Chapter 93: It Seemed They Were Being Tracked, Yet No One Appeared to Have Caught Up

The spirit vessel launched from Mount Yu Island was called the Sheep Mountain.

This vessel belonged to the Sheep Mountain Island League, much like the former Thousand Leaf Island League.

Of course, the Sheep Mountain Island League was considerably stronger. Within its ranks were one false-core family and two clans each guarded by a cultivator at the ninth level of Foundation Establishment.

Formidable, certainly, but still far beneath the power of a force truly anchored by a Golden Core cultivator.

For that reason, the routes assigned to the spirit vessels of the Sheep Mountain Island League could only make do with the remote passages left over by other Golden Core powers.

On board, the vessel was overseen by one cultivator at the eighth level of Foundation Establishment and two at the fifth level.

In addition, the vessel’s defensive array could rise to the level of a false core. On routes along the outer reaches of the Sea of Ten Thousand Stars, that was enough to keep things secure.

Unlike the vessel he had taken before, where a false-core cultivator personally kept watch, Shen Lian did not sense any divine-sense sweep from the stationed cultivators aboard the Sheep Mountain.

He had not even boarded the spirit vessel yet. Then whose divine sense had brushed past him just now, bringing with it that faint stench of blood?

Without changing expression, he boarded the vessel and returned to his room, standing with his hands clasped behind his back beside the window as though in no great hurry, gazing outward.

On the deck of the spirit vessel, Qi Chengzan frowned deeply. His cultivation was at the eighth level of Foundation Establishment, and among the vessel’s stationed cultivators, only one was at the same level as he.

So long as he acted covertly and did not strike openly, it would not be difficult to evade the stationed cultivator’s notice.

“Did you catch it?” he sent through secret voice, his palm gripping the swollen lump hidden there.

In order to catch up with the Green Goat vessel, he had even crossed two dangerous stretches of sea without hesitation.

Yet ever since the Green Goat spirit vessel had set down, he had been watching the Foundation Establishment cultivators coming and going aboard, and still he had not sensed the aura of the Tracking Spell.

“Did he use a concealment art and leave the vessel as a Qi Refinement cultivator?”

Qi Chengzan felt uneasy, but even if a concealment art had been used, the aura of the Tracking Spell could not have vanished entirely.

Back on Mount Yu Island, he had chased the trail all the way there by sheer luck.

Black Cliff had said that the Tracking Spell could remain for as long as three years. It had only been half a month.

How had the scent disappeared so completely?

Even the blood-bean spirit insects he had raised with living beings could no longer detect any trace of the Tracking Spell’s aura.

“Could it be that the imprint of the Blood Demon Tracking Spell has truly been erased?”

At that thought, Qi Chengzan’s expression darkened further.

The Black Cliff Patriarch was renowned throughout the Sea of Ten Thousand Stars. With only early Golden Core cultivation, he had repeatedly dared to bare his fangs against the major Golden Core sects. Beside caution, he possessed ruthless methods as well.

He did not care whether his disciples lived or died; what he cared about was whether the task he had assigned had been completed.

Remembering the agony of the soul-burning torment he had once suffered, Qi Chengzan shivered.

What should he do?

He had finally clawed his way up to become the head of the Qi family, and he was not willing to lose all of it.

He had already carefully checked every cultivator who had disembarked from the spirit vessel, and indeed found nothing suspicious.

One of the vessel’s Foundation Establishment cultivators had left the ship, but had then returned.

After much thought, Qi Chengzan decided to take a gamble and narrow the field to the remaining cultivators aboard the vessel.

Pressing the swollen lump in his palm and thinking of the Black Cliff Patriarch’s punishment, Qi Chengzan revealed a trace of viciousness.

He drew both hands into the wide sleeves of his robe and used his fingers like blades to slit open his palm, cutting into the blood-bean insect hidden within the swelling as well.

What was strange was that the body of the blood-bean insect held no flesh and blood at all. Instead, it was made up of tiny particles curled into dense little grains.

If enlarged and examined closely, each grain contained the coiled shadow of a human soul.

In the cultivation world there was a divine ability known as scattering beans to make soldiers, but the refinement of blood-bean insects was far more cruel and bloody than that.

Within the split body of the blood-bean insect, the tiny grains began greedily drawing in Qi Chengzan’s blood, changing from black to crimson, then swiftly becoming transparent.

At the same time, the soul shadows within the grains stirred awake one by one, rising into the void and beginning to scent the currents of energy there.

...

Inside the room, Shen Lian’s divine sense covered every corner.

A few faint, translucent points of light drifted through the room. He could sense that within each one clung a soul shadow, sniffing about restlessly.

At the same time, a slight tremor passed through his sea of consciousness, and a shadowy imprint of the Ghost-Demon Soul-Capturing Seal emerged half-formed.

The faint bloodiness concealed within those particles had not escaped his perception.

“Life-Sacrifice Bean Refinement Art.”

As his thoughts turned, Shen Lian once again drew out fragments of Xiang Jingying’s memory.

From those memories, he found records of a demonic secret art.

This art used human souls as seeds to refine bean insects. Their form was like grains of beans, within which human souls were gathered. Only by feeding them with vast amounts of cultivators’ flesh and blood could one cultivate a single bean insect.

Shen Lian closed his eyes as though in cultivation, but in his mind he recalled the scene on the harbor plaza when he had disembarked from the spirit vessel two days earlier.

Whatever a Foundation Establishment cultivator saw could be etched into memory; whether it was remembered or not was another matter.

Soon, the figures in his mind overlapped and formed the shape of one person standing on the deck of the spirit vessel.

So it was him.

This man was far too careless. He had not even changed his appearance along the way.

“So he really is after me.”

Shen Lian quickly pieced together the entire chain of cause and effect. The Life-Sacrifice Bean Refinement Art possessed tracking abilities.

Thinking back to the Black Cliff old demon’s eerie words of “I will remember you,” and then the rolling demonic encirclement that had followed, the truth stood plainly before him. He did not believe in coincidences.

Just when he had slain three demonic cultivators, he had encountered a cultivator versed in the tracking methods recorded in a demonic cultivator’s memories.

And after he had taken care of Xiang Jingying and the others, he had not rested for a moment before rushing to Mount Yu Island, then boarding the Green Goat spirit vessel.

Even so, he still had a tail on him.

As expected, the Black Cliff Patriarch was no ordinary figure, one who could keep jumping between Golden Core-level powers without ever falling; the people under him were not trash either.

One must never underestimate any cultivator.

Before long, the illusory points of light that had appeared in the room drifted a full circle about the chamber, then flew out and plunged into another room.

“Could it be they found no scent at all?”

Watching the translucent particles fly off, Shen Lian’s expression turned knowing.

He had burned away the demonic encirclement with fire-attribute spiritual power strengthened by the Sky-Transforming Flame Domain, and had purified himself repeatedly as well. The marks left behind should have been worn away completely.

This made things rather interesting.

The one hunting him had caught up, yet it seemed he had lost the trail again.

Otherwise, if they had truly tracked him to this point, he had remained in the City of Immortal Farewells for two days and even repeatedly gone out to the sea beyond the city. What a perfect chance that would have been to strike.

Now, in broad daylight and under everyone’s eyes, that man had even resorted to unleashing a demonic secret art so gloomily. Was he getting desperate?

Yet according to Xiang Jingying’s memories, the Black Cliff Patriarch did not care much about the deaths and injuries of those under his command. So why was he still pursuing him so relentlessly?

Were Xiang Jingying and the other two somehow special? Or was the matter of seizing the Blood Soul Pearl truly so important that his killing of Xiang Jingying had ruined some plan of the Black Cliff old demon?

Had the old demon flown into a rage and ordered his followers to hunt him down?

...

Sitting cross-legged, Shen Lian tapped his leg with his fingers as he considered what to do next.

Should he seize the chance to kill this one as well, or...

This cultivator’s spiritual sense was not weak; in fact, it felt even stronger than Xiang Jingying’s.

Judging by the present situation, the man had not tracked him down yet.

If he acted rashly and killed him, would that further enrage the Black Cliff old demon?

When he killed Xiang Jingying, that old demon had already put him on his little list.

Earlier, in Black Whale City, caught off guard, he had killed Pei Huoyu and even thrown away the Five Elements Mountain, fleeing two hundred thousand li in a single breath to hide in the mortal world.

This time... the problem was not too great.

...

“Demonic cultivators!”

Before Shen Lian could make his decision, a sharp cry rang out aboard the spirit vessel.

The entire array formation of the ship began operating at once, its flashing spiritual light illuminating every corner.