The ancient monster turned his gaze to Zhao Yunshan and asked, "Yunshan, tell us what happened in this incident."
Although Zhao Yunshan's cultivation had reached the peak of the Golden Core stage, he couldn't help but pale slightly when facing the sect's old ancestor. After looking at his fellow disciples around him, he said with a wry smile:
"This time, we fellow disciples were assisting Junior Brother Lei in his breakthrough, which should have been foolproof. However, first, Ding's Thunderfire Beast suddenly lost control, and then we were inexplicably attacked by many enemies. This disciple believes that the Ding family is behind this incident. Just now, Ding Ruozhao, that girl from the Ding family, along with a Golden Core中期 cultivator whom I had never seen before, somehow broke into the formation, wreaked havoc, and stole the Thunderfire Beast..."
Zhao Changyun briefly recounted the events that had just transpired in one breath.
The ancient monster's expression didn't change much, but the aura around him suddenly increased several times, instantly causing the nearby disciples to feel a sense of pressure.
Although the old man's face remained calm, he was extremely angry inside.
The Ding family had rebelled, and now Liu Yuan, the acting head of the Ding family, was also missing.
However, the old man knew that this matter was definitely not just the Ding family's doing. The Ding family's power alone probably couldn't achieve all of this. He vaguely felt that the Cyclone Gate might also be involved behind the scenes.
After all, he had been blocked by the Cyclone Gate's Old Monster Tianfeng earlier. But now, after releasing his spiritual sense to check the valley several times, he didn't find any aura of other Nascent Soul cultivators.
This naturally made the Nascent Soul old monster feel complicated.
Soon after, these Green Thunder Sect people also left Thunderclap Valley and returned to the sect. Only the ancient monster didn't return to the sect, but instead transformed into a streak of green light and flew directly towards the outer periphery of the Wind Thunder Mountain Range, flying in the direction of the Ding family's residence.
This matter naturally couldn't be left at that. The first to be questioned was the Ding family.
...
The ancient monster's escape speed was extremely fast. It only took him the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to fly directly out of the Wind Thunder Mountain Range, covering a distance of more than a thousand miles in a short period of time. After a while, he arrived at the Ding family's residence on Wind Thunder Island, Falling Rain Valley.
This was the area that was allocated to the Ding family when they were attached to the Green Thunder Sect, and it contained a decent middle-grade spiritual vein.
After the old man entered Falling Rain Valley, he first released his powerful spiritual sense to cover the entire valley.
He first saw Ding Family Fort on the outermost periphery. People were coming and going in this small town, and many of the Ding family's mortals lived there. These people didn't seem to have anything unusual about them.
As his spiritual sense continued to spread, enveloping the central area of the valley, the ancient monster's expression changed, as if he had discovered something. He transformed into a streak of black light and rushed towards the core area of the Ding family, those few mountain peaks with spiritual veins.
However, what he saw made the old man's expression turn gloomy. The Ding family was now lifeless, shrouded in a bloody aura.
The ancient monster entered a large complex of buildings and landed on a bluestone square, where he saw more than a dozen corpses lying on the square.
These people were covered in blood, and he could also see some broken magical artifacts and other things used by cultivators. They were clearly all disciples of the Ding family.
The ancient monster snorted coldly and transformed into black light again, entering several houses and looking at the situation, which was roughly the same.
Finally, he checked all the mountain peaks and didn't find a single living person, only observing hundreds of cultivator corpses.
These people had all died not long ago, definitely no more than half a day. This situation was like the Ding family had been exterminated.
However, the ancient monster thought for a moment and realized that the number of these people didn't match up. With his powerful spiritual sense, he also discovered that these corpses were only some low-level cultivators, and there weren't many with Foundation Establishment cultivation.
However, the Ding family's power was not small. There were nearly a thousand cultivators, and there were also fifty or sixty Foundation Establishment cultivators. Now, the remaining people were all missing.
At the same time, he also sensed the residual spiritual power fluctuations in the air. Not long ago, there were definitely more than a hundred cultivators gathered here, at least five hundred or more.
The ancient monster thought for a moment and had a guess in his mind. Zhao Yunshan had said earlier that the Ding family was very likely to have disrupted this incident, and now he could basically confirm that it was indeed inseparable from the Ding family.
Seeing this situation, it was very likely that the Ding family had seen that the situation was not good and had directly fled the island as a clan.
For a time, the Nascent Soul cultivator's expression turned ugly.
Afterwards, the ancient monster transformed into遁光 and entered Ding Family Fort, the small town where mortals lived. There were still a few cultivators left, but they were all only at the Qi Refining stage.
He quietly found these few Qi Refining cultivators and directly used the Soul Searching Technique on them. However, he didn't get any valuable information.
In the end, the ancient monster didn't stay in Falling Rain Valley for long and left soon after.
As for the Ding family, they had been removed from the Green Thunder Sect in his heart. This Falling Rain Valley would soon be directly taken back by the sect and redistributed.
As for the large number of mortals left behind by the Ding family, this was not something that the ancient monster needed to worry about.
And the actual situation was similar to what the old monster had guessed. After the Green Thunder Sect and others entered Falling Rain Valley, a fratricidal fight broke out within the Ding family.
Some cultivators supported Ding Ruozhao to be the head of the family, while others supported the acting head Liu Yuan to become the new head of the family.
The Ding family disciples who supported Ding Ruozhao had planned this for a long time. After both Ding Ruozhao and Liu Yuan left, they directly launched an attack on the cultivators of Liu Yuan's lineage.
After a chaotic battle, most of the remaining Ding family disciples directly took a large amount of cultivation resources and secretly left Wind Thunder Island.
...
Meanwhile, Zhang Ling and Ding Ruozhao also flew out of the Wind Thunder Mountain Range and headed north on the island. Before long, they arrived at a wilderness.
Before them was a expanse of dull yellow, with gusts of yellow sand permeating the air. It was like a desert, with many weathered rocks visible. Gusts of strong wind flowed continuously from the cracks in the rocks, making sounds like ghosts crying and wolves howling.
This was a desolate place on Wind Thunder Island. Hundreds of miles were of this terrain. There were neither mortals nor cultivators here.
The reason for coming here was that there was a teleportation array here that would allow them to quickly escape Wind Thunder Island.
Although Wind Thunder Island was a medium-sized island, there was no teleportation array built in Wind Thunder City. Most cultivators who came here usually came by merchant ship or flew here on their own.
With the strength of the Green Thunder Sect and the Cyclone Gate, it was possible to build a teleportation array on this island, but firstly, there was no need for it, and secondly, building a teleportation array was quite expensive.
Because there were not many resources on this island, it could only supply their two sects. As for trade activities, they could directly use merchant ships to trade with other islands.
Building a teleportation array was not only expensive, but also did not have much benefit, so naturally there was no need for it.
Most of the teleportation arrays built in the current cultivation world are small teleportation arrays, which can only teleport within a range of a thousand miles. The ancient teleportation arrays that can teleport tens of thousands of miles are difficult to build.
