Thirty feet beneath the white marble floor of the Public Root-Washing Bathhouse, Elder Hei Shui—a sinister Rank 5 Mid Foundation Establishment Inner Elder from the Joyous-Gold Sect’s Hidden Shadow Hall—glided silently through the warm underground water pipe like a black water-snake.
When Chief Overseer Zhao and his nineteen flying vultures failed to come back after two hours, Elder Hei Shui had come down the mountain personally to spy on the border plaza from a hilltop. Watching three hundred “trash-root” Outer Disciples break through to Rank 5 Foundation Establishment inside Pei Xuan’s bathhouse had nearly scared the soul right out of Elder Hei Shui’s body!
If word got out that Pei Xuan’s bathhouse could wash away twenty years of sect lead-poisoning and upgrade Spirit Roots in one hour, not a single Outer Disciple would stay in the Four Sects by tomorrow morning!
“Attacking from the sky is stupid when that spiked iron giant is guarding the gate,” Elder Hei Shui sneered to himself inside his waterproof Turtle-Breath Bubble. He clutched a skull-patterned jade bottle filled with Rank 5 Ten-Thousand Toad Itching Venom. “Every bathhouse needs an underground spring pipe. All I have to do is swim up to the main heating boiler, pour one bottle of Toad Venom into the water supply, and every bather above will break out in screaming red blisters! Once they think Pei Xuan’s bathwater is cursed, they’ll come crawling back to our mines begging for an antidote!”
