For a moment, as this conjecture swirled through Mo Fan's mind, his gaze followed it toward that cloud-shrouded direction.
But once the brief shock had passed, a trace of hesitation and wariness abruptly welled up from the bottom of his heart.
The foot of the [ Abandoned Sword Cliff ] was, to him, quite literally his true starter village and home base.
Both Unit 001 and Unit 003 had been born in that abandoned wasteland.
On top of that, back when he'd first obtained [ Death Vision ], Mo Fan had already tried using the skill to probe just what sort of divine entity lurked within the unfathomable mist deep at the foot of the cliff.
And that single probe had made him thoroughly clear-eyed about the situation.
He'd contentedly developed for a long while within the safe zone along the fringe—
And even after reaching Tier-2, no desire to explore it again had ever stirred in him.
After all, he knew better than anyone that the level of peril down there was absolutely no less than that of the abandoned-mine abyss deep within Hundred Forging Peak.
Worse still, in that pile of scattered rocks at the foot of the cliff, there were certainly still traces left behind of where he'd first lived and honed himself.
Even though some time had passed, in the eyes of someone with the right intentions...
Those seemingly chaotic, disordered piles of dry bones could absolutely be studied into revealing something.
If he brought A-Song and just went down like this—and one day this kid happened to let something slip in casual conversation...
That would, for him, be absolutely the last situation he'd ever want to see.
A-Song might be utterly trustworthy, but this concerned his very life and livelihood.
Mo Fan didn't dare gamble on it—still less did he want to.
Thinking of this, Mo Fan glanced at A-Song beside him, who was gazing off into the distance with a grave expression, then lifted his head to check the color of the sky.
"Cough..."
Mo Fan withdrew his gaze in the most natural manner, deliberately opened his mouth wide, and let out a weary yawn.
"A-Song."
He casually tossed a demon beast's mangled carcass onto the ground and turned around.
With one hand kneading the small of his back with great effort...
He offhandedly remarked in a tone of one whose strength couldn't keep up:
"From here to the Abandoned Sword Cliff is probably still no short trek on foot. By the time we fight our way over there, the sky'll likely be fully bright."
He deliberately hunched his spine, grimaced, and sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.
"Ohh... your Big Brother Qi here—these old bones and old limbs of mine—my back and waist are aching something fierce."
"My strength has advanced quite a bit lately, sure, but at the end of the day, I've still got a mortal's frame. This stamina of mine just can't keep pace with a Foundation Establishment cultivator like you."
At these words, A-Song's expression froze in an instant.
He hurriedly turned his head, looked at Mo Fan's "stamina-depleted," weary appearance—
And a wave of extremely intense concern surged up from the depths of his eyes, carrying even a trace of deep apology and self-reproach.
"Ah! Big Brother Qi, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I was careless!"
A-Song hurried over and reached out to support Mo Fan, his tone full of remorse.
"I forgot you don't have any cultivation!"
"Fighting all those crazed Foundation Establishment beasts back-to-back just now must've put an enormous strain on your physical body—that you've held out until now is already no small feat!"
Seeing the fish swim right into the net, Mo Fan was about to speak...
But then he saw A-Song's expression turn serious, brows furrowed.
Staring into the gloomy depths of the dense forest as he proposed with utter earnestness:
"Big Brother Qi, this really is no small matter. Since the root of it may lie at the Abandoned Sword Cliff—and that place is a forbidden ground of the Sect, with who knows what terrifying monsters still hidden inside—how about..."
"I head back to the Dao Asking Palace right now to report to my Master, and have his venerable self dispatch an Inner Sect enforcement squad to thoroughly investigate this!"
"Let's just head back and rest tonight first. Anyway, we've already cleared out all these crazed demon beasts on the fringe, so they shouldn't be coming back to disturb Old Lü's village anytime soon."
Hearing those two words, "report to Master," Mo Fan's eyelids twitched violently a couple of times, and he went on frantic alert in his heart.
Absolutely not! Letting the Inner Sect handle this—wouldn't that be running directly counter to my whole original intention!
"Cough, cough! No! Absolutely not!"
Mo Fan forced down the panic in his heart and kept up that appearance of one whose strength couldn't keep up.
He heaved a long sigh and countered pointedly, his words heavy with meaning:
"A-Song, have you been in the Inner Sect so long that you've forgotten the Sect's way of handling things?"
"If the Inner Sect experts really did come with a big, showy fanfare, what do you think the very first thing they'd do would be?"
Though A-Song had already shot up to over one meter eighty—even faintly half a head taller than Mo Fan...
Those clear eyes of his still carried a naive innocence untouched by the ways of the world.
He scratched his head and asked, somewhat bewildered:
"The first thing? Slaying demons and vanquishing evil, of course. What is it, Big Brother Qi?"
"Idiot!"
Mo Fan stuck out a finger and flicked A-Song lightly on the forehead, exasperated at his failure to catch on.
"Of course it's clearing the area!"
"An upheaval like this, one that might threaten the foundations of the Outer Sect—the moment the Inner Sect steps in, all the idle bystanders will definitely have to scatter, and fast!"
"By then, let alone relocation—to prevent the demon beast riot from harming innocents, the very first thing the enforcement squad does will absolutely be to forcibly disperse every village near the back mountain, Old Lü's included, hundreds of miles away overnight!"
"If it really came to that, then all our hard toil tonight, running out here to slay demons—wouldn't it be like carrying water in a bamboo basket, coming up with nothing at all?"
"Huh?!"
Understanding dawned on A-Song, his eyes going suddenly wide.
"Right! How did I not think that far! You really do think of everything, Big Brother Qi!"
But then, the youth's brows knotted deeply together once more.
He looked at Mo Fan somewhat helplessly, at a loss.
"Then... then given the situation now, what should we do? We surely can't just stand by and watch."
Seeing the situation slowly returning to his own control, Mo Fan let out a long breath of relief in his heart as well.
Forcibly holding back his smile, still keeping up that feeble appearance, he patted A-Song on the shoulder:
"So, that's exactly why we still need to head back first and plan for the long term."
"But don't worry. Whatever else, we are Inner Sect disciples now, at least. First thing tomorrow morning, we'll take our identity tokens and go straight to the Outer Sect Chief Steward."
"We'll tell him that we two brothers have already joined forces and suppressed the back mountain's demon beasts, and get him to grant a grace period on the village relocation order."
Mo Fan laid out a flawless stalling plan.
"That way, we both save Old Lü's home and buy ourselves time to investigate. If the upheaval flares up again over these next few days and we really can't hold it back, then it won't be too late to go report to the Inner Sect. What do you think?"
"Brilliant! That idea's too good!"
A-Song was suddenly enlightened, and once again his eyes filled with adoration as he looked at Mo Fan.
"Big Brother Qi, you really are something! Then let's do as you say—we head back first!"
The two of them followed the same route back, swiftly returning to the village through the night.
In the little courtyard, Mo Fan watched A-Song gently and quietly push open his door and go inside to sleep.
"Whew..."
The very instant A-Song's door closed...
That weary, gentle look on Mo Fan's face receded in a flash, like a tide going out.
He didn't light a lamp. He simply stood quietly in the darkness of his own room.
After patiently waiting a full quarter-hour, and confirming that A-Song's breathing had already turned steady and long, with no further movement whatsoever—
Those eyes of Mo Fan's, glinting in the darkness, once again flashed with a sharp light.
Whoosh!
With practiced ease, he vaulted up onto the windowsill, his figure like a weightless shadow...
And melded into the vast night beyond, once again departing the village.
The road to the Abandoned Sword Cliff was, for Mo Fan, long since committed thoroughly to memory.
And what's more, all this time he'd been cultivating day after day alongside Lin Dong on Hundred Forging Peak.
To maintain his body-cultivator disguise, he hadn't dared let even a wisp of death qi leak out—he'd been holding it back for a very long time.
At this very moment, all was utterly silent, and there wasn't a soul among the mountains.
That feeling of extreme comfort, of no longer needing to suppress anything...
It made Mo Fan feel like every single cell in his body was cheering and leaping for joy!
"Finally, I can catch a breath of fresh air."
Mo Fan stood on a steep ridge, facing the biting night wind that blew in from high above.
His thoughts stirred.
BOOM—!
An extremely condensed, majestic surge of Necrotic Mana erupted from his back in an instant!
[Floating Soul Wings]!
Through all the level-ups over this stretch of time, along with the two great gulps of soul nourishment in the mystic realm—
The pair of Soul Wings on Mo Fan's back had now undergone an astonishing qualitative transformation.
They were no longer that initial semi-transparent phantom that looked as if a single gust of wind would scatter it.
The Soul Wings now were extremely solid!
Though still impossible to touch on the physical plane—
The contours of the feathers, woven from that deep, abyssal-blue death energy, were so lifelike they might as well be real...
Like the vast demonic wings a god-devil spreads open as it falls to the mortal world!
The Soul Wings flapped gently at Mo Fan's sides...
Cold, ghostly soul-fire leaping along their edges, lending him out of thin air an extremely eerie, domineering, and mysterious sense of pressure.
Not only that.
Mo Fan's mind reached out and connected with the [ Necrotic Realm ].
"Come out for a joyride."
Along with a grayish-white spatial ripple...
A huge-framed skeletal beast of bleached bone crashed down onto the rocks at his side.
It was none other than that mighty giant beast, likewise bearing enormous wings—Unit 003!
"Let's go."
Mo Fan wasted no words. The abyssal-blue Soul Wings at his back abruptly beat downward.
WHOOSH—!
Powerful lift erupted, and man and beast both shot straight up off the ground!
They no longer climbed along the rugged mountain paths...
But turned into two arrogant streaks of light, sweeping domineeringly across the low altitude...
Ignoring every obstacle in the terrain, tearing straight through the air toward the direction of the Abandoned Sword Cliff!
A trek that had once taken half a day to walk on foot during his training days was, at Mo Fan's terrifying flight speed now, no more than the space of a breath.
Mere moments later.
Mo Fan hovered above that familiar broken precipice.
The astral winds of the high sky howled, whipping his robes into a flapping racket.
He lowered his head slightly, his deep gaze piercing through the layered night toward the bottomless abyss below.
On the cliff face, among those jutting rocks, he could still faintly make out the mottled climbing claw marks he'd left behind.
In some hidden crevices in the stone, one could even still see the torn scraps of the tattered clothing of those who'd come before...
Ripped away when they'd plunged from the cliff, fluttering forlornly in the wind.
Looking at these traces, a flicker of complicated emotion couldn't help but cross the depths of Mo Fan's eyes.
Revisiting the old place—things remain, but the people have changed.
That "scavenger" of the past, who could only cling to scraped-together, incomplete skeletal frames to eke out a miserable existence at the bottom of the valley—
Had now grown into an expert capable of weathering the wind and rain on his own.
But amid this nostalgic emotion—
Mo Fan also keenly sensed that the foot of the Abandoned Sword Cliff now clearly held an aura utterly different from before.
The cliff foot and cliff face of the past, though grim and terrifying, heaped with skeletons, had possessed the dead-stillness belonging to the deceased.
But now.
Within that bottomless darkness...
The thick mist that hung year-round without ever dispersing was, at this moment, in some unstoppable riot...
Churning and roaring with extreme violence.
Deep within the mist, an aura of extreme agitation faintly seeped out.
Sensing this unusual, ultimate crisis, Mo Fan not only didn't shrink back—instead, his expression gradually turned cold and hard.
After all, whatever else, this Abandoned Sword Cliff was ultimately his turf.
No matter what, he had to go down and get to the bottom of it.
Once his thoughts were clear, he lingered no longer.
As the abyssal-blue Soul Wings at his back erupted in an instant with a burst of blinding radiance...
Those seemingly substantial giant wings snapped open, driving back all the surrounding night wind.
Then, his whole body like a meteor, he plunged headfirst straight into that churning, roaring abyss of mist!