With a wave of his hand, he caught the jade slip thrown by Bai Xinyao. After probing it with his divine sense, he understood his mission.
Inside was a detailed map of the vicinity, with three fixed routes. These were the places he had to patrol in the next ten days.
These routes covered a hundred miles around the side of Red Rock Mountain, a considerable area. Among them was also a low-grade spirit stone mine, which required key surveillance.
Then he looked at the ten Qi Refining disciples beside him, and with a sweep of his divine sense, he saw their cultivation levels.
All of these people had late-stage Qi Refining strength, and two of them had already reached the peak of Qi Refining.
Zhang Ling looked at these disciples for a few moments before asking, "Who is the team leader of this squad?"
"Reporting to Senior, this junior is Du Hao, temporarily serving as the captain of the thirteenth squad." A man who looked to be about fifty years old, his face already showing signs of age, quickly stepped out of the group and said respectfully.
Scanning the man, he was indeed one of the Qi Refining peak cultivators.
Zhang Ling nodded. According to the information he had received, these cultivators were mostly rogue cultivators recruited from Yanhua City.
Seeing that this person was much older than him, although he had reached the peak of Qi Refining, it could be basically concluded that this person could not establish a foundation. At such an age, the energy and blood in his body had already begun to decline.
He wondered if this rather old cultivator still held the determination to establish a foundation.
There were also remaining male and female cultivators, whose ages were about the same as his. Then Zhang Ling asked this person to tell him about the specific matters of the patrol mission.
Du Hao naturally did not dare to neglect and began to explain. After that, he had these people introduce themselves one by one. After a quarter of an hour, he led them to begin the patrol.
Although these people were not strong, they would be his subordinates for a long time to come, so he couldn't be completely ignorant of them.
That would also be detrimental to the patrol mission. Zhang Ling also briefly introduced himself to these people.
Thus, after the patrol mission began, they used the Wind Control Technique to travel while fully opening their divine senses to patrol the surroundings.
After two hours, Zhang Ling led them to temporarily sit and rest under an earthen slope to recover their consumed spiritual power.
Although Zhang Ling himself didn't consume much in this short period, these Qi Refining disciples had consumed most of theirs, especially their divine sense.
Patrol missions also have risks, and now is still the time when the Alien Demon race is invading. He couldn't be careless.
In fact, regarding the patrol matters that Du Hao had said not long ago, some Foundation Establishment cultivators, in order to reduce pressure, generally let these Qi Refining cultivators spread out and each take charge of a small part of the area.
Zhang Ling naturally knew that this was also a way to be lazy, and he had thought of this.
It's just that he had just accepted the patrol mission and was not very familiar with this place. Leading these disciples on patrol was firstly to familiarize himself with the environment, and secondly, to use his divine sense, which was stronger than that of Qi Refining cultivators, to patrol and avoid missing any lurkers.
In this way, six days passed peacefully and boringly. The ten Qi Refining disciples he led also gradually relaxed.
At the beginning, these people were a little timid, but after discovering that this Foundation Establishment senior of his had no airs, they also began to call him Martial Uncle or Martial Granduncle.
From time to time, they would also ask some questions about cultivation, which Zhang Ling answered one by one. After all, the patrol mission was boring, and having someone to talk to could also relieve some of the boredom.
In conversations with these Qi Refining disciples, he also learned more about them. Most of them came from rogue cultivator backgrounds. They took on missions to earn merit points from Yanhua Immortal City.
From these people, he also learned something about Yanhua City. It was not far from this immortal city, and he planned to go to this immortal city to take a look when he had time.
...
In the blink of an eye, it was the ninth day of his patrol. This afternoon, Zhang Ling was closing his eyes and resting under a large tree when he suddenly opened his eyes and stood up.
Then, a white light flashed in front of him, and a sound transmission talisman arrived. Seeing this, his expression became serious. He reached out and grabbed the sound transmission talisman, checking the information inside.
After reading the information, Zhang Ling released the flying boat without hesitation. In a flash, he had stepped onto the enlarged flying boat. Under his control, it flew towards the direction from which the sound transmission talisman had come.
This was a sound transmission talisman sent by his subordinates, which only said that they had encountered a monster attack. It seemed to have been sent in a hurry.
Zhang Ling drove the flying boat quickly towards the scene of the incident.
Not long ago, he had let these disciples patrol in pairs scattered within ten miles, intending to be lazy, but he didn't expect that something really happened. He sighed helplessly in his heart.
Before long, he came to a small river. The sound of fighting came from ahead. With a sweep of his divine sense, he saw the movements ahead clearly.
Thirty feet away, a man and a woman, two Qi Refining disciples, were fighting with a large snake emitting black gas.
The two stood nervously together, holding up a red shield in front of them. While retreating, they controlled two magical artifacts to attack the giant snake.
The two were both at the eighth level of Qi Refining, but the giant snake confronting them seemed a little strange in his divine sense.
This giant snake was forty to fifty feet long. With a flash of black light in its divine sense, it sprayed out a stream of black liquid. The power of the two people's magical artifacts seemed to be greatly reduced when they touched the snake venom.
This monster actually had peak first-order strength.
For a time, the two could only barely resist. Zhang Ling instantly arrived above the two. He saw him put his hands together, and a ball of earthy yellow light shot out.
In the blink of an eye, it landed on the giant snake's head. Suddenly, the light burst and formed a layer of pale yellow light curtain covering the giant snake's whole body.
The giant snake was raising its upper body, opening its bloody mouth as if to spew snake venom.
When illuminated by the yellow light curtain, it suddenly stiffened, and the snake's body slammed heavily on the ground. Then, a flash of light appeared on the side of the snake's head, and a flying sword as thin as a cicada's wing pierced through the giant snake's head, leaving a small hole in it.
This not-weak monster was instantly killed by him. After the giant snake died, the man and woman reacted and bowed to him to thank him.
"Thank you for saving our lives, Martial Uncle Zhang."
"How could there be such a monster?" Zhang Ling put away the flying boat, landed in front of the two, and frowned.
Within a few hundred miles of Red Rock Mountain, cultivators often clear out monsters. Even the shadows of ordinary monsters are hard to see. How could such a first-order monster appear?
"Martial Uncle Zhang, we don't know either. We were patrolling along this small river before. When we walked here, this giant snake suddenly rushed out of the water and attacked us..."
After listening to the two people's simple narration, Zhang Ling fully opened his divine sense and instantly extended it to a hundred feet, carefully sensing it. He didn't find anything unusual, nor did he encounter other monsters.
Then, he collected the monster's body and carefully checked the path they had patrolled before, even looking at the small river next to it several times, but found nothing.
Having found nothing, Zhang Ling then summoned the ten Qi Refining cultivators under his command and asked about their situation. Apart from these two encountering a monster attack, the others had found nothing.
He only took it as an accident and no longer cared about it. Then, he led them to continue patrolling.
He planned to patrol the area he was responsible for again to avoid any omissions.
