Boating on Dongting Lake.

"Why does Senior Sister Han Yuan have white hair?" Xu Yinglian asked curiously.

"I was infected with a cold poison while in my mother's womb." Luo Baiyuan replied, "My body was born with defects, so my hair turned white."

"I didn't expect that it was not easy for Senior Sister." Xu Yinglian said with emotion, "Now she can win the position of the chief of the Golden Core Realm. It is really admirable."

Qiu Changtian did not interrupt, but just listened quietly.

He knew that Junior Sister Xu liked this kind of "hard work to succeed" story the most, especially since Senior Sister Luo had a low starting point, was the chief, and was also a woman, which made her more likely to win Xu Yinglian's sympathy.

"There's nothing to admire." Luo Baiyuan replied, "It was just luck."

"Luck?" Xu Yinglian smiled indifferently, "If even a great leader in the Golden Core Realm can achieve this by luck, then I don't know what is difficult in the world."

After being bullied by Qiu Changtian for many years, she has now become extremely immune to this kind of "academic tyrant-style humility".

Luo Baiyuan was a little confused and said honestly:

“Junior Sister Qiongying, I’m not lying to you. It was just luck… There are three brothers of my generation who are much stronger than me. Later, they all advanced to the Nascent Soul stage. My cultivation progress is too slow, so I stayed in the Golden Core stage to be the chief.”

Xu Yinglian: ...

Qiu Changtian turned his head away to hold back his laughter, but Xu Yinglian noticed it sharply and glared at him fiercely.

She thought about how Senior Brother Gou had completed the Dan stage ahead of time and left the position of the chief of the Foundation Establishment Realm to her. Seeing her husband laughing, she became a little furious.

"Junior Sister Qiongying and Junior Brother Changgeng have such a good relationship." Luo Baiyuan said with envy, "It is a blessing to have a confidante in life; it is even more fortunate to finally be together. How rare it is."

"Senior sister, you are joking." Xu Yinglian was unusually shy and said in a low voice, "Senior sister is so outstanding, there will definitely be no shortage of good people to match her."

The two began to enter the stage of mutual flattery when women first get to know each other, and their feelings were heating up rapidly.

Qiu Changtian was very conscious and did not rashly interfere with their friendship. He just stood at the bow with his hands behind his back, looking into the distance.

The reason why the three did not fly on swords but traveled by boat was naturally to conceal their tracks - it is said that the traitor of the Xu family at that time also did not fly on a sword throughout the journey, but disguised himself as a mortal and went south along the river.

When they entered the Xiangjiang River from Dongting Lake by boat, Xu Yinglian stopped chatting with Senior Sister Luo and instead perked up and carefully observed the surroundings.

According to the records of the Xu family's search for the traitor, the last time the traitor was located was along the Xiangjiang River.

And then he completely lost his whereabouts... Through the calculation test, it can be confirmed that the other party has fallen.

In fact, over such a long period of time, the Xu family had searched most of the villages and towns on both sides of the Xiangjiang River and the villages in the nearby mountains and forests, but they had not found any trace of the traitor.

Although the relics left by Feng Tong are precious, their most important significance is that they are "relics left by our ancestors". Of course, it is impossible to devote manpower to searching for them in vain from generation to generation.

Xu Yinglian guessed that the other party must have entered some secret realm.

Only a secret realm that is independent of the world could have hidden the body of a monk until now without being discovered.

However, without any clues, searching for the entrance to an unknown secret place on the entire Xiangjiang River is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

"A Jing!" Qiu Changtian asked tentatively, "Is there a way to scan the entire Xiangjiang River?"

"Yes." Kunlun Mirror replied unhappily, "I also have the means to scan the entire cultivation world. Do you believe it?"

"Don't lie. I've warned you twice." After Qiu Changtian finished teasing Ah Jing, he turned back to the cabin and began to read the information brought by Xu Yinglian alone.

The entire Xiangjiang River is more than 200 miles long, so a carpet search is unrealistic. We must search for evidence from other places and try to narrow the scope of the search.

According to the records provided by the Xu family, the traitor's name was "Xu Zhi". He was a bad guy with pus on his head and sores on the soles of his feet. He betrayed his family because he had a rebellious mind... What a mess!

Qiu Changtian read the records carefully and found that apart from a large amount of political smears, there was not much valuable information.

For example, why did Xu Zhi betray the Xu family? Only a few places mentioned that he failed in the power struggle within the clan, so he rebelled against the Xu family and went south.

Of course, if you think about it carefully, you will understand that those who practice Taoism should just focus on practicing Taoism. Why would there be any question of fighting for power or not?

Can the power based on the organizational structure compare to the great power that comes from one's own cultivation?

It was clearly the overly fierce political struggle that caused the final ruler of the Xu family to be unable to tolerate Xu Zhi, which forced the latter to flee.

Xu Zhi originally had an excellent talent for cultivation within the clan, and was also one of the core members of the clan's upper echelons. Otherwise, he would not have been qualified to enter the Fengtong Mausoleum.

At that time, the Xu family of Tiannan seemed unprepared for his defection, or they misjudged the time of his defection, so that he was discovered missing by the family half a day after his defection, and his tomb was robbed.

After leaving the Xu family, Xu Zhi first arrived at Jiangling City on a sword (many witnesses have confirmed this), then disguised himself as a mortal to sneak into the city and continued south along the river.

There are no ID cards or cameras in this world, so once a practitioner uses disguise and blends into the vast crowd, it is almost impossible to be discovered. This is why the Six Paths of the Demon Cult can never die under the siege of the Three Purities of the Orthodox Church.

The reason why I said "almost" is because there is a secret method in this world called "arithmetic".

In short, the Xu family of Tiannan invited the Jian family of Qingzhou to come, and through calculations they confirmed that he continued to sail up the river to the southwest, arrived at and crossed Dongting Lake into the Xiangjiang River, and then disappeared without a trace.

In the art of divination, there are many explanations for "no trace left", such as the spell blocking the divination, the deeper secrets involved making it impossible to calculate, or the person entering a cave that the divination cannot cover, etc.

So the Xu family deployed a large number of personnel to investigate around the Xiangjiang River. Strangely, Xu Zhi disappeared without a trace and left no clues at all... All information and intelligence came to an abrupt end here.

Where was Xu Zhi going? Qiu Changtian flipped open another copy of Shenzhou Hydrology and found the map, and saw that Xu Yinglian had already marked it.

Tiannan, Jiangling City, the Yangtze River, Dongting Lake, and Xiangjiang River, if you connect them into a line, you can know that Xu Zhi is always heading southwest.

What is in the southwest? The Ten Thousand Mountains in Southern Xinjiang, where Xu Yinglian drew a circle with a red pen.

Maybe he was going to join the Donghuang Dao, or maybe he was looking for a place to live in seclusion, but Xu Zhi's destination was most likely southern Xinjiang.

Although Southern Xinjiang is far away from the Central Plains, it has many relics of the witch clan and unorthodox ways, including many evil methods that can block sorcery. Therefore, if people in the Central Plains are being hunted by their enemies and have to choose to be isolated from the world and not be disturbed, they will often choose to go to Southern Xinjiang to find local ethnic minorities, or go to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to find foreign monks, rather than fleeing to the northern desert, beyond the Great Wall, or the East China Sea or the South China Sea.

But if this is the case, then Xu Zhi most likely does not have the ability to block calculations, otherwise he would not have been so determined to go to southern Xinjiang.

Thinking about it this way, the most likely possibility among many possibilities is that he accidentally entered a secret place, causing all traces of his magic... and even all traces of his existence in this world to completely disappear.

However, where is the entrance to this secret place? Without any clues, isn't it like looking for a needle in a haystack?

Qiu Changtian thought about it, and finally sighed and asked Kunlun Mirror:

"A Jing, you said before that there is a way to scan the entire Xiangjiang River, right?"

"I suggest you travel back to the time when Xu Zhi rebelled against his clan, and follow him all the way to see where he goes. This will be more reliable." Kunlun Jing suggested.

"That's not impossible..."

"Get lost! You can't do it!"