Ye Qingxuan and that Green Demon clansman flew one after the other for about three hours.
Eventually, they arrived at a massive mountain peak.
As Ye Qingxuan drew near this peak, he sensed the auras of other Green Demon clansmen nearby and immediately came to a halt.
He watched helplessly as the Green Demon he had been tracking vanished without a trace just as it reached the area near the mountain.
“An obscuring formation?”
Ye Qingxuan stared at the spot where the Green Demon had disappeared, lost in thought.
So it seemed that inside this massive mountain lay a Green Demon tribe’s settlement.
However, after hunting down so many Green Demon tribes, this was the first time he’d encountered one that had an obscuring formation set up outside its settlement.
“It looks like this Green Demon tribe hidden inside the mountain is no ordinary one!”
Now it was Ye Qingxuan’s turn to be torn.
He’d finally come across a Green Demon tribe that was at least at the Golden Core level, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to take it down.
But the tribe inside the mountain wasn’t just separated by the mountain’s rocky bulk—it was also concealed by an obscuring formation.
This made it impossible for Ye Qingxuan to thoroughly scout out the tribe’s internal situation.
After a moment of deliberation, Ye Qingxuan turned his gaze toward the four shorter hills surrounding the main peak.
The other Green Demon auras he had sensed earlier were coming from these four hills.
From what Ye Qingxuan could tell, each of these four hills had three Purple Mansion realm Green Demons stationed on them.
He guessed that these four hills were probably the tribe’s external outposts.
With that thought, Ye Qingxuan stroked his chin and smiled faintly, then stealthily crept over to one of the hills.
He didn’t strike immediately to subdue the three Purple Mansion Green Demons on the hill.
Though subduing three Purple Mansion realm Green Demons was a trivial matter for him, launching a direct attack would make it impossible to prevent energy ripples from spreading.
He pulled over a dozen formation discs from his storage ring and quietly buried them around the hill he’d set his sights on.
The formation he laid down was another obscuring formation.
It was only a low-tier fourth-rank obscuring formation, but concealing one small hill and blocking the perception of other Purple Mansion cultivators was more than enough.
To avoid detection, Ye Qingxuan activated the formation very slowly, suppressing the faint energy fluctuations it produced so they didn’t leak outward.
By the time the entire formation was fully activated and shrouding the hill—
Neither the three Purple Mansion Green Demons on that hill nor the ones on the other three hills noticed anything amiss.
With the formation in place, Ye Qingxuan struck decisively. Without giving the three Purple Mansion Green Demons on the hill any chance to react, he subdued them on the spot.
To avoid alerting the tribe inside the main peak, he didn’t kill them outright.
Instead, he temporarily sealed all three Purple Mansion Green Demons and began searching through their memories.
Half a cup of tea’s time later, after Ye Qingxuan had finished sifting through their memories—
He finally had a basic understanding of the Green Demon tribe inside the mountain.
The tribe inside the mountain was called the Yin Kui Tribe, and it was a Nascent Soul-level tribe.
Within the Yin Kui Tribe—
There was one Nascent Soul realm cultivator, five Golden Core realm cultivators, eighty-six Purple Mansion realm cultivators, nearly a thousand Foundation Establishment cultivators, and over ten thousand Qi Refining cultivators.
The sole Nascent Soul Green Demon was the tribe’s leader—the Yin Kui King.
Moreover, the Yin Kui Tribe also had a fifth-rank guardian grand formation, which could be activated at any time to fend off enemies.
After digesting all this basic information about the Green Demon tribe inside the mountain—
Ye Qingxuan smacked his lips and said with a hint of difficulty:
“This Yin Kui Tribe… is going to be a tough nut to crack!”
The Yin Kui Tribe was inside the mountain, and it went without saying that the tribe had reinforced the inner walls to be extremely sturdy.
With the mountain’s rock mass and the fifth-rank guardian formation acting as barriers—
Even if he set up fifth-rank formations outside the mountain, it would be hard to deal any meaningful damage, even with seven or eight of them.
He had obtained the activation incantation for the external obscuring formation from the memories of the three Purple Mansion Green Demons, so he could enter the tribe without triggering the formation.
But actually getting inside the mountain and setting up a fifth-rank formation within the tribe itself was nothing short of a pipe dream.
He’d probably be spotted the moment he set foot inside.
Scanning the mountainous terrain surrounding the Yin Kui Tribe, Ye Qingxuan fell into deep thought, then muttered under his breath:
“You’re forcing my hand here—don’t blame me. Forgive me, forgive me.”
Since the gentle approach wouldn’t work, it was time for the hard way.
Though he was chanting “forgive me,” a mischievous grin crept across his face.
He continued to keep the three barely-conscious Purple Mansion Green Demons sealed.
Then he left the hill and, at breakneck speed, buried hundreds of formation discs around the main peak where the Yin Kui Tribe was located—even the four hill outposts were encircled by the discs.
These hundreds of formation discs weren’t some grand killing formation—just a large-scale fifth-rank obscuring grand formation.
After setting all the discs in place, Ye Qingxuan discreetly activated them, linking each one together, but he didn’t trigger the entire formation just yet.
With all the prep work done, he snuck over to the vicinity of the main peak where the Yin Kui Tribe resided.
He took out ten fifth-rank nuclear explosion pills from his storage ring and weighed them in his hand.
Still feeling it wasn’t enough, he pulled out twenty more.
Staring at the thirty fifth-rank nuclear explosion pills in his hand, he rubbed his chin and hesitated:
“This should be enough, right?”
One fifth-rank nuclear explosion pill packed a punch comparable to a Nascent Soul late-stage cultivator’s self-detonation—on par with a sixth-rank low-grade attack talisman.
Though the blast from a fifth-rank nuclear explosion pill spread outward, and energy would be consumed in destroying other matter, Ye Qingxuan couldn’t guarantee the effective lethality.
Still, thirty fifth-rank nuclear explosion pills going off at once—taking out a Nascent Soul-level Yin Kui Tribe should be more than enough, right?
Ye Qingxuan gazed at the mountain and said in a low voice:
“You brought this on yourselves. Who told you to make your turf so well-defended that I don’t even have a chance to get my hands dirty?”
Wasn’t this just artificially inflating the difficulty of his dungeon run?
He had always strongly condemned such cheating behavior. And when necessary, he would deliver a direct, devastating blow.
Ye Qingxuan barely managed to suppress the corners of his mouth from curling up. Then, using the incantation he’d obtained from the soul search, he slipped stealthily into the Yin Kui Tribe’s interior.
But the moment he entered, he hurled the thirty fifth-rank nuclear explosion pills deep into the mountain’s interior space and bolted right back out.
Originally, he’d planned to sneak in a little further.
But as soon as he stepped inside, the demonic energy there—both in density and quality—shot up by two or three levels.
In just the short time he was inside, without forming a spiritual energy barrier, that demonic energy had already started eating away at his skin.
So Ye Qingxuan had no choice but to abandon the idea of infiltrating deeper. After flinging the thirty pills into the tribe’s interior, he retreated immediately.
Once out, he didn’t stop—he dashed outward at top speed while simultaneously activating the fifth-rank obscuring grand formation he’d prepared earlier.
Meanwhile, inside the Yin Kui Tribe—
The thirty nuclear explosion pills Ye Qingxuan had tossed landed squarely on the heads of a few Qi Refining realm Green Demons.
“What the—who threw that?”
One of the Green Demons rubbed his head, picked up a pill from the ground, and studied it with confusion.
“What is this thing?”
Another Green Demon beside him leaned in curiously, staring at the object in his hand, and said thoughtfully:
“This… looks like a pill, doesn’t it?”
“A pill?”
Upon hearing that, the Qi Refining Green Demon who’d first picked up the pill brightened up. And right along with his eyes, the pill in his hand began to glow as well.
Because by now, Ye Qingxuan, already far from the mountain, had used the spiritual sense he’d left inside the pills to activate all of them.
At the same time, deep within the Yin Kui Tribe, in a sealed chamber, the Yin Kui King suddenly opened his eyes and said in confusion:
“How peculiar—why has this king suddenly grown so restless?”
