The days were ticking by, and Xiao had yet to make any move. Anoteros was certain that this secret realm was going to be an event in the crimson-eyed youth’s script, so although simultaneously being distracted and led astray by Yin, Shu had been tasked with keeping an eye on Xiao.

Naturally, Yin was also doing the same, and now, Lihua, Pluma and Mumin were also on this job. However, the protagonist had not budged yet, presumably waiting for when the core disciples would lead the group to the outside.

As of right now, the sole outer disciple of the group was spending nearly every hour of every day sitting in meditation, practising the secret technique without pause. His sheer focus and patience were impressive to look at.

‘No wonder the author just went ahead and said that a few days passed instead of providing any details…’ in his mind, however, he was feeling a fair bit impatient. What had been a mere few words in the novel were multiple full days for him, and he had nothing better to do than to cultivate.

In truth, he had already mastered the sword cultivation technique he had picked up. With the incredible natural capabilities of a Chen descendant. Such a simplistic weapon cultivation technique posed no problems. His progress had remained swift and smooth the whole way without a single bump in the road or bottleneck.

He was wholeheartedly practising the secret technique. It was important that he could stay within the realm for as long as possible, and he did not know how that had gone for ‘Novel Xiao’ since the author had just skipped over that part entirely and just off-handedly mentioned the secret technique later down the line.

As such, he simply went all in on using it.

It wasn’t like he had anything else to do. Ai had not been selected to enter the secret realm, so he basically knew no one, or at least, not well enough to strike up conversations with them.

Apart from Yin and the two core disciples, who had their names mentioned in the book, most of those people had basically been cardboard cut-outs. They had served basically no purpose in the story. Well, they could be used to show how powerful an enemy was, sometimes.

He inwardly sighed. The dark horse, Edrick, was probably having more fun than he was right now…

And indeed, Anoteros was currently sneaking through the woods accompanied by his invisible servant. Edrick had reached the point where he understood and could speak some words of the Underwood tongue, nothing grandiose, but Linguistics had come into play to allow him to miraculously comprehend some of those despite the frankly poor odds.

Right now, he and Daklaiel were scouring the woods. His servant was helping him avoid other Underwood Elves, as they were capable of spotting invisible people far more easily.

What they were doing was simple.

Edrick now had an Underwood Elf servant. This was already tremendous as he could be used to begin to secure a foothold in one village. Once Anoteros could speak their language fluently with the backing of a trusted member, establishing trade relations would be possible. From there, he would be able to contact other villages until he was on friendly terms with all Underwood Elves.

However, he did not want to bet on just that to secure their trust.

They were a sapient species that had been hunted down by humans for centuries at this point. Even if it only occurred once every fifty years, it was only natural that they had a certain hatred of humankind.

So, of course, the best way to show how trustworthy a person he was, was to ‘team-up’ with an Underwood Elf, and hunt down the other disciples who were trying to hunt the elves, bring their corpses back as proof and with the testimony of Daklaiel--This should certainly make them reconsider at least him.

Originally, Anoteros had not planned to slaughter disciples from righteous sects like this, but if found out, he could always claim that, after discovering the sapience of the Underwood Elves, he attempted to convince the others to stop unjustly hunting them down, but they declined, forcing him to act. He was an Elt anyway, they would have to accept his version of events as the other versions would be in a grave.

Now that Daklaiel knew that this was the year of invasion, he sought tracks that were unfamiliar to him to find humans, guiding his master towards them.

Obviously, they didn’t run into a solitary disciple. Only those with bad intentions moved alone. All others moved in groups.

Three people wearing golden robes were found by Daklaiel.

Edrick had done his homework and recognised them as inner disciples from Golden Destiny Sect. Their main theme, as was obvious, was gold.

All of their techniques featured this element within them, but this meant that the type of cultivator that a disciple could be wasn’t obvious, unlike with the Myriad-Arm Sect.

Body, weapon, spell and such were a possibility here, and Edrick was far from being skilled enough to make guesses from scanning their inner energies.

But there was a way to nullify this problem, which was to simply kill them all before they could even fight back.

When it came to suffering a sneak attack at the hands of Edrick, only a body cultivator could have a chance to survive it. Even then, Edrick had massive advantages when it came to physical strength, so even an accomplished inner disciple practising a body cultivation technique could easily die in one blow.

The problem was that with three of them, even with Daklaiel’s assistance, one would have more time to react than the other two. Anoteros was unwilling to let any of them escape, but chasing one down through the woods could attract unwanted attention…

He signalled something to his servant, and the invisible elf slithered away to fulfil the command. Meanwhile, Anoteros stalked and listened to the three disciples.

“-I hear that Underwood Elf females are stunning to look at!”

“And? How does that matter? Are you suggesting something here?”

“I am just making small talk…”

“Anyway, we should only target the males. Their bodies are stronger and thus, more effective for what we want them”

The three were having a frankly boring conversation.

One of them seemed to have unlawful ideas about the female elves, another stood with his back straight, clearly not appreciating what his fellow was suggesting, and the third was just speaking about practicality.

Clearly, the second one was wholly unaware that the Underwood Elves were sapient. With the way he was acting, he would be against hunting them if he knew.

As for the other two… It was harder to say. One would certainly hope that the first one knew... Otherwise, he was suggesting bedding what he believed were beasts. The third one seemed to only care about the value of what they could collect.

The sound of a stampeding herd rumbled in the distance.

‘Already? He is quite efficient’

Daklaiel had lured a group of Earth-Carrying Boars over. The aggressive beasts, not seeing the one who had provoked them anymore, seamlessly decided to attack the three golden-robed men instead, redirecting their ire without a second thought.

Edrick focused as the two sides were about to clash…