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Inside the Devouring Heavens Sect, three tablets had broken in two days. They belonged to three outer disciples who should have been staying in the surrounding forest. While the elders generally wouldn't care about the death of outer disciples, they still had to find out what happened. It was just a formality but it was one of sect's duty to get back their corpses if they could.

The elder in charge of the task was quite in a hurry to do so as he considered the task below himself. Still, it was his duty so, while unhappy, he would do it seriously.

He used the tracking array that had been placed on the disciple's robes and hurried forward through the forest. It didn't take him more than a few minutes to reach the first location. This was where two of the three had died.

The scene was quite gruesome. He came a little too late for those two. The wild life had already done quite the number on them. Their bodies were in a very unsightly state. Still, he had to take those back and find the reason for death…

At first glance, one would think of pinning the blame down on the wild life. After all, they had been eaten too. However, as he looked closer at the remains, he could see some marks that were far too clean to have been the work of beasts. It hinted at something else.

He began to look around the area and found many traces of a fierce battle. A battle between humans. And considering the absence of spiritual energy inside the marks, cultivators of the body strengthening realm.

They had gone out as a trio and only two died here. What's more, there are signs of battles between body refinement cultivators… He added one and one and reached the hypothesis that the third one killed the first two.

That being said, he wasn't one to make hasty conclusions. He kept checking his surroundings until he found something unexpected. It was a rock. Nothing strange about finding one but what was strange were the markings over it.

He bent down to examine it more thoroughly. Those were words… It read: "Trade spiritual beasts for spiritual pills. Five pills per stage. Find me at the big stone to the north"

As he moved his hand over the rock, he could feel some residual energy. Someone used spiritual energy to carve through that rock… It meant that someone or something at the spiritual accumulation realm and with the ability to converse had a part in this.

Still, this message, it was no wonder the three of them would try to kill each other. They only gave ten pills to every disciple as a form of motivation and it was their most precious treasure until they proved themselves. The three kids that died were talentless weaklings even from their standard, they couldn't have had more funds. And it was true that the sect placed importance on beast tamers, enough for it to motivate them.

He had discovered the motivation now.

He picked the rock and placed it in his spatial ring. Then, he went to the remains. He took out two wooden caskets from his storage, used his spiritual energy to move the remains in them and put them back into the spatial device.

He looked around a second time, to make sure he didn't miss anything. He hadn't. Then, he moved out towards the third location.

As he arrived, he saw the dead body with her back to a big rock. As he expected, this was the reason for the infighting. So, this girl killed the other two kids in hope to get the tamed beast and was killed in turn…

He could understand why she killed the other two but he was unaware of the motives of the fourth (and maybe fifth…) person. Why would he want to trick those losers? Did he have a grudge? No, it was someone at the spiritual accumulation stage, there was no need to go so far. He could have simply eliminated them with a wave of his arms.

He went towards the girl's corpse. It had yet to be devoured though some insects had already begun the feast. He bent down and examined it. Only one clean hit that went through the head… He looked up. The killer had been on top of the rock. As for what he used…Yeah, spiritual energy. A single shot of it. Clean and effective.

There wasn't much else to discover from this. He took out the third casket and put her body inside of it after killing the insects with a spiritual energy wave including remnants of the sound element. It wasn't strong enough to affect humans but more than enough to eliminate all insects. He couldn't put anything alive in a spatial ring so he had to take that extra step. Not like it was too difficult for a cultivator like him at the 34th stage of spiritual accumulation.

He got up and looked around.

He saw the three bags that had been shredded along with the open boxes and the few books that had likely been thrown all over the place. Those boxes… They were those supposed to contain the pills. So, was it solely for the pills? He could have just killed them at once if it had been so, there were no reasons to go so far… It was a possibility.

He looked at the books. They were those related to basics and given for free. He picked them up. They were still in a good enough state to be lent to another disciple. There was only one other book: "How to find your soulmate as a long-lived cultivator"

He picked it up and after coughing once, stored it in his spatial ring. He would keep this one, not mentioning it in the report.

Then, he turned his attention to the bags. He first thought there would be three but he could only see two? They had been shredded so, it wasn't far-fetched that he made a slight error in judgement. But that meant the third one was missing… He sensed the surroundings and found it in a tree close-by. He moved over there in a second. It was being used as a bird's nest? And there were already a few eggs inside it?

Wait.

Could this have been the doing of a spiritual beast? A beast at the spiritual accumulation stage here? This might be a lot more important than he first thought. He needed to check further. He picked the two shredded bags and placed the remains in his storage.

He took one last look at this place before leaving. He rushed back to the sect. Once he arrived, he kept running and went straight to the beast tamer's section. He needed to find proof for his guess.

He found another elder quickly and asked him if he could help him meet a senior elder. It took some time but he was led inside the abode of a senior elder of the beast tamer school. As he arrived, he bowed and greeted the senior elder politely. He was someone of higher standing than him and higher prowess, he couldn't be sloppy.

The Senior Elder didn't seem to care though and went straight to the topic at hand: "So, what is the matter, fellow elder?"

He went forward and began to speak about everything he saw and deduced, using what he brought back as proofs. The Senior Elder became more and more interested as he spoke. Once he was done explaining, the Senior Elder asked for the remains of the bags to be brought to him. He examined them closely before he said: "Those were done by claws…front, no, back. Yes, back claws…Was it a wolf? No, there are only two marks…Then, a bird. Indeed. It was the work of a bird-type spiritual beast"

So, he had been right? It was the work of a beast at the spiritual accumulation stage? The entire thing? It was quite hard to believe though. He decided to ask the Senior Elder: "Senior Elder, could it be the work of another beast tamer?"

The Senior Elder pondered for a moment before he spoke: "It isn't impossible. Regardless if it was tamed or wild, there was a spiritual beast involved. If it was a beast tamer, it means that we have an intruder in the spiritual accumulation stage on our grounds. If it wasn't…It means there is a very smart spiritual beast at that stage roaming our forest. Either way, we need to take some measures about this. Come with me, we'll go meet a few of the Grand Elders, this is something that is beyond our scope of jurisdiction"

He trembled at the thought of meeting a Grand Elder. They were the strongest under the Sect Master and all of them were in the 40+ stages. If he could get a connection with these figures, he might one day reach their level.