In almost a second after Bai Yunfei managed to hide his aura completely, Bai Yunfei felt two strong auras come out from the right side of the villa.

Soul Kings!!

A moment prior to their arrival here, Bai Yunfei could feel a disturbance in the space in the villa. Luckily, he was able to react in time and hide himself, else the two Soul Kings would’ve found out about his presence here.

He could feel a weak amount of soulsense wash over the area as soon as Xiao Qi managed to hide his own presence. Bai Yunfei could feel his own breath caught in his throat and his heart practically refusing to beat due to his nervousness. It was fortunate for him that their soulsenses were only doing a very lazy scan. If it was stronger, then Bai Yunfei definitely would’ve been found. And combined with the fact that Xiao Qi’s ability to hide now was a lot better than before, Bai Yunfei and Xiao Qi were able to successfully hide themselves from the two Soul Kings.

Their scanning was only within the perimeter of the villa itself, so Qiu Bailu who was hiding a little distance away wasn’t found out.

These two Soul Kings were clearly not expecting to have enemies in this area, so their soulsense scanning was done very lazily and not at all expecting any visitors to suddenly pop up.

Bai Yunfei sighed in relief when he felt the soulsenses retreat away from him. But still, he refused to move from his spot so he could observe what would happen next in relative safety.

......

On the right side within one of the rooms.

In the center of one of the darker rooms, the air was twisting slightly within itself to reveal a two meter tall pitch-black hole of sorts. This black hole remained for only two seconds before it disappeared from sight, but not before revealing a figure in white and another figure in black.

When the figure in white appeared, he waved his hand to activate the light stones in the room. Straight away, the room light up with light, revealing the appearance of the two people in the room.

One of them was an elderly man with greying hair.

The elder in white was one of the strongest in the house of Cheng and Cheng Xin’s second grandfather, Cheng Chaochuan. The person in black next to him was the person that had first been with him when Cheng Xin was first scheming against Bai Yunfei.

The very first thing both Soul Kings did was send their soulsense throughout the villa and scan it for people.

Their eyebrows furrowed together when they detected someone. But what they detected was Cheng Xin and his group, not Bai Yunfei.

“A small group of senseless youngsters, let us pay them no mind, brother Wu Shang.” Cheng Chaochuan withdrew his glance to grab onto a chair to sit on as he spoke to the disdainful looking elder with him.

The one named ‘Wu Shang’ nodded, sparing a lazy glance at the bickering group. He walked with Cheng Chaochuan to where the chairs were and sat down without a word as if resting.

Cheng Chaochuan didn’t seem to care much for the cold attitude he was getting from him. “Brother Wu Shang, we’ve already dealt with Xu Jiang with a great deal of success we weren’t anticipating. Should we take action against that Xu Jinlin then?”

Wu Shang looked up at Cheng Chaochuan, replying with his gravelly voice. “You are too impatient, sire. I only just took care of Xu Jiang, the house of Xu will most definitely be wary now. Do you believe it be wise for us to take action now? Furthermore, what kind of person is this Xu Jinlin? He’s a Soul King that wouldn’t lose to you or I, how could a mere Soul Exalt like Xu Jiang compare to him? If we want to take care of him, we must be very careful with our next plan, or at least find a way that’ll allow us to use Xu Jiang for it....”

“I know that, naturally, but...” Cheng Chaochuan looked worried for a moment, “I heard that Xu Jinlin has been trying to become a late-stage Soul King recently. If he succeeds, then the equilibrium between the Cheng and Xu will become imbalanced, and fighting him then would be hard. Even if the two of us were to band together, it’d be a little...”

But Wu Shang frowned, “Late-stage Soul King? Is advancing to the next stage so easy to do when said? That Xu Jinlin is hardly even eighty, breaking through to a mid-stage Soul King was already difficult for him. With his talent, becoming a late-stage Soul King is nothing more but a fool’s wish! Pah, let him try to advance. If he fails, his strength will fall, and that will suit us just fine!”

Cheng Chaochuan casted Wu Shang a meaningful look. He himself had only just became a mid-stage Soul King, so he didn’t know just how difficult it was to become a late-stage Soul King. It did however seem that Wu Shang had experienced this before from how he was speaking. Did he perhaps fail to become a late-stage Soul King before?

Despite never experiencing the difficulties of becoming a late-stage Soul King, Cheng Chaochuan had still been able to become a mid-stage Soul King. From that experience, he could infer just how difficult the next step would be. The advancements of a Soul King was different than any of the stages below. Using the ‘bottleneck’ metaphor wouldn’t fit how Soul Kings and the higher levels grew in power. Not only was a great deal of strength needed, one also had to have luck, making advancement very difficult.

Cheng Chaochuan himself didn’t want to try and become a late-stage Soul King for at least thirty years. If anything, he wouldn’t even think it all too bad if he remained at a mid-stage Soul King for the rest of his life.

But even then, the world was not so kind to listen to him! That Xu Jinlin had rare talent, and his growth was unsettling to Cheng Chaochuan. In the case Xu Jinlin did breakthrough, that would really be a great deal of pain, and so he would have to hurry to deal a blow against the Xu for the sake of the Cheng.....

He had already ‘taken care’ of the heir apparent to the Xu, Xu Jiang, but today Cheng Chaochuan felt the need to hurry up and deal with the actual patriarch of the house, Xu Jinlin. If he could succeed in that, then....

“You needn’t worry about Xu Jinlin for the time being. Wait until the ‘situation’ with Xu Jiang settles down first, then we can plan for how to take care of Xu Jinlin.” Wu Shang glanced at him. “We should avoid a confrontation with the Xu for now.”

Cheng Chaochuan nodded. “That is easy to be done. We the Cheng have lived like this for the last hundred years, waiting a short amount of time like this is nothing.

“Will you be resting here in the meanwhile then, brother Wu Shang?” He asked a moment after. “With the matter of Xu Jiang, the entire house of Xu will most definitely be searching the area, and the Tianhun School might get involved. If that’s the case, then staying in the Capital might be dangerous.”

Wu Shang nodded. “I used up a great deal of energy and must recuperate for the meanwhile. I will hide here for now. But in the meanwhile, I want your Cheng to do me a favor....”

“Oh?” Cheng Chaochuan quirked an eyebrow, “Please ask away, brother Wu Shang.”

“I want you to investigate a person named Bai Yunfei. Compile everything you know about him for me.”

“What?!” Cheng Chaochuan gasped, “You want to deal with Bai Yunfei?!”

Wu Shang glanced at him, “Will that be a problem?”

“No...no problem at all.” The stunned look disappeared in an instant to be replaced with a smile. “I will have my men investigate everything about Bai Yunfei as quickly as possible. We will whole-heartedly cooperate with you.”

𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

He never thought that Wu Shang would actually want to deal with Bai Yunfei himself. That would be doing the Cheng a great favor in fact, so it was only natural that he agreed to help.

Wu Shang nodded, “Also, according to what I know, there’s been several people that came looking for Bai Yunfei. One of them is the young daughter of the patriarch of the house of Tang in the Forest Pass Province, and the other two are the daughters of the current headmaster and elder of the Crafting School. I want information on them as well. The more the better.”

Cheng Chaochuan’s pupils dilated, and he couldn’t help but gasp again.

Was he planning to take action against Tang Xinyun and the others too?!

There was no way he couldn’t feel stunned about that. This was an absolutely major action to take!

He wasn’t the only one stunned. There was someone else that was even more bewildered—the ‘eavesdropper’ Bai Yunfei standing right outside!