Chapter 268: “Hidden Cloud Peak (4)”
The youths had been jittery ever since they’ve entered the Hidden Cloud Peak. When they saw the expansive beds of a multitude varieties of herbs everywhere around them, they became overcome with awe. They started to look around for rare herbs that they had heard of, exclaiming loudly as they identified them, seemingly trying their best to impress the Hidden Cloud Peak disciple of their “wide knowledge”.
Besides childish and moronic, Jun Wu Xie could not find any other words to describe these lambs on their way to slaughter.
The Hidden Cloud Peak disciple led them to their living quarters. The Hidden Cloud Peak lived up to its name as the second largest peak. The disciples’ living quarters were extremely spacious and a scattering of several disciples were walking across the huge courtyard with their heads lowered, showing no interest in the new batch of junior fellow disciples just accepted into Hidden Cloud Peak.
The disciples of the Hidden Cloud Peak were well treated, and each disciple was assigned an individual room. Not even disciples of Qin Yue himself enjoyed such privileges in their living quarters. In Qing Yun Clan, besides for Elders and the privileged few specially granted by the Sovereign himself, a single room was usually shared by two or three disciples.
Walking into their own rooms, the group of youths were laughing at the luxurious quarters they were to enjoy, silently thinking their fortunes had really turned around.
Jun Wu Xie’s room was next to Qiao Chu’s, situated at the northern edge of the quarters. Their rooms were next to a pond and it was decorated with artificial mountains, and it looked rather elegant.
Sitting on a chair in the room, Jun Wu Xie’s eyes scanned the room. The beddings were new, although they were of rather bad quality, they were at least clean. She had not sat down for long before a slight frown appeared on her face.
A light familiar scent of blood swirled below her nose. The smell was very faint, almost too faint to be noticed. If not for her unusually keen sense of smell, she would not have noticed it at all.
Following the hated scent, Jun Wu Xie came to stand before the table next to the bed. The paint on a corner of the table was new, its colour a slightly brighter shade than the rest. Jun Wu Xie retrieved a small dagger from her cloth bag and scraped off the paint in that corner. The orange paint flaked off bit by bit and the original wood was revealed. Looking at it closely, within the wood itself, it was stained with the darker shade of blood. The bloodstain looked rather recent when blood had dripped on the table and seeped into the wood staining it a dark shade of red, and it was impossible to wash off.
“This is interesting.” Jun Wu Xie sat back on the chair and stared at the carelessly covered bloodstain and her cold eyes flashed.
The Hidden Cloud Peak was as dangerous as she had heard. The previous occupant of this room did not die too long ago, or the scent of blood would have completely dissipated.
Ke Cang Ju accepted a large number of disciples on the fifteenth of every month. But she had secretly observed earlier within the living quarters of the disciples, there were less than two hundred of them when added up. According to Ke Cang Ju’s acceptance of thirty disciples every month, the numbers did not add up, not even when you multiply it by ten.
Judging from Ke Cang Ju’s way of accepting disciples this time round, he had accepted her and Qiao Chu openly, but he had also secretly got his disciples to gather almost another thirty rejected candidates after the assessment and brought them back to the Hidden Cloud Peak.
If Ke Cang Ju had done it the same way all this while, others would not see anything suspicious about the Hidden Cloud Peak.
After all, from what many on the outside can see, the Hidden Cloud Peak did not have that many disciples.
All traces of their existence were erased, they were thorough in their deceit.
Jun Wu Xie got up, and took out a sealed porcelain bottle. She heaped the scraped paint together into a tiny heap and poured a tiny bit of the liquid from the bottle onto it. The dry paint dissolved gradually and Jun Wu Xie smeared the paint across gently with the bottom of the bottle, and recoated the corner she had scraped off with the paint. In a moment, it was restored to look as it had before.