But before he truly stepped out of that hidden canyon, Mo Fan stopped.
The steady, composed mindset he'd forged through years of hardship was still running—cold and clear.
He had people now. Family. Friends. He couldn't just vanish without a word the way he used to.
If he disappeared without contact for ten days to half a month at this particular moment, Zhao Ziwei and that earnest Eldest Senior Brother Wu Kuan would tear the entire Hundred Forging Peak's abandoned mine upside down in a panic.
And they might even run to the inner sect to find A-Song.
Once that kind of commotion started, he—a disciple who very much preferred to keep a low profile—would be pinned under the sect's spotlight in seconds.
"I need an airtight excuse."
Mo Fan turned back to the stone cottage, sat down at the battered wooden table, ground some ink, picked up a brush, and wrote a letter with careful deliberation.
The contents were simple.
He wrote only that he had been meditating in the mountains these past days when he was struck by a "sudden whim"—a caprice of the Dao—and recalled some unresolved "family matters" back in the mortal world that required his immediate attention.
Return date unknown. He asked his senior brothers not to worry, and specifically not to disturb A-Song, who was in closed-door cultivation.
A flawless excuse.
In the cultivation world, it was entirely normal for Qi Condensation—even Foundation Establishment—cultivators to still have ties to the mortal world.
Everyone came from a mother's womb, after all. Who didn't have relatives and old connections back in secular life?
Only those who had truly formed a Golden Core, with their lifespan dramatically extended, would gradually begin to let go of mortal attachments and devote themselves entirely to the Dao.
For low-ranking cultivators, returning home for a funeral or to settle a family inheritance dispute was as natural and unremarkable as an ordinary person calling in sick.
No elder would ever have the spare time to go verify a handyman disciple's mortal family records.
Mo Fan pressed the letter under a teacup and walked out through the courtyard gate with a clear conscience.
On the winding path down the mountain, the mountain wind tugged at his long robes.
His resolve was set—but a very concrete, practical problem was making him frown.
"In this vast cultivation world... where exactly do I find a devil cultivator?"
Devil cultivators weren't like high-tier demonic beasts—all muscle and territorial instinct, sitting openly on their mountain thrones.
They were rats crossing the street that the entire orthodox cultivation world wanted dead. Public enemies.
Especially here, in territory nominally under Azure Cloud Sect's jurisdiction—finding one would be like dredging a needle from the ocean.
These people survived by disguising themselves, concealing themselves, and reinventing their identities. That was their greatest skill.
They might be posing as a kind-faced schoolteacher. They might be an ordinary street vendor at the market.
He couldn't exactly walk up to people in the marketplace and ask, "Hey, buddy—are you a devil cultivator?" That would be a spectacularly stupid, suicidal act.
Just as Mo Fan was hitting a dead end, a streak of crimson lightning split across his memory.
He thought back to that terrifying night in Greenwood Town.
That withered old man! That Golden Core stage devil cultivator!
"Wait..."
Mo Fan's footsteps halted. A flash of sudden clarity lit up his eyes. He began working backward through the logic, step by careful step.
"That old monster set up a formation of that scale—something so massive and horrifying it nearly drained the entire earth vein beneath Greenwood Town."
"But in the eyes of the sect's upper echelons, the whole thing started as nothing more than an unremarkable 'Mutant Rat Infestation Cleanup' bounty on the General Affairs Hall board!"
When devil cultivators operated—whether they were draining mortal blood essence to cultivate their dark arts, or gathering vast quantities of baleful Yin energy to construct demonic formations...
It inevitably disturbed the local flow of heaven and earth Qi, or caused abnormalities in the surrounding micro-ecosystem.
Unexplained disappearances of people. Livestock found drained of blood en masse. Low-tier demonic beasts that were previously docile suddenly turning frenzied and bloodthirsty.
To the devil cultivators, these were merely unavoidable "side effects" of covering their tracks.
But to ordinary mortals and low-ranking rogue cultivators, they looked like nothing more than strange, inexplicable "bad luck" or "minor beast outbreaks."
"So they report these problems to the sect's affiliated towns—and those reports ultimately transform into bounty listings!"
A Hail Mary approach. Head to the market's General Affairs Hall. Sift gold from the sand through the mountains of bounty listings.
Look specifically for the ones that felt wrong—the low-tier bounties that didn't add up, that carried a whiff of something off and unnatural.
That was, without question, the absolute best shortcut to finding a devil cultivator's trail right now!
"Greenwood Market—I'm back."
Mo Fan stopped hesitating. He fixed his direction and moved like the wind, heading straight for the nearest market to the sect.
For safety's sake—and to provide sufficient armed deterrence for the hunt ahead—Mo Fan didn't keep Mo Yan stuffed inside the storage bag the whole time.
In a secluded grove a few miles from the market, he released Mo Yan.
Mo Yan was once again draped in the valuable [ Moon Veil Gauze ].
Under Mo Fan's mental control, the skeleton frame was perfectly concealed beneath the wide black robes. The veil conjured the face of a middle-aged swordsman—sallow complexion, a scar at the corner of one eye.
Aside from those eyes—utterly cold and hollow, betraying the absence of any living soul—he looked entirely like a real, breathing high-tier guard radiating a clear "strangers keep out" aura.
Like a breathless phantom bodyguard, Mo Yan fell into position exactly half a step behind Mo Fan and followed without a sound.
After many days away, Mo Fan returned to familiar ground.
He was no longer the green, fumbling rookie servant he'd been before.
Master and shadow walked the mountain road toward the market—steps unhurried, auras contained.
The eyes beneath Mo Fan's bamboo hat were still as a dead pool, yet carried the unmistakable quality of a true hunter forged in blood and carnage.
The rogue cultivators they passed, upon sensing that faint, sourceless chill of death emanating from Mo Yan, parted around them instinctively—as if avoiding a plague god.
Half an hour later.
The two arrived at the center of Greenwood Market.
It was the same as always. Noise, chaos, and a layered stench of sweat and scorched low-grade pills.
Mortal martial artists, low-tier rogue cultivators, and even a handful of outer court disciples in their uniforms were all crammed into the massive bounty plaza.
Haggling loudly with spit flying everywhere, or arguing red-faced over a particularly lucrative gig.
Standing at the entrance, Mo Fan made a small, inconspicuous move.
He casually unclipped the bronze token at his waist—the one marking him as an inner sect disciple—and tucked it into the deepest corner of his storage bag.
In a gray-zone gathering place like this, where dragons and snakes mingled, the ultimate rule for staying alive was simple: never flash your cash, never flaunt your status.
Walking in with an official sect badge to pick up bottom-tier bounties would either paint him as a fat sheep experiencing life to be slaughtered, or get him secretly marked by someone with bad intentions.
Token stowed, Mo Fan walked into the mission hall with Mo Yan at his back. The place was packed as tight as a sardine can.
The bounty notice board was surrounded by layer upon layer of human walls.
The cultivators desperate for coin were shoving and cursing at each other just to squeeze close enough for a glimpse of the latest high-value listings.
Faced with that solid wall of people, Mo Fan didn't use a single drop of Mana. He didn't signal Mo Yan to draw a sword and roughly carve a path through.
He simply dropped his shoulder slightly.
Beneath those seemingly unremarkable robe muscle fibers coiled tight as steel cables, bones dense as profound iron. Expressionless, he just walked forward.
"Hey, hey, hey! Watch where you're shoving—what the—?!"
A burly man who'd been jostled turned around ready to unleash a torrent of abuse. But the moment his shoulder made contact with Mo Fan's, it felt like crashing into a moving block of millennium-grade meteorite iron!
The man felt half his shoulder go instantly numb.
An overwhelming, completely unreasonable physical reaction force—with no room to resist and no time to react—transferred into him, and his entire body uncontrollably staggered sideways.
Mo Fan moved through the crowd like an icebreaker ship cutting through a frozen sea. Effortless. With understatement.
Every cultivator who tried to hold their ground felt as though a mountain had simply pushed them aside—yet they could detect no trace of spiritual pressure being applied.
They could only stare at his retreating back with wide, shocked eyes.
Just like that, Mo Fan steadily took his place in the prime position of the front row.
Resting his chin in one hand, his gaze swept across the dense, colorful array of wooden plaques like a falcon scanning open ground.
His mind began high-speed information filtering.
"Squire Zhang's household seeks a mutated Spirit Cat, reward: 2 Spirit Stones." — Skip. Waste of time.
"Collect ten stalks of Starspirit Grass, requires venturing ten miles deep into the Mist Forest." — Skip. Pure manual labor.
"City east, butcher Wang's old sow went berserk at midnight and bit someone." — Skip. Highly likely ate some aphrodisiac demon grass.
Mo Fan's line of sight roamed continuously.
Suddenly, his gaze stopped dead on a gray wooden plaque hanging in the corner. It had gathered a thin layer of dust and had clearly been hanging there for days without a single taker.
[ Bounty: Frequent Livestock Mummy Cases at Night in Linshui Village ]
[ Description: Over the past half-month, bizarre incidents have occurred frequently after nightfall in Linshui Village. Dozens of healthy draft cattle and spirit hounds have died silently in the night. Cause of death: anomalous. Bodies completely drained of blood, reduced to desiccated husks. No visible bite wounds or tracks of large Spirit Beasts found. ]
[ Reward: 15 Low-Grade Spirit Stones.]
[ Note: Suspected low-tier malevolent entity causing trouble. Acceptance restricted to cultivators at mid-stage Qi Condensation or above.]
"Drained of blood? Reduced to husks? No large beast tracks?"
Mo Fan's pupils contracted slightly. Those descriptors hit his hunter's instincts like a set of perfectly matched keywords.
This was textbook. Entry-level devil cultivator activity—a blood-path technique used to extract life essence from living creatures!
Although this reward of 15 Spirit Stones wasn't considered low for rogue cultivators, the "bizarre manner of death, suspected malevolent entity" language had clearly scared off most of the bottom-tier cultivators who only sought to make safe money.
After all, dealing with an unknown evil spirit was far more dangerous than hacking to death a visible, tangible Spirit Beast.
"A bit interesting..."
Just as Mo Fan was deliberating over this wooden plaque, pre-playing the threat level of the devil cultivator he might encounter in his mind, and hesitating whether to pull down the listing...
A sudden change occurred.
A rough, callus-covered large hand reached in from the side without any warning and landed on his shoulder with a solid smack, acting extremely chummy.
Immediately after, a voice—slightly hoarse, tinged with the weathered aura of the jianghu—abruptly rang out right by Mo Fan's ear:
"Little brother?"
The voice paused, carrying a hint of probing and recruitment mixed with a smile:
"Interested in... forming a party with us?"