Flowing Stream City was about a two day journey away from the Heaven Supression City. But Rein and his group were going to use a great beast to pull their carriage, so it was not going to take that long for them. This great beast was tamed by the sect which most of the time was only possible if that beast was already tamed before awakening as a great beast.
So with that beast pulling their carriage, it took Rein's group only about 10 hours to reach the city. It was still a long journey but 10 hours was a great improvement if compared to the 36-40 hours that it would have normally taken.
Before entering the city Rein put away the carriage inside his storage unit and also asked the great beast to hide in the forest close to the city. Taking the carriage to enter the city would cause a commotion which might alert the evil cultivators or the great beast. And if someone was trying to hide something in the city, being anonymous would help them in discovering it.
So Rein was not going to use his identity as a disciple of the Divine Scale Pavillion to her favourable treatment.
So the five of them entered the city without attracting much attention. This city did not have any powerful sects or family so noticing so many well dressed and good looking ladies did turn a few heads but that was all and Rein's group was not the target of any suspicion.
Everyone was tired for the day after a long and nonstop journey, so they were not planning to do anything for the day and were just going to rest or cultivate. While getting ready for that Rein started to explain to everyone about the schedule he had created to finish the work.
There was a time limit of 2 weeks on the quest so they needed to finish all three of the quests at least before that. Rein still had a decent amount of time in hand but still he tried to get it done as soon as possible so that he would also be able to enjoy some time with the girls as a vacation.
There was a high chance that the evil cultivators might run away if they knew that someone from a powerful sect was here to get rid of them. So Rein was planning to take care of them first. The next day he was planning to surround the abandoned fortress that they were using as their base to not allow even a single one of them to escape.
But the nonchalant attitude of the evil cultivators changed when Colinde easily cut down two of the guards who had approached her. Seeing the evil cultivators realised that this young girl was dangerous and they attacked her from all sides together.
...
While Colinde was taking on the evil cultivators from the front, Rein and Lan infiltrated the fortress from a secret entrance that Rein had managed to find after reading about it in an ancient book about this city. It looked like the evil cultivators were also aware of this route as there was a person guarding the door of this route.
But this was not a bad thing. This person's cultivation was actually almost on par with Lan's so he would make a good opponent for her. So Rein asked Lan to take care of him while he made sure that no one else was going to bother Lan while she was fighting.
Lan was actually able to perform better than Rein had expected. As it was her first real fight, Rein had expected her to be a bit nervous which she actually was before the start of the battle. But as soon as the fight began, suddenly Lan became very calm and calculated. Rein had expected her to win the fight in 20 minutes or so but Lan again amazed Rein by ending the fight in less than 10 minutes.
This did not happen because Lan was overwhelmingly more powerful than her opponent but because she always made extremely good decisions in the middle of the fight and was able to maintain her advantage throughout the whole battle. It was truly amazing. Lan really had a great talent for combat.
After that was over and seeing that Lan was not feeling any discomfort after killing for the first time in her life, Rein allowed her to join him to fight the other enemies.
Just like that a massive battle started in the abandoned fortress.