Li Yun almost skinned the puddle bird and pulled out its tendons. Seeing this, Yan Zhengming even prepared coarse salt and chili powder, ready to roast the bird at any time - he still couldn't figure out why she couldn't change back.

It can be seen that some men are really just good at talking. They seem capable at ordinary times, but they will fail at the critical moment.

The puddle splashed Li Yun's head with feathers, and he angrily said, "What use do I have for you!"

She had rebelled against her superiors and then fell to the side panting. She remembered something and spat out a sticky little piece of paper with a "Pooh" sound.

Yan Zhengming's expression changed immediately. He covered his face with his fan and took two steps back without making a sound.

"I can't do anything about it," Shuikeng said unhappily, "I don't have any hands to hold it, and I can't hold it under my wings, right?"

Yan Zhengming said disdainfully: "Do you want me to catch a carrier pigeon and show you how other birds work?"

Shuikeng said aggrievedly, "Have you ever seen a carrier pigeon tie a letter to its own leg? I didn't see Brother Zheshi's men at all. This thing was mixed into a pile of bird food and was finally dug out. If I hadn't been sharp-eyed, I might have missed it."

The word "bird food" successfully forced her senior brother to retreat another step.

Cheng Qian, however, reached out and picked up the note without paying any attention. After opening it, he saw only a line of tiny words inside: "I have entered Tianyan. This place has strict hierarchy and is very secretive. Be careful when you encounter it in the future."

Cheng Qian turned to look at Yan Zhengming in surprise: "Big Brother..."

Yan Zhengming's fan was still half covering his face, and he maintained the posture of a top courtesan who was reluctant to accept the offer, but his eyes had become sharp. He whispered, "In the eyes of outsiders, Tianyan is just a place where independent cultivators without any sect or school condescend to work. But it took Zheshi more than 30 years to get in. There are too many unspeakable things in it."

He closed his fan with a swish, put his hands behind his back, and continued, "There are many trivial matters in the mortal world. It stands to reason that for the sake of their own cultivation realm, cultivators should not get involved in too many things. But I have been thinking about one thing - those noble officials in the mortal world, who have lived a life of wealth and glory, don't they want to live forever? Doesn't the emperor want to make his descendants live forever? I don't believe that the officials in the court are all thinking about devoting themselves to the country and have never had such thoughts. Otherwise, why would a mere mortal prince's rebellion involve so many talismans and immortal artifacts?"

Shuikeng asked curiously, "What does that have to do with us?"

"Stupid bird," Yan Zhengming poked her with the tail of his folding fan, "For some reason we don't know, we are probably already on the record of Tianyan. Zhou Hanzheng knew everything about us a hundred years ago. I don't want to see another Zhou Hanzheng, so I have no choice but to be ready to strike first at any time."

I don't know when he became tainted with a murderous aura. Sometimes, the circumstances of life are truly unpredictable.

Cheng Qian's chest suddenly ached. As the time he was away from the ice pond got longer, the joys, sorrows, anger and happiness in his heart were like the first ice of the glacier, slowly melting away and recovering. At this moment, he finally realized the pain.

He destroyed the note written by Zhe Shi and patted Yan Zhengming on the back: "If I can kill the first Zhou Hanzheng, I can kill the second one, don't worry."

Yan Zhengming was particularly worried about him, so he turned around and said sternly, "You'd better behave yourself - I haven't held you accountable for pretending to be ignorant when you clearly knew what the major and minor heavenly tribulations were. Don't think... Ah! Cheng Qian! You little bastard, what did you touch just now!"

The head brother was giving a very normal and serious lecture, but when he realized which hand Cheng Qian was using to touch him, his tone suddenly turned into an extremely tragic scream.

Cheng Qian, with an innocent look on his face, raised his hand slightly and added insult to injury, "It's just a little saliva, it's already dried up."

Yan Zhengming's face was distorted.

Cheng Qian could only sigh and comfort him: "Don't be like this, Senior Brother, you are still innocent."

Yan Zhengming: “…”

He now truly felt what it meant to "have a junior fellow disciple who is worse than a dog". It seemed that it was not without reason that the ancestors of the Fuyao sect declined due to infighting among their fellow disciples.

Yan Zhengming was wondering whether he should go back to skin him, wash him, and change his clothes, or deal with Cheng Qian first, when suddenly, he heard footsteps outside.

Several people were stunned at the same time. The smile in Cheng Qian's eyes suddenly disappeared, and the whole person seemed to have just emerged from a handful of frost. Shuikeng also suddenly closed his mouth, flew to the pen holder on the side, pretending to be just an ordinary bird.

After a while, a strange servant ran to the door and said respectfully, "Master Cheng, there is a letter."

Yan Zhengming asked coldly, "Since when did you guys get to come and go as you please in the inner courtyard?"

On the one hand, there are rules in the villa, and on the other hand, there are talismans at the entrance of the inner courtyard wall, so outsiders should not be able to enter at all.

Cheng Qian waved his hand, and the letter floated over. The moment the letter left the servant's hand, he seemed to be awakened by a blow. He shuddered and looked at the owner of the villa in horror. Meeting Yan Zhengming's grim gaze, he knelt down with a plop and trembled, "Manor, manor owner, there is a magic spell on that letter. I... I didn't mean to..."

Cheng Qian glanced down at the envelope and saw "From Mr. Cheng" written on it, and the signature was "Tang Zhen".

The seal of the envelope had been torn open, and a faint fragrance emanated from it. Cheng Qian knew it was the juice of the dreamwalking grass after just a sniff. Tang Zhen had traveled all over the world in recent years, and there were many strange stories around him, and even Cheng Qian had learned a lot from him.

By mixing the juice of the sleepwalking grass into the ink, anyone who, except the real recipient, wants to open the letter with ulterior motives will be retaliated against - for example, if there is a gap and someone has been wandering outside their villa, thinking about how to sneak into the inner courtyard, then if he touches the sleepwalking grass, he will be guided to break in directly.

Yan Zhengming raised his hand to grab the man. He was just testing him and didn't use much strength. However, the suspicious-looking servant took it seriously, jumped up from the ground, dodged nimbly, and ran out quickly.

Just as he ran to the door, a figure suddenly appeared in front of him, with a frosty blade shining coldly across the gate, blocking his way in an instant.

"Did you leave?" Cheng Qian said in a low voice, "Stay."

The servant wanted to attack at first, but before he could get close, he was frightened by the heavy pressure from Cheng Qian's seven great tribulations. His legs went weak and he fell to the ground, mumbling, "Please spare my life, senior, please spare me..."

Before he could finish his begging for mercy, his body suddenly stiffened, and he opened his mouth wide to the sky. His entire head fell backwards, and was split in two by the mouth, like a rotten watermelon that had been split in half by a knife. Then, a ball of gray air came out of his mouth and suddenly rushed towards Cheng Qian.

Li Yun exclaimed: "Be careful!"

Cheng Qian's eyes fixed. The ball of gray gas was frozen before it came within three steps of him. It retreated like a human being and drilled back into the boy's body, covering his head. In an instant, it turned the man's head into a pile of white bones, and then fled in all directions.

Cheng Qian lightly tapped the bones with the tip of his sword, and the bones turned into a pile of powder. The servant just now became a headless corpse and fell to the side silently.

"It's the work of a demon cultivator." Cheng Qian said, "But it may not be done by a demon cultivator. Has this happened before?"

Yan Zhengming looked a little solemn. "No, I haven't seen this person before. Normally, the people coming in and out of the villa are all familiar faces. We have settled here for nearly ten years, and we haven't seen any monks."

Li Yun reacted quickly and said, "Could it be that someone has been targeting Xiao Yuan and followed him to our place?"

The trigger for Han Yuan to fall into the devil's way was Zhou Hanzheng's painting soul, which seemed to be related to Tian Yanchu.

Shuikeng didn't dare to say anything for a moment, thinking that it was a good thing that Zheshi didn't meet her.

Li Yun asked softly: "Big Brother, then... do we need to change places?"

When he said this, he felt a little desperate. He had been a stray dog ​​for a hundred years and it had almost become a habit for him.

Yan Zhengming was silent for a moment, then said, "We're not going anywhere."

Li Yun: "But..."

Yan Zhengming suddenly raised his eyebrows and interrupted him, "Can I hide forever? I want to see what these cowards can do to me."

After saying that, he flicked his sleeves and there was a loud noise at the door.

Cheng Qian's heart skipped a beat when he heard this, and the Frost Blade Sword immediately rose into the air. In mid-air, he saw a huge stone tablet rising up at the gate without any warning. Countless mortals came upon hearing the sound, scrambling to watch, pointing and talking. It was unknown who first looked up and saw Cheng Qian standing in the air with the sword, but the mortals in the villa suddenly knelt down and prayed to the immortal for protection.

Four large characters were written on the stone tablet in a very ostentatious manner: Fuyao Villa.

Cheng Qian shook his head, unsure whether his senior brother was angry or had wanted to do this for a long time. He silently picked up the letter Tang Zhen gave him and returned to the bamboo forest.

There was nothing important in Tang Zhen's letter. It only said that Minggu sent Liu Lang to him. Liu Lang was possessed by the evil cultivator Jiang Peng and his soul was damaged. Fortunately, Cheng Qian pinned him down with three ice spikes. In the future, this path of cultivation would be much more difficult than for others. He would try his best to find a way.

At the end, there was a subtle mention that they should not appear near Fuyao Mountain too frequently recently, as there were too many people watching there.

Cheng Qian felt a little heavy in his heart for a moment, and he always felt that the road back to Fuyao Mountain was endlessly long.

A few days later, Yan Zhengming drastically reinforced the talismans outside the villa, and the group set out for southern Xinjiang as planned, still with three people and one bird - the bird perched safely on Li Yun's head to urge him to waste less time and figure out a way to change her back as soon as possible.

Several people did not fly on swords along the way.

Firstly, going to Southern Xinjiang was not a pressing matter. Secondly, after being in seclusion for a long time, monks did need to go out into the world occasionally. As the saying goes, "good and bad are interdependent" and "disasters and calamities go hand in hand." Sometimes a trip to the mortal world might help to break through the bottleneck. Everyone understands this truth, and most monks who have just started practicing do so. But the strange thing is that the more famous a powerful person is, the more he or she tends to stay in seclusion.

When people strive for higher goals, they are entering a narrow path. The long and bright road will one day turn into a single-plank bridge that is as frightening as a spider silk thread. One has to be on high alert all the time, fearing that one will make a mistake.

It seems that the stronger a person is, the more cowardly he is, because he dare not take the risk of falling.

Fuyao Villa is located in the Central Plains, slightly to the north, and its scenery is very different from that of the south.

Midsummer had passed and the beginning of autumn was approaching, but the southern land was still hot and humid with heavy rains. Before he even reached the southern border, Li Yun was dazzled by the abundance of spiritual herbs.

Every day he carried a bird on his head and a bamboo basket on his back, and crouched like a wandering doctor as he went deep into the mountains and forests. Sometimes he ordered the puddle birds to snatch some natural treasures from those stupid monsters and demons, and shamelessly showed off his power as a junior sister.

Li Yun said that he was trying to refine "poison-avoiding pills" to prevent the invasion of miasma in southern Xinjiang.

But according to Cheng Qian's estimation, the way he picked the fruits would be enough to make three meals a day, let alone elixirs.

Yan Zhengming had no choice but to pretend that he didn't know his second apprentice brother, and pretended to be a mortal every day, taking Cheng Qian to mingle in the market. This was really too much to ask, Cheng Qian liked quietness and didn't like noise since he was a child, not to mention that he had been in seclusion in the Ice Land for so long and had no contact with people. Rubbing shoulders with countless people every day was a torture for him.

But Yan Zhengming had some problem, he was like a kitten that had not been weaned and always wanted to find its mother. If he couldn't see him for a while, he would start to act up in various ways, causing great trouble.

They wanted to investigate the Nightmare Walker, so they settled down in a small border town on the outskirts of southern Xinjiang. However, after more than half a month, they did not find any traces of demonic cultivators here.

Could it be that these nightmare travelers usually stay like the ladies from wealthy families, never leaving the house?

This devil... looks quite like their head brother.

Yan Zhengming was not afraid of being robbed or showing off his wealth. He carelessly booked a few rooms in the only restaurant in the town. When ordering food every day, he never asked what was available and just asked the restaurant to serve the most expensive ones. From his hair to his toenails, he looked like a dandy.

After so much trouble to find such a sucker, the store owner almost treated him as an ancestor. The people in southern Xinjiang are tough and there is no defense between men and women, so the store owner specially sent his daughter to follow the man, fearing for any inadvertence.

No matter how delicious the dishes were, Cheng Qian never picked up his chopsticks. He just waited silently with a glass of cold water.

The shopkeeper carefully observed his expression for a moment, and finally mustered up the courage to talk to him: "Sir, is there anything that doesn't suit your taste?"

Cheng Qian is very clear about his inner and outer ways of dealing with people. He is always a bit polite and dull in front of outsiders. Unless he has to know something, he almost never takes the initiative to talk to others and looks very cold.

With Yan Zhengming beside him, he was too lazy to deal with others and just said briefly, "No, thank you."

The store lady's courage, which she had finally mustered, suddenly disappeared completely. She didn't dare to provoke him again, so she turned to Yan Zhengming and said with a smile: "You two gentlemen came at an untimely time. If it was later, when the weather was a little cooler, there wouldn't be so many people around."

Yan Zhengming asked, "Why? Are there any scenic spots nearby that you want to visit in this season?"

The shopkeeper’s young lady said, “That’s right. Not far ahead is the old site of the Suzaku Pagoda. We all come here for that.”

Yan Zhengming was stunned: "Suzaku Tower? Are you talking about Xu Yingzhi, one of the Four Saints... Ahem, Senior?"

He only knew that Xu Yingzhi was in the south, but he didn't know the exact location of the Suzaku Tower. He didn't expect to run into him like this.

The shopkeeper's young lady nodded and said, "That's right. The owner of the Suzaku Tower has been dead for more than a hundred years, leaving behind only a relic and a loyal old servant. The old servant followed the master's will and made this place as peaceful as the breeze and bright moon. It has become an ownerless place and opens its doors to welcome destined people every August 15th. Every year, people want to try their luck. Even if they are not the 'destined person' and cannot enter the Suzaku Tower, they can meet the old servant and maybe he will be able to give them some pointers. Hehe, but although the Suzaku Tower has no owner, it is not so easy to enter. The two young masters are obviously from wealthy families, so they should not mix with these wild monks. If they fight to the death, blood will be shed and the government can't do anything about it."

They had been staying in the vicinity for several days but had gained nothing about the Nightmare Walker. They did not want to delay any longer, but unexpectedly they found the Vermillion Bird Tower of the Four Saints.

Could it be a blessing in disguise?

At the same time, Yan Zhengming had some doubts in his heart. Ever since he knew that the ground lock might be related to the Four Saints, he paid close attention to the rumors related to the Four Saints, but he put the Vermillion Bird Tower last.

There is no other reason. The owner of Suzaku Tower, Xu Yingzhi, died at the hands of Bei Mingjun.