts were instructed that they needed to perform the crystal test for every disciple in the outer court. However, the Core Court disciples were instructed on a covert mission: [ Find Da Long ]. That was the reason why it was taking so long to check the whole outer court, because they didn’t include the outer court disciplinary department, and because they were going around in pairs instead of spreading their limited numbers.

  The reason the mission was split up this way was because Yao Wu believed that there were a few outer and inner court elders that were trying to keep his identity a secret. She felt that she could only trust the core court disciples with this task.

  The only reason the inner court disciple in Li Lian’s house wasn’t looking down on her was because she was living in such a large and luxurious house, which usually meant that she came from a very noble family. Which in this case was true since Li Lian was from one of the four major families in the province, the Li family……

  The Core Court disciple was upstairs checking each room for the man known as Da Long. Xiao Hei could hear someone quietly snooping around and checking every room so it made her nervous. She didn’t trust someone that would try to sneak around in their house, so when she finally opened their door, Xiao Hei put a hand on Xiao Fang’s back then used [ Stealth ], hiding the both of them.

  Since the room was completely empty, she didn’t look inside for more than a second before moving on to the next room.

  After she had gone through every room in the house she finally went back downstairs, returning to her illusory body as if nothing had happened.

  As they were getting ready to leave, the core court disciple saw the glowing crystals in the inner court disciple’s hands. One glowing a fiery red, and the other glowing a ghostly white. A bit of shock appeared in her eyes then she looked back up at the two girls. She also didn’t know what it meant, but for the sect to go to such lengths just to find these two girls, she knew it must’ve meant they were special……

  They eventually left the house, and they took them to meet an elder as they were instructed to do. The elder took one look at the glowing crystals and nearly jumped with joy. Although Li Lian and Xun Wei were both exceptionally beautiful, the elder couldn’t sense anything special about them, but she knew the crystal didn’t lie so she took them straight to the Matriarch……

  [ In the Matriarch’s Hall ]

  There were several elders wearing white robes, but they had special decorations in specific colours to show their difference in rank.

  The outer court elders wore white and pink robes, inner court elders wore white and black robes, and the core court elders wore different shades of white robes, and the Supreme Elders wore white and purple robes.

  The Supreme Elders were all very old people that had performed meritorious or outstanding services in the past. This also includes those that had accomplished something major for the sect.

  Despite being surrounded and stared at by so many powerful elders, there was only one person that caught their eye. She was the woman sitting on the highest seat, the one with the lofty air, and the most dazzling one amongst them all.

  The Matriarch.