The golden core elder didn't believe the promise made by the speaker on the other side of the communication talisman.
She asked in anger, "Do you take me for a fool? Do you think that I do not know that you will discard me after you have won and have no use for me?"
The voice assured her by saying, "You don't have to worry about that. I am a man of my word. Besides, I have also sworn an oath by the Ethera tree."
This claim only made the golden core elder scoff and say, "I don't doubt you. The people I doubt are the people of your sect."
"So you've sworn an oath. That doesn't mean that the oath can't be broken. It only means that the consequences for breaking the oath will be severe or even lethal. If you gain more by breaking the oath, you will do so."
"Besides, you are the one who swore the oath, not one of the five nascent soul patriarchs of your sect. You're just one of the more than 50 golden core elders in your sect. I'm sure that your sect can give you up in exchange for killing me and uprooting the last remnants of the Purple Flower sect."
The voice on the other end couldn't argue against this claim or deny it. So its speaker chose to relent and say, "I can't give you the cultivation technique so soon. You haven't done enough to be worthy of it. But I can make the decision to give it to you earlier after you've contributed enough to our course."
The golden core elder said, "What do you want me to do to contribute then? I can do nearly anything as long as it doesn't involve confronting my patriarch."
The voice chuckled and said, "There is no need to go that far. We can handle your patriarch. What we want from you is inside information. The more important the information, the better."
"But preventing the Blood Skull sect from taking part in this war is still the most important mission. If you can make the exchange program turn sour and make the Blood Skull sect give up on your sect, then you would have also prevented the other sects in the region from helping. This would definitely qualify you for the cultivation technique."
The golden core elder said, "Fine. Remember your words and promise."
The voice replied, "I will remember. You should also remember that I am a man of my word."
The golden core elder didn't say anything about that claim. She only sneered to herself. She clearly didn't believe what he said, but she didn't want to offend him.
Then she said, "Good for you. Anyway, I have to go. I'll reach out to you when I have news."
The voice said, "Good luck."
After that, the communication talisman was deactivated.
The golden core elder looked around again. It was only after checking to make sure that she hadn't been spotted that she chose to return.
But before returning, she changed her attire in order to look different. And after she began to return, she chose to return from another direction.
Lady Evergreen watched her leave with a faint smile of triumph on her face.
She said to herself, "Excellent. Truly excellent."
"I mean, it is a bad thing that there is a traitor in the Purple Flower sect, but my performance in discovering this traitor is excellent and impeccable. Sword Flash couldn't have done a better job himself."
Then she thought to herself, "What is her name again? Purple Flower, is it? To be honest, she was the highest on my list of likely traitors."
"These unfeeling people who cultivate only their energy are the most likely people to betray. There is also the fact that she is about to make the attempt to advance to the fifth mortal coil and needs all the help that she can have."
The identity of the traitor is Purple Flower. She is the one who asked Arthur to drop his weapons for inspection and wanted to convince the patriarch of the sect to force Arthur to do so.
She is the only golden core elder of the Purple Flower sect at the ninth transformation. This makes her the strongest in the sect.
Purple Flower has reached the limit of the fourth mortal coil. But she is not willing to attempt to break through to the fifth mortal coil because she is not confident in her chances of success.
The chances of success of everyone attempting to advance to the fifth mortal coil are generally very low. But her chances are lower than normal because she only cultivated her energy, not her body.
Because her body is weak, her chances of success will be less than 10‰. This is because her body can give out before her soul is liberated from her body.
Many people before her have survived the process despite the odds against them. The current patriarch of the Purple Flower sect is a clear example of this.
But the current patriarch was also the only one in the history of the sect to forge a perfect foundation and a perfect golden core, so Purple Flower can't compare herself to the patriarch.
There is also the fact that since the current patriarch advanced to the fifth mortal coil, two more people in the sect have made the attempt to advance to the fifth mortal coil and have failed.
All of these things have undermined her confidence in herself. So she decided to try her best to improve her chances.
Unfortunately for her, her sect can't help her solve this problem. After all, there is nothing they can do about their crippled cultivation technique.
Not even the shortcut that the patriarch took to forge her body could help her. In fact, that shortcut would only make things worse for her because the rank 5 body forging cultivation technique that the patriarch used is not compatible with their energy refining cultivation technique.