Translator: Cinder Translations
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Song Wen returned to his residence.
He set up the "Qi-Locking Array" in the room.
A pile of jade boxes suddenly appeared on the bed. Song Wen took out the yellow spiritual mushrooms from his storage ring and arranged them in order of age, sealing each one in a jade box.
Since arriving at the Su family, he had acquired many storage rings, some of which contained empty jade boxes. He retrieved all of these boxes.
However, the amount of yellow spiritual mushrooms he had gathered was overwhelming—more than a thousand stalks—and there weren't enough jade boxes, leaving over a hundred stalks with nowhere to be stored.
Jade boxes can slow the dispersal of the medicinal power of the yellow mushrooms to the maximum extent. If left in a storage ring for too long, the mushrooms' medicinal properties would gradually weaken.
As Song Wen was troubled by the excess yellow mushrooms, the Sacred Gu that was guarding outside sent a message: a large group of Su family members were heading towards the courtyard where foreign cultivators resided.
"They're coming so quickly!" Song Wen muttered to himself.
With a thought, a blood-red coffin appeared in the room.
He opened the coffin, revealing a third-grade pseudo-silver corpse inside.
Song Wen placed all the remaining yellow mushrooms into the corpse-raising coffin.
According to the " True Explanation of Corpse Puppets," the yellow spiritual mushroom is a parasitic spiritual plant on corpses and has the effect of nourishing them. Since he had no better way to store the excess mushrooms, it was better to feed them to the silver corpse than to let their medicinal properties dissipate in the storage ring.
After putting away the coffin, he collected all the jade boxes into the storage ring.
Song Wen dismantled the "Qi-Locking Array" and swallowed the storage ring into his stomach.
The Su family only had one early-stage Golden Core cultivator, who was old and near the end of his life. It was unlikely that he would personally descend to the courtyard of foreign cultivators just to investigate the missing yellow mushrooms.
As for the Foundation Establishment cultivators of the Su family, Song Wen was confident he could avoid detection.
For the other empty storage rings, Song Wen commanded the Sacred Gu to drill a hole, less than an inch deep, in the open ground behind the house, where he buried them deep underground.
After finishing all this, Song Wen sat cross-legged on the bed, closed his eyes, and began meditating.
Suddenly!
A giant ball of light appeared in the pitch-black sky over the courtyard.
The light ball, over ten feet in diameter, emitted a blinding light, illuminating the hundreds of houses in the courtyard as bright as day.
All the cultivators in the courtyard were disturbed by the light and got up to investigate.
A late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator from the Su family hovered in the air, shouting loudly.
"Everyone inside, listen up! I am Su Junhao, the Great Elder of the Su family. No matter who you are, you have ten breaths to come out of your rooms. If you don't, you will be considered enemies of the Su family and imprisoned!"
"Ten, nine, eight, seven..."
As the countdown began, the foreign cultivators in each house realized that something serious had happened. The Su family wouldn't act this drastically otherwise. No one dared delay and quickly exited their rooms.
"...One."
When the countdown ended, almost all of the foreign cultivators were standing in the open area outside their houses.
Only about a dozen foreign cultivators, for some unknown reason, had not come out on time.
Su Junhao's eyes flashed coldly as he looked at the still-closed rooms. He shouted down to the nearly one hundred Su family Qi Refining disciples standing below him.
"Drag them out! If they resist, kill them on the spot."
The Su family disciples, trained like a disciplined army, divided into several squads and swiftly rushed towards the closed doors.
Before they could reach the house, one door suddenly opened.
A foreign cultivator inside rushed out and shouted, "I'm coming out! Don't capture me!"
The Su family members paid no heed to his explanation. Several of them surrounded him, knocked him to the ground, and tightly bound him with chains.
The situation was the same in the remaining dozen houses. Whether the occupants voluntarily opened the door or the Su family broke in, all of them were captured.
Seeing this unfold, the group of foreign cultivators standing in the open space began to stir uneasily.
Though they worked for the Su family, they had not sold themselves to the family. Their relationship with the Su family was one of equals, not that of master and servant. Moreover, they were respected in the cultivation world as alchemists, talisman makers, weapon refiners, and formation masters.
The Su family had captured people without any explanation or reason, naturally causing discontent among them.
As the crowd below became noisier, Su Junhao suddenly roared.
"Those who don't want to die, be silent!"
As the second elder of the Su family, Su Junhao was in charge of all the spiritual fields, and the loss of the yellow spiritual mushrooms was his responsibility.
He was desperate to recover the mushrooms to lessen his blame.
The Su family had sent nearly all their members to search for suspicious individuals around Qingping Mountain, and they were also conducting an internal investigation within the family.
Foreign cultivators like Song Wen were naturally their prime suspects.
Of the many foreign cultivators, only a few Foundation Establishment cultivators lived in the caves higher up on Qingping Mountain. The rest resided in this courtyard at the foot of the mountain.
Su Junhao released the full extent of his late-stage Foundation Establishment pressure, enveloping the entire courtyard with a heavy, oppressive atmosphere, like the calm before a storm.
The foreign cultivators below, feeling the weight of his pressure, fell silent. The courtyard became so quiet that even the sound of a pin drop could be heard.
Seeing that the situation was now under control, Su Junhao looked at the dozen foreign cultivators who had been captured and shouted loudly.
"Take them to the prison for interrogation under torture."
In truth, Su Junhao didn't expect to get any useful information from these cultivators.
Most of them were only at the mid-stage of Qi Refining, and the possibility of their involvement in the yellow mushroom theft was slim.
When he noticed that these people were slow to come out, Su Junhao had immediately focused his spiritual sense on them. He saw clearly that they had delayed leaving their rooms because they didn't want certain personal secrets to be exposed.
Among them was a pair of illicit lovers, too afraid to reveal their affair in front of everyone, who had hidden in their room, not daring to come out.
But now, Su Junhao needed to establish his authority. Whether these dozen people were involved or not, they were doomed to be imprisoned.
After a squad of Su family cultivators took the dozen foreign loose cultivators away, Su Junhao shouted loudly.
"Search!"
Dozens of Su family members rushed into the various houses and began searching.
They were thorough in their search, checking every corner inside and outside the houses, including door cracks, wall gaps, and floor crevices, leaving nothing unexamined.
After their search, the houses looked as if a hurricane had swept through them, with furniture turned upside down. In some suspicious areas, they directly dismantled parts of the house. Doors, walls, and even floor tiles were torn apart.
What was once a neat courtyard had now turned into a scene of utter devastation.
They found many hidden items in the houses, which were all handed over to Su Junhao for inspection, but none were related to the stolen yellow spiritual mushrooms.
(End of the Chapter)
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