Qiao Yihong did not have to wait long. Soon, a taxi with its headlights blazing roared up and stopped at the entrance of the village.

The man in the long trench coat stepped out of the cab, which immediately turned around and sped away. Once the taxi was gone, the desolate area returned to its cold silence.

The man in the trench coat was none other than Park Seung-eun, who had come to Huaxia alone. Park Seung-eun looked around, then walked toward the village entrance.

His pace appeared slow, but only Qiao Yihong, a fellow Neijin cultivator, understood that this speed was equivalent to a champion sprinter at full sprint. Just as Qiao Yihong was intently watching the man beneath the dark curtain enter the village, a strange cry suddenly echoed in his ear.

"Jiu jiu..." Qiao Yihong turned his head, his eyes immediately widening into perfect circles. Behind him was a pitch-black fox, blending seamlessly into the darkness of the night, its nine high-held tails the only conspicuous feature.

Swish! A cold gust of wind swept past, causing Qiao Yihong to shudder violently.

When he looked back, the nine-tailed fox was nowhere to be seen. Rubbing his eyes hard, Qiao Yihong scanned his surroundings.

There wasn't even a mosquito near him—where had the Nine-Tailed Fox come from? "Was it an illusion?" Muttering to himself, Qiao Yihong frowned, utterly perplexed.

However, seeing Park Seung-eun's figure already reduced to a black dot about to vanish from his sight, Qiao Yihong couldn't afford to ponder whether he had hallucinated. He banished the fleeting, bizarre image from his mind and hastily followed, trailing behind Park Seung-eun.

The Qiao Family Heart Method that Qiao Yihong cultivated was practically designed for tracking. It perfectly concealed all his aura.

Using the cover of night, he hung back far behind Park Seung-eun. He was confident enough that unless the target was a Dachengjing (Great Completion Realm) cultivator—or even just a Neijin Level Four cultivator—they absolutely could not detect his pursuit.

Of course, at this point, Qiao Yihong had already discounted Zhang Yang; in the cultivation world, few could, like Zhang Yang, comprehend the Dao of Nature and achieve Great Completion before reaching the late stage of Neijin Level Four. In fact, Park Seung-eun did seem genuinely unaware that someone was following him closely.

He walked alone down the desolate village path. The only time he paused was to pull a small piece of paper, folded squarely, from his shirt pocket.

He glanced at it, folded it back up, slipped it into his pocket, and continued forward. This village was called Zijing Village, the last settlement planned by the Changjing government at the foot of Zijing Mountain.

Most villagers had already received land acquisition compensation from the government and found temporary lodgings elsewhere, although a few households had not yet moved out. In a dilapidated courtyard on the north side of the village lived an elderly man.

It was said his spouse had passed away a year ago, and his two sons and one daughter all worked in distant cities. The old man had given all his compensation money to his children and stayed alone in the village, relying solely on a large black dog.

The old man’s sleep was always light. As soon as darkness fell, he lay down fully clothed.

Now, with the sky deeply shadowed, he woke from his sleep. He wrapped his clothes around himself, climbed out of bed, and found some unfinished rice porridge still on the table.

Carrying the bowl that was still more than half full, the old man pushed open the door and stepped out. The large black dog that had been his companion for decades seemed unchanged; it lay lazily at the doorway, occasionally lifting its head to bark a few times at the moon in the sky.

"Stop your barking. I know you're hungry.

Here you go." The old man chuckled and placed the remaining half bowl of rice porridge in front of the black dog. This had been the old man’s pleasure for decades; every time he woke in the middle of the night, he would share his uneaten rice porridge with the dog.

But today, the black dog did not, as usual, rush forward upon seeing the porridge, gobbling up the leftover scraps. "Woof!

Woof! Woof!" The large black dog abandoned its previous lethargy, leaping up and instantly darting to the front of the courtyard gate, barking incessantly at the closed entrance.

"What is it?" The old man stared, bewildered, at the suddenly agitated dog. In his memory, this dog was highly unusual.

It didn't roam around aimlessly, chase things, or fight with other dogs. Instead, its favorite activities were lying in the courtyard, sunbathing during the day and moonbathing at night, never willing to exert any extra energy moving.

When the old man was young, he had even wondered how long this lazy creature would survive if their family hadn't adopted it. For the dog to suddenly abandon its gentle demeanor and become ferocious, barking wildly at the gate as it was doing now, was unprecedented.

A man in a long trench coat kicked open the wooden door of the old man's courtyard. The door, which looked sturdy, yielded like thin paper under the man’s foot.

The old man watched the intruder burst through the entrance in stunned silence. Clatter.

The half-bowl of rice porridge in his hand splashed onto the ground, and the celadon bowl shattered into two pieces. The black dog bared its teeth, glaring fixedly at the man, its usually smooth black fur standing on end.

"A second-tier Spirit Beast, yet willing to struggle in the mortal world. What a waste of nature's gift!" Park Seung-eun, having forced his way in, shook his head repeatedly with a sigh as he looked at the black dog watching him menacingly.

According to Park Seung-eun, this large black dog, which had been the old man's sole companion for years, was the only second-tier Spirit Beast near Changjing. Spirit Beasts possess an innate sense of impending crisis.

This was why the dog had suddenly erupted and barked wildly at the door. However, the old man nearby understood none of Park Seung-eun’s words, as they were spoken entirely in Korean.

Even if he had understood the words, he wouldn't grasp concepts like "Spirit Beast" or "waste of nature's gift." The only thing the old man could grasp was that this fellow breaking into someone's home in the dead of night definitely meant trouble. "You, who are you?

Why are you breaking into my house? Is there no law here?" Although the old man was very old and needed to rest after walking for extended periods, it didn't mean he was weak or afraid to resist.

After all, the old man had served in the military when he was young; though aged, the spirit of a Huaxia soldier still lingered. Park Seung-eun’s eyes did not register the old man's presence at all.

He was a mid-stage Neijin Level Four cultivator. Even third or second-tier cultivators would struggle to capture his attention standing before him, let alone a frail old man like this.

"This is none of your business. Get out!" Park Seung-eun tilted his head proudly, frowning slightly, and glared sidelong at the annoying old man beside him, shouting sharply in heavily accented Chinese.

In Park Seung-eun's view, this was the greatest honor he could bestow upon the old man. His purpose here was twofold: first, to eliminate the few first-tier Spirit Beasts on Zijing Mountain, and second, to take away this second-tier Spirit Beast hiding in the mortal realm.

The black dog before him appeared ordinary, but in Park Seung-eun's eyes, it was anything but. Before coming to Changjing, Kim Hyun-shin had already expended vast financial and human resources to locate this black dog in the village.

It could even be said that the Korean chaebols had a hand in the Changjing government's strong push to renovate the Zijing Mountain scenic area. Initially, Kim Hyun-shin had planned to take the black dog away when he returned to his country after the Traditional Chinese Medicine exchange event concluded in Changjing.

Unfortunately, he died unexpectedly at his residence, leaving the task to Park Seung-eun. "Get out of here!" Hearing Park Seung-eun's words, the old man was furious.

This person was not Huaxia; he was a foreigner. A foreigner dared to break into a house on Huaxia soil, then arrogantly tell the owner that it was none of his business and ordered him to leave?

The old man simply could not swallow such an insult! The old man scanned his surroundings and spotted the carrying pole resting horizontally on the courtyard wall.

He walked over unsteadily, laboriously lifted the pole, and then brought it down hard toward Park Seung-eun! Thud!

Park Seung-eun’s movement was too fast—so fast the old man couldn't react. The pole swung past, missing entirely.

The massive inertia caused the old man to lose his balance, and he was about to fall heavily to the ground. It was the black dog.

It leaped up, landing beneath the old man, thus preventing him from crashing down. "Come along quietly now!" Park Seung-eun quickly said this to the black dog in Chinese.

Seizing the opportunity, he stepped forward, concentrated his Neijin, and a syringe materialized in his palm. He threw a swift punch at the dog's head, simultaneously plunging the syringe concealed in his hand into the dog's neck.

"Woof..." The black dog stumbled violently, using its Neijin to repel Park Seung-eun’s fist and the syringe. However, it immediately felt a wave of dizziness, let out a pained cry, and collapsed onto the ground.

The old man rolled off its body. It was, after all, only a second-tier Spirit Beast.

Confronting Park Seung-eun head-on offered no chance of victory, especially since Park Seung-eun had attacked by surprise. But in truth, when the dog first sensed Park Seung-eun's arrival, if it had fled immediately, Park Seung-eun would never have caught it so easily.

It was only for reasons unknown that the black dog never once considered running away. "Da Hei!" Seeing Park Seung-eun strike the black dog, the old man—ignoring the pain in his own waist—lost control of his emotions.

He threw himself onto the dog, crying out in distress.