Qi Lian bowed to Bai Ye first, then the village elder. "I apologize for the delay," he said to the latter. "My master was originally planning on looking into this matter, but due to a last-minute incident, he couldn't make it to this trip, and it took us some time to gather a different group."
Teng Yuan was supposed to be here? I wondered what kind of last-minute incident might have gotten in his way, and I hoped it wasn't related to any bad news. But considering the group standing in front of me was mostly disciples from his hall, I reckoned whatever happened couldn't have been that undesirable. So I smiled at each familiar face, not hiding the pleasant surprise when I found Wen Shiyin at the back of the crowd as well. There was no sign of Xie Lun though.