The mist rose suddenly, with no prior warning, spreading rapidly. It was thick yet limited to only a few acres of forest, hovering and refusing to dissipate. The last distant scream was drawing near, but the figures gathered within the fog-shrouded forest were becoming blurred, their movements chaotic and indistinct.
At first, Huang Tai was puzzled, but then a thought crossed his mind, sending a chill down his spine as if he’d been plunged into icy water.
He had witnessed Yu Ci’s abilities before—the power to disappear without a trace. In such an environment, where visibility was poor and figures blended together, wasn’t it the perfect setting for that guy to strike? No, it was likely that this mist itself was Yu Ci’s doing, and that guy could be hiding in the fog, waiting for the right moment to attack!
With this realization, Huang Tai dared not be careless. Immediately, his Yin Spirit stirred slightly, like casting a large net woven from divine consciousness, covering an area of nearly thirty zhang in all directions.
This kind of Yin Spirit sensing had a wide range and clear perception. Within a thirty-zhang radius, nothing could escape his notice, not even the rustle of grass. The sensing range could even extend as far as a li away, which was incredibly powerful. However, the consumption of soul energy was great, and it was particularly vulnerable to spells that directly attacked the soul, so Huang Tai had always been cautious. But now, he could no longer hold back.
Under the cover of his divine net, the soul fluctuations of all living beings within the area were clearly reflected. Each soul was unique, and with Huang Tai’s level of cultivation, even the slightest differences stood out like a beacon.
He commanded his men to stand guard nearby while he focused entirely on sensing. In an instant, the positions of the patrolling guards in the vicinity were all within his grasp. But the most crucial one… where was Yu Ci?
Huang Tai’s mind was momentarily blank, but only for a brief second before he steeled himself.
Gritting his teeth, he made his move. His Yin Spirit, which had been residing within his physical body to control his divine consciousness, suddenly emerged. Without the limitations of the body, the sensitivity of his Yin Spirit increased tenfold. In that moment, he “saw” it—a chilling, icy aura blending into the dense mist in a corner of the forest, drifting silently toward the distance.
That aura was almost indistinguishable from the fog itself, so seamlessly integrated. If not for the Yin Spirit forcibly leaving his body and causing intense vibrations in the divine net, which interfered with the surrounding souls, it would have gone undetected once again!
The source of that aura was… to the west?
The Yin Spirit immediately returned to his body, and Huang Tai shivered. Although he had achieved Yin Spirit mastery, he was still some distance away from being able to freely roam with it outside his body. Exposing the Yin Spirit to the world before it was fully perfected could cause damage, even on a moonless night.
Suppressing his discomfort, he shouted, “Behind us! That b*stard is behind us!”
At Huang Tai’s command, the nearby guards rushed in a frenzy toward the indicated direction. Huang Tai also took a few steps forward but quickly realized with despair that his target was undoubtedly using some high-level talisman technique, moving at an incredible speed. Besides him, no one here could hope to catch up.
In such a vast forest, if the group couldn’t form a complete encirclement, what were the chances that he alone could catch and subdue someone as cunning as that guy?
Recalling the strange technique that allowed the opponent to almost merge completely with the mist, Huang Tai involuntarily halted. He finally understood why, in the Sky Rift Valley, the opponent had been able to come and go as he pleased, playing them all for fools. With such skills, in the Sky Rift Valley, wasn’t it like a fish in water?
Ahead, Yu Ci’s figure had already disappeared into the night, but without the cover of the mist, his unique soul fluctuations flickered like a candle, guiding the way but also threatening to vanish from sensing range at any moment.
Huang Tai gave a bitter smile and finally pulled out the jade talisman he had long prepared.
The jade talisman had only a few inscriptions on it, exuding a cold aura and emitting a faint spiritual light. This wasn’t his own work; it had been given to him by Tu Du as a contingency plan.
Yet Huang Tai had hoped he would never have to use it. He still remembered Tu Du’s smiling words when he handed it over: “The Sun Light Sect has stood for over a hundred years, and it’s rare to get such an opportunity. I’m quite curious to see what it would be like to capture such a junior.”
Huang Tai understood that if the old man actually used this talisman, his future in the Sun Light Sect would likely be bleak or even tragic. But if Yu Ci escaped, then his future… would be nonexistent!
No longer hesitating, he infused the talisman with his Yin Spirit, then crushed it in his hand.
With a soft “hiss,” a faint arrow of smoke shot out. Before it had traveled even half a li, it was caught by the wind and its form rapidly changed. The wisps of smoke twisted and transformed into delicate feathers, eventually forming a palm-sized crane. The crane soared gracefully into the sky, its speed swift, disappearing from sight in an instant.
Watching the smoke crane take flight, Huang Tai felt his strength leave him. It wasn’t exhaustion, but the realization that he had just squandered the last chance Tu Du had given him.
His teeth ground together audibly. “B*stard! When I catch you, I’ll make you regret ever being born!”
Huang Tai never doubted Yu Ci’s fate. In his eyes, with Tu Du, the chief elder of the Sun Light Sect and a Core Refinement master famous for centuries, personally involved, that boy’s tragic end was already sealed.
*****
Yu Ci, who had fled far away, couldn’t comprehend Huang Tai’s complex thoughts at the moment. Just now, he used the “Misty Flowing Shadow Talisman” as a cover and drove his physical body with the sword intent of mist transformation, executing a technique close to invisibility. This was the culmination of his recent understanding and application of Ye Bin’s sword intent. After running for several miles, he began to feel faintly exhausted.
This sense of weakness in his body was something he had grown quite familiar with. The sword intent Ye Bin had gifted him was indeed a divine technique, but it also imposed a great burden on him. After becoming accustomed to it over the past few days, he realized that using the mist transformation sword intent, he could only manage five strikes before his entire body would collapse from exhaustion, surpassing his body’s limits.
Fortunately, his strong recovery ability, cultivated from “Innate Qi,” provided a solid foundation. After just a few breaths, his fatigue was swept away, and his body was once again filled with strength.
Then, he opened the Divine Map.
The winter night forest was suspended in a faint blue glow, still in the shape of an inverted sea bowl, with its colors slightly darkened, faithfully reflecting the changes in light and darkness around Sky Rift Valley. Yu Ci’s mind made a slight shift within, and soon he spotted a small smoke crane hovering in the void.
“As expected, it’s the Flying Crane Soul Talisman. That Huang guy really has no creativity!”
He knew this talisman technique as well, belonging to the realm of demon illustrations and ghost patterns. Once the talisman was formed, it could capture specific ghostly Qi or spiritual fluctuations within a range of several dozen miles, making it perfect for tracking and locating. The reason he said “as expected” was because the day before, when the old demon Tu Du gave this talisman to Huang Tai, Yu Ci had watched the entire process through the Divine Map, empowered by the “One Breath, Three Calls” technique, without missing a single detail.
And now, the old demon Tu Du should be catching up soon.
Yu Ci slowly regained his strength, his steps naturally slowing down. He began drawing talismans again, sealing them within the blue light guide of the Divine Illumination Bronze Mirror. Because the timing of the sealing was critical, he had to be precise.
Once the three talismans were written, his mind withdrew from its state of clarity, and his emotions began to stir. To be honest, he was feeling genuinely nervous, and because of this, his mind started to wander a bit more.
He had been precocious since childhood. By the time he was seven or eight, he already had a fairly clear set of personal rules. However, during his five years in the Twin Immortal Sect, he had rarely done anything willingly. So, after gaining his freedom at the age of thirteen, he worked hard to ensure that everything he did aligned with his will and gave him peace of mind.
This wasn’t an easy task, but he enjoyed it.
He pursued immortality, that much was true. But the immortality he sought—or rather, yearned for—was not the cruel and ruthless kind pursued by Zi Lei and Immortal Chi Yin, nor was it the petty and corrupt kind pursued by the Sun Light Sect and Thousand Spirit Gate.
It was a kind of…
How to put it? Yu Ci couldn’t think of the exact words for it at the moment, but he knew it should be an immortality that brought him immense satisfaction and happiness.
The requirements seemed incredibly high, but to Yu Ci, they weren’t unreasonable. For him, immortality was the culmination of all meaning. And this “meaning” referred to everything that mattered to him, everything he pursued and yearned for, which should all fall under this category.
If he couldn’t reach this standard—would that kind of immortality even be considered immortality?
So, many times, he would do things that others found utterly baffling: things unrelated to morality, gain, or even right and wrong. The only reason for doing them was simple and sufficient:
He was satisfied, he was happy, he enjoyed it!
Yu Ci grinned silently.
In the Divine Map, the smoke crane behind him was drawing closer. However, up until now, there was still nothing in the fifty-mile radius that seemed obstructive, so he had a fair amount of time… wait!
What was that?
The blue light of the Divine Map spread out, but there was a conspicuous long line of mist extending from the edge, crossing mountains and rivers, spanning half the map, and rushing toward him at high speed.
In the largest scale of the Divine Map, this misty long line appeared no thicker than a strand of silk. However, if one changed the perspective and looked closely, they’d realize that this “long line” was actually made up of distorted light and shadows around it, about the thickness of an arm’s embrace, and its diameter was constantly expanding. This was the trace left by some tremendous force as it tore through the void.
To conserve his energy for the difficult situation that might come later, Yu Ci hadn’t used the “One Breath, Three Calls” technique. As a result, the clarity of the Divine Map was limited, and the so-called “Core Refinement haze” appeared in the image once again.
However, this did not seem like a Core Refinement cultivator!
Speaking of which, Yu Ci knew Huang Tai’s plan inside out, but when it came to Tu Du’s intentions, he was still in the guessing phase. With Tu Du’s status and abilities, there was no need for him to explain his plan in detail to his subordinates. Alone, he was a force several times more powerful than Huang Tai and his companions combined.
Yu Ci knew he was taking a risk, but he had a consistent reason for doing so.
He took a deep breath, calming his mind. He quickly measured the speed at which the long line was extending. The answer was: a thousand feet in an instant! This was not a speed a Core Refinement cultivator could reach. In just a dozen breaths, the fifty-mile distance had been erased!
He jerked his head up. At this moment, there was no need to use the Divine Map anymore. Yu Ci could see with his naked eye that a dazzling bright star was streaking through the sky from behind the mountains. The star radiated a red glow with sharp edges, as large as a bucket, crossing the sky like a comet. But its trajectory was clearly descending toward him!
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