The night was silent. Moonlight, like liquid silver, poured through the sparse leaves of the forest, casting mottled shadows on the ground.

Chen Qing moved silently through the woods, pushing his Startled Swan Escape Shadow Technique to its limit. He left behind only the faintest whisper of a breeze brushing against the blades of grass.

He was following the faint trail left by Miao Zhicheng and Lu Da as they fled.

He was certain of the direction.

However, after several miles, the trail seemed to vanish into thin air.

Aside from the chirping of insects and the rustle of the wind, the woods were silent.

’Where did they go?’

Chen Qing stopped, his brow furrowing slightly. ’They were so heavily injured. There’s no way they could be this fast, let alone leave no trace.’

’Did they have backup?’

’Or did they use some special Concealment Technique?’

He held his breath and focused his Heart and Spirit, heightening his hearing and perception to their absolute peak as he carefully scanned for any movement within a radius of several dozen yards.

After searching the area for a long while, a very faint conversation, mixed with suppressed groans of pain and heavy panting, drifted to his ears on the wind.

The sound came from a low-lying, leeward hollow ahead and to his left.

Chen Qing’s eyes narrowed. He immediately suppressed his aura, activated his Turtle Breath Stinging Dragon Skill, and crept silently toward the source of the sound.

He crouched behind a dense thicket of bushes, parted the branches, and peered down.

In the hollow below, Miao Zhicheng was slumped against an old tree. His face was as pale as paper, his chest heaved violently, and bloody foam constantly frothed at the corners of his mouth. He was clearly gravely injured and struggling to circulate his energy to regulate his breathing.

Beside him, Lu Da, built like a mountain, was also sitting cross-legged. He was in slightly better condition, but one of his arms hung limply at his side, clearly indicating he too had suffered a serious injury. He was healing with his eyes closed.

The most eye-catching person was an old man sitting behind the two of them.

This man was also wearing the earth-yellow robes of the Earth Element Sect, but the material was clearly of higher quality, and his cuffs were embroidered with intricate mountain patterns. His status was obviously extraordinary.

He currently had both palms pressed against Lu Da’s back, slowly channeling a pure, heavy, earth-yellow True Astral into his body to heal him and stabilize his turbulent qi and blood.

The True Astral was incredibly condensed. Though it was deliberately restrained, the heavy, profound aura it occasionally emitted made Chen Qing, who was watching from a distance, shudder inwardly.

’Run!’

Without a moment’s hesitation, he pushed the Startled Swan Escape Shadow Technique within him to its absolute limit. His figure shot backward into the dense forest like a faint, barely visible wisp of green smoke.

However, the instant he moved, the white-haired elder healing Lu Da snorted coldly. Without even rising, he simply slapped his palm outward through the air from a distance.

The palm strike seemed casual, but it caused the surrounding airflow to suddenly stagnate. An earth-yellow True Astral Palm Seal, shimmering with a faint golden light, instantly tore across dozens of yards of space, hurtling toward Chen Qing’s back.

Before the Palm Seal even arrived, its terrifying intent—heavy as a mountain and crushing all in its path—was already enough to make Chen Qing’s breath catch in his throat.

’So fast!’

Chen Qing’s heart pounded wildly. He knew he absolutely could not let this palm strike, infused with Astral Force, hit him directly.

With no time to spare, the True Qi in his body erupted at an unprecedented speed, concentrating in his right arm to meet the Astral Force Palm Seal head-on!

BOOM!

A tremendous roar exploded in the silent night forest!

Chen Qing felt an irresistible, immense force slam into his body through his arm. It was utterly overwhelming!

A sweet taste filled his throat, and he forcibly swallowed the blood that welled up. He used the force of the impact to accelerate, pushing his Startled Swan Escape Shadow Technique even faster. He shot into the depths of the darkness, vanishing completely into the dense woods after a few leaps.

The old man let out a soft sound of surprise and slowly withdrew his palm. A faint golden glint flashed in his eyes and disappeared. He looked in the direction Chen Qing had vanished, his brow twitching almost imperceptibly.

His palm strike just now, while not at full strength, had still contained fifty percent of his Astral Force. Even a typical expert at Embracing Pill Power Perfection would have suffered severe internal injuries and been unable to escape after taking it head-on.

But this spy had actually managed to use the force to escape. Judging by the sound of the wind as he fled, although he was shaken, he was far from being incapacitated.

’What a powerful and solid True Qi foundation, to be able to take one of my palm strikes and still escape... Since when did the Yunlin Prefecture have such a figure?’

A trace of suspicion flashed through the elder’s mind, but looking at the seriously injured Lu Da beside him, he ultimately suppressed the urge to give chase, merely making a mental note of the incident for later.

"Elder Yu, what happened?"

Miao Zhicheng, startled by the elder’s actions, forced himself to suppress his injuries and asked nervously.

He was as jumpy as a startled bird now; the slightest rustle of leaves made his heart pound.

Lu Da also opened his eyes in confusion.

Elder Yu’s tone was calm, as if he had just swatted a fly. "It’s nothing. Just a little bug hiding in the shadows. Its aura wasn’t weak. It was likely an expert drawn by the commotion of our earlier battle. I’ve already scared it off."

"Spying?"

Hearing this, Miao Zhicheng’s face grew even paler. He quickly asked, "There won’t be... any trouble, will there? What if he comes back?"

Elder Yu glanced at him. "Relax. With me here, he can’t cause any trouble. Once Lu Da’s injuries have stabilized a bit, I’ll go check the ruins of that inn and see just who is behind all this commotion."

Hearing the elder’s confident tone, Miao Zhicheng finally let out a long sigh of relief. As his tense nerves relaxed slightly, a wave of intense pain and exhaustion washed over him, almost causing him to collapse to the ground.

Once his Heart and Spirit calmed, his mind started churning again. He stole a glance at Lu Da, who was still healing beside him, his expression a mixture of complexity and apprehension.