Unsheathed

After parting ways with the scholar, the three of them arrived at Banner State City, a city located in the southernmost region of the Plum Glaze Nation. The highest-ranking officer in this city wasn't the prefectural overseer, but instead the official responsible for the canal transport of the region. Meanwhile, the chief military official was a high-ranking official one rank below the canal transport official.

Chen Ping'an and the others stayed in this city for ten days, and they discovered that the concentration of spiritual energy here was far superior to that of ordinary regional cities. This was a boon for Ma Duyi and Zeng Ye's cultivation, so Chen Ping'an decided to choose a large inn near the river so that the two of them could cultivate in peace. In the meantime, he wandered around the city and heard many things.

For example, the chief military official had a single son who was mediocre at scholarly studies and had no chance of becoming a champion scholar. He didn't want to study either, and he often whiled away his time in the brothels, leaving him with a terrible reputation. However, he didn't act tyrannically toward other people, and his only quirk was that he liked to instruct his subordinates to wantonly capture cats, dogs, foxes, and other similar animals. He liked to break their legs, twist them backward at strange angles, and watch them suffer.

It wasn't long before a shocking piece of news traveled out from the chief military officer's office, saying that the arms and legs of the chief military officer's son had been snapped. He suffered a miserable fate not too dissimilar to his animal victims, and he was tossed onto his bed with a rag stuffed inside his mouth. The young man was already low on vitality thanks to his indulgence in wine and women, yet he somehow didn't die even though he had suffered such severe wounds.

The chief military officer was enraged, and after confirming that this was the doing of spirits and demons, he spent an exorbitant amount of money to recruit two Cave Abode Tier cultivators from an immortal force to leave the mountains and subdue the demons. Of course, he also wanted to use immortal techniques to heal the wounds of his crippled son.

Chen Ping'an had coincidentally been strolling along the banks of the transport river at the time, and he had personally seen a group of immortals from the mountains entering the city on a small boat.

The person standing at the bow of the boat was surprisingly a Dragon Gate Tier cultivator.

In vassal states like the Plum Glaze Nation, recruiting a Dragon Gate Tier cultivator was a huge investment. From this, it could be seen that the office of the chief military officer was indeed very wealthy.

Apart from allowing Zeng Ye and Ma Duyi to cultivate, there was another more subtle reason for choosing to stay at Banner State City.

According to the immortal reports kept by the inn located on the banks of the Spring Flower River, the woman in green and the young boy in white, who had suddenly burst onto the scene, had once appeared in the sky above Banner State City, blocking the path of an elderly Golden Core Tier sword immortal who was known in the Luminous Vermilion Empire as someone who was one step away from advancing to the Nascent Tier. There had been three encounters and battles between them in total, and the woman in green and the young boy in white eventually killed the Golden Core Tier sword cultivator on the border of the Plum Glaze Nation and the Luminous Vermilion Empire.

Chen Ping'an speculated that Cui Dongshan and Ruan Xiu were "fishing," trying to entice one or two Nascent Tier sword cultivators to leave the mountains and lose the protection of their mountain-protection formations as they mindlessly rushed to the Plum Glaze Nation to rescue the Golden Core Tier sword cultivator who had huge potential and was highly valued by the nation.