Chapter 849 - 848: Gu Yuexi Didn’t Retreat? She Must Be Trying to Commit Suicide!

A relaxed and cheerful atmosphere filled the command room.

The marker representing the Southwest Defense Line on the sand table had been casually pushed aside, ignored by everyone. As for the severe consequences that would befall the entire southern battlefield once the Southwest Front was breached by the Sea Demons... what did that have to do with them?!

At most, it meant that after the third defense line collapsed prematurely, the fourth line—composed of Loose Cultivators—wouldn’t be fully prepared. The worst-case scenario was merely the deaths of a few more insignificant Loose Cultivators. As long as they could eliminate Gu Yuexi and that mosquito, this small price was nothing at all.

Zheng Chenguang had even pulled out a small bottle of Spiritual Wine, ready to celebrate the moment Gu Yuexi’s death was confirmed.

"Miss Feng is truly incredible. You’ve mastered the art of borrowing another’s knife to kill," Yang Qingyang chuckled, his tone dripping with flattery. "When this is done, the top credit will definitely be yours."

The others quickly chimed in, showering Feng Shiyu with praise. Even Zheng Chenguang, who usually couldn’t stand her, was no exception.

Feng Shiyu pushed up her glasses without a word, though the corners of her lips curled up slightly. She was clearly brimming with confidence in her scheme.

Li Zi’an leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers gently against the table, his eyes half-closed. As long as Gu Yuexi died amidst the chaos of battle, no one would be the wiser. Even if there really was some powerful faction backing her, they would never be able to trace it back to the Eight Great Clans.

Perfect.

Just as they were about to pop the champagne early...

THUD!

A Li family servant stumbled into the room. His face was deathly pale, and he had completely forgotten to knock.

"Young Master! Something terrible has happened!"

Li Zi’an frowned and scolded him in a deep voice, "What is with this panic? Where are your manners? The sky isn’t falling. Speak slowly."

The servant shivered in fear, hastily swallowing hard to calm his tone. Yet, he still couldn’t suppress the tremble in his voice. "That girl named Gu Yuexi... She didn’t retreat with the City Guard Army! She stayed behind on the Southwest Defense Line!"

"What?!"

Upon hearing this news, all the scions of the Eight Great Clans sprang to their feet in unison. The relaxed expressions on their faces vanished instantly.

Zheng Chenguang leaped out of his chair and bellowed at the top of his lungs, "How is that possible?! Has Gu Yuexi lost her mind? Is she just staying on the Southwest Defense Line all by herself to wait for death instead of retreating with the main force? What on earth is she trying to do?!"

Li Zi’an similarly furrowed his brow, his fingers freezing at the edge of the sand table. After a moment of deep thought, he quickly voiced a theory.

"Could the one remaining on the Southwest Defense Line be Gu Yuexi’s clone? Not long ago, when Gu Yuexi’s Beast Pet—that mosquito—fought against the Jiang Family Grand Elder, it used a Clone Skill that looked indistinguishable from the real thing. There were fifty clones with auras identical to the original; even the Elders couldn’t tell them apart.

"Perhaps Gu Yuexi knows the same Clone Technique. Or maybe her Beast Pet left a clone on the Southwest Defense Line as a decoy, while her true body actually left with the main force long ago."

Li Zi’an frowned and muttered to himself, "But why would she do that? Could it be... she saw through our plan?!"

Feng Shiyu shook her head, her tone resolute. "Impossible. This was just a standard, strategic troop mobilization. It is completely compliant on paper, with zero flaws to be found. Gu Yuexi hasn’t been in Luoping City for long; she’s unfamiliar with the place and the people, so there’s no way she could have noticed anything amiss."

Turning to the Li family servant, she asked seriously, "Are you certain Gu Yuexi didn’t retreat from the Southwest Defense Line? Did the Scout see clearly? Could they have mistaken her for someone else?"

The Li family servant nodded vigorously, his tone extremely certain. "Miss Feng, there is absolutely no mistake.

"On the only route from the Southwest Defense Line to the Northeast Defense Line, we set up a Divine Power detection device in advance specifically to monitor Gu Yuexi’s Divine Power fluctuations. If she had left the Southwest Defense Line, no matter which path she took, we would have detected her immediately.

"However, even after the last squad finished retreating, the device didn’t pick up a single trace of her Divine Power. That is enough to prove that Gu Yuexi is still on the Southwest Defense Line. She hasn’t left at all."

Li Zi’an tapped his fingers against the edge of the sand table, producing soft TAP-TAP sounds as his frown deepened. "This is too strange. If Gu Yuexi isn’t retreating, what is she doing alone on the Southwest Defense Line? She can’t possibly be planning to hold the entire line by herself, can she?"

As soon as he said this, he shook his own head in denial. "Impossible. A Cultivator in the Divinity Transformation Realm could never defend the entire Southwest Defense Line alone."

No one could answer that question.

A heavy silence fell over the command room.

None of them could figure out what Gu Yuexi was trying to achieve with this move. It defied all logic!

After a long while, Yang Qingyang suddenly scratched his head and blurted out an absurd answer. "Could it be that she finds life meaningless and stayed behind on purpose to commit suicide?"

Everyone turned to stare at Yang Qingyang in unison, rolling their eyes.

"What nonsense are you spouting?" Zheng Chenguang scoffed. "She is a young Cultivator with boundless potential and a profound background. She has everything she could ever want; what could she possibly be depressed about? Status, Cultivation Techniques, Cultivation Resources, peerless beauty... She didn’t just get a head start in life, she started at the summit! How brain-dead would she have to be to want to kill herself?! Not to mention, dying at the hands of the Sea Demons means not even leaving behind a complete corpse. What would be the point?!"

Everyone felt that Yang Qingyang’s theory was complete garbage and utterly brainless.

Yet, Yang Qingyang stubbornly stiffened his neck, still convinced that his idea was the most realistic.

"Look, it’s already a fact that Gu Yuexi didn’t leave the Southwest Defense Line, right?

"And it’s also a fact that with the City Guard Army retreating, the Sea Demon Army will immediately press forward, right?

"So the current situation on the Southwest Defense Line is that Gu Yuexi, a Cultivator who has merely just entered the Divinity Transformation Realm, will have to face a massive Sea Demon Army. There’s no debating that either, is there?"

Yang Qingyang paused. Seeing that the others looked thoughtful, he continued, "Forget a Cultivator in the Divinity Transformation Realm like her. Even a Celestial God Realm Cultivator, whose Realm is vastly superior to hers, wouldn’t be guaranteed to survive the onslaught of a Sea Demon Army. Therefore, it is a foregone conclusion that Gu Yuexi is going to die. If throwing her life away like this isn’t intentionally courting death, then what is it? Is that not suicide?!"

After stating his reasoning, Yang Qingyang, fearing he wasn’t persuasive enough, brought up an example.

"I heard that the only son of a certain wealthy Patriarch up north grew up in the lap of luxury and lacked nothing. But he ended up finding life so meaningless that he deliberately went and got a sex-change operation. That Patriarch was so furious he directly disowned the kid, then immediately turned around, took a concubine, and had another baby. Now, no matter the occasion, that Patriarch brings his second son along with him everywhere, just in case.

"See? The minds of second-generation elites work differently from ordinary people anyway. As a scion of an Immortal Sect family, isn’t it perfectly normal that Gu Yuexi might have lost the will to live over some unknown issue and decided to kill herself?"

...