In the past, Bi Lan might have tried to persuade Bi Teng, but there was no longer any need for such tactics. Why bother with someone who was already as good as dead?
Bi Teng suppressed his anger and stomped off to Madam Nalan's quarters. Soon, he saw the woman herself.
"Fuxue, this was all my fault. I didn't look into the matter thoroughly and misunderstood things. I apologize," Bi Teng said while just barely keeping his anger from surfacing. He succeeded in making his apology seem quite sincere.
Madam Nalan gave the man an odd look. "There’s no need for you to be polite. We're all on the same side."
Bi Teng was taken aback. Madam Nalan had never spoken to him in such a manner before.
"Come in and sit for a while," Madam Nalan said while stepping aside.
Bi Teng felt quite puzzled. He gave Madam Nalan a second glance, desire flickering across his eyes. This woman was incredibly tempting, and Bi Teng had been interested in her ever since she had joined the Merchant Exchange. However, because of their respective positions in the company, he had buried that desire deep. What was going on today?
He entered Madam Nalan's quarters, and she placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. He felt surrounded by her fragrance, and Bi Teng did not dare to move. He wondered if he had walked into a trap. Could the Heavens Sect be using the woman to tempt him into providing more resources? Yes, that had to be it. He quickly tried to stand up and leave the room.
Suddenly, he was struck by a sharp pain, which was followed by a sense of numbness and paralysis.
A spatial diablo appeared nearby as it tried to isolate Bi Teng.
However, not even the spatial diablo was able to last longer than a moment under Madam Nalan's hand, and it shattered instantly.
Bi Teng stared up at Madam Nalan in horror. "Fuxue, you...?"
Madam Nalan's face shifted. "I’m not Fuxue. You can call me E' Ji."
...
The Heavens Sect soon received the resources from the Merchant Exchange.
"Dao Monarch, I'm going to return to the Merchant Exchange now," Madam Nalan announced with a bow.
Lu Yin replied, "You need to report any information about Aeternus targeting the Merchant Exchange back to me. That’s very important."
"I understand," Madam Nalan replied. She gave another bow and then left.
With the situation with the Merchant Exchange settled, Lu Yin just needed to await news from Whitecloud City.
The Lord of Lightning was currently fully occupied with the Ancient Thunder Locust, which made it quite difficult for Jiang Qingyue or anyone else to speak to the man.
While he waited, Lu Yin made a trip to the Three Monarchs Universe, hoping to find Luo Shan. Unfortunately, the man could not be found.
Luo Shan’s name had also been on the list of traitors, and Lu Yin could not trust anyone completely.
No one could prove that Luo Shan had betrayed humanity or that he was a spy, but the Monarch did not believe that Lu Yin would implicitly trust him. So, he had chosen to disappear.
As for Mr. Daheng, he was also on the Endless Frontier. The man was backed by Astral Anura, though aside from Luo Shan and Lu Yin, no one else knew of that matter.
Mr. Daheng felt confident that Luo Shan would not reveal the matter to anyone, and the Arborean had no idea that Lu Yin was aware of their connection.
Through Mr. Daheng, it might be possible for Lu Yin to locate Astral Anura’s lair.
Lu Yin harbored a heavy grudge against Astral Anura. Aeternus frequently hired the toad to harass humanity, but hiring Astral Anura indicated that Aeternus lacked sufficient power on their own. If Astral Anura could be dealt with, Lu Yin would gain an even greater advantage for humanity in the war against Aeternus.
Time passed, but there was no news from Whitecloud City. Instead, Lu Yin received terrible news.
The Five Spirits Alliance and the Luna Alliance had both been attacked Aeternus, and they had suffered heavy losses.
Upon hearing the dreadful news, Lu Yin hurried to the Ice Spirit Tribe’s universe.
The Five Spirits Alliance and the Luna Alliance were outside civilizations that also fought against Aeternus, and they had previously interacted with the Origin Universe. Any attack on those alliances would prompt an immediate response from the Origin Universe.
Unfortunately, they had been too late.
Aeternus had only attacked once, but that single assault had resulted in the death of the Luna Alliance’s Yue Shen, as well as three of the Five Spirits Alliance’s leaders. Specifically, the Fire Lord, the Lightning Lord, and the Wood Lord had all died.
This devastating news caught the Sixverse Association off guard and completely ruined Lu Yin’s previously good mood.
He arrived in the Ice Spirit Tribe’s universe, mostly worried about the Iceheart. Fortunately, the Iceheart remained unharmed, though the Ice Lord had been gravely injured. Still, he had survived.
Lu Yin quickly found the Ice Lord. “What happened?”
The Ice Lord looked distressed. “Poison.”
“Poison?” This was unexpected.
Lu Yin felt rather confused. Eight sequence powerhouses from the Five Spirits Alliance and the Luna Alliance had instantly suffered heavy casualties from a single attack from Aeternus. This was highly unusual.
From what Lu Yin understood, even if Aeternus launched a unified attack under the Divine Commandment with their full, united forces, they should not have targeted the Five Spirits Alliance, but rather an outside civilization. This was what they had done with the Nine-Star Civilization. Logically, Ye Sheng or The Abandoned should have been targeted next. After all, the Five Spirits Alliance had five sequence powerhouses, which should have been enough to resist the attack long enough for allies to arrive.
If Lu Yin had known that Aeternus had the ability to instantly severely damage both the Five Spirits Alliance and the Luna Alliance, he would have devised countermeasures.
After all, he was not currently able to contact Ye Sheng or the Nine-Star Civilization.
The Ice Lord was panting as he asked, “Have you heard of Megalith Poison?”
Lu Yin’s eyes narrowed, and he instantly understood. He had nearly forgotten that Aeternus was constantly researching Time Poison and Vitality Poison, both of which were extremely dangerous.
For a long period of time, Lu Yin had been on guard against the usage of poison, but as time passed and his cultivation had improved, he had stopped considering poisons as real threats.
Unexpectedly, Aeternus had used poison to instantly cripple the Five Spirits Alliance and the Luna Alliance, and it was even a poison that Lu Yin had never heard of before: Megalith Poison.
It seemed that this Megalith Poison was rather similar to the Vitality Poison and Time Poison that Aeternus had developed previously.
“We never anticipated something like this Megalith Poison existing. The people of our Five Spirits Alliance are born of nature and are not human. We never imagined that we could be poisoned. As soon as we are poisoned, our strength and vitality are quickly sapped away. The condition is practically irreversible, much like the condition of the woman who’s frozen in the Iceheart. Only exceptionally strong cultivators can treat this poison, and even peak powerhouses can just barely manage to stay alive.
“As soon as I realized that I had been poisoned, I used the froststone that you gave me to freeze myself and then boosted my sequence particles with it. Without that, I would have also died during Aeternus’s assault. I don’t know how the Earth Lord survived, but the other three were all poisoned before being killed by Aeternus’s experts.” The Ice Lord’s voice was weak.
Lu Yin’s expression fell even further. The fact that both the poison drained both strength and vitality made it even more vicious than Vitality Poison. “How were you poisoned?”