"Hello, there, which faction are you from, brother?" said someone from Han Xuhan's back, his voice filled with doubt.

Han Xuhan winced and turned around slowly. No matter how chaotic the situation was in the Stardust Sect, someone was bound to acknowledge his unfamiliar face eventually.

Plastering an unfriendly look on his face, Han Xuhan said with a snort, "Not the Phoenix faction, if that's what you're looking for."

The guy who had stopped him chuckled at that reply and punched his shoulder lightly.

"With how fragile their position has grown, I wouldn't reveal that I belong to their faction even if it was the truth. Where are you going, by the way? The third contest is taking place over there on the other side of the ring," he said, pointing to the distant crowd.

"Shen Mi owes me some spirit stones. Since their faction is going to be dethroned, I thought I should ask for my money before they end up spending all of it," Han Xuhan replied, his countenance rather insidious.

It made the guy's eyebrows jump. No matter how bad the situation was, it was a bit heartless to go ask for payments of old debts to someone in trouble, especially so when the said debtor was a pretty young lady who had just rushed away with tears in her eyes.

There was no need to be this vicious in an issue of internal strife between peers. All of them were disciples of the same sect. What good could come out of needless antagonistic behavior?

This was not the time to settle personal debts. This was the time to contemplate the greater good, to think what would get their sect across this round of the tournament. Any smart man would know not to get all chummy with a peer who couldn't understand the limits to pushing boundaries.

With a fake smile on his face, the young man walked off, leaving Han Xuhan to attend to his business.

Turning around once more, Han Xuhan hurried on his way following Shen Mi's tracks. She took a wide detour to avoid meeting anybody, which suited his purpose perfectly. Gradually, they left the vicinity of the general populace, walking further and further toward the outer edge of the second ring.

The moment she reached the edge, Han Xuhan realized why the narrow, floating bridges connecting the three ring-shaped islands didn't look used.

Shen Mi simply stepped forward on empty air...and didn't fall down into the sea.

As if an invisible force was pushing against her soles, holding her body up in the air, she walked across the void between the middle ring and outer ring casually. It didn't even seem like she was casting a spell. Han Xuhan couldn't sense any movements in qi nearby as he watched her reach the outer ring and jog towards the barracks.

So this was how they crossed from one island ring to another?

Han Xuhan took a moment to digest the scene. This method of walking on air closely resembled how Qing Ya relied on the buoyancy of the air to stay afloat, moving freely in any direction.

Unfortunately for him, this meant that he could no longer follow her trail. There wasn't a bridge nearby to help him move over to the outer island ring.

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Quickly, he summoned Tun Shi Tian and ordered, "Follow that girl. Be sneaky about it. All you need to find out is which house she enters."

Tun Shi Tian saluted like a devoted soldier and hurtled towards the outer island ring, using the neatly planted trees on the edge of the islands to hide himself from wandering eyes.

"Damn, this bird really became obedient after sensing genuine malice..." Han Xuhan muttered, watching Tun Shi Tian's flawless execution of the mission.

He himself wasn't planning on sitting around doing nothing. He trekked along the edge of the middle ring to look for one of the floating bridges. It didn't take long to locate one. But it proved to be an arduous task to reach it. The ring's constant rotations in random directions were one factor, which was complemented by the discovery that the bridges weren't stagnant in their positions either. Try as he might, he couldn't figure out any pattern to the spinning. What flummoxed him even more was the fact that despite the ceaseless, fast spinning, none of the occupants of the islands, including him, felt any nausea, motion sickness, or a sense of imbalance.

In fact, it didn't even register in his senses that the ground he was walking on was moving itself. Perhaps the technique behind this supermassive island structure was emulating the planet's spinning, or the movement of an airplane.

Finally reaching a bridge, he hopped onto it and cautiously crossed the dozen-meter-wide expanse. Indeed, even on top of the bridge, he couldn't sense whether it was moving or not. Unless the bridge suddenly sped up, it would be difficult to discern with his eyes as well.

The moment he reached the other side, he surveyed the region behind him, hoping that no one had seen him use the bridge. Thankfully, due to its odd structure, the breadth of the island was enormous, to begin with, and it wasn't a full flat expanse either. Training courses, duel stages, large fortified tents, plenty of obstacles were in the middle ring to block a full 360° range of vision.

Relieved after his survey, Han Xuhan turned around...and found himself surrounded by three disciples of the Stardust Sect. None of them seemed friendly, considering the weapons they were pointing at his face.

One male, the other two females, all three of them were exuding an aura fairly above his own cultivation base.

Han Xuhan immediately knew not to do anything that involved violence at the moment. That would just backfire on him, not to mention that he was standing right at the inner edge of the outer island. The bridge behind him had already shifted several meters away. He would fall straight down if he took one wrong step.

"Brother Ao is looking for you three," Xuhan said without missing a beat. The three disciples of the Stardust sect looked unperturbed, though.

"You're an outsider," one of them replied, making the situation clearer for Xuhan.

"Yeah, I know. That doesn't stop Brother Ao from looking for you," he retorted calmly, as if stating the obvious.

For a brief fraction of a moment, uncertainty flashed in their eyes as their gazes flickered toward the middle ring behind him.

"Brother Ao can afford to wait. For now, you need to come with us. Put your hands forward," one of them said with a hint of aggression in her tone.

Han Xuhan snorted. "To let you cuff me? Why would I do that?"

"Do you understand your position here, right now? We can just kick you to another sect, or maybe even down to the sea as long as we want to. You're not gonna escape with that puny cultivation base."

Han Xuhan nodded at that answer.

"Very well explained. But for you to be able to attack me, you need to be members of the defense team of this sect. Are you?"

The rules of this event were quite clear.

Assaults on the invasion team without prior provocation were not permitted. This was one of the reasons why Han Xuhan had the guts to walk around in enemy territory so confidently. No matter how numerous or powerful the disciples of the Stardust sect were, his opponents were only ten in number.

"That's funny," said the girl with a somewhat insidious smile. Han Xuhan found her smile rather familiar. It was a smile he himself wore often.

"Unfortunately for you, we haven't yet decided to form a defense team due to the political problems among our factions. But now that we've managed to catch an invader sneaking around, I suppose we have no choice but to do so. Alright, I declare me and my two martial brothers here as members of the defense team of the Stardust Sect. Now, if you don't want to get kicked between the legs, surrender."

The seamless, fluent declaration made Han Xuhan's brows jump up.

Hoh...seems like the Crimson Snow Sect's defense team wasn't the only one who had decided to take advantage of the loopholes in the rules of the new event. And these guys had chosen quite a different method of doing that as well.

Unlike an invasion team of powerful, well-known sects like the Abyss Guild, the disciples of most other sects would choose to execute their invasion missions in secret. This would make it difficult for the defense teams to track down the invaders and attack them before they could find out the traces of the treasure hidden on their islands.

Other than the members of the defense teams, no one could actively make trouble with the members of the invasion teams.

So the disciples of the Stardust Sect had chosen this sneaky method to delay their selection of members for their defense team. Once any disciple of their sect managed to identify an invader on their island, they could just call everybody nearby to beat him up while declaring themselves members of the defense team that had been elected on the spot.

So damned smart!

With a helpless smile, Han Xuhan put his arms forward, surrendering to their successful scheme. He didn't want to get beaten up.

But the moment one of them approached him to tie his hands up, a lightbulb lit up in his mind.

He retracted his hands and said with a warm smile, "None of you three are members of the Phoenix Faction. It doesn't make sense to allow you insignificant disciples to make such important decisions that can affect your entire sect. So unless I see an influential disciple of the Phoenix Faction ratifying your decisions to become members of the defense team, it seems like you cannot touch me."