Robert Carter was furious, his face ashen: “A bunch of sneaky cowards, they’ve just been waiting for today to rebel…”

David Bolton clenched his fists tightly and kept watching. He saw that as soon as the woman in black finished scattering the papers, she flew toward a nearby empty island.

However, the patrol disciples of this outer courtyard had already been on guard. At this moment, more than a dozen nets flew in from all directions, sealing off both the sky and the ground.

Just as David Bolton thought the woman was sure to be captured, several beams of treasure light fell from the clouds. His eyesight was limited, so he couldn’t see what kind of magical artifacts they were. But as those beams struck down, they instantly broke open most of the nets. The woman in black seized the opportunity to escape, and her figure vanished into the nearby empty island in the blink of an eye.

Then the sky turned into utter chaos. Countless patrol disciples in blue robes flew out from all directions, surrounding the empty island. Soon, the island was filled with the screams of women, and the commotion sounded like utter bedlam.

After a while, a high-ranking spirit master cast a spell to summon clouds and mist, completely obscuring the scene above.

What happened next, David Bolton could no longer see, but he was already relieved. He turned his attention to a flyer that had fallen nearby and picked it up.

After just a quick glance, David Bolton’s face turned slightly red. The first half of the paper listed various suspicious points about the Guanglin Mountain tragedy, and this part was fairly reasonable. But the rest was all praise for Henry Spencer, saying he had done countless good deeds, guided many fellow disciples, saved many people, benefited millions, and so on. In short, the message was: Henry Spencer is truly a great person! So he absolutely could not be the culprit behind the collapse of Guanglin Mountain.

The flattery was so over the top that even David Bolton felt embarrassed. He wondered if this living saint of a person was really himself? It all seemed so exaggerated.

But Robert Carter misunderstood, thinking he was angry, and snatched the flyer away: “It’s all nonsense, fabrications and rumors meant to mislead those who don’t know the truth. Nothing worth reading. David Bolton, don’t be upset! The Disciplinary Hall and the Patrol Hall will root them out sooner or later.”

David Bolton actually wanted to read more, but when he saw many blue-robed disciples descending from the sky to confiscate the flyers, he gave up and instead asked, “What’s the deal with this Xuanhao Faction? With so many brothers in the Disciplinary and Patrol Halls, can’t they find out who’s behind it?”

“They’re just a group of fellow disciples bewitched by Henry Spencer, and there are quite a lot of them. I’ve heard that just in our Tianzhu Mountain outer courtyard, there are four or five hundred people.”

Robert Carter frowned, his eyes full of helplessness: “It’s not like we haven’t caught members of the Xuanhao Faction before, but they all refuse to betray their companions no matter what. The key is, their crimes aren’t serious—at most, they’re punished with a few years of wall-facing meditation, and we can’t use soul-searching or anything like that. As you saw today, there must be insiders in the Patrol Hall. Most likely, we’ll come up empty-handed again.”

David Bolton had indeed noticed that not only were there insiders among the patrol disciples, but a few were clearly going easy on the suspects. And the empty island where the woman in black escaped was precisely the residence of female cultivators in the Tianzhu Mountain outer courtyard, and it even had a bathhouse. Even if the Patrol Hall sealed off the island, there was no way they could find out the identity of the woman in black.

Chapter 0003: Reunion with Emily

“But there’s no need to worry too much about them. In a few days, Deputy Head Qin of the Patrol Hall will come out of seclusion. With his discerning eyes, those bastards from the Xuanhao Faction will have nowhere to hide! They can only be arrogant for a little while longer.”

The two of them chatted as they walked, and in just a moment, they arrived at the martial arena. The field was four li long and wide, with nearly a hundred dueling platforms inside. The thousands of youths from before were already resting and waiting in the pavilions set up nearby.

“Actually, there’s another participant in this entrance trial who, like you, is from Guanglin Mountain. It’s a girl, and I hear she’s especially beautiful, with a great figure.”

“Also from Guanglin Mountain? Is her name Emily Clark?”

A little girl’s image surfaced in David Bolton’s mind. In the first half-year after he was “rescued” by the Sun and Moon Profound Sect, he was often unconscious. The one who took care of him then was a girl named Emily Clark.

But if she was “especially beautiful, with a great figure,” it probably wasn’t her. The girl in his memory was at most delicate and pretty, and her figure was as flat as a washboard.

Still, if Emily was going to take the martial trial, she would have to return to Tianzhu Mountain. If he had time later, he should go look for her.

“Emily Clark? I don’t know, I just heard someone mention it.”

Robert Carter replied casually, and by now he had led David Bolton into a pavilion. He then pointed to a high platform outside and said, “Your match will be on platform number seventy-five, it’s very close. You should know the rules of the martial trial, so I won’t explain.”

David Bolton certainly knew the rules. Today, the Tianzhu Mountain outer courtyard would only admit one thousand people, who would be called entry disciples and qualify for the second entrance test. This martial trial was an elimination system—everyone had to win three matches to qualify.