Night falls.
On the Chen Bell Platform.
Li Qian, who had just finished cultivating, picked up a piece of tanned cowhide parchment.
He carefully controlled his True Qi, etching lines onto the cowhide.
Whoosh whoosh....
With Li Qian’s exhale, specks of dust dispersed, and the map’s lines became clear on the cowhide—a map indeed.
Li Qian touched the uneven lines on the cowhide map with his fingers, a smile unwittingly spreading across his face.
The map was quite complex; it had taken him two whole days to complete.
Fortunately, if he had nothing else, he had time in abundance.
Holding the map on cowhide, Li Qian’s fingers glided across it, splitting it neatly into four even sections of smaller maps.
Looking at his work, he smiled contentedly and immediately left the bell tower.
In the room, rhythmic snoring sounds arose.
Liu Ming was asleep.
Li Qian walked into the small storage room next door.
He lifted the cellar door and descended; although not spacious, it stored quite valuable items.
Clang!
He opened a wooden chest, which was filled with many more cowhide parchment maps of the same size.
Tossing the newly made cowhide map into the chest, Li Qian’s expression turned solemn, and he moved to the other side, opening a cloth bag and pulling out a black cloak.
This black cloak was obtained from a Grandmaster he had killed previously.
It was also a Divine Refining Device.
Unlike Divine Swords and other devices of similar refinement, its use was unrestricted.
Anyone wearing it could achieve a significant effect in concealing breath and hiding.
Its black color made it especially effective in the cover of night.
"It’s time to shift their focus."
Li Qian murmured to himself.
Then he donned the black cloak, and as he covered his head with its hood, he seemed to vanish into the shadows.
He stuffed all the maps in the wooden chest into the cloth bag.
Slung over his shoulder, the bag in tow, he left the cellar.
This night, the moon was absent.
Darkness enveloped the world.
Swoosh!
Shortly after, a figure silently soared out of the Chen Bell Platform and disappeared into the night.
...
Several days later.
Li Qian returned to the Chen Bell Platform.
However, the copious cowhide maps that were originally with him were now nowhere to be found.
The only thing in the cloth bag he carried was the black cloak.
He had scattered the cowhide maps across the various states of the Tai Xing imperial borderland, using the grid-like approach. Three versions of the map were real and unaltered; they aligned with maps he had obtained from a half-demon.
Only the fourth map... had been intricately modified by him.
Moreover, he had deliberately released only three.
The main reason he didn’t directly head to the treasure site was due to the substantial risks involved.
The site might have connections with the former Taiping Sect.
Who knew what lay within that treasure site?
Currently weak, he was not yet self-sufficient in protecting himself.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have needed to resort to spreading so many copies of the four cowhide treasure maps, an action aimed at diverting the attention of that power.
He believed that power could not be sure whether the three maps were in his possession.
Now, with so many cowhide treasure maps suddenly surfacing, that power would likely be greatly perplexed upon learning this.
.....
Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, over a year has passed.
The outside world was not calm.
The Divine Sword Sect and the Xuanming Sect had engaged in numerous conflicts.
But both sides had exercised a certain level of restraint; conflicts only occurred among the disciples, preventing the elder-level masters from getting involved.
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