The most critical thing now is not to persuade the Zhao family or Zhou family in Lucheng to defect to the Taiwei Sect, but to first confirm how many elite combat forces are lurking in the Demon Temple deep in the mountains south of Lukai Gorge.
Firstly, Du Linan is a disciple of Taiwei Sect, so there is no need to be responsible for him. Secondly, there are various signs that the Demon Temple has so many elite disciples lurking near Lucheng, mainly targeting Taiwei Sect and the Dong family. Du Linan himself is only in the late stage of the spiritual realm. The cultivation base and the manpower available in Lucheng are extremely limited. It is quite normal for the Demon Temple to be able to hide it from Du Linan.
Seeing Chen Hai and Qi Hanjiang return, Du Linan breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Lucheng was closed last night and no one could enter or exit. We stayed in the guild hall all night in fear and waited until the city gate opened at dawn and rushed over. Why, the envoy was not there last night. In Luheyuan?"
After thinking about this, Du Linan broke out in a cold sweat.
The Demon Temple has not forgotten the blood feud twenty years ago. In addition to secretly supporting Zhang Xiong and Kong Peng to subvert the Ye family's royal power and destroy the marriage between the Dong family and the Ye family, it also wants to directly lure and annihilate the elite troops in Hexi!
"If it's not us, then who is it?" Qi Hanjiang said angrily. Thinking about how dangerous the battle last night was, even if Du Linan hadn't reported it, he still felt that Du Linan had neglected to do so.
Chen Hai nodded, thinking of the Red Eyebrow Sect's uprising in Qintong Mountain.
Such speculation can also explain why Taiweizong's informants lurking in Pinglu and Tahe have not found any clues. The Demon Temple did not borrow troops from the tribes in the Tahe Oasis, nor did it borrow the passage between the Tahe and Pinglu Oasis. Who could find any clues
Even if spiritual beasts like the black dragon don't have huge scaly wings or feathered wings, just relying on their innate magical power to soar into the clouds and ride on the mist, they can fly in the wind at a speed that is not even weaker than that of ordinary spiritual birds. It is really difficult to get rid of Chen Hai and Qi Hanjiang. It's very easy. It's just moving and fighting in a narrow space. It's not as flexible as some powerful martial arts cultivators. However, there are a few martial arts cultivators who dare to imitate Chen Hai, who fought head-on with the black dragon for two hours without losing any strength. exhaust
Chen Hai and Qi Hanjiang were still able to chase two to three hundred miles eastward, mainly because the black dragon and Chen Hai were seriously injured in a fierce battle. They couldn't worry too much about their hasty escape. The huge monster body flew across the sky, which would inevitably drive strong airflow. , and the hot dragon blood spilled down, will leave some traces on the glacier that has not melted for many years on the top of the cliff on the north slope.
Of course, in addition to Chen Hai's shocking incident of repelling Yue Yiran, Du Linan's biggest headache was his previous misjudgment. He suddenly said with difficulty: "Yue Yiran has already arrived in Lucheng. There are definitely not just a few or five people from the Demon Temple lurking in Lucheng." Hundreds of elites!”
That was three years ago, and Yue Yiran's cultivation at this time would only become more unpredictable.
Chen Hai suspected that the Demon Temple had more elite combat forces lurking near Lucheng. However, on the northern slope of Wushaoling Mountains, he and Qi Hanjiang chased two to three hundred people eastward in the direction where the Taoist in Tsing Yi and the black dragon escaped. Inside, I soon found that there was no trace of the black dragon flying by anymore.
Du Linan had no time to pay attention to Qi Hanjiang's rejection of him. When he heard Qi Hanjiang said that yesterday's battle was indeed a powerful enemy encountered by Chen Hai at the source of Luhe River, he was shocked when he saw the mess of cliffs and rockslides nearby. It's hard to imagine how intense the battle last night was.
At this time, it seemed that the elites of the Demon Temple lurking near Lucheng were far beyond their imagination.
Du Linan has been investigating for so long, and can generally confirm that there are three to five hundred elites in Lucheng, who are directly controlled by the Demon Temple or the Tibetan and Qiang Kingdom. However, these three to five hundred elites are mainly martial arts cultivators in the Tongxuan Realm, and they are only relatively small. There were three to five hundred Dao Yamen soldiers.
When Qingyi Taoist thought of hiding the traces, he only needed to raise the flying height of the black dragon to more than a thousand meters, or follow the wind and fly between the mountains, and there would be no more clues left.
The barren mountainous area south of Wushaoling is more steep and steep than the Qintong Mountains. Snow peaks and glaciers above 10,000 meters abound. Even the Hexi Dao Yamen and the elite combat force, mainly Tongxuan Realm disciples, , cannot easily climb over nearly ten thousand miles of steep mountains, most of which are above the snow line, but what if the demon temple dispatches at this time are the most elite disciples who have at least the foundation of spiritual realm cultivation
Du Linan was in the late stage of the Spiritual Realm, and unlike the five surnames in Lucheng who had so many eyes and ears outside the city, he saw that thunder and lightning were particularly dense at the source of the Luhe River on a stormy night. He just guessed that there was a fierce battle here, but he couldn't confirm it. Chen Hai must have been ambushed by a powerful enemy. At dawn, he galloped over on a fast horse to see what happened.
The Yue family is a small clan in Tahe. In their early years, they were oppressed and abused by a large clan, and the clan was almost destroyed. After Yue Yiran achieved success in cultivation, a man named Jiao broke into the territory of this enemy clan, beheaded the head of the enemy clan who was in the late Mingqiao realm, and then escaped completely.
Chen Hai told Du Linan about the appearance of the black dragon and the Taoist in Qingyi.
Seeing that Chen Hai and Qi Hanjiang were safe and sound, Du Linan breathed a sigh of relief and mistakenly thought that Chen Hai was not in Luheyuan yesterday and that the fierce battle last night had nothing to do with Chen Hai.
"Yue Yiran!" Du Linan did not find out the details of the two powerful men lurking in Lucheng in the Demon Temple. This was mainly because these two people had not appeared in public since they entered Lucheng with the caravan of the Changle City Lord's Mansion. However, Du Linan had no idea about the Demon Temple. He knew the important person well and said, "Yue Yiran is the direct disciple of Zhou Nan, the headmaster of the Demon Temple. He was originally a descendant of the Yue family of the small tribe of Tahe Oasis. When he was young, he had the courage to capture tigers and dragons and entered the Demon Temple. In cultivation, it is said that at the age of twenty, he opened up the sea of ancestral aperture consciousness and stepped into the realm of Ming Aperture. He is regarded as the most likely candidate to continue the position of the master of the Demon Temple. The demon dragon he controls, even if it is only seventy or eighty years old, is A rare species seen in Dajin Mountain for thousands of years. I didn’t expect that it was Yue Yiran and his monsters who ambushed the envoy here yesterday.”
If the Demon Temple gathers three to five hundred elite disciples above the Spiritual Realm realm, plus the hundreds of ferocious demon beasts and demon birds it controls, even if Hexi dispatches tens of thousands of elite Yamen soldiers to aid Pinglu, there will be nothing to guard against. Even if we are afraid, we will not be able to escape the bleak end of the collapse.
Even if the Taiwei Sect and the Hexi Protectorate would not directly send troops, if the Jingjue Army and the Ye Family Royal Army were ambushed in Lucheng and suffered heavy losses, he would never think about being able to succeed in Hexi and the Taiwei Sect.
Although there were millions of refugees gathered in Qintong Mountain at that time, in the eyes of the court ministers and the children of the eight ethnic groups in the capital, no matter how large the number of refugees were, they were still a vulnerable rabble. However, few people would think of Tianshi Gong. Liang led more than a thousand elite disciples of the Red Eyebrow Sect to sneak into Qintong Mountain long ago.
Speaking of this, Du Linan saw Chen Haizhen frowning and looking at the peaks south of Lukai Gorge. He was also shocked and asked uncertainly: "The envoy also believes that the elite disciples of the Demon Temple are most likely lurking in Lukai Gorge." Among the mountains south of Kaixia?"
The Demon Temple did not take action in advance, probably because they believed that Taiweizong and the Dong family would definitely interfere in the civil war of the Western Qiang Kingdom. They wanted to use Lucheng as a trap and wait for the Taiweizong and Dong family's reinforcements to step into the trap before ambush them!
"There may be more elites lurking nearby in the Demon Temple."
"Some of the five surnames in Lucheng must have turned to the Demon Temple to help hide the elite disciples of the Demon Temple!" Qi Hanjiang said carelessly.
It was precisely because he knew the details of important figures such as Yue Yiran that Du Linan was even more shocked. He did not expect that Chen Hai and Qi Hanjiang could repel Yue Yiran and the demon dragon. This was something that even Dan realm figures could hardly do.
When Chen Hai and Qi Hanjiang returned to Lukai Gorge, they saw Du Linan and a dozen cavalrymen anxiously inspecting the traces of yesterday's fierce battle in front of the stone bank at the bottom of Lukai Gorge.
The biggest question now is where the elite of the Demon Temple is hidden, and how did they lurk near Lucheng
Taiwei Guild Hall has spies in other cities in Pinglu, but Du Linan didn't find many clues.
The five surnames in Lucheng remain neutral. This is the result of the five surnames constraining each other. Not every family wants to remain absolutely neutral. Du Linan also suspects that the Zhang family in Lucheng may have secretly turned to the Demon Temple, but they are restrained by the other four families and cannot make it public. It was just a statement, but he still didn't feel that these elites from the Demon Temple were hidden in Zhang's farm outside the city. He said: "The Demon Temple is not famous for its weapon refining, alchemy and talisman seal writing, but they all have methods for controlling beasts. Almost every elite disciple has trained a spiritual beast or spirit bird to follow them since childhood - just like the black dragon in front of Yue Yiran. The Zhang family also has several farms outside the city, with more than 100,000 acres of grain under its jurisdiction. Tian, it is easy to hide two or three hundred people, or even two or three thousand people, but if you want to hide two or three hundred ferocious monsters from others' sight, it is impossible to hide two or three hundred ferocious monsters without any clues. "
Chen Hai is a freak who cannot be measured by common sense.
Chen Hai saw that there were several people nearby inspecting the traces left by yesterday's fierce battle. At this time, he would not blame Du Linan for neglecting his duty, and asked Du Linan to discuss the matter in a corner where he could avoid other people's eyes.
At this time, the Black Yan Army competing with the Xiyuan Army and Huben Army in Heyang, Lichuan, and Jiyang was formed by integrating millions of refugees on the basis of more than a thousand elite disciples of the Red Eyebrow Sect.
It seems that this group of elites can still affect the situation in Lucheng, especially since there are two people at the peak of Mingqiao Realm or even half-step Dan Realm hiding behind the scenes, but the real wait is for the elite army and the King of Xiqiang ruled by Ye Qinglin. When the clan army arrives at Lucheng City, the role that these three to five hundred elites can play will become extremely limited.
Therefore, in the previous strategy, Du Linan also wanted to help Chen Hai win the support of the Zhao family or the Zhou family, so that he could win Lucheng at lightning speed.
When the black dragon escaped, the injuries were not serious, but the huge monster body was also slashed by Chen Hai in many places, leaving mottled blood stains among the fallen rocks and cliffs, and also contained the blazing sun monster essence. It is not difficult to imagine that Chen Hai yesterday How powerful was the opponent Hai and the others encountered