186: Chapter 186 Absurd Cipher! The Shadow Pavilion's Intelligence Network!

The Flying Sword landed within the capital of the Great Empire.

Following Dark Seven, the Empress arrived before an incredibly magnificent and massive building.

On the surface, this building was a top-tier den of debauchery called "Heaven on Earth," but hidden deep beneath its foundations lay a behemoth reinforced by countless Formations, with a scale comparable to an underground city—the Great Empire branch of the Shadow Pavilion!

The underground palace was brightly lit, with countless Cultivators wearing various masks hurrying to and fro, and the walls were covered with dense arrays of mission crystals.

Trading areas, martial arts arenas, and intelligence hubs were all present, and the air was suffused with dense Spiritual Qi fluctuations.

Everything appeared orderly, yet it exuded a cold, murderous intent.

Dark Seven walked straight to the mission handover point, preparing to settle the reward for this extermination of the Blood Spirit Sect.

As for the Empress, she silently followed behind him like an emotionless machine.

After receiving a large bag of Spirit Stones, Dark Seven turned to look at the Empress and smiled slightly, saying, "What? Are you stunned by the grandeur of our Shadow Pavilion?"

"How do I join? I want to take missions too!"

The Empress ignored his banter entirely, keeping that expression of coldness that went to her very bones, and spoke directly.

Dark Seven couldn't help but laugh, extending three fingers: "If you want to take missions, you must first become an official assassin. There are three paths: one, accept and complete an assessment mission appropriate for your current Realm; two, go to the back mountain and pass the Shadow Pavilion's Wooden Man Lane test; three, be directly recommended by a captain of Copper Plate rank or higher."

"Considering you're a good prospect, I suggest you choose the third..."

Before Dark Seven could finish saying the word "third."

The Empress said nothing, simply striding forward with her short legs and walking with great purpose to the crystal board at the mission reception area.

"I choose one!"

Subsequently, to Dark Seven's astonishment, he saw the Empress's dark golden eyes quickly scan the crystal board.

Without any hesitation, her small hand reached out and pulled down a top-tier bounty jade plaque flashing with red light.

This was an assassination mission with the most generous rewards for the Foundation Establishment Stage, and simultaneously the mission with the highest difficulty!

Sitting behind the mission reception counter was an old man with one blind eye.

The old man squinted his remaining eye, glanced at the jade plaque, then looked at the Empress, who appeared to be only twelve or thirteen years old and whose aura had just entered the Foundation Establishment Stage, and kindly warned:

"Little Girl, you have quite a temper. You've only just broken through to the first level of the Foundation Establishment Stage, your Realm might not even be stable yet, and you want to take this mission to assassinate the Blood-Guarding Silver Devil of the Joyous Union Sect, who is at the half-step Golden Core Stage? Be careful not to lose your life before you even earn any Spirit Stones."

Hearing the name of the mission, Dark Seven, who was following behind, felt his heart skip a beat.

This was a ruthless character that even an average Early Golden Core Stage Cultivator would not want to provoke!

How could this "top-grade cauldron" he had just scouted be throwing herself into the jaws of death in the blink of an eye?

"Little Girl, are you crazy?! What are you doing? Crossing nearly an entire major Realm to kill someone, who do you think you are? The Reincarnation of a Supreme Emperor?!" Dark Seven grabbed the Empress's wrist and scolded her angrily.

The Empress's gaze remained completely calm; she coldly shook off Dark Seven's hand, then turned to look at the one-eyed old man, her tone filled with a supreme, arrogant dominance:

"What? Does this jade plaque say that this Empress... cough, that I cannot take it?"

Upon hearing this, the one-eyed old man didn't get angry; instead, he burst into laughter.

He looked at the furious Dark Seven with great interest, casually picked up a jade cylinder from the table, inscribed it, and tossed it to the Empress.

"Accept it? Of course you can! The rules of the Shadow Pavilion are: life and death are fated, wealth and honor are in the hands of Heaven."

"However, as a newcomer who has not yet officially joined the Shadow Pavilion, if you take such an Advanced mission, you must be accompanied by an official assassin from the Pavilion acting as a supervisor throughout the process."

"Firstly, it is to assess your true strength, and secondly, it is to prevent you from being captured alive by the enemy and leaking the intelligence secrets of our Shadow Pavilion. If you fail, the supervisor has the authority to execute you on the spot."

The old man pointed to the jade cylinder, smiling like an old fox: "I have already inscribed the name of the supervisor into this for you."

Dark Seven heard this and had a bad premonition.

He snatched the jade cylinder, scanned it with his Divine Sense, and couldn't help but curse on the spot:

"Damn you, Old Deng! You actually arranged for me to be this crazy girl's supervisor? I just finished a mission and haven't even caught my breath!"

The Empress also sensed the information inside the jade cylinder through her Divine Sense.

She turned her head expressionlessly, glanced at the furious Dark Seven beside her with a look as if she were looking at an idiot, her rosy lips parted slightly, and she coldly spat out two words.

"Idiot."

Old Deng was stunned, then slapped the table and pointed at Dark Seven, laughing uncontrollably: "Did you hear that? The Little Girl called you an idiot! Why aren't you hurrying to escort her to complete the mission?"

Dark Seven gritted his teeth, glared fiercely at the Empress on purpose, and threatened her in a low, vicious voice: "You crazy girl, just you wait! If you can't even take one strike from that Devil Head later, I absolutely will not lift a finger to save you!"

However, the Empress completely ignored his boring intimidation, not even bothering to offer a rebuttal.

After she probed the jade cylinder with her Divine Sense to read the mission information, she turned without looking back and flew straight toward the mission location.

The Empress now had only one pure thought in her mind—kill the target and take all of his resources!

"Hey! You little beggar, wait for me!" Dark Seven sighed and had no choice but to follow helplessly.

He muttered to himself: he was a dignified Early Golden Core Stage Cultivator, a renowned Copper Plate captain in the Shadow Pavilion, yet he had to act as a "nanny" for a Little Girl who had just entered the Foundation Establishment Stage and didn't even understand common sense?

If the brothers under his command found out about this, how would he lead his team in the future?

...

On the outskirts of the Great Empire, in the Luoxia Mountain Range.

Following the guidance in the jade cylinder, the Empress soon arrived at the designated desolate crossroads.

In a short while, a passing farmer with a weathered face, carrying a rusty hoe on his shoulder, strolled slowly toward the Empress.

He stopped three steps away from the Empress and asked tentatively in an extremely awkward accent:

"The Heavenly King covers the earth with tigers?"

Upon hearing this, the Empress's beautiful, delicate eyebrows instantly knitted together tightly.

"What kind of vulgar and Dao-less code word is this?" the Empress thought with extreme disdain.

At the level she occupied in her previous life, which meeting didn't use the Great Dao Sanskrit or stellar trajectories to transmit messages?

But for the sake of intelligence and resources, she could only suppress her inner discomfort and stiffly spit out the second half of the code recorded in the jade cylinder:

"Su Yan... two hundred and fifty!"

And a certain young master of the Su Family far away in the Upper Realm suddenly sneezed: "Who is cursing me?"

Hearing this correct code, the farmer's previously cloudy eyes instantly became sharp.

He nodded, lowered his voice, and told the Empress the intelligence in great detail, like pouring beans from a container:

"Reporting to you, my lord, the Blood-Guarding Silver Devil of the Joyous Union Sect you are looking for is currently hiding in that abandoned Taoist temple ten miles ahead. Because this person is Cultivating an evil technique, he is in urgent need of Yang Qi to replenish himself and has recently forcibly abducted many young male Cultivators; he has already been issued a joint warrant by various factions."

"But this old Devil Head is extremely cunning; not only is he highly skilled in concealment techniques, but his Physical Body has been tempered by evil arts, making him invincible within the Foundation Establishment Great Perfection Realm. He has set up an Illusion Formation here and seems to be preparing to forcibly break through to the Golden Core Stage..."

The farmer's intelligence was extremely detailed.

"Hmm, understood."

After listening, the Empress nodded coldly, her figure moved, and she was just about to charge straight toward the Taoist temple.

"Wait, my lord!"

But she saw the farmer actually have the audacity to reach out a calloused hand and block her.

A flash of murderous intent flickered in the Empress's eyes: "Are you courting death?"

A mere ant at the Qi Refinement Stage dared to block her path?

The farmer shivered from the Empress's terrifying gaze, but he still braced himself, rubbing his hands and giving a dry laugh: "My lord, the rules cannot be broken... for the intelligence settlement, that will be ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones."

The Empress's eyes were filled with confusion, and her brows furrowed even deeper.

Settlement? What settlement? She had to pay out of her own pocket to buy intelligence for a mission she accepted?

Just as the Empress was preparing to simply leave, Dark Seven appeared beside her like a ghost.

He rolled his eyes helplessly at the Empress, casually took ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones from his Storage Pouch, and placed them into the farmer's hand.

"Thank you for the reward, my lord!"

The farmer took the Spirit Stones, the shrewdness on his face instantly vanished, and he returned to that dull, farmer-like demeanor.

He shouldered his hoe, hummed a country tune, and soon blended into the surrounding environment, as if he were truly just an old man who had just finished working in the fields.

Not until the farmer had walked far away did the Empress look at Dark Seven and coldly demand: "Why did you give it to him? Even if you didn't, he is a mere ant; would he dare to demand it from me?"

In the Empress's deep-rooted perception, the world of Cultivation was inherently one of the strong preying on the weak. The strong looked down upon all living beings, while the weak could only crawl on the ground.

These bottom-tier Mortals or low-level Cultivators being able to provide intelligence services for the high and mighty, was that not an honor they had cultivated for lifetimes? How dare they ask for money?

"Heh, only those narrow-minded idiots would think like that!"

Dark Seven crossed his arms and cast a look of disdain at the Empress.

"These peripheral intelligence personnel are mostly the lowest-level Qi Refining Cultivators, and they work extremely hard. They lack the talent to Cultivate, yet they yearn to exchange for a bit of resources to embark on the path of immortality. However, they have no strength to trek long distances to the various branches to collect their rewards."

"Therefore, the Pavilion Master set a rule that their remuneration is paid on-site by the assassins who take the mission. After we complete the mission and return, the Shadow Pavilion will naturally reimburse us with interest."

The Empress frowned tightly as she listened and retorted: "Ridiculous! What is the point of such cumbersome rules? This Empress... I only need to use my Divine Sense pressure, and he would obediently spit out everything."

"Yes, the Shadow Pavilion used to do that too."

Dark Seven gave a cold laugh: "At that time, everyone didn't treat these external intelligence departments as people, feeling they were just disposable consumables, and treated the Pavilion Master's decrees as wind passing by their ears. And guess what happened?"

The Empress's eyes flickered, and after pondering for a moment, she deduced using her old imperial logic: "You violated the Pavilion Master's rules, so the Pavilion Master naturally suppressed you, killing one to warn a hundred?"

"Heh~ that's why I say your perspective is small, Little Girl!"

Dark Seven looked triumphant, as if he had finally crushed the intelligence of this Little Girl who always acted so high and mighty.

The Empress looked at this Golden Core Stage ant acting so smug in front of her, and she was instantly so angry her teeth itched!

"When this Empress returns to the Peak, I will definitely make you, this ignorant junior, have your eyes pop out in shock!" she swore silently in her heart.

"The Pavilion Master didn't punish anyone at all; he just published a set of data on the announcement board at the headquarters."

Dark Seven reined in his smile, his tone filled with deep awe for that Pavilion Master: "The data showed: those assassins who followed the rules and treated intelligence personnel well had a mission mortality rate of only one percent! While those assassins who ignored them like you, or even coerced and intimidated them, had a staggering mortality rate of forty percent!"

The Empress was stunned: "Why is the discrepancy so large?"

"Why? Because intelligence can be deceptive!" Dark Seven looked coldly at the Empress.

"You think you can get all the real information by relying on pressure? If the intelligence personnel harbor resentment toward you, they only need to conceal some subtle things at a critical moment, such as what defensive Magic Treasure that old Devil Head brought today, or if the opponent broke through temporarily..."

"The difficulty of the mission wouldn't just increase by a little bit; it would send you straight to Hell!"

Dark Seven patted the Empress on the shoulder and earnestly educated her: "The fact that you can get the intelligence first and pay later, and that the intelligence is so precise, is all because of the rules set by the Pavilion Master, which completely tied the interests of these bottom-tier personnel together with us assassins!"

"In the Shadow Pavilion, those who do not respect intelligence are often the ones who die the fastest. Remember that, Little Girl!"

The Empress stood frozen in place.

Her Supreme Dao thinking, which had been dormant for one hundred thousand years, received an unprecedentedly violent shock at this moment.

Interest binding? Data statistics? What kind of freak is that so-called Shadow Pavilion Pavilion Master? Was he not suppressing his subordinates with cultivation, but using... his brain?!

"Alright, enough chatter."

Dark Seven looked at the Taoist temple hidden in the night and the Illusion Formation ahead, his Golden Core Stage aura slightly restrained.

"The old Devil Head is inside. I am only responsible for watching; I will absolutely not lift a finger to help you. Go, let me see how you, this Little Girl who clamors about bestowing me with a Heaven Rank Cultivation Technique, can cross four minor Realms to kill someone!"