Kenja smiled in satisfaction at his handiwork.

Truthfully, not everything had gone as he had planned, especially Snail’s kleptomaniacal antics. Plus, he had not known that his performance inside the Dragon’s Basin would cause such a huge ruckus outside, alerting everyone to his progress.

The main point he was proud of was that he had intentionally taken Kitamura Bolo’s name as his alias.

He had to use a real disciple’s name to avoid being caught.

He did not gain much from failing the sect entrance exam twenty times, but one thing he did learn was that the examiner’s notebooks were synced with one another by some sort of enchantment.

Because of this, Kenja knew there were many people inside the sect that had a list of every known disciple in the sect along with a short description about them.

Kenja’s true identity was not a member of the sect, nor did he want to involve his other identity, Hirai Hikaru, in something this high profile immediately after joining the sect.

Kenja wanted to attract as little attention onto his female persona as possible.

Since he neither knew the names listed in the sect’s roster, nor which of them were easily recognized, Kenja decided upon one of the few disciples he knew existed in the sect that few should know about, Kitamura Bolo.

Since he came from the newest batch of disciples, very few were aware of his appearance.

Most importantly, even if Kitamura Bolo had learned that someone with his name established this shop, he was a new disciple who had no prior knowledge pertaining to all the disciples in the sect.

In other words, he could only assume it was a different disciple with the same name and not someone using his name to commit fraud.

All this gave Kenja the greatest chance of preventing anyone from seeing through his lie until he was done.

Best of all, he would cause problems for his eternal enemy, the chubby and annoying Kitamura Bolo who swung his belly wherever he pleased and bullied the poor commoners at his whim.

With the unplanned and unexplainable Rusty Robber nonsense thrown into the mix, the entire sect was chasing its own tail because of Kitamura Bolo.

Next to him, he could hear Shizuka and Yoshie whispering to each other.

“Do you think it’s him, Zukie? That Bolo?”

“It has to be. Who else has such an odd name? I can’t believe that useless oaf got in and someone like elder brother was rejected. The heavens are truly blind.”

Yoshie nodded in agreement.

“But it l-looks like he’s in trouble now.”

“Serves him right! He always troubled us and elder brother, so this is just the karma he sowed.”

Kenja secretly beamed at Shizuka whose thoughts aligned perfectly with his own. She was like his protégé, always knowing what he was thinking and reacting as he would.

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It was unlikely for Kitamura Bolo to suffer too much once they realized that he has uninvolved in everything.

But if the elders punished Kitamura Bolo out of anger or, at the least, imprisoned him for a while, then Kenja would consider it a bonus.

After some time, Kaitou Daiki commanded the vice elders, “Summon one of the pillars.”

Logically speaking, Kaitou Daiki deduced that it should be unlikely for there to be a connection amongst all three points—the Rusty Robber, the patsy Migawari Puchi and the real Kitamura Bolo that should still be in the Dragon’s Basin—but his intuition was telling him otherwise.

He decided he needed more information to sift through while the vice elders continued to take roll of all the gathered disciples. Because of the huge number of disciples but only a handful of vice elders, they had yet to finish accounting for everyone.

One of the vice elders took initiative and jumped on his sword before soaring two dozen meters up the Spout. He stopped in front of a cave and began forming seals with his hand. Upon forming the final seal, blue qi gathered at his fingertip with which he wrote several symbols onto the cave door.

With this, he requested the presence of the pillar’s will that was originally birthed from this cave.

After being relocated to the Dragon’s Basin, the pillars retained an invisible connection to their birthplace through the water pathways under the sect. In this way, it was possible for the elders and vice elders to communicate with them without traveling to the Dragon’s Basin.

Kaitou Daiki could inquire one of the pillars about Kitamura Bolo without disturbing his practice.

And because this specific will had bestowed his acknowledgment upon the vice elder, the pillar should be more receptive to his summons.

The vice elder floated solemnly in front of the door, awaiting a response.

A response did not come.

The vice elder smiled nervously back at the elders and vice elders, embarrassed. For there to be no response, it was equivalent to the pillar completely ignoring him.

Kaitou Daiki’s eyes narrowed, but he did not rebuke the vice elder for wasting their time. He merely glanced at a another vice elder.

The second vice elder soared upwards and around to the Spout’s second face, stopping in front of a different cave and repeating the same process.

A response still did not come.

Kaitou Daiki’s face darkened. An electric current visibly surged across his bald head, making the vice elders and the twins recoil backwards.

Kenja, on the other hand, leaned forward in amazement. He could only remark at how cool it looked to have yellow sparks surge across one’s skin.

Was this also something gained from learning a lightning-based breathing technique?

“All of you, go try,” barked Kaitou Daiki.

The pillars were spirits birthed from rocks. They received soul wisps from the past elders. In this way, the spirits gained the personality and memories of the now-deceased former elders.

As a result, the wills had some seniority over the present elders based on their history, but they were also lower in status than the present elders.

This placed the Six Elders in an uncomfortable situation as they could command the pillars as they wished, but they had to retain a deferential attitude when facing them.

It was like hiring one’s father as an employee for one’s business. It was an unbearable situation for both parties.

For the First Elder who disliked being undermined, he hated dealing with these ancient rocks that would lord their legacies over his head. And their snobbish attitudes often made things difficult for him, like right now for example, when he wanted to summon one to ask about Kitamura Bolo.

The two pillars had intentionally ignored the first two summon requests.

Eight more vice elders leapt onto their swords and flew to different caves before repeating a summon request.

Nothing happened.

This time, the four non-snoring elders wore baffled expressions.

One or two ignoring their summons was not unexpected, but it was improbable that all the pillars would ignore them.

The First, Third, Fourth and Sixth Elders flew to their respective caves and repeated the same summoning process.

Kenja could see the First Elder’s cave illicit no response.

Seconds later, the other three elders returned with solemn expressions. It was clear none of them had received a response.

“Something’s happened at the Dragon’s Basin!”