I established the Eternal Immortal Clan by taming beasts.

Three days later, in Chuyang City, the night was as dark as ink.

An inconspicuous shop in the eastern commercial district of the city.

The signboard of "Bai Cao Tang" swayed gently in the night breeze, making a soft creaking sound.

This is a small shop that sells common spiritual herbs and low-grade pills. It is usually deserted, with only a few wandering cultivators occasionally visiting to buy some cheap healing medicines, and nothing else.

The shop was already closed, with the doors and windows tightly shut, and not a single ray of light could be seen coming out.

But in the backyard of that shop, three zhang underground, there was a completely different world.

A hidden underground chamber, its walls made of bluestone that prevents divine sense from detecting it, and several soundproof array patterns engraved on the floor. The array patterns have faded, obviously set up many years ago, but they are still in operation.

The room was simply furnished with a stone table, a stone chair, and a copper lamp.

The flame of the copper lamp flickered slightly, casting a dim yellow light on the entire secret room, but it could not illuminate the deep shadow in the corner.

A thin, middle-aged man was sitting under the lamp, holding a jade slip that he had just received a message for.

He had an ordinary face, the kind of face that you could easily lose in a crowd.

Eyebrows neither thick nor thin, nose neither high nor low, lips neither thick nor thin.

But those eyes, illuminated by the lamplight, gleamed with a sharp light that seemed out of place with their appearance.

His surname is Meng, and his given name is "Yan".

On the surface, he is the owner of this general store, a rogue cultivator in the early stages of Foundation Establishment who makes a living by reselling spiritual herbs.

In reality, he was the head of the Shadow Hall of the Rebellious Demon Palace in Chuyang City, and had been lurking in this remote town for more than a decade.

Meng Yan put down the jade slip and tapped his fingers lightly on the stone table, making a rhythmic "tap-tap" sound.

He was planning several "business deals" in the near future.

The Shadow Hall's mission is to infiltrate, hide, and wait.

The instructions given to them from above were simple: stay put, don't expose yourselves, and wait for the right opportunity.

But people can't live off the spirit stones allocated by their superiors, especially those marginal pawns who are abandoned in remote border towns and neglected year after year.

The spirit stones from above are allocated on time every year, but that amount is only enough to support a few people.

However, if you want to break through your cultivation level faster and reach the Golden Core stage, those spirit stones are just a pipe dream.

So Meng Yan came up with a plan: "Use business to support spies."

Using channels secretly controlled by the Shadow Hall, they resold spiritual items, profited from the price difference, and subsidized their undercover agents.

Where do spirits come from?

Naturally, these are the places with lax supervision and unclear accounts.

Simply put, it's selling stolen goods!

He searched for a long time and finally found a very lucrative line.

Thirty miles northeast of the city, there is a special spiritual plant garden called "Bloodthorn Forest".

The Bloodthorn Forest is home to a spiritual plant called "Bloodthorn Vine," whose vines are incredibly tough and can be used to craft the third-tier magic weapon "Bloodthorn Whip."

Its fruit is used as an auxiliary ingredient in some unorthodox elixirs and is quite valuable.

This plant garden is an asset directly managed by the City Lord's Mansion.

The reason for developing Chuyang City back then was precisely this.

The city lord's mansion stationed a small team of cultivators there to manage the area, and they regularly registered and reported the output.

The captain of this squad, surnamed Han and named Guang, was a minor steward in the city lord's mansion.

This person's cultivation level is not high, only at the early stage of Foundation Establishment, yet he is quite greedy.

In response to this, Meng Yan used some channels to let Han Guang know that he could sell stolen goods here, ensuring that the spiritual items would not appear near Chuyang City, or even in Fen Gu City.

So one day ten years ago, Han Guang took the initiative to approach Meng Yan.

The two hit it off.

Han Guang tampered with the accounts, falsely reporting the yield, and secretly transported out some of the bloodthorn vines and fruits;

Meng Yan then used the Shadow Hall's channels to sell these spiritual items to Burning Bone City and even further afield, exchanging them for spirit stones, which he then split with Han Guang.

This line has been running smoothly for ten years without any problems.

Three days from now is the day for the next batch of spirit item transactions. The location will be an abandoned mine outside the city, and the handover code has already been set.

Meng Yan put the jade slip into his pocket, blew out the oil lamp, and got up to go back to his room to rest.

But as he reached the door of the secret chamber and his hand touched the cold stone wall, an inexplicable unease suddenly welled up in his heart.

The unease came inexplicably, without reason or basis.

He stopped and listened intently.

Above the secret room is the backyard of Baicaotang.

At this moment, the night wind rustled through the old locust tree in the courtyard.

A few barks could be heard in the distance, faint and indistinct.

There were no footsteps, no spiritual energy fluctuations, and nothing unusual.

Meng Yan shook his head, suppressing his unease, pushed open the hidden door, and walked out.

……

Inside Chuyang City, a secret stronghold.

This outpost is hidden in the residential area of ​​Chuyang City.

From the outside, it looks no different from an ordinary cave.

Several spirit trees were planted in the courtyard, and a few spirit chickens were raised there. Some spirit herbs were drying under the eaves.

There is a hidden compartment beneath the spring in the corner of the courtyard. Enter it and walk down the steps to enter a secluded underground space.

The four walls were constructed of a mixture of iron wire, charcoal, and spiritual mud, with molten lead poured into the gaps to prevent any divine sense from probing them.

Three sets of formations were engraved on the ground.

The Spirit Gathering Array, the Soundproof Array, and the Early Warning Array—each one was created by Lin Xuanjing.

In the center of the secret chamber was a long stone table, on which lay several jade slips and several sheets of spiritual paper covered with cryptic writing, the ink still wet.

On the lamp holders on the four walls, several spirit lamps emitted a soft light, illuminating the entire secret room as if it were daytime.

Lin Xuanyu sat at the stone table, dressed in black, with a bamboo hat beside him. A black and white mask covered most of his face, revealing only a pair of calm, watery eyes.

In front of him lay several jade slips containing intelligence.

The document contains the complete structure of the Shadow Hall's branch in Chuyang City.

Member list: There are 23 people in total, from the person in charge Meng Yan to the scouts who run errands. Each person's name, cultivation level, location, and activity pattern are clearly marked.

Their activity patterns were meticulously documented: which contact point was manned on which day of the week, which spies went to Burning Bone City to deliver intelligence on which day of the month, and which routes were used to transport spirit items.

The channels for funds are clearly identified: which shops laundered the money, which independent cultivators transferred the spirit stones, and even the flow of spirit stones in several large transactions.

It was something Lin Xuanyu pieced together bit by bit over three years.

They obtained information about the Shadow Hall's internal movements from Liu Fang, and then verified, compared, and eliminated information through their own organizations' overt channels.

Each piece of information must be cross-referenced from at least three independent sources before it can be written into the jade slip.

It took him three years before he dared to say, "I have them under my control."

He spread out the last few jade slips and looked at them again.

Every name, every place, every route is already etched in my memory.

"It's time."

He put the jade slip and the secret text into his sleeve, stood up, blew out the spirit lamp, and disappeared into the night.

……