"Um, something seems wrong."

  Lights were flashing randomly in her big eyes. Meteorite Crystal was trying hard to analyze and calculate at a thinking speed that was tens of millions of times faster than that of ordinary people. However, with the thinking mode of her kind of intelligent life, she was slowly showing a tendency to fall into an endless loop...

  "I, I'll go ask Sister Bing."

  Shaking her dizzy little head, Meteorite Crystal bumped into Chen Yue's chest. With a flash of faint light, she disappeared.

  His eyes suddenly narrowed. Chen Yue's fingers quickly touched his chest like lightning, and then stopped abruptly. A bitter smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. Chen Yue slowly took out the blue-striped card on his chest and sent his mind into the subspace. Immediately, he saw Meteorite Crystal flying around the Frozen Rabbit.

  Slowly exhaling a breath, as if he had also exhaled the shock in his heart, Chen Yue's expression relaxed a bit. This little thing could even enter his subspace, which showed how extraordinary she was as the crystallization of wisdom of the ancient civilization.

  "However, in this way, the risk of exposure is also avoided." After thinking about it, Chen Yue immediately felt relieved.

  Since then, the matter of the ancient ruin had finally come to an end, and there was no longer any need to stay. Chen Yue left the core area with the little thing who refused to come out of the subspace and Thorne.

  Although Meteorite Crystal had left, which meant that the ruin had lost its controller, as long as there was still energy, the extreme cold in the core area wouldn't stop, and not many people would be able to enter. And those who could enter the core area, seeing such a harsh environment, probably wouldn't persevere. Even if they persevered and saw the ordinary snowfield on the surface, they wouldn't think that there was an ancient ruin hundreds of meters under the snow.

  Perhaps only those with definite information would persevere. However, of the few people who knew about the ancient ruin, some were dead and some were teleported away. In the Sky Leaf Empire, only Chen Yue and Thorne knew this secret.

  Chen Yue naturally wouldn't take the initiative to reveal this secret. He had already planned to regard this place as a backup base. As for Thorne, having obtained a large sum of wealth, he was already extremely excited. With this money, the Snow Goose Mercenary Group no longer needed to live the previous adventurous life of licking blood from the edge of a knife.

  However, the sudden wealth was too eye-catching. Especially since the Snow Goose Mercenary Group had obtained such wealth just after coming down from the Ace Mountains, it would instead bring disasters and attract countless covetous eyes to the Ace Mountains.

  After some discussion between the two, Chen Yue returned to the Capital of Freedom first, while Thorne stayed nearby to try his best to calm down the treasure incident in the Ace Mountains. After everything was over, he would come to the Capital of Freedom to find Chen Yue and use Chen Yue's identity as an apostle to launder money openly. Meanwhile, the Snow Goose Mercenary Group could also completely get rid of its previous life and instead live a wealthy life in the Capital of Freedom.

  After the discussion was settled, Chen Yue went down the mountain overnight. When he went back, he didn't need to walk like when he came. After renting a carriage, Chen Yue arrived at a nearby small city in just half a day. After renting a flying beast, he didn't fly directly to the Capital of Freedom. The distance between here and the Capital of Freedom was too far. If he only took the flying beast, by the time he arrived at the Capital of Freedom, the time for the gambling fight would probably have passed long ago.

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  He rushed to the big city where the apostles were looking for him at the fastest speed and found those apostles. Fortunately, among the three apostles, there was an old acquaintance - Moya, which saved him a lot of trouble in explaining.

  Originally, after Chen Yue hadn't returned for a long time, people like Moya who usually had a good relationship with him immediately became worried. Especially the Ling Yue'er sisters were as anxious as ants on a hot pan. Ling Yue'er even secretly complained to her sister several times, thinking that she shouldn't have indulged Chen Yue and let him go to train alone.

  Ling Zhu'er could only smile bitterly. She could understand her sister's thoughts. Such complaints were actually manifestations of extreme worry. Therefore, the relationship between the two sisters didn't have any cracks because of this.

  Originally, for apostles, time wasn't a big problem. So even if some people were worried, it didn't cause a big stir.

  However, ten days ago, the return of West and the other two people, as well as the return of the deacon, Cless Nor, who hadn't returned to the Apostle Association for hundreds of years, caused a huge uproar.

  You should know how noble the status of a deacon was. For them, whose lives were extremely long, time was meaningless. Therefore, deacons often went out for months or even years. Anyway, with their strength, they were all top-notch on the entire continent, and they didn't need to worry about their safety at all. Although the Sky Leaf Empire nominally had three deacons, the three deacons usually took turns to preside over affairs, with a cycle of one hundred years. This hundred years was when Venia was in charge of affairs. Logically speaking, Cless Nor had no need to come to the association and accept Venia's nominal jurisdiction.

  For a while, Cless Nor's return attracted everyone's attention, and many people guessed that he would take some major actions.

  And Cless Nor's actions completely met people's expectations.

  The first thing he did was to recall the other two deacons and clearly regarded himself as the leader.

  Apostles had their own ways of communication. Within three days, Venia and another deacon returned to the Capital of Freedom one after another.

  Immediately after that, Cless Nor brought up the gambling agreement between West and Chen Yue to decide the candidate for the disciple.

  Venia had an agreement with him before, so she naturally wouldn't refuse. With the consent of the two of them, the other deacon could only agree to this resolution.

  However, after learning that Chen Yue had been missing for more than four months, that deacon also put forward an additional condition. That was, if the gambling fight between Chen Yue and West couldn't be held as scheduled or if neither side could determine the winner, then the candidate for the disciple must be designated by him, and the other two couldn't object.

  Helplessly, Venia and Cless Nor could only agree.

  In this way, what was originally a two-sided struggle suddenly turned into a three-way melee. As soon as this news spread, the entire Apostle Association was immediately in an uproar.

  At this time, Venia just learned that Chen Yue had been missing for more than four months, and her face immediately became extremely ugly. Of course, she wouldn't think that Chen Yue was afraid of the fight and ran away. However, if an accident caused the third deacon to benefit, it wasn't what she wanted to see.

  At this time, rumors extremely unfavorable to Chen Yue also spread within the Apostle Association, saying that he was as timid as a mouse and deliberately went missing because he was afraid of the gambling fight in the trial place. The rumors were so vivid that it seemed as if the people spreading them had heard it with their own ears.

  Chen Yue's name also became notorious in no time.

  In such an environment, Venia couldn't sit still anymore. After asking clearly about the place where Chen Yue disappeared and the possible places he might go to, she immediately used the authority of a deacon to send a large number of apostles to search for him and even used several sets of expensive positioning devices at all costs.

  On this issue, Cless Nor, who also didn't want others to reap the benefits, also rarely stood on the same side as Venia, which was why such a large-scale search team was sent out.

  Listening to Moya tell the whole story of the incident, Chen Yue didn't say a word. He sat there steadily, his eyes as calm as water, but his whole body exuded an imposing manner as solemn as a mountain. Even Moya, who was usually slow-witted, sensitively sensed the impending storm.

  The next day, through the positioning device, Chen Yue returned to the Capital of Freedom in the first place. At this time, there were less than ten days left before the date of the gambling fight.